Six-Hour Surprise Set Suggests Dave Chappelle's Flightiness Isn't A Case Of Comic's Block
Comedy Central disappointment Dave Chappelle continues to confound his fans with a nearly impossible to anticipate performance schedule: The disappearing comic will be a no-show at scheduled engagements, but then he's been known to pop up without warning from time to time at a local comedy club, as he did Sunday night at the Laugh Factory. What set this appearance apart from the others, however, was its record-breaking, six-hour marathon length:
Chappelle kept telling jokes until 4:43 the next morning—- making his entire set a whopping six hours and seven minutes.
Amazingly, the previous record was established just a few days earlier. On April 10, Dane Cook performed his own marathon act, appearing on stage for three hours and fifty minutes.
"It was just one of those nights," Masada said of Chappelle's appearance. "He had everyone laughing for six hours."
Indeed, Masada said only about a dozen of the 150-plus original members of the audience left the club before Chappelle wrapped his set. "The audience was with him 100 percent," he said.
As amazed patrons feasted on the gluttonous bounty of new Chappelle material, a post-midnight call from a high-ranking Comedy Central scout at the show awoke network head Doug Herzog with the breathless news. Determined to harvest what he considered was rightfully his, he instantly leaped out of his bed and sped over to the comedy club equipped with a handheld video camera. Should the ensuing legal battles go Herzog's way, the resulting, shaky footage will be segmentized and broadcast as Chappelle's Show fourth season, with a disclaimer at the start of every episode kindly requesting that viewers "Please ignore the running commentary featuring a male voice muttering, 'This fruitcake turns down my $50 mil but then gives the milk away for free? To hell he will, if I have anything to say about it!'"
