Neal Brennan

Neal Brennan

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Mar 8, 2004

Chappelle’s Show is the funniest sketch comedy show on television since Mr. Show with Bob and David went off the air in 1998. That’s a big compliment coming from me. When Comedy Central was promoting the show I was already a big fan of Dave Chappelle’s. I was one of the few people who actually saw Half Baked in the theatre and I actually was able to light up a big joint while watching it because it there was no one else in there but me and my friends.

Throughout Chappelle’s movie and now television career there has always been another name next to his in the writing credits, Neal Brennan. I figured that they were friends and that eventually we would get to see who Neal was through cameos or even starring with Dave. Never happened. Then once he and Dave created Chappelle’s Show I thought that eventually someone would have to talk to Brennan and find out what his deal is. Once again it never happened.

I think it was the release of the first season of Chappelle’s Show on DVD and the allure of a free membership to Suicide Girls that allowed Brennan to feel comfortable enough to break his silence and finally talk to someone about how he met Dave, how they create the sketches and show the white guy behind the black guy.

Go here to get Season One of Chappelle’s Show on DVD .

Daniel Robert Epstein: How are you doing?
Neal Brennan: Good. I’d like a free membership.
DRE:
No problem.

I can’t find too much info on you.
NB:
That’s exactly how I want it.
DRE:
So is it true, behind every black man there is a white guy?
NB:
[laughs] No we’re just partners and we’ve been partners for a long time. It’s not like Dave couldn’t do it without me because he’s a pretty fucken funny dude.
DRE:
How do you two write together?
NB:
Basically each of us will come up with ideas for a sketch separately then we’ll write them on index cards. After that we’ll convene and pitch them to one another. The hope is that the other one likes the idea. If I don’t like an idea that Dave pitches we probably won’t do it and if he doesn’t like an idea I pitch we definitely won’t do it. Then once the idea is down we go through and outline what jokes we want to do. That takes about a half hour then we write the sketch. In sketch comedy premise is about 70 percent of the whole thing. Once you’ve got that you’re on your way.
DRE:
Are there other writers?
NB:
Well the first season we wrote 46 out of 52 sketches that aired. With the other sketches we would take the premise then rewrite it. Another guy pitched the Playa Hater’s Ball. But it’s pretty much me and Dave.
DRE:
I heard that Dave almost didn’t come back for the second season.
NB:
I don’t know if that’s true. In fact that’s news to me.
DRE:
Dave comes on every week and talks about how close the show is to being cancelled. Have you come close?
NB:
No because the ratings are too good. Comedy Central isn’t stupid.
DRE:
Have you always planned to put uncensored stuff on the DVDs?
NB:
Yeah, what was interesting is that when we were making the DVD is that Dave didn’t want to do the commentary track because he never listens to it on other DVDs. But his biggest worry is that he didn’t want to come off like a blowhard “Like my genius is this.” I told him that we don’t have to do that and we could just give funny anecdotes. I think that’s how it comes off. We don’t give a lot of tips to youngsters. There’s nothing on there that’s educational except that it’s good to have a partner that you enjoy and have fun with.
DRE:
Was the Klu Klux Klan leader who is blind and doesn’t know he’s actually black the most controversial sketch?
NB:
Yeah, probably because it’s got so many racial epithets in it also because anytime you have a black dude or anybody in a Klan uniform it’s controversial. The first person we showed the sketch to was our art director who is a black dude and he came up with our logo. He did all the album covers for Def Jam so we thought he would be cool. After we showed it to him he looked like he got punched in the face, just shocked and he said it was really fucked up. It was like when Adam Horovitz [of the Beastie Boys] said the N-word at the Apollo Theater. We thought we were sunk because we hadn’t shown it to anyone else. We do practice shows at Caroline’s Comedy Club in New York so when we showed it there it just killed. The art director was there and I asked what he thought of it then, he said “Aw man people will laugh at anything.” So he wouldn’t admit defeat. We had our breath held there for a little bit.
DRE:
Do you guys get angry letters?
NB:
We never really see the letters. They send them to Comedy Central which is a different office. There was one lady who left a bunch of phone messages about how offended she was. Dave actually felt bad about that because she wasn’t a harpy. She had a genuine beef with it.
DRE:
Originally did Comedy Central come to you and Dave to do the show?
NB:
It was kind of mutual. We were looking to do a show and Comedy Central wanted to work with Dave. We wrote Half Baked which they show all the time.
DRE:
I read that Dave has done like ten TV pilots for the networks. Did you work on those?
NB:
