There were several moments foreshadowing the Oscar slap. When he made his Broadway debut with “The Motherfucker With the Hat” (2011) by Stephen Adley Guirgis, Variety’s Marilyn Stasio began her review with “Chris Rock, the comic dynamo who comes to Broadway having conquered every other field of entertainment, is the obvious draw…” However, she was underwhelmed by the production.
He was also exec producer and narrator of the TV series “Everybody Hates Chris,” which debuted in 2005 and was loosely based on his own childhood. Rock also became a writer-director-star with the political comedy “Head of State” (2003), with those same three duties in “I Love My Wife” and “Top Five.” He increased his movie presence, including films that played at Sundance and Cannes, and moved into leading roles, such as a 2002 action-comedy “Bad Company,” with Anthony Hopkins. Rock won two Emmys, as a producer and writer of best variety/music/comedy special. In 1996, he appeared in the second of his five HBO comedy shows, “Bring the Pain,” which Variety’s Phil Gallo described as “a whopping success” on every level, saying Rock, like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, supplies “a clear mirror” of society and attitudes through raw language and images.
