It's Chappelle's not-so-mad, mad world

Terrence Howard and Tyler Perry might be the latest brown-skinned toasts of Tinseltown, but I love me some Dave Chappelle.

Recently I went to see his current movie, “Dave Chappelle's Block Party.” After watching it, I left the theater in a much better mood.

In “Block Party,” a documentary-cum-concert film, Chappelle is laconic and easy-going as he makes his way from Central Ohio, where he lives, to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he wants to mount a free open air-concert with Erykah Badu, Kanye West, the Fugees and other hip-hop performers.

Along the way, we meet some of Dave's neighbors in Dayton, including several bland, middle-aged white residents who seem like the most unlikely Chappelle fans ever.  But it turns out  they are big Chappelle lovers, and the casual respect they display as the comedian pops up from nowhere, offering them “Golden Tickets” and a bus ride to New York for the block party, is touching and funny.

As they interact, the comedian seems aware of the incongruity of things, but not once does he appear to making fun of his neighbors' squareness: "Are you down for this?" he asks a middle-aged white woman who works at the local store where he stops in to buy cigarettes. “Well, I've never been to a hip-hop concert,” she replies before gamely agreeing to visit Brooklyn.

These sequences are a far cry from the biting, race-related satire found on “Chappelle's Show,” the Comedy Central hit that brought so much fame and, apparently, despair to the lanky comedian. I watched the movie in Silver Spring, Md., the same middle-class, racially-integrated town where Chappelle spent his childhood and teen years.  While some may go to “Block Party” hoping see the comedian's most famous characters — a drugged-out Rick James; the blind white racist who doesn't know he's black; or the lucky father of Oprah Winfrey's baby — what they'll see in the feature film is a kinder, gentler, though no less funny, depiction of Chappelle.

In “Block Party,”  the suspicion that an underlying Good Guy has always lurked beneath Chappelle's confrontational stage persona is confirmed.

The timing of Chappelle's first solo cinematic outing — after a spate of more modest roles in such films as “Half-Baked” and “You've Got Mail” — is impeccable.  And its presentation of Chappelle as smart and thoughtful person gives valuable context to the flap that erupted last year when he walked off the set of his wildly popular Comedy Central show.

Recovering from controversy
Chappelle has been making a comeback of sorts. In January, he began making a few surprise stand-up appearances. Then in February, he sat down with Oprah Winfrey and with James Lipton of Bravo's “Inside the Actors Studio.”

Yet his much-publicized disappearance last year caused an uproar in the entertainment industry: How could anyone, let alone a Black Man, just walk out on a $50 million contract to produce and star in his own television show?

Amidst all the coverage last year, a recurring subtext — planted and cultivated by Chappelle's network handlers, or so he claims — was that Dave had gone crazy.  Once the comedian surfaced in Johannesburg, South Africa, he gave a brief interview to Time magazine, admitting to having sought psychological counseling. But he denied rumors that he had lost his mind or been waylaid by drugs.  In fact, he sounded honestly perplexed and reluctant to label the nature of his distress one way or the other.  This is understandable, especially since the image persisted of Chappelle as an out-of-control and probably ungrateful lunatic.

I can only guess at the kinds of pressures felt by famous black men of Chappelle's age (he is 32) once they realize the level of scrutiny and responsibility that comes with having a high profile, not to mention buckets of money.

But I have studied black American mental health and self-image, and the vast array of factors that can negatively effect both. I know that even brothers who aren't placed in Hollywood's floodlights struggle daily to strike a balance between their own self-dignity and natural ambitions, and the nagging, widely-held stereotypes that unfortunately still haunt black American men.

You know them, and Dave Chappelle has made millions satirizing them: the Big Angry Black Man. The Shuffling Sell-Out. The Loud-Mouthed, Sex-Crazed Ignoramus.

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