Dave Chappelle in African Mental Hospital?
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Dave Chappelle In South African Mental InstitutionBy Erin WhitlockDate: 5/12/2005 10:15 am Comedy Central golden boy Dave Chappelle has admitted himself into a mental health facility in Africa, as reported by Entertainment Weekly today (May 12). The comedian has been M.I.A. since last week, after Comedy Central officials announced plans to postpone production with an undetermined re-start date of the third season of ???Chappelle???s Show.???Chappelle flew to South Africa from Newark, NJ for treatment on April 28, quotes an unidentified source close to the show. The facility has not been named.Comedy Central officials are keeping closed lip about Chappelle???s whereabouts, with channel spokesman Tony Fox saying to the magazine ???We don't know where he is. We???ve heard about South Africa. We don't know. We haven't talked to Dave."Members of Chappelle???s camp are keeping information under wraps as well, with his publicist Matt Labov, not commenting on the magazine???s reports, and other members denying that the treatment is drug related.Entertainment Weekly senior editor Dade Hayes commented, ???It seems like the issues he's contending with are really quite serious. It isn't a case of him spending a weekend someplace recuperating from exhaustion."Chappelle reportedly singed a multi-million dollar deal for the show???s 3rd season, brought upon by soaring DVD sales from the first season. The magazine says the show had yet to start stage production for the 3rd season, and had wrapped only four to five episodes worth of sketches prior to his abrupt departure.damn, thats crazy. Its always weird to see what massive sucess will do to someone. Especially when it comes so quickly. hopefully dude is okay,...but damn!
Comments
Where to go with this one?
Yea, comedians aren't exactly know for their lack of drug and alcohol abuse. But who knows. Dude has a wife and kids too so i hope everything works out. I really think he's funny. I know a lot of people were hatting in the other thread, but I've been telling people to check for him for a long time and I was thrilled when his show took off and he finally got paid.
Real sad. Perhaps the best comedian out there, imho. Love the shows and his comedy.
I heard he went to South Africa, though....
I was referring to the female rapper/media cypher.
Oh - and hell, I hope he's fine. No reason to suspect hard drugs or illegal stuff. The man has been in demand for years and I can only assume traveling around the world and back is taking its toll.
Yea, I'm not trying to talk shit, he just did a fair amount of drug humor, but I always pegged him as an innocent pot head and not a hardcore user. I'm sure he work/family schedule went nuts with his popularity. Plus, when you get money suddenly everyone wants a piece of you so I'm sure it can drive anyone a little over the edge.
Now that would be funny. The fact that he went all the way to South Africa seemed a little wierd. That could be the joke "why would a black guy feel better in South Africa?". We'll see...........
I don't think so. Comedy Central just took a massive bath on all the advertisements they had for the upcoing season. I'm guessing a couple million dollars may have been lost already in commercials and billboards. Not to meantion advertisers that had signed up for slots during the early parts of the season.
I'm also pretty sure Chappelles image isn't going to improve with the idea that he has mental issues. Martin Lawrence never fully recovered from his little episodes and it ain't like Anne Heche and Margot Kidder became entertainment gold after they flipped the fuck out.
Sometimes a dude just buckles under the pressure. Although if you look at the back of the dollar bill upside-down you can see the silhouette of Dave Chappelle giving Cartman the bird.
Plus, fooling the media into printing a fake story is a good way to make sure you don't get anymore press.
This is why I have to (regretably) believe the story.
Don't forget dirty phone call guy. Is there any chance he'll really get back on TV just cuz he let Dr Phil whip him?????
May 15, 11:06 AM (ET)
(AP) Comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Laugh Factory in New York City in this April 3, 2004 file...
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NEW YORK (AP) - Comedian Dave Chappelle wants to set things straight: "I'm not crazy, I'm not smoking crack," he tells Time magazine in an interview more than a week after his hit Comedy Central show was suspended and the rumors started to fly.
"I'm definitely stressed out," said Chappelle, who took off last month to South Africa for a "spiritual retreat," leaving his fans - and even his agent and publicist - wondering where he went.
"You hear so many voices jockeying for position in your mind that you want to make sure that you hear your own voice," he said. "So I figured, let me just cut myself off from everybody, take a minute and pull a Flintstone - stop a speeding car by using my bare feet as the brakes."
After Comedy Central announced that the planned May 31 debut of the third season of "Chappelle's Show" had been postponed, the magazine Entertainment Weekly reported that Chappelle had checked himself into a mental health facility in South Africa.
"I'm not in a mental facility," said Chappelle, who also said he did not have a drug problem but had consulted a psychiatrist for one 40-minute visit.
The 31-year-old comedian said he fled to stay with friends in Durban because he wasn't happy with the direction of the show, which is behind only "South Park" as Comedy Central's most-watched program.
"There's a lot of resistance to my opinions, so I decided, 'Let me remove myself from this situation,'" Chappelle said.
Comedy Central president Doug Herzog told Time that the star has "complete creative freedom." He has told staff he believes there won't be a "Chappelle's Show" in 2005, but leaves the option open for the comedian's return.
Chappelle, whose wife and two children live in Ohio, said he hopes to start up the show again, but did not indicate when he would return.
Comedy Central had inked a reported $50 million deal to keep "Chappelle's Show" for two more seasons, and the comedian hinted to Time about struggles associated with the power and fame that come with that kind of success.
"If you don't have the right people around you, and you're moving at a million miles an hour, you can lose yourself," he said. "Everyone around me says, 'You're a genius, you're great, that's your voice,' but I'm not sure that they're right."