No I had nothing to do with them. I’ve done two pilots myself which were both failures. But we work so well together we just figured we should work together. Half Baked didn’t turn out exactly how we wanted but the script was really good.
DRE:
What was wrong with Half Baked?
NB:
The script was better than the movie.
DRE:
How did you get people like Rusty Cundieff and Bob Goldthwait to direct sketches?
NB:
We just went to them. People like directing. There are a lot of talented dudes out there that aren’t quote unquote hot by Hollywood standards but are good and talented. Bobcat directed episodes of The Man Show and Rusty was pitching a sketch show to Comedy Central around the time we were starting to go. He was basically pitching a different version of our show so they told him they were already doing that show with us. So they asked him to come onboard as director.
DRE:
So when someone is a director on TV it’s more the producers and the writers who have the control.
NB:
Yeah it’s our job to oversee that stuff because since we’ve written the sketch we know the sort of code of it. They say movies are a director’s medium and TV is the writer’s medium. But having said that I have directed some of the show.
DRE:
How has that been?
NB:
It’s not much different from what I normally do except it’s a little more stressful because usually I’m the safety net for the director. Meaning that if they’re not getting something I’ll tell them. Whereas when I’m doing it I don’t want to fuckup the sketch or disappoint Dave. I don’t want to be responsible for a sketch dying.
DRE:
What uncensored parts of the show are on the DVD?
NB:
Well the words are unbleeped; the girl’s titty pops out in the first episode and more of Charlie Murphy jerking off in The Mad Real World.
DRE:
Is The Mad Real World the most popular sketch?
NB:
We’ve got probably five really popular sketches and that’s certainly up there. It’s kind of a flip between that, the blind dude, Trading Spouses, R. Kelly Pee on You and Wu-Tang Clan.
DRE:
Who has Wu-Tang Clan’s number on speed dial?
NB:
That would be Dave. RZA and GZA are really cool dudes but aren’t known as being funny. But they’re just fucken funny. We wrote them into the racial draft sketch this year and it got to the point where we are so used to them that we know their voice. It’s not like writing for Bob Hope but we know what a GZA joke is.
DRE:
One of the things I like about the Chappelle’s Show is that the sketches can get really long but they don’t get unfunny like Saturday Night Live.
NB:
Yes people always slam SNL but I have a lot of friends over there and I like the show. The thing about them is that they have to do that show in a confined space and time. They have an hour and half to fill so they could only do eight sets. So each sketch has to be five to eight minutes long. They’re reliant on entrances and exits of characters and they have to repeat that ad nauseum because they can’t leave the set. Our sketches are more narrative because they can be. SNL is more like a theatre review and our show is a like a short film show.
DRE:
Do you guys ever get nervous about letting the films go so long?
NB:
Naw because we try to be thorough. At a certain point in the sketch you have to mutate the joke. The audience builds up their tolerance and can start predicting what you are going to do so then you have to switch it. Take the blind guy sketch, you meet him, he talks all gibberish and you realize he’s blind. That’s three or four minutes into it so then we put him out into the world, he tells the white kids to turn the music down. You just have to put them into different situations. We don’t like to do the same joke again and again. One place we did run into that, which is why it’s fairly short, is the Kinko’s parody sketch from the first show. It was one location and was somewhat of the same joke over and over again. In the pilot the sketch is probably 5:15 and in the show we aired it was 3:55 because we wanted it to make it shorter and faster before people got tired of it.
DRE:
With the man on the street interviews did you just bump into Dee Snider?
NB:
That was funny. It was one of our first days shooting for the “Ask a black dude” questions and we bumped into Dee Snider, Stephen King and Joe Rogan in like two hours. It was just a coincidence.
DRE:
Some of the music acts from the first season aren’t on the DVD. What happened?
NB:
It was just a music rights thing. It was just poor planning on our part and Comedy Central’s. People like the music but I think they tune in for the sketches.
DRE:
Are you guys phasing out of Dave introducing the sketches? Because it seems like he’s doing it less.
NB:
No it literally depends on whether the setup will help the sketch.
DRE:
Where did you grow up?
NB:
I grew up in Chicago and Philadelphia then I moved to New York to go to NYU. Then I dropped out of NYU.
DRE:
Why’d you drop out?
NB:
I hated the NYU students. I just fucken hated the kids in the film school. This was in 1991. I was in film school and my brother was a comedian so I was hanging at the comedy clubs. I was 18 and the only other guys my age were Dave and that Jay Mohr guy. They didn’t go to college and they were doing well so I figured I didn’t have to go to college. I also liked comedians better than film students.

