Our Report from The TOP FIVE NY Press Conference

By Josef Rodriguez.

Chris Rock, alongside co-stars Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, JB Smoove, Sherri Shepard, and Ben Vereen – made a stop in Manhattan for the “Top Five” New York press conference. Rock’s film is a hilarious, intelligent, modern piece of cinema that will surely go down as one of the 21st century’s great comedies. Rock and his actors discussed their own relationships with fear and addiction, the ongoing influence of hip-hop culture, and the cast’s ability to improvise in a room full of comics.

On the film’s non-linear structure and other film influences Chris had while directing:

CHRIS: Yeah, it wasn’t in the script. At all. I mean, that’s one of the big differences between the movie and other movies I’ve done. I treated the editing like I was writing again. Like, okay yes we have all this footage but it doesn’t matter, I’m gonna make it, you know….let’s make music, let’s make something different.

And you know, Woody [Allen’s] been known to jump around, uh, [Quentin] Tarantino has been known to start a movie in the middle, and you come back to that scene an hour later.

How each performer came to the role:

JB: When Chris approached me about the project – there is no, “Chris approached me about the project” – because what it is, is whatever the hell Chris does, he better put my ass in it. When Chris calls you about doing a project, you say, “what is it?” He’ll tell you what it is, he’ll tell you what he wants from you, but you also gotta leave the door open because, typically, when someone calls JB, they want the over-the-top JB. I didn’t have to play the over-the-top, crazy JB. I gotta be in his corner, ‘cause I got his back. And you can’t have two over-the-top people. They’ll cancel each other out. So, I’m happy that I got a chance to play a role that this guy wanted me to play. And he helped me because now my range has just increased. ‘Cause now I get a chance to play his guy, his dude, who has his back, who has to get him on time somewhere, who has to watch who’s coming into his life. Is this the right one for him? Is Rosario [Dawson] the right girl for him? I don’t know. But as we go through the process of the movie, you see how I’m warming up to this lady. Does she have his back, does she have his best interest? We both found out that she’s not who she says she was, also. But, I saw a heart, I saw his heart, I saw where he’s at, and you know, Gabrielle [Union], his fiance was amazing.

SHERRI: In my scene, it was a bunch of comics, which it’s very hard to corral a bunch of comics. Tracy Morgan, Michael Che, Jay Pharoah. And, I think, I have to give it to Chris because he was able to let everyone have a certain amount of freedom and then corral everybody back and that’s a hard thing to do. And he’s very intensely focused on the directing aspect of it so that was a surprise because when you work with Chris doing stand-up, that’s what you see, but then you work with him as a director, because he’s very focused and he knows what he wants, and he’s able to get it out of you in that realm of freedom. It was an awesome, awesome experience.

On the freedom to improvise:

GABRIELLE: I mean, like, pretty much everything you see in the movie is – we started off in one place, and then in the moment he was like, “okay we have it. We have what I wrote. Let’s just play. Let’s just see where the scene takes us, where the moment takes us.” And what’s great about Chris is he gave us his script, he gave us his baby. And he wasn’t like, “my baby is perfect. My baby is–my baby’s really testing off the charts.” He doesn’t assume that he has created, you know, the next “Schindler’s List.” He’s saying, “I wanna get there. Please give me real feedback. Let’s all work together and please give me real notes so we can create magic.” And he started that way and he continued the whole process that way.

ROSARIO: I kept calling him a conductor. He had all of these different people and everyone, you know, it can be noise. Or it can be music. You can put it together and go, okay you have all these incredible people together but it might not work. Just because you have that much talent doesn’t mean it’s gonna be watchable. And I thought that was something that was really remarkable was that he was different with everyone. Like every single person that came on set there was something slightly different. Depending on who the comedian was, or what [he] was trying to get in one of those little one-off scenes, he’d give them lines and keep asking them questions and other people he’d just shut up and let them go, and every once in a while do a little tweak. Or just do as [Gabrielle] said where he wouldn’t call cut so he just kind of let them keep reaching and then see them kind of pushing themselves and go, “Okay I already did that, let’s see where I can take it.” And then other people, he’d go, “No, no, no, no. You need to say it just, just hit that word. If you hit that word, we’re good. Okay, do it again. Okay, we got it.” He just knew what everybody’s sweet spot was.

On the core of the film and where its heart would lie:

CHRIS: I knew the relationship would be the heart of the movie. These three relationships are kind of the heart of the movie. As far as edgy, I mean, I knew I wanted to do what I do. And not have it so filtered down. And I thought I had a decent idea and that’s why I went to Scott [Rudin, the producer]. So I thought I kinda had something and was in a good head space to pull it off.

