Dave Chappelle: For What It's Worth: Live At The Fillmore (DVD)

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This release of "Dave Chappelle: For What It's Worth" begins with him backstage answering the question, "Why the Fillmore?," accompanied by black-and-white shots of comedians who have taken the stage there—people like Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, and George Carlin.

It's ironic now, of course, since Chappelle recently bolted from his popular TV show and headed for South Africa, saying he couldn't take such comparisons.

But if anything, "For What It's Worth" proves that he had nothing to worry about. Like most raunchy standup comics, his material is uneven, and like everyone else—ranging back all the way to Lenny Bruce, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx—the raunchiness is used as a crutch to prop up jokes that don't have legs. Sometimes his "m------er f-----er"s, delivered in that high-pitched voice that seems to come from a helium balloon near the back of his throat, make us laugh when the jokes don't. But other times . . . well, the thing about a live performance is that you can constantly look at the faces of the audience to see their reactions, even when they're not laughing out loud or applauding. And their faces pretty much mirrored my own.

Chappelle covers a lot of ground, but judging by the audience (including myself), the material in the first third and last third of his act isn't nearly as strong as the middle material. He goes off of crackheads and gays, then launches into a LONG routine about a guy "beating off" on a bus. The trigger? Chappelle's observation that in San Francisco, he was allegedly yelled at for lighting up a cigarette, while in the same public space there was someone masturbating. That routine goes on way too long, and you have to wonder whether Chappelle is capable of shifting gears to better play to the audience when a gag just isn't working. He does the same thing when he jumps into a ultra-long routine about sex with monkeys (yep, we're talking humans and monkeys—and it gets raunchier than that later) that's triggered by his take on people who claim that the AIDS epidemic is the result of that sort of thing.

Like an equal-opportunity Don Rickles, Chappelle systematically assaults every race in the opening third, going off on Native Americans in Wal-Mart (buying bows and arrows—what else?), Asians that all look alike, and, of course, those feckless and most un-hip Caucasians. But he starts to grab the audience when his routines cover ground that's more topical. "Every black person needs an alibi," he says, and given the widespread reports of racial profiling in the newspapers, the audience responds with gusto.

In moments like those, when Chappelle gets into topical humor and everyday material that people can identify with, the audience bursts into laughter. Me too. It can't just be a coincidence, though humor is highly subjective. When Chappelle starts talking about trying to do Disneyland with his kids and getting harassed by fans, then goes off on Disney Dollars, you can tell that he's struck a familiar chord. The audience knows Disney dollars. But they can't anticipate the twist that Chappelle puts on them, and humor is the result of surprise, more than anything. "DISNEY DOLLARS? What I want with them? You can't buy weed and pussy with Disney dollars!" Huge laughs. Same with when he launches an attack on American money. "Our money looks like baseball cards with slave owners on it." True art helps people see familiar things in a new way, and that's what Chappelle does when he's in top form—which, in this performance, is about a third of the time. The rest of the time he's just average—though his likable personality makes you want to laugh with him more.