One day I pitched a joke to Dave and as much as he resented me pitching to him he liked the joke.
DRE:
Did you start doing standup?
NB:
No I didn’t start doing standup until a year and a half ago. No I just worked the door handing out fliers and shit.
DRE:
Does Dave like your standup?
NB:
He says he does.
DRE:
Is there going to be a Half Baked 2?
NB:
There are rumors. But Dave has said “If you see me doing Half Baked 2 rest assured that I have run out of money.” I think we’d rather do something else but it’s a real popular movie.
DRE:
Do you smoke pot?
NB:
I really never smoked much pot. I smoked pot some in high school but since college I’ve done it maybe 20 times. I don’t really like it and it does nothing for me.
DRE:
I read about this old screenplay of yours and Dave’s called “Rufus the Slave.”
NB:
Yeah that was back in 1997. That’s dead now. We’ve got other movies I can’t tell you about.
DRE:
Would you be directing?
NB:
I don’t know, getting to direct a movie is a real political minefield.
DRE:
You must be hot now because the show is so popular.
NB:
We’re popular now and we’ve been popular before. When we wrote Half Baked we were the toast of the town and “hot” for a month so people threw everything at us. It’s like “So a year ago we were talentless.” It’s all way out of proportion. Once you’ve gone through it you can see it for what it is.
DRE:
What do you think the point of view of Chappelle’s Show is?
NB:
I couldn’t put my finger on it. Like the Supreme Court definition of porn, I know it when I see it. It’s definitely a palpable thing but it definitely comes out of Dave and me knowing each other forever. The Mad Real World we’ve literally been talking about for ten years. Trading Spouses was another one where anytime we would complain about white girls Dave would say I need to go to a black girl.
DRE:
Even though Chappelle’s Show sometimes uses the same people you don’t have a constant cast.
NB:
We didn’t want to do the cheesy cast photo where everyone kneels down so it looks like a JV basketball team and we also didn’t want to have to write “Steve does a Bryant Gumbel impression so we need to write him into the sketch.” Then it just becomes like SNL. Ultimately it doesn’t help the sketch or the actor because you’re forcing them in. We let the premise lead us.
DRE:
What have been your favorite sketches so far?
NB:
Pretty much the ones people like. It’s no accident. I don’t sit there and say “This R. Kelly sketch is terrible.” The thing about the show is that we are fans of it. We think it’s funny and crazy.
DRE:
I like the Grand Theft Auto sketch.
NB:
That was one I had no expectations for. It’s not our most popular but it is in the top ten.
DRE:
What sketches do you cringe at?
NB:
I don’t want to say. I don’t want to discourage people from liking them. But I think people like the right sketches. The ones that aren’t that popular are that way for a reason.
DRE:
How long do you see yourself doing the show for?
NB:
I don’t know. I’ve always loved sketch comedy from the age of 8 on. Robert Smigel has been with SNL for 18 years. Obviously we won’t have that opportunity. But I understand that to have a knack for sketch comedy is a real cool thing. Smigel has never written a movie, he just doesn’t like movies. I think his thing is that he has a gift for sketch comedy so he sticks with it. Jim Downey is the same thing because he’s written for SNL since 1976. I have friends that have written for SNL for five or six years and are ready to move on to movies. With this we have to feel it out contractually. I enjoy it and I might have a knack for writing movies also.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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