Some comedians are more than eager to work their well-honed routines into interviews when they go on late-night TV. Chris Rock is a piece of work, though, because he hits the clubs for a solid couple of weeks before he hits the promotional circuit to write and develop new material for his appearances. Such has been the case these past few nights as Rock went on Late Show with David Letterman — sticking it to Letterman repeatedly about his adultery problem, and also Tiger Woods — then Real Time with Bill Maher, and last night Lopez Tonight.
The conversations always go back to the project Rock is promoting, in this case the movie Death at a Funeral. But I found it interesting that both Maher and George Lopez preferred to talk comedy shop with Rock first. And in last night's case, Lopez also had Rock judge three "audience members" try to impersonate Rock's bits in an ad-hoc game of "Chris Rock Band." When I heard one of the audience members say his name was Sadiki, my radar ears twitched. Today my friends at SF Stand-Up confirmed that the audience members actually were three San Francisco Bay Area comedians: Julian Vance, Keith Jensen & Sadiki Fuller.
Here's their efforts, complete with leather jackets. Lopez: "Have you ever thought of doing stand-up?" Jensen: "Yeah. All the time."
And here is Rock talking shop and then some with Lopez and Maher. In the Maher segment, there's more talk after this clip about Rock's stint on SNL — he said he's more than OK with having been in the shadows of the other SNL players, not just because he was on a great cast, but also because his career turned out more than OK. He also said he feels closer to David Spade and Adam Sandler than most other comedians, because they went through it together, and Maher talked about how comedians often have a class of people they feel a kinship with because they came up at the same time. If/when I find that part, I'll add it here. Until then, roll it!