“Misty Green” is actually the fourth scripted narrative feature that stand-up legend Chris Rock has directed, but he understands (and doesn’t necessarily disagree with) people who think of “Top Five” (2014) as the first Chris Rock film. Rock doesn’t disavow his early comedies, “Head of State” (2003) and “I Think I Love My Wife” (2007), but he sees them as products of playing follow-the-leader.
“Men, guys, we don’t know how to talk to girls. We don’t know how to dress. We just look at the friend we have that gets the most girls, and we copy him [about what to say and wear],” said Rock, while a guest on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “I probably had that with Adam Sandler a little bit. It’s like, ‘Oh, my friend who has the most success in movies, I guess that’s how you do a movie.’ Something like ‘Head of State,’ has a more broad sensibility, let’s say, more Sandler-esque. Not that it didn’t work, but it wasn’t a personal suit for me.”
Rock acknowledged he fully fits in Sandler’s world as a performer, reporting he’s currently having a blast shooting “Grown Ups 3,” which has wreaked havoc on “Misty Green” publicity schedule. But as a filmmaker, he agrees that “Top Five” was where he found his voice.
The inspiration to make the step toward personal
The inspiration to make the step toward personal filmmaking came from working with actor and director Julie Delpy on “2 Days in New York.” Here was a peer, Delpy, making a film for herself, and, in the spirit of directors he’d secretly admired like Mike Leigh, Alexander Payne, Noah Baumbach, Richard Linklater, and Woody Allen. He walked away from the experience determined to write “Top Five,” the first time he’d write a script for the type of movie he’d like to watch, and without industry executives in the back of his mind.
“I had to get over, ‘OK, this is what’s expected from the Black guy,” So it’s like, ‘Oh, make a Black president movie [‘Head of State’]’; no one’s gonna say no to that,” said Rock, who loved indie films. “‘Squid and the Whale’ is right up my alley, Noah Baumbach‘s right up my alley, I love ‘Greenberg,’ it’s this underappreciated gem of a movie, one of my favorite LA movies ever. So I kinda came out the closet a little bit in ‘Top Five.’”
Part of becoming an indie filmmaker was loosening his grip. His written word would no longer be the bible—the rhythm, cadence, timing, and delivery he mastered working out his acts in comedy clubs didn’t translate to directing. One thing he knew he could do was attract top talent to be in “Top Five,” so he felt it would be insane not to let them breathe life into his words. Rock would stop being a “slave to my script,” and start listening to performers, learning that directing equated more to being in the moment during sex than mastering his stand-up routine. The film’s title itself, “Top Five” — a reference to characters debating their top five rappers — was a result.
I don’t even know what the original name
“I don’t even know what the original name of the script was,” said Rock. “There is no page in which the words ‘Top Five’ are in the script. That scene doesn’t exist, it happened that Tracy Morgan ad-libbed it, and I was like, ‘Oh, let’s do that again.’”
Rock said his tastes naturally gravitate toward smaller films, which was good, because he was also fully aware he would need to make something less expensive — the “Misty Green” budget was $5 million, but that included finishing costs, meaning the ambitious shoot was executed for closer to $3 million
“The less money you spend, the less people you have to talk to,” said Rock. “Here’s the thing: when you’re a Black artist, there’s an assumption that you’re not going to be understood. It’s not compromise; you’re fighting a translation. You’re fighting whoever your exec is. He, for whatever reason, thinks that fewer people are gonna understand what you’re saying than somebody else.” While Rock acknowledges he’s still learning his craft as a director, on this point he is absolute, 100-percent confident in his understanding of the audience, honed from years on the road as a stand-up, in a way no movie executive or producer could ever be. “People know exactly what I’m saying. I’ve spoken to more people than you. I literally speak in front of crowds all over the world.’”
The smaller, low-budget film also allowed Rock freedom
The smaller, low-budget film also allowed Rock freedom with casting. Although he landed A-listers like Adam Driver and a semi-retired Daniel Kaluuya for supporting roles, he wasn’t forced into a fatal mistake with his lead. As Rock has said in other interviews, he was talking to a famous actress and singer to play the titular role, but went with British actress Rosalind Eleazar — who, like Misty, has had some TV success (“Slow Horses”) but less of a recognizable face than her character — confident she was not only right for the role, but that a celebrity performer would be wrong.
“That’s what I love about ‘Anora,’” said Rock. “I don’t really know [Mikey Madison], I guess I’d seen her when people pointed it out to me, but while I’m watching ‘Anora’ I don’t know who this is, and when you don’t know who the person is, when they’re not famous, anything can happen. When they’re really famous, you’re like, ‘OK, they’re not gonna kill Zendaya.’”
Rock also wanted his movie to be raw, and believes the biggest problem plaguing non-studio tentpole filmmaking is the overabundance of “fake edgy” movies.
Your edgy movie should feel edgier than
“Your edgy movie should feel edgier than an episode of ‘White Lotus,’” said Rock, who professed his love for Mike White’s HBO series. “The rules on offending people, it’s almost a crime… we say we want edgy, but there’s a lot of fake edgy movies out there. A lot.”
This was definitely a risk with “Misty Green, a Hollywood satire that looked at the industry’s racism, ageism, and sexism through the story of once-successful 38-year-old Black actress scraping to make ends meet. But these realities of the business were more Rock’s canvas, he wanted to tell the story a “messy” protagonist, one who took unwise risks, and was not above using sex to land drugs, her apartment, and in the film is confronted with the dilemma of letting Adam Driver’s sleezy character pimp her out to a Middle Eastern crowned prince, and whose best friend (Anna Kendrick), tired of the acting grind, is trying to hook a wealthy, boring husband (Rich Sommer), while attempting to sleep with every hot Black man she lays eyes on.
With his stand-up, Rock avoided being fake edgy; his analogy for how to get there is a pharmaceutical company making a cancer drug. “You go too far, and you pull it back. How are you gonna cure cancer? Well, whatever the good shit is, it’s gonna kill some people first, and then we pull it back and until they’re not dead.”
Unlike his stand-up, Rock needed a partner, specifically
But unlike his stand-up, Rock needed a partner, specifically a female lead, he could cross that line with before pulling it back. While not uttering the words “cancel” or “PC,” the normally sharp-tongued Rock becomes careful in how he picks his words to describe the dilemma of finding the right collaborator on “Misty Green,” acknowledging there were now “rules” about talking about such things, before finding an analogy he was comfortable with.
“Put it this way, when I was at ‘SNL,’ we, the young writers thought the older writers sucked, OK? Every job has that rivalry. But we weren’t trying to get them fired. We weren’t trying to eliminate them from ever working again,” said Rock. “So Rosalind let me know, ‘Whatever you gotta say, say it. Don’t feel scared. Don’t feel inhibited. I can take it straight.’ Where everybody can’t take it straight. Rosalind’s version of Misty is much rougher than my version of Misty. It’s like a Charlize [Theron] in ‘Monster,’ or Halle Berry in ‘Monster’s Ball’ — you gotta go for it. In both instances, there’s no nice way to do what they did.”
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