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'I know nothing about marriage'
19/03/2007 09:41 - (SA)
New York - US comedian Chris Rock's
new film detailing the frustrations and temptations of married
life strangely reflects persistent rumours his real-life
marriage is in trouble.
But even after such scrutiny in life and fiction, one of
America's most popular comedians says he is no marital expert.
"I know nothing about marriage," Rock told Reuters recently
in an interview for his cinematic look at modern matrimony, I
Think I Love My Wife, which opened on Friday in the United
States.
Rock, 42, dismissed media reports from late last year that
he was filing for divorce as "all rumours, I am happy". His
10-year marriage succeeds due to being tactful, he said.
"I know it helps if you are wrong all the time and when you
are right, just say you are wrong," he joked. "It helps to
smooth things over. That is pretty much it. Just be wrong."
In his new romantic comedy, a lighthearted remake of the
1972 acclaimed French film Chloe in the Afternoon, Rock plays
a successful investment banker devoted to his wife and two kids
- who is sexually tempted by an attractive female friend.
It is his second directing effort and displays the same
humour that helped him rise through the comedy circuit ranks in
the 1980s to a film and television career using comedy that
pokes fun at both romance and class.
"I just wanted to do a grown up movie," he said. "It's an
adult topic."
The film is Rock's first since Madagascar and The
Longest Yard with Adam Sandler in 2005, the same year Rock
hosted the Academy Awards, a gig he described as a "hard job".
His abrasive style of poking fun at US race relations and
success has led to comparisons with fellow black comedians
Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, who initially recommended Rock
for the TV show Saturday Night Live after seeing his stand-up routine.
"It is just the weird world I live in," he said, commenting
on a scene in the film which sends up the lack of black
Americans in his character's firm and corporate America. "The
reality is, I went to one of these brokerage houses and there
were two black guys out of 800 people, like six out of 5000,
wow!"
His comedy sought to poke fun at his own life rather than
deliberately crossing racial barriers, he said.
"Look at James Brown, what's blacker than James Brown?
There was no real effort to cross over into a wider audience,"
he said. "If you do anything good, everybody will buy it."
Above all, Rock said, he wanted to be remembered for making
people laugh.
"If they say something else, that is just the gravy, you
can't take for granted that people are even going to say you
are funny."
- Reuters
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South Africa
