On the night after the 2008 election, David Alan Grier opened his Comedy Central show “Chocolate News” with something that is rarely seen in comedic television: silence.

He simply looked at the camera for a long moment — 10, maybe 15 seconds — took a deep breath, and smiled.

David Alan Grier

It was a set-up for a gag, of course. Grier followed this pause with the exclamation, “Holy ****! Did we just elect Barack Obama the President of the United States?”

But watching it, I couldn’t help but think that long, prideful moment said more than every talking head on any of the 24 hour news networks.

“I really did not know what I was going to say,” Grier said in a phone interview, when asked about that show. “It was like five in the morning (the day before), we all knew Barack Obama had been elected. We had been up all night. It’s like, I wanted to be honest and emotionally true, but also find the humanity and comedy in the moment. It was really walking a fine line.”

Grier’s career in comedy has seen him walk that fine line for many years, from his work on the groundbreaking sketch comedy “In Living Color” to such films such as “Blankman” and “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” Now, he has completed his first book, Barack Like Me: The Chocolate-Covered Truth.

Talking with a man who has been on the cutting edge of comedy for so many years is a bit intimidating, at first— I wasn’t sure how much of the conversation would be “schtick,” or like listening to his stand-up routine. Many comedians can be very guarded about their public persona. But Grier is extremely open about the contrast between his comedy and his life, a contrast that is reflected in Barack Like Me.

Grier is quick to point out that the book is not only a comedic examination of a pivotal point in American history, but also a personal memoir of his life and the perspective he brings to the election of the first African American president.

“When I was at the inauguration, standing in the crowd, looking at these millions of people and thinking of how this story of that day would be told, and re-told, and grow…I realized that so much of our experience of moments like that is about what we bring to it. And that’s what really motivated me to write about myself, because all of my life story, I brought to that event, and it shaped the way I experienced it.”

This is not to say the book is a purely emotional and reverent take on Obama’s presidency. Au contraire. The first chapter features an extended fantasy sequence where Obama cries out “DAG!” from the stage at the inaugural ball and appoints him “Secretary of Mirth.” There’s that fine line again.

“I didn’t really see any books around that dealt with Barack Obama and his election with the same point of view,” Grier said. “It’s a more cockeyed view of that whole event. There are very sentimental parts, but there are also very funny parts, because comedy just forced itself into so much of what was going down.”

As someone who wasn’t there, I had to ask: What was it like, being there at the inauguration, living history firsthand?

“Everybody was happy, to such an extent that it became almost absurd. When I was standing at the Purple Gate, there were thousands and thousands of people. And this was the gate where they had all the problems…There was a point where people started surging. Now, normally, people would be screaming and hollering. But you’d hear people in the crowd go, ‘I’m being squeezed, but it’s okay! I’m good, I’m happy, but please don’t push me so hard!’ No one wanted to kill this good mood.”

Grier has a long history as a performer, both onstage and in front of the camera, most recently the aforementioned (and sadly short-lived) “Chocolate News,” which was cancelled after just ten episodes. The show’s brief run was more than a little anticlimactic after its incredibly long development period.

“I pitched it, like, two and a half years before people saw it on the air,” Grier said. “As we got closer and closer, the show evolved and changed in order to take advantage of all those things that were happening around it, and it became more and more political in nature.”

With the subtitle Chocolate-Covered Truth seeming to reference the show, it is easy to assume that there is a direct connection between the content of the book and “Chocolate News,” but the two are totally different in style. “I really wanted the voice in the book to be mine, and not that character,” Grier said.

There has been a long history of comedy figures making the transition to print — what was it like for you with this, your first book, I asked?

“Someone asked me, ‘Why didn’t you just do a stand-up special, instead of writing a book?’ And I said, ‘Because there are no punch lines in the book.’…So, it required a different writing process and one that I had never really done before. And that’s why I wanted to work with a ghostwriter (co-author Alan Eisenstock) — and also, with the time constraints, it had to be handed in so quickly, and I had never written before.”

More books may very well be on the horizon for Grier — “we’re in the process of pitching some things,” he said, but could not specify what — but for now, the positive feedback he is getting on Barack Like Me makes the difficult writing process a worthwhile journey.

“I think people are going to be surprised when they read the book, because it is honest, it’s really funny, and it’s from a different perspective, I think,” Grier said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under Arts and Life, Pop Goes the Culture.
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