I'm Dave Chappelle, bitch

Somehow, I bet a google search of the above title will yield hundreds of hits, but just too appropriate to resist the urge to be more creative. Hey, if it works for the New York Post....

Comedy Central Suspends Show:
Without explanation, Comedy Central said it had suspended production of the third season of the comedian Dave Chappelle's show.
After a yearlong hiatus, "Chappelle's Show" was scheduled to begin airing at the end of this month.

"The third season will not premiere on May 31st as originally scheduled," Comedy Central said in a statement. "All parties are optimistic that production will resume in the near future."

The return of Mr. Chappelle's show has been postponed twice. It was to happen in February, but did not because Mr. Chappelle had contracted walking pneumonia, said Tony Fox, a spokesman for Comedy Central. At the time, the network dismissed reports that Mr. Chappelle was experiencing writer's block.

Ten new episodes have been completed and are ready to be broadcast, said Mr. Fox. The rappers 50 Cent, Common and Kanye West are a few of the musical guests who had taped performances for the coming season. Last week, Mr. Chappelle and his crew were filming skits in Harlem.

The Chappelle show is sometimes too coarse for my taste, but often is laugh-aloud funny. I smell a financial dispute: Comedy Central probably doesn't want to give up a slice of the action, and Chappelle realizes he has a lot of clout at the moment.

{Business, Arts}

update:

Representatives of the comedian Dave Chappelle yesterday denied rumors that drugs were involved in the suspension of production of his acclaimed sketch comedy show, "Chappelle's Show."

No one has explained why Dave Chappelle stopped production.
Matt Labov, Mr. Chappelle's publicist, categorically denied speculation that drug use - a frequent topic of Mr. Chappelle's stand-up comedy routines - played any part in his client's problems with delivering the show on time. The third season's premiere had already been delayed twice.
"He's not in rehab. He does not have a cocaine addiction," Mr. Labov said.

I love how publicists have to deny allegations that aren't even being speculated upon, yet.

update 5/16/05:
here is perhaps the real reason for Mr. Chappelle's absence, not drugs, not psychological problems, per se, just stress, mountains of it.

The first thing Chappelle wants is to dispel rumors--that he's got a drug problem, that he's checked into a mental institution in Durban--that have been flying around the U.S. for the past week. He says he is staying with a friend, Salim Domar, and not in a mental institution, as has been widely reported in America. Chappelle says he is in South Africa to find "a quiet place" for a while. "Let me tell you the things I can do here which I can't at home: think, eat, sleep, laugh. I'm an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I've been doing a lot of thinking here."

The picture he paints--and it seems a fairly honest and frank assessment-- is of someone struggling to come to terms with a new position and power who's still figuring out how to come to grips with how people around him are reacting to the $50 million deal he signed last year with Comedy Central. Without naming specific characters, he seems to blame both some of his inner circle (not his family) and himself for the stresses created by last year's deal.

"There were things that overwhelmed me," he says. "But not in the way that people are saying. I haven't spent any of the money. All that stuff about partying and taking crack is not true. Why do I live on a farm in Ohio? To support my partying lifestyle?"

The problems, he says, started with his inner circle."If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour you can lose yourself," he says. "Everyone around me says, 'You're a genius!'; 'You're great!'; 'That's your voice!' But I'm not sure that they're right." And he stresses that Comedy Central was not part of the problem and put no more than normal television restrictions on what he could do.

"You got to be careful of the company you keep," Chappelle says. "It's hard to know how much to say. One of the things that happens when people make the leap from a certain amount of money to tens of millions of dollars is that the people around you dramatically change.

But Chappelle also says that he must share the blame for the stalled third season. "I'm admittedly a human being," he says. "I'm a difficult kind of dude." His earlier walkout during shooting "had a little psychological element to it. I have trust issues, things like that. I saw some stuff in myself that I just didn't dig. It's like when I brought a girl home to my mom and it looked as if my mom really didn't like this girl. And she told me, 'I like her just fine. I just don't like you around her.'

His religion is also crucial. "I don't normally talk about my religion publicly because I don't want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you learn it the right way. It's a lifelong effort. Your religion is your standard. Coming here I don't have the distractions of fame. It quiets the ego down. I'm interested in the kind of person I've got to become. I want to be well rounded and the industry is a place of extremes. I want to be well balanced. I've got to check my intentions, man."

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