About four years ago, Chris Rock stopped by the video store and found himself looking in the foreign-film section. He came across Eric Rohmer's French drama L'amour l'après-midi (Chloe in the Afternoon), about a contentedly married man who falls into a flirtation with a friend's ex-girlfriend. Though Rock had never heard of the film, he rented it and went home to watch it. He came close to turning it off a couple of times because, he recalls, "it was so boring." But something kept him intrigued. "I wasn't looking for a project. I was just watching a movie," he says. By the time he finished the movie, he knew what he wanted to do. "I thought, 'Boy, I could do this movie.' I knew right away," he says. "Everyone thought I was out of my mind."
Rock recognizes he might not be the logical choice to adapt a quiet, leisurely paced Rohmer film for American audiences. This is, after all, the scathing comic whose frank takes on such topics as race relations, class, and politics are simultaneously brilliant and brutal. Known for his fierce, rapid-fire delivery and intrepidness in slaying a few sacred cows, Rock is widely regarded as one of the funniest men in America. He's also one of the few standup comedians who has been able to make the transition to movies. He's taken supporting roles in big hits (The Longest Yard, Lethal Weapon 4) and acclaimed indies (Nurse Betty, Dogma), and he co-wrote and directed the underrated comedy Head of State. He's also a successful producer: The autobiographical sitcom Everybody Hates Chris is one of the few bright spots on the struggling CW network. Still, Rock says, only his writing partner, the comic Louis C.K., believed in him when Rock decided to update Chloe. "I'm sure this was the joke assignment down at your magazine," Rock says upon our introduction. "I get the sense from enough journalists I've talked to in the last couple weeks, they were surprised it was good. They kind of expected a train wreck."
But the pairing of Rock and Rohmer makes a strange sort of sense. "It does," Rock agrees. "If you really watch what I do, it makes so much sense. I use all these words, and Rohmer uses so little words. It kind of goes together."
On this particular day, Rock isn't using too many words. He's a far cry from the antic persona he wears when prowling on stages; his attitude is low-key, almost shy. In other words, he's not one of those comics who feels the need to be "on" at all times. Instead he is introspective about his experience on I Think I Love My Wife, a film that marks a major departure for him as an actor. In addition to co-writing (with C.K.) and directing, Rock stars in the film as Richard Cooper, a suburban businessman torn between a loving wife (Gina Torres) and a former acquaintance (Kerry Washington). Mild-mannered and buttoned-down, the role of Richard required Rock to dial down his usual manic energy. "A lot of times I'm like Bugs Bunny," Rock says of his previous roles, which were often variations on his stage persona. "I had to take that Bugs Bunny aspect out and tell myself that if I'm walking down the hall, I'm just walking down the hall." For the first time, Rock hired an acting coach, Susan Batson, even before he had a green light to make the film. "I had people try to hire an acting teacher for me in the past, and I just dismissed it," he says. "This was the first time I really got into it and embraced it." During filming, Batson remained on the set to help rein Rock in and give him guidance. "It's such a different role," he muses. "We really worked on finding the character—all that corny stuff I dismissed as a young man. As an older man, I'm like, 'Wow, they were all right. And if I want to stay in this business, I'll pay attention.'"
Rock embraced the opportunity to show a different side of himself onscreen. "The thing about comedians is that so few comedians get cast in roles," he says. "People either see comedians and think they'll be good for something or they just don't call. And we'd rather be up for everything." He points to, of all things, Tom Cruise's role in The Firm as one he would enjoy playing. "Me and Tom Cruise are the same age, but no one's ever going to cast me in The Firm," he says. "I watch The Firm and I think, 'I could have done that. I would have been really good.'" Part of what appealed to Rock about playing Richard was the ordinariness of the character. "It's such a simple character," he says. "It was a character I hadn't ever been given."
Of course, I Think I Love My Wife still has plenty of comedy, and Rock's humor remains intact—which means audiences can look forward to one-liners about Michael Jackson and a rant about married women giving up sexy underwear that sounds like it's straight out of a Rock standup special. And Rock maintains that comedy is far more difficult to do well than drama. "You get effort points for drama," he observes. "There are no effort points for comedy. People laugh or they don't. They don't go, 'Well, it was a good performance. I didn't laugh, but it was great.'" He adds that he has no desire to star in a straight-up dramatic piece. "I couldn't sell that," he says. "I can't imagine telling the world, 'Come see me not be funny!'"
Rock began his career as a standup comedian in the 1980s and wasn't planning on a future as an actor. "I liked acting, but I never went on auditions until they called me," he recalls. "It wasn't something I was pursuing." Director Mario Van Peebles saw Rock perform and asked him to audition for the crime drama New Jack City. Rock landed the plum role of Pookie, a crack addict who works undercover for the police. "Mario said that Pookie really needed to be likable, so they auditioned a lot of comedians for it," Rock says. "He said, 'This whole movie lives and dies on how much we like Pookie.'"
Rock didn't have to look far to research his role. "I knew crackheads," he says. "It was in the middle of the crack epidemic, and I wasn't on Saturday Night Live yet, so I lived in Bed-Stuy [Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, N.Y.]. I would go back to my crack-filled neighborhood at the end of every day. So I was kind of mimicking people I knew." Before New Jack City was released, he landed a job as a cast member on SNL, where he would create such characters as militant talk-show host Nat X, spouting lines like "I've seen better acting in a Cambodian whorehouse" to Tori Spelling. But it wasn't until his 1996 HBO special, Bring the Pain, that Rock seemed to find his voice as a comic—and America found him. He won two Emmys (for outstanding special and writing) and inked a deal for his own series, The Chris Rock Show, on the network. Movie offers came in. Rock insists he took on only scripts he loved. "I read scripts all the time and just look for a decent part, any size part as long as it's good," he says. "I've done one movie for the money, and I shouldn't have done it." Asked if the movie is the Joel Schumacher flop Bad Company, Rock reluctantly confirms it is. "You live and you learn," he continues. "It wasn't a bad experience, but I did it for the wrong reason."
