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When a
performer follows a run on "Dancing With the
Stars" with a role in a new David Mamet play, you
have to admit, now there's an interesting guy.
David Alan Grier
is certainly that. The comic actor — who competed on
the ballroom dancing show last season — will appear
next in "Race," which opens on
Broadway
in December. As Mamet, one of America's leading
playwrights, explained in the
New York Times
, the play is about "race and the lies we tell each
other on the subject."
Grier
also has a new book out that explores politics, culture
and race, "Barack Like Me: The Chocolate-Covered
Truth" (
$24.99
, Touchstone). It's interesting. And amusing. And edgy.
And kind of profound. Best of all, it's unpredictable.
If you've
read other books by comedians, you know how they usually
go: personal anecdote, joke, observation on human
behavior, joke, another anecdote, joke, joke, joke. By
the time you're finished, it feels as though you've been
smacked in the face by the print version of a laugh
track.
But
Grier, who became famous for his characters on "In
Living Color," wanted to create a different kind of
book. "I hope, in a good way, that you don't sit
there and read and, you know, 'Hey, have you ever
noticed when you eat Cheez Doodles, your hands ... turn
orange?' I wasn't trying to write that," he says by
phone. "I was trying to be honest and, also, in my
own voice and my own sense of humor."
"Barack
Like Me" is a candid memoir that describes his
years growing up in
Detroit's
Boston
-Edison neighborhood, his journey to becoming an actor,
his experiences at Barack Obama's inauguration (the view
from his crowded spot was blocked by "the Shaquille
O'Neal of trees," he writes, but being there was
"deeply, innately uplifting"), and, yes, his
stint on "Dancing."
Some
moments in the book are endearingly seen through a young
person's eyes, like the story of how ice cream figures
into his memories of being a tired, cranky kid at the
historic 1963 Detroit march led by Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
In one
chapter, he recalls sitting on his grandmother's lap and
listening to stories from when she was a child in the
segregated South. "It was only when I got older and
more analytical that I saw her stories for what they
really were: sad histories, cautionary tales and, often,
horror stories," he writes.
Even the
hilarious, over-the-top section on what happened behind
the scenes at "Dancing" has a relevance to
America's continuing discussion on race and culture,
according to Grier.
"It
was fun to talk about and, in a perverse way, the joke I
was trying to make was that, in a very populist sense,
'Dancing With the Stars' does represent post-racial
America. ... It's one of those shows where it doesn't
matter what race you are. It doesn't matter your
socio-economic status. Any cheesy person can win that
glittery ball," he says.
Although
Grier prefaces the book with the fact that he and his
wife (who appears frequently in the narrative) are in
the process of divorcing, "Barack Like Me" is
ultimately a story of humor and hope.
It's not
about punch lines. "It's also not me trying to
write 'Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot,'" says
Grier, referring to the book by
Al Franken
.
"It's
just more about that glorious time in