Interviewing Chris Rock – comedian, movie star, Oscar host and more – is like having a great seat at a Chris Rock show. His stream of consciousness rolls on like a tidal wave, jumping from his life to his career to African-American life to his favorite topic, what’s wrong with America as a whole.
“The world hates us because Americans worship money,” he says in that familiar, high-pitched voice. “We all go to the same church in America – it’s called the Sacred Church of the ATM. Everywhere you look, there is a new branch going up.”
And speaking of ATMs, Rock would rather they weren’t open 24 hours a day.
“Have you ever taken out $400 at 3 in the morning for something positive?” he says. “I swear, a shrink’s face should pop up after you type your ID number in. He should say, ‘Don’t buy those drugs. Go home. Go to sleep!”‘
On May 27, not one but two Chris Rock movies will open: Adults can catch him in “The Longest Yard,” a remake also starring Nelly, Burt Reynolds and Adam Sandler, while their kids can hear him as the voice of a zebra in the animated “Madagascar.”
“Hopefully everyone will see ‘Madagascar’ in the morning and then at night go see ‘The Longest Yard,”‘ Rock says. “It will certainly be the biggest opening weekend for any one actor in the history of the movie business. Until the new Will Smith movie comes out.”
Actors usually say that they do voice work in animated movies for their children, but not Rock.
“If they paid me $20 million to do a porn film, well, that would be a little bit better for my kids in the long run,” he says, grinning.
Actually, “The Longest Yard,” a remake of the 1974 prison film, is about as adult as Rock’s movies get. Sandler plays a former NFL player who, after being jailed, is forced by the warden to field an unlikely football team of inmates to play a team of vicious guards.
Rock plays Caretaker, the inmates’ go-to guy.
“Adam and I have been friends for about 19 years,” says Rock, who was a “Saturday Night Live” castmate of Sandler’s from 1990 to 1993. “We even shared an office for three years when we were on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but this was the first time when we ever really worked together for an extended period.” Anyone expecting to see Rock on the football field, he says, will be disappointed.
“I didn’t get out there,” he says. “To be honest, I got knocked around enough as a kid growing up in New York. I didn’t need to face real-life football players whose necks were bigger than both of my legs.”
As for “Madagascar,” Rock provides the voice for Marty, a zoo zebra who doesn’t know if he’s black with white stripes or white with black stripes. When one of the other animals disappears, Marty, a lion named Alex (Ben Stiller) and a hippo named Gloria (Jada Pinkett-Smith) go in search of him. The friends soon find themselves on a ship bound for the island of Madagascar.
“I didn’t even know I was a zebra until yesterday,” Rock says jokingly. “I thought I was a muskrat, but then (Dreamworks Animation chief) Jeffrey Katzenberg cut the movie, and it looks great.”
When pressed, Rock will get serious – however briefly.
“I did do the movie for my kids,” he admits. “My kids can’t see most of my movies until they’re 30. It’s nice for them to be able to see Daddy’s world right now.”
And yes, Rock says, parents can rest assured that, however profane his stand-up routines may get, the humor in “Madagascar” is appropriate for younger audiences.
“All of my clean jokes are in the movie,” he says. “All of my inside jokes are probably being shown at some animator’s backyard barbecue.”
The comedian is still dealing with fallout from his job hosting the Academy Awards in February. Some viewers found his jokes – especially about the omnipresent Jude Law – unduly negative.
“I would host again if I was asked,” he says, “but now I realize that some people treat the Oscars like religion. To say that they take it seriously is an understatement.”
No, Rock says, he wasn’t out to get Law.
“I wasn’t dissing him,” he says. “I was just talking about the fact that this guy has been in a ton of movies. People act like I was talking about Clint Eastwood or a legend. It’s Jude Law!”
Despite the backlash, Rock adds, simply being asked gave him a sense of pride.
“Doing the show got a bit of the chip off my shoulder,” he says. “When you’re a comedian, like myself, who curses, then you’re a bit of a second-class citizen to the guys who don’t curse.
“You hear, ‘Oh, Chris, you’re big, but so-and-so is a family comedian. He’s mainstream, and you’re not.’ But my audience was big enough for them to ask me to host the Oscars.”
Afterward, Rock says, he was happy to get back to work.
“The day after I did the Oscars, I got all these congratulations, which were nice,” the comedian says. “But even better was hearing Jeffrey Katzenberg on the other end of the line saying, ‘Chris, hey, that was great, but could you come to the studio at 6 a.m. tomorrow?’ It was back to work – just like I like it.”
It’s that work ethic that took Rock from his Brooklyn roots as the oldest of seven children of a truck driver, fending for himself in the tough streets of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, to his current success. The comedian, who recently turned 40, lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.