He confesses that he should have taken his earlier roles more seriously. "Now I realize I've been given a lot of opportunities and wish I had taken more advantage of them as an actor," he admits. "I wish I'd had an acting coach on Nurse Betty. It's a decent performance, but I could have really..." He drifts off before adding, "I knew my lines. But it was so much more than knowing your lines."
Frustrated by the lack of good roles, particularly for African-American actors, Rock turned to writing and directing his own material. "It's totally out of necessity," he says. "In '96 I do the special, I get big, but no one's got anything for me. So if I don't write it, I don't star in a movie." He points to his contemporaries as examples. "Don Cheadle is one of the best actors in the world," he says. "And he's starred in what: one, two movies? How many movies has Forest [Whitaker] starred in? If you're an African American and you don't write—fuck. You've got to be incredible."
Rock has enjoyed a long-term partnership with C.K., who worked on Rock's HBO show and also co-wrote Rock's Down to Earth, another remake (of Heaven Can Wait, which was a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan). Rock says the secret to their collaboration is simple. "Me and Louie share a life," he says. "We've both been married 10 years, we both have two daughters, we both live in the suburbs. We related to [Richard]. Comedians that travel know there's some temptation out there that you're combating. We totally, totally related to the character."
The pair have a process: They sit together in a room and act out scenes. Sometimes they watch movies; Woody Allen films were particularly popular for them while they wrote I Think I Love My Wife. "We watched a lot of Lost in Translation," Rock adds. "That relationship between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson—you don't see his wife in the film, but essentially he chose his wife. He went home. He didn't say, 'Give me your number.' He just let it go."
Rock admits he and the opinionated C.K. often disagree, but Rock has the final say. "It's like, we're a band, but I'm the singer," Rock explains. "And ultimately the singer has to be comfortable with things. I can overrule him because I'm going to be on camera."
As a standup, he says, he has to resist the temptation to use previous material in his screenplays. "I normally separate movies and standup and never use a line from my act in a movie," he says. "But there are lines in this movie that I had for my next standup. They won't be now." He insists he'll never leave standup behind. "I love laughter. I hear it, I feed off it, and I'm amazed by it, still. Sometimes I can't even hear myself talk."
Rock may have come to directing out of necessity, but according to his leading ladies, he's a natural. "More than any director I've ever worked with—maybe because he's sort of new to acting—he's sort of in awe of it," co-star Washington tells Back Stage. "And it's kind of neat to have your craft appreciated in that way. You'd do things, and he'd go, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' He doesn't really have the language yet in some areas, but he's very supportive and affirming." Echoes Torres, "He's astute. He knows it when he sees it."
Rock has a strong affinity for all actors and says he fought for the people he wanted in every role—specifically for Steve Buscemi, who plays Richard's womanizing co-worker. "You're in control, but it's still someone else's money," he says. "They did not want Steve Buscemi. Think about it: Steve Buscemi in an office? Steve Buscemi as a womanizer? It's never been done." This, Rock asserts, is precisely what makes it so great. "In most Hollywood movies, the womanizer is some hunky guy taking off his shirt. But in real life, it's the guy with a lot of personality and no conscience; those are the two things you need. If I didn't get Steve, I don't know who could have played that part. He has a line, 'I don't look like Brad Pitt, but I can fuck like him.' Who else could say that?"
For the female roles, Rock was looking for fresh faces. "But a lot of actresses, they don't want to act," he observes. "They come in and they start talking about their 'brand.' It's all about their image." Torres read for the wife and girlfriend roles, but Rock cast her as the former after he saw her out having lunch with her husband, Laurence Fishburne. For the role of the would-be mistress, Rock turned to his Bad Company co-star Washington. "Kerry was like that kid in the neighborhood you still think is a kid, and then you come home and she's sexy! You think, 'Hey, what happened to you?'" he says. "And I wanted a girl who doesn't take off her clothes a lot. Because it's kind of an event, seeing her be sexy."
He enjoyed the casting process because he was able to continue to build the script. "Even though I'm auditioning people as a director, I'm still hearing it as a writer," he notes. "And each person brings something different to it. Some people you hear and think, 'I've got it perfect.' Other people make you think, 'I've got to rewrite this scene; it kind of sucks.'"
Rock found himself to be a more assured director with his sophomore feature. "On Head of State, I was really feeling myself out, just in terms of tone," he admits. "Sometimes it's silly; sometimes it's serious. There are scenes in that movie that belong in different movies. So I was trying to get this to be one movie." He adds that he cast everyone in Head of State because of their comedic abilities, whereas everyone in I Think I Love My Wife was cast because of their dramatic abilities. "I wasn't really concerned with if they could be funny," he says. "All the jokes in this movie come out of the situations." There was another big difference between directing the two films. "On Head of State, we had twice as much money," he notes. "So I could make more mistakes."
He says he looks forward to the day when he can direct something he doesn't star in. "I love directing," he says. "Especially if you give me somebody funny. I mean, it would have to be a comedy. Why would you hire me to do a drama?" He adds that he's only recently received directing offers, since I Think I Love My Wife started screening, but nothing he'd want to take yet.
Rock offers the advice he says guided him best during his career. "Hear everything, but listen to nothing," he says. "Everything people say, there's a point to it. And don't close your ears to it. But if you're going to apply it, do it because you want to, not because somebody's rich or something like that. Do it because you feel it."
