Word: comically
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...could have stuck to the Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence path to fame and fortune: 1) sign up for a buddy-cop film; 2) ad-lib your way through the criminally formulaic script; 3) get paid; 4) repeat. But Rock is playing it smart and working with Hollywood's edgiest comic directors. He has a co-starring role in Dogma, a film by Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy); a lead opposite Morgan Freeman in Nurse Betty, a film by Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men); and a star turn in I Was Made to Love Her for the Weitz brothers (American...
...never know whether what's going to come out of him is going to be soothing or scalding. "It's good, it's intelligent," says Allen about Rock's stand-up. "He sucks the audience in quickly and keeps them." And his unpredictability is part of what makes his comic take so fresh. "Somebody should always be offended," Rock says. "Somebody in your life should always be like, 'Why did you have to do that?' Always. That's just being a real artist. That's the difference between Scorsese and Disney...
...toxic waste," and would beat him up regularly. Funny thing was, even though he was a misfit in Bensonhurst, after a while he didn't fit in back in Bed-Stuy either. And nobody in either place took him seriously. It was then Rock first realized he was a comic, not a fighter. "I just remember that whenever I got really mad or passionate, like in an argument, people would laugh, and I'd be dead serious," he says. "It would happen a lot. So it was like, 'Gee, I've got something here...
Rock quit school and, after a stint as a busboy at Red Lobster, launched a comedy career. He was a clueless 17-year-old, playing small clubs around New York like the Comic Strip, trying to read the crowd, trying to milk laughs, usually failing. He wasn't making much--the Comic Strip paid $7 a set during the week, $40 on weekends--but he was trying to get his name out there, trying to build a rep. His big joke was this: "Woman comes up to me, says she'll do anything for me, anything. So I say, 'Bitch...
...used to always tell me he needed another joke like 'Bitch, paint my house!,'" says Mario Joyner, a comic and friend of Rock's. "He thought that was a big bit for him." Rock, frustrated that crowds wouldn't laugh, once poured a drink on a man's head. Clubs refused to give him much stage time, agitating him further...