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050515/D8A3MAUO0.html
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1061415,00.html
CAPTION: HEY-YOU'RE...: The seventh fan to recognize Chappelle in South Africa
On the Beach With Dave Chappelle
In South Africa, TIME's Simon Robinson talks with the comic about his sudden disappearance from Chappelle's Show[/b]
In this week's TIME, Christopher John Farley reveals why Dave Chappelle decided to leave his hit show and what he's been up to since he disappeared to South Africa two weeks ago. Last Friday night, TIME Johannesburg bureau chief Simon Robinson met with the comic at uShaka Marine World on the beach in the South African port of Durban. In a ninety minute conversation, Chappelle was eager to set the record straight on why he suddenly left the U.S. and what he's doing in South Africa. Here's Robinson's account:
Dave Chappelle shows up to our interview in a red t-shirt, blue jeans and shiny white sneakers. He lopes around in his usual style, pacing a lot, but does not seem like a man struggling to speak or to order his thoughts at all. He's lucid and thoughtful and a couple of times asks me to give him some time to think about answers. He concedes that he is dealing with a lot of issues and mentions that he had consulted a psychiatrist about a week ago for a forty minute session. He is also quite fastidious about keeping his new sneakers clean and stops at least twice to wipe smudges off their toes.
The first thing Chappelle wants is to dispel rumors???that he's got a drug problem, that he's checked into a mental institution in Durban???that have been flying around the U.S. for the past week. He says he is staying with a friend, Salim Domar, and not in a mental institution, as has been widely reported in America. Chappelle says he is in South Africa to find "a quiet place" for a while. "Let me tell you the things I can do here which I can't at home: think, eat, sleep, laugh. I'm an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I've been doing a lot of thinking here."
The picture he paints???and it seems a fairly honest and frank assessment??? is of someone struggling to come to terms with a new position and power who's still figuring out how to come to grips with how people around him are reacting to the $50 million deal he signed last year with Comedy Central. Without naming specific characters, he seems to blame both some of his inner circle (not his family) and himself for the stresses created by last year's deal.
"There were things that overwhelmed me," he says. "But not in the way that people are saying. I haven't spent any of the money. All that stuff about partying and taking crack is not true. Why do I live on a farm in Ohio? To support my partying lifestyle?"
The problems, he says, started with his inner circle."If you don't have the right people around you and you're moving at a million miles an hour you can lose yourself," he says. "Everyone around me says, 'You're a genius!'; 'You're great!'; 'That's your voice!' But I'm not sure that they're right." And he stresses that Comedy Central was not part of the problem and put no more than normal television restrictions on what he could do.
"You got to be careful of the company you keep," Chappelle says. "It's hard to know how much to say. One of the things that happens when people make the leap from a certain amount of money to tens of millions of dollars is that the people around you dramatically change.
"During my ascent, I've seen other people go through that wall to become really big. They always said that fame didn't change them but that it changes the people around them. You always hear that but you never really understand it. But now that I'm there that makes a lot of sense and I'm learning what that means. You have to have people around you that you can trust and aren't just out for a meal ticket."
The breakdown in trust within his inner circle seems to have led him to question the material they were producing. He seems obsessed with making sure the material is good and honest and something that he will be proud. "I want to make sure I'm dancing and not shuffling," he says. "What ever decisions I make right now I'm going to have live with. Your soul is priceless." The first two seasons of his show "had a real spirit to them," he says. "I want to make sure whatever I do has spirit."
But Chappelle also says that he must share the blame for the stalled third season. "I'm admittedly a human being," he says. "I'm a difficult kind of dude." His earlier walkout during shooting "had a little psychological element to it. I have trust issues, things like that. I saw some stuff in myself that I just didn't dig. It's like when I brought a girl home to my mom and it looked as if my mom really didn't like this girl. And she told me, 'I like her just fine. I just don't like you around her.' That's how I feel in this situation. There were some things about myself that I didn't like. People got to take inventory from time to time. That's what this [coming to South Africa] is for."
This is Chappelle's second trip to South Africa. He first came to Durban, and visited Salim, in 2000. Chappelle won't tell me exactly how he met Salim but describes him as a family friend. A soft-spoken Muslim, Salim seems also to be something of a sounding board to Chappelle, who converted to Islam several years ago. While Chappelle is not doing a formal religious course in Durban, says Salim, who wore a simple cotton robe and hung back through the interview and photo shoot and only spoke when I asked him a question, "if he wants to talk religion then I'm there as someone to talk to." Says Chappelle: "This is kind of my spot where I can come to fill my spirit back up. Sometimes you neglect these things if you are running on a corporate schedule." The crux of his crisis seems to boil down to his almost obsessive need to "check my intentions." He uses the phrase a few times during the interview and explains that it means really making sure that he's doing what he's doing for the right reasons.
His family, he says, has been a huge support over the past eight months. "They've been phenomenal really, just incredible. What beautiful people. Everyone loves their family but it's good if you can like them too."
His religion is also crucial. "I don't normally talk about my religion publicly because I don't want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is a beautiful religion if you learn it the right way. It's a lifelong effort. Your religion is your standard. Coming here I don't have the distractions of fame. It quiets the ego down. I'm interested in the kind of person I've got to become. I want to be well rounded and the industry is a place of extremes. I want to be well balanced. I've got to check my intentions, man."
That includes planning for the future. When I ask him if he would ever buy a place of his own in South Africa, Chappelle replies, "First of all I've got to make sure I've got a job."
He says that he's only been recognized five or six times in the two weeks he's been here. "It happens so sporadically that when it does it freaks me out because I have to remember, 'Oh, yeah, I'm famous.'" At the end of our interview/photo shoot an American woman does recognize him. "Number seven," he cries. "Wow, I'm not that big in Africa. I've got to do an action film here."
During most of the hour and a half that we talk, Chappelle is serious and introspective. But he still has his sense of humor, which comes out as we near the end of our conversation: "Is that enough to prove I'm not smoking crack or hanging out in a mental institution?"