Chris Rock Breaks The Illusion
Catching up this morning, I watched Chris Rock's new HBO special, and it was funny as usual. What was unusual, though, was that he taped three performances in different places (New York, London, and Johannesburg), and actually intercut all three, often in the middle of a sentence. Comedy TV shows often record two or more performances at the same place and use the best parts of each, or use one as a backup. But this show is interesting because they consciously destroy the illusion that modern comics are extemporaneously making observations that just happen to be really funny, and not performing (and riffing on) written material. In this special, they not only cut to a different location, they also show him doing the same exact, nearly identical performance (down to his movements) in three different venues with different sets and different costumes:
