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.Because white performers had to tone down their75The Big Screen and the Small Screenact onstage, they developed this very raunchy joke to useprivately.They used it to  warm up backstage (telling theirfriends and fellow comedians) before going onstage andtelling cleaner,  nicer jokes to the public.EVERYBODY HATES CHRISRock s next endeavor was prime-time television and hetook it by storm.Rock is the executive producer and narra-tor of a UPN comedy called Everybody Hates Chris, which isfilmed in Los Angeles, California.The title, a play on the hitshow Everybody Loves Raymond, was thrown out by ChrisRock as a joke during a writing session.Everybody laughed,and the name stuck.Rock originally presented the show to the Fox network,which turned him down.Dawn Ostroff, president of the UPNnetwork, was excited to pick up the show.In turn, Rock washappy to have a network that believed in the show.The fam-ily sitcom, set in the early 1980s, is loosely based on Rock schildhood, growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant.The showis funny and heartfelt at the same time.The humor stemsfrom realistic family relations and emotions.The stories arecharacter driven and smart.Everybody Hates Chris is set inflashback Chris Rock (the narrator) is looking back at hislife as a child.The actor who plays young Rock, 12-year-oldTyler James Williams, portrays Chris at age 13.Tyler beganacting on Sesame Street at the age of four.Although the show is based on Rock s own life, changeshave been made.Rather than the real-life family of seven chil-dren, there are three.Like the real Rock, the Chris on the showis a black boy bused a long way to a nearly all-white school.But the fictionalized students at the white school do not rep-resent any particular students from Rock s real school.Manyof the plots have been changed some from Rock s life or arecompletely made up.Rock also points out that Tyler is a cuterkid than Rock at that age Rock had crooked teeth.76CHRIS ROCKOn the show, Rock s father (also named Julius) is played byformer National Football League player Terry Crews.(Crewsplayed one of the convict football players in The Longest Yard.)The sitcom Julius is a combination of the late Julius Rock andJohn Amos (who played James Evans, Rock s favorite televi-sion-sitcom father on Good Times).The sitcom Julius, like thelate Julius, is tight with money.He works two jobs to make endsmeet.Crews views the style of the sitcom s parents as a returnto parenting.The parents on Everybody Hates Chris are lovingand supportive, but when they say  no, they mean it and fol-low through and the children listen.Tichina Arnold playsRock s mother, who is named Rochelle on the show.Rochelle isa strict disciplinarian with  100 recipes for whoopin ass. Sheis determined to see her children grow up and make somethingLoving Everybody Hates ChrisFor the actors and others involved in Everybody Hates Chris, the opportunityto present a part of life rarely seen on television has been a welcome one.Here is a sampling of what they had to say: A hardworking black man on TV who s not a player or a goofball is rare.There are millions of Juliuses out there, but you never see them on TV, saidTerry Crews, who plays Julius, in Jet magazine. I was attracted to Rochelle because of the strength of her character.Andthe fact that we haven t seen a black family in a long time portrayed the waywe re portrayed with love, strength and honesty.A lot of people were ableto identify with it in addition to the fact that it s not just for black people.The wonderful thing is that Italian women and Jewish women walk up tome all the time saying,  Oh my God, my mom says the same things to me.It crosses a lot of cultural barriers, and a lot of people are able to get it.To portray a black family on television that all cultures can relate to is veryrewarding, said Tichina Arnold, who plays Rochelle, in Jet magazine. Watching other shows, children talk back to parents [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]