On the difference between stand-up and filmmaking:

CHRIS: You know, it’s weird, I made this movie just like my stand-up. I used to have, like, a movie process, a stand-up process, and I used to go, “Okay these are the jokes for the movie,” and I’d have a whole ‘nother file for stand-up. Not this one. I put it all together, I workshopped it a long time, like I do my stand-up. I treated it like my stand-up and that was kind of the goal, to get a movie that felt like my stand-up. That kind of went all over the place, that started here and went there. And can be about relationships and can have a political component to it. So yeah, I tried to go about it the same way.

Regarding the fear of career failure:

BEN: Unemployment. (*laughs*)

SHERRI: Stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something new and reinventing yourself. Which is why I so love what Chris has done because it’s stepping out of the comfort zone and going, “I’m gonna take a risk.” It’s always hard when somebody knows you for a certain way to step out and not worry about whether you’re going to be accepted or not. But in stand-up comedy, doing that, of just putting your heart out there and hoping that folks will come along for the journey.

On the cast’s relationship with addiction in their real lives:

GABRIELLE: I think with my character, and also me in real life, it’s an addiction to please. And to want to be liked and to be validated by people. And in the film you have this girl who doesn’t have any discernible talent, any quantifiable talent, except who she is and that people have decided that they like her. And there’s this addiction to constantly feed the beast. “How do I stay relevant? How do I stay liked? How do I keep it going? How do I avoid unemployment?” And I think that becomes addicting in our industry and in life. And I think that’s something that everyone everywhere can relate to.

Regarding the fear that the film would ever go off the rails:

CHRIS: Um, no. (*laughs*) That’s what pre-production’s for! I mean, there is a fear. You can’t make anything good unless you know how much it can suck. So I was aware of how much it can suck. The worst movies tend to have the best people in them. Because they aggressively suck. You know there’s lazy movies where you just do safe stuff, and the whole thing and it just kind of sucks. And then there’s “Howard the Duck” where it’s trying. And I knew I was gonna try. But, luckily, we didn’t suck.

SHERRI: And what Chris did during our scene, during the top five hip-hop artists, what happened before that scene in the days we were filming was, it was a chemistry that had become with all of these comics. And we would sit there, and Chris as well, and we just were silly. Every single day, just silly, just talking. And then it just bred this thing. It was a natural kind of process once those cameras started rolling.

ROSARIO: With Chelsea, that was the only character that wasn’t perfect on the page. I saw what she could be but it just felt like I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like I read her perfectly. I felt everybody else so clearly but her voice was so, like, what needed to be there in so many different scenes but I didn’t know who she was. I couldn’t put my finger on it and that made me nervous because you’ll jump on something and people will say, “yeah we’ll fix it, we’ll write it later,” you know, and you show up and then nothing ever happens and you’re making this movie and people are like, “why did you suck in this movie?” and I’m just like, (*fake crying*) “I tried!”

So it was interesting and it’s also comedy and it wasn’t my comfort zone at all. And there were many times where Chris would look at me and go, “I know, I know. Look at your face. You’re scared right now. Don’t worry about it, you know. It’s okay. I gotchu. You’re wondering what happened to your career, how’d you end up here. What did you do wrong?” (*laughs*) And I was just like, okay well I can’t have hot sauce in public again! And then it was brilliant. I felt like this was one of the most collaborative if not the most collaborative project I’ve ever worked on. I had that in a couple of different films and I felt like I was really able to stretch and grow in those films because of it.

And Chris not being worried was really helpful because this was a big film. This was a really big idea. This wasn’t something we’ve seen before. I call this a very modern film. You know, this is a film for our very ADHD kind of culture. It’s as poignant as you want it to be so you feel like these characters are really real. And what they’re saying resonates. But it’s also as silly as it needs to be because you expect that because you see all these comedians in there and you don’t wanna see them all doing straight, kind of flat, dramatic comedy. So really it has all that full range and it takes you there to that next level.

The role of hip-hop in the movie and in life:

CHRIS: I would say this is a movie with a bunch of characters that grew up on rap and we don’t question it. We don’t even call it hip-hop it’s just music. We treat it like it’s any other music. And in most other movies, they treat rap music like it’s this new thing. Like, only old people call it “the internet.” With young people it’s just like….whatever it is.

BEN: It’s music. Music in time has always moved a society. Society’s voice is in that music so therefore we are moving with it and it’s called hip-hop, it’s called music, it’s called art.

“Top Five” will open in theaters nationwide December 12, 2014.