Comedian Neal Brennan: White vs. Black Humor

Co-creator of "Chappelle's Show" Neal Brennan chats with http://www.WatchMojo.com at Montreal's Just for Laughs Festival about black versus white humor and how - as a skinny white dude - he is able to appeal to primarily African American audiences.

• Category

  Comedy

[zjironman]

Black people don't be chillin, we be coolin

[mikesgotniceice]

Saw him last night, hilarious! He was on for over an hour and his performance as a whole was great. Everything is just funnier when you're at a live show, had a couple drinks in me too :D

[joachim713]

...breaking new ground. He's playing it as safe as possible with his act, and it falls flat. And it's made all the worse because he's a terrible performer.

[joachim713]

If you read my comments, which I assume you have because you replied to them, then you'd know that I did acknowledge most of those skits as 'good'. I gave the show its due credit. But it was still largely a bunch of tired racial stereotypes and even the title character of the show said that. Dave didn't start having problems in the third season, he was having issues even before that.

And if this guy is a good writer, why does his act suck so much? He's not challenging anything, he's not...

[Kayo Odoms]

he's probably a better writer then performer. yeah the third season was when dave was having probs with the show, but there was a bunch of good skits like the making of the band, wayne brady, when keeping it real goes wrong, old dave compared to young dave etc.

[joachim713]

No, I'm not. And even Dave Chappelle complained that the show was enforcing negative stereotypes more often than it was making fun of them.

I honestly wouldn't mind hearing more jokes about white people, but this guy sucks. His timing and delivery are awful, and even the crowd doesn't seem to be enjoying his bit.

[Kayo Odoms]

there were more than just white folks do this black folks do that..you must have been just focusing on that.There was alot of stuff that dealt with pop culture and culture in general. so yeah theres gonna be white folks do this black people do that stuff. paul mooney mentioned in an interview how when he mentions all the messed up stuff blk people do white people are laughing like crazy but when he tlks about white people they get all uptight. you one of those people?

[joachim713]

...and?

[macp1992]

This guy also wrote half baked with chappelle just btw

[joachim713]

Don't get me wrong, there were some brilliant moments on it. I loved his impression of Rick James, and I really liked how he brought on lesser known talent to share his spotlight. The crackhead character he played made me laugh every time.

But most of his sketches felt like 'White folks do this, black folks do that'. Those kinds of jokes have been done to death. I'm not going to call them offensive, but you have dig pretty deep to make them funny. I know now who to blame for that.