Nathan Callahan / Calleys 2004

2004
The Ninth Annual Calleys
The Passion of Chris
Why Bush Should Not be Never Scared of Chris Rock

Chris Rock is begging for our attention with his trademark wide-mouth toothy yowl on the cover of his latest DVD Never Scared. Rock, arguably the world’s funniest man with a TV special, flings his brutal candor in a high-pitched scold whenever he thinks he might have an audience. Sometimes he even gets political. Just listen:

“Yo, don't let all this celebrity news fool you. All this stuff going on in the news? It's just a trick to get your mind off the war. That's all it is.”

So it came as a bit of a big ass surprise when celebrity news network ABC, in an attempt to pull in the youth market, hired the 39-year old Rock to host this year’s Academy Awards. For ABC, it was a brash move that will boost ratings like a glinting nipple ornament. For a rant aficionado like Rock, hosting the Oscars is an opportunity of a lifetime. So far, he has played it relatively cool.

He began by bringing a sense of perspective to the Academy’s ritual. . Rock called the award ceremony "idiotic," then defined Oscar night’s fundamental function.

"Come on, it's a fashion show,” he said. “What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one.”

Rock offered his personal assessment of the Academy Awards by adding, “They don't recognize comedy, and you don't see a lot of black people nominated, so why should I watch it?"

Well Chris, maybe you shouldn’t. As you've said yourself, “The world's addicted to distraction. It's the oldest drug in the book, distraction. We know what has to be done. We know how to do it. But it never gets done because we're addicted to distraction.”

OK. Fair enough. But isn’t it time to break this cycle of distraction? And isn’t Chris Rock the man to do what needs to be done this Sunday, February 27, when he takes the stage?

A self-inflated and superficial affair, the Oscar ceremony is Mecca and Medina (hell, it’s the Rapture) for practitioners of the frenzy of renown. During this celebration of the fanatical, Rock will have the biggest audience share of his life.

Bigger than a Billy Graham Crusade?

You bet.

A distraction? Maybe. That’s up to Rock. Thanks to ABC, Rock has been handed the perfect place to deliver his BIG message — the rant of a lifetime.

I understand cutting loose like this might be a big career move. It could even be a terminal career move. But let’s face it. It’s time to own up, Chris. It’s judgement day. The world is spiraling down fast. Abu Grahib. Fallujah. Nukular Weapons. Global Warming / Heating / Char-Broiling. Hotmilitarystuds.com. Flood waters in LA. Holy shit, Chris. These are the End Times. We’re in the final act and I don’t want you ending up like those meat puppets Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal doing vaudeville while Hollywood burns. Get up with it, Chris. You’re special.

To help you along with your moment of truth, I'd like to suggest three fine documentaries from 2004 you should check out for inspiration. I’ve awarded all of them the Nathan Callahan Motion Picture Award (Or as they say in Vietnam, The Calley). You won’t see these films on the Oscar list. They weren’t made for the fashion show crowd.

The first is the tale of a dead poet and drunkard — Bukowski: Born Into This. Charles Bukowski or "Hank," as his friends called him, is Los Angeles’s unofficial working-class underdog hero/poet laureate. Directed by John Dullaghan, Born Into This is about Hank's women, his drinking, his abusive father, his tenure of servitude at the U.S. Postal Service and his rise in world of punk literature. But most of all, Born Into This is about the power of words.

“Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive
that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much
it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full
and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses
elevate fools into rich heroes”

Are you following this, Chris?

When Hollywood tried to glamourize Bukowski’s life in the movie Barfly things went freaky. Hank wrote the screenplay, but was so appalled by the mechanisms of the entertainment industry that he rewarded Tinseltown with a scathing novel. Hollywood is a place, Bukowski wrote "more crooked, dumber, crueler, and stupider than all the books I read about it."

I suspect Bukowski was right. So forget the crowd at the Kodak Theater, Chris. Take aim at a BIG target.

The second film from 2004 that will help with your moment of truth is director George Hickenlooper’s The Mayor of the Sunset Strip. The Mayor, of course, is Rodney Bingenheimer. A fixture at Los Angeles' KROQ-FM since 1976, Bingenheimer is a champion of cool hunter cutting-edge rock. The Sex Pistols, Blondie, Nirvana, Oasis, Coldplay, and many other indie- alt- punk- new- wave- whatever bands all owe the Mayor.

But wait.

The Mayor of the Sunset Strip is about more than cool. It’s about fame. Today, in Bingenheimer’s world, the party’s over. The Mayor, wizened and sadder, has been sentence to obscurity on the ROQ, deejaying the midnight to 3 am shift.

Early in the film, Hickenlooper asks Rodney’s father and step-mother, "What's so special about mingling with celebrities?" There is silence. They look at each other, think long and hard, but came up with nothing.

Get the picture here, Chris?

OK, now. Let’s talk about your big rant — the one that could change the world. Remember when you got in Bush’s face? “They're looking for weapons of mass destruction,” you said. “They can't even find a whiffle-ball bat.” Why don’t you run with that thought?

You might want to see director Jehane Noujaim’s Control Room (another Calley winner) for inspiration. Control Room is about the Al-Jazeera network or as George W. Bush described this Arab TV news station, “the mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden.”

Bush lied. But you already know that, Chris. You said it yourself — “Bush lied to me” — in Never Scared.

In Control Room, you’ll witness the fallout from Bush’s lies. You’ll be present at the bombing of Baghdad. You’ll see the civilian casualties — the bloody collateral damage. It’s serious shit, Chris. “Welcome to my home, Mr. Bush,” an Arab wails in the ashes of his neighborhood. “Where is your humanity?”

In the end you’ll realize that Al Jazeera journalists don’t hate America, as Bush would have us believe. They’re just disappointed in us. "Who's going to stop the United States?" one journalist asks rhetorically. "The United States is going to stop the United States. I have absolute confidence in the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. people."

And so do I. And so do you, Chris — in that crazy bug-eyed cynical head of yours.

It’s time to stop the bullshit. It’s time to call Bush out. You’ve got the stage, Chris. It would be a messy affair, but I have absolute confidence that you can do it. Just listen to yourself in Never Scared:

“Everybody’s trying to scare us! Telling us to be on the lookout for Al-Qaeda. Where, where, where? I ain’t scared of Al-Qaeda! I’m from Brooklyn; I ain’t scared of Al-Qaeda, okay? Shit, motherfuck Al-Qaeda. Did Al-Qaeda blow up the building in Oklahoma City? No! Did Al-Qaeda put the Anthrax in your mail? No! Did Al-Qaeda drag James Byrd down the street till his eyeballs popped out his fucking head? No! I ain’t scared of Al-Qaeda. I’m scared of Al-Cracka!”

Do it, Chris. Let that liar know the power of the word and the fact of who you are. You’ll never get an Oscar (or work in that town again), but a Nathan Callahan Lifetime Achievement Award is waiting in he wings if you do what needs to be done.

— Nathan Callahan, February 23, 2005

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