Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him on Threads. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
Typically, I don’t blame the audience when things go off script. That’s as true for me now in my work with the media as it was back in the days when I was a full-time comedian.
But in the case of Dave Chappelle walking off the stage during his stand up show last week in Florida it was, in my view, 100% the fault of the audience member.
What was it that set Chappelle off? A cell phone. Not one ringing in the audience — which every comedian has had to deal with at some time or another — but a person using their phone to record Chappelle’s act, in violation of numerous explicit warnings not to.
Everyone who bought a ticket to Wednesday night’s show was warned online that recording devices are banned. The venue where the show was held, The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida posted similar warnings throughout the club.
The DJ who introduced Chappelle, DJ Trauma, specifically instructed the audience not to record any part of the show. In addition to myriad warnings, everyone attending the show was required to place their phones in a special bag that was locked before entering the venue.
Despite all that, an audience member sitting close enough in the 7,000-seat venue to allow Chappelle to see him from the stage was recording the show, via the camera on a cell phone that apparently wasn’t surrendered as requested.
During his set, Chappelle admonished the audience member and alerted security. But apparently he became so frustrated about the incident that he left the stage before finishing his act.
What anyone who thinks this was an overreaction doesn’t get, is that Chappelle and comedians at his level are not just concerned with getting laughs, but also with the business end of their craft. That’s why for years, comedians like Chappelle, Chris Rock, John Mulaney and others have been requiring audience members to lock their phones in a pouch to prevent the recording of the show.
These measures are partly to prevent people in the audience from recording new material a comedian is developing that isn’t ready for primetime. That was the very point Chris Rock made back in 2014, noting that comedians— even famous ones—need to “workshop” new jokes while they hone their material and weed out lines that simply are not funny.
Imagine seeing countless videos of famous comedians presenting material that wasn’t any good? Rock was so upset with people recording him working on new material in 2014, that like Chappelle last week, he reportedly walked off stage — after scolding a few audience members for recording him.
Beyond that, there’s also the concern that if people can watch a well-known comedian’s current tour for free on a bootlegged video, they might not be willing to pay for a ticket. Or people may attend, but then complain that they had seen all the jokes before.
In the case of Chappelle, there’s the added concern of his deal with Netflix that pays the comic reportedly $20 million per stand-up special. In fact, Chappelle’s new Netflix special, “The Dreamer” with a December 31 release date, is his 7th special for the streaming giant in 6 years. Obviously, if audience members were to record his tour and post videos of the material online ahead of the Netflix release, it could negatively impact how many people watch the show.
But something else is at play here as well. Some famous comedians don’t want to be recorded in case they say something offensive on stage that could hurt their career or even lead them to being “canceled.” In fact, Rock made that very point around the time he walked off stage in 2014, telling Vulture that knowing people are recording your every word — especially when workshopping new material — can cause comedians to self-censor. As Rock explained, in the past a comedian could “cross the line” trying to find funny material, but with cameras everywhere it leads comedians like Rock to believe “you don’t have room to make mistakes.”
In the case of Chappelle however, I doubt that was his rationale for being one of the first comedians to require audience members to lock their cell phones away during his shows. Chappelle’s history tells us he seems to love to court controversy, from his past Saturday Night Live monologues about Kanye West’s anti-Semitic remarks and on Donald Trump’s then-new presidency to jokes about the transgender community in his 2021 stand-up special that prompted a backlash.
Even if audience members aren’t recording his act, Chappelle knows his jokes and comments will get press, given his stature and his penchant for telling provocative jokes that sometimes upset people. And that includes his most recent standup show on Netflix.
But courting controversy hasn’t seemed to hurt Chapelle’s career. In fact, it may just have proved to be rocket fuel for it, as evidenced by the fact that in 2023, he was the top-grossing comedian of the year, earning $62 million for 31 ticketed shows in 2023. (And that doesn’t even include what he brought in co-headlining shows in 2023 with Chris Rock.)
People can like or hate his jokes, but a backlash won’t stop Chappelle, who said last year about these controversies: “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it.”
