Comedy fans, including David Letterman, got a rare look at the unreleased documentary Dave Chappelle: Live in Real Life at the 23rd annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival on Aug. 8. The screening of the film, which chronicled the comic’s beloved cornfield comedy shows during the pandemic, was followed by an even rarer audience talkback. Initially titled Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place, the doc originally premiered at a packed Radio City Music Hall in 2021 during the first live Tribeca Festival since the COVID lockdown. Fallout over trans jokes from his controversial Netflix special The Closer reportedly derailed distribution. In response, Chappelle did a special tour featuring both the doc and a comedy show. The documentary remains unavailable to the general public.
Chapelle’s appearance was part of his philanthropic effort to raise money for his D.C. high school, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the latest in a string of public events this year that includes accepting the President’s Award during the 56th Annual NAACP Image Awards in February.
Following an address from Duke Ellington’s principal Sandi Logan, Steven Bognar, who co-directed the film with his now deceased wife Julia Reichert — both of whom won the Oscar for American Factory, produced by the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground, in 2020 — introduced the documentary to the full crowd at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center. As is customary for a Dave Chappelle show, all phones, including press, were zipped up and stored upon entry.
“We have a neighbor; his name is Dave. When the world shut down in 2020, Dave called us,” Bognar said, explaining he and Reichert’s involvement as he acknowledged her death, as well as the huge role George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests played in the comic’s motivation for hosting his historic cornfield comedy shows during the pandemic. “Dave felt he needed to do something.”
Audience laughs and cheers were frequent during the screening of the feature, which captured emotional behind-the-scenes footage of the shows Chappelle hosted in the cornfields of Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he lives, during the height of COVID and on the heels of Floyd’s murder. Over the course of 50+ shows, Chappelle, supported by his wife Elaine, collaborated with his neighbors to create a prototype for comedy shows in the open air with attendees socially distanced and wearing masks. The doc detailed the evolution of COVID testing for the shows, which became a model for live shows at that time.
The film also featured numerous candid glimpses of Chappelle’s interactions with such comedy friends as Jon Stewart, the late Bob Saget, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish and David Letterman, as well as musical performances by Common, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu and Questlove and a special appearance from Jon Hamm. It also reveals his role as a mentor to the then-emerging comics Michelle Wolf, who lived with the Chappelle family for months during the pandemic, and Mo Amer, along with his special connection to Donnell Rawlings.
As the credits rolled, Chappelle, dressed in a suit sans tie and sneakers, took a seat onstage and awkwardly discussed the documentary, noting that he didn’t know about the scheduled open forum because “I didn’t read the brochure, I just showed up.” Reiterating Bognar as to his why for doing the comedy shows, he said, “It was really important for me to have my voice out there.”
From the stage, he shouted out Letterman for being in the audience, crediting the iconic late show host for bringing attention to his cornfield comedy shows by attending and featuring him on his Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction. “I love you so much, bro,” he told Letterman, who, in return, was handed a mic and shared that Chappelle is the gold standard he cites when advising young comedians in and around his native Indiana, asking whether or not they should go to L.A. “If you’re not going to be as good as Dave Chappelle,” he said, there is no need to leave.
The multiple Grammy-winning comedian fielded questions from the audience with wit and candor, briefly referencing the uproar over his trans jokes. “I’ve gone on to get snubbed by the Grammys and the Emmys because someone thought it was a good idea to tell trans jokes,” he playfully quipped, despite winning those awards since the controversy. He also sidestepped answering a controversial question from an audience member offering a conspiracy theory around antisemitism.
Before closing out, he shared the role Duke Ellington School of the Arts played in affirming him as both an artist and a Black person. “Ellington gave me a sense of community,” he said, during a time when the crack epidemic was all over the media. “It was a predominantly Black school when I went there, and that was important because everything in the news was so negative,” he explained, adding that the sense of community was the reason he stepped up during COVID and why he was at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival supporting his high school.
For the fifth year in a row, Dave Chappelle resumed his comedy show Dave Chappelle’s Summer Camp in Yellow Springs, Ohio, starting with the Fourth of July weekend, and continuing through the weekend of Aug. 14-16. It will conclude the weekend of Aug. 21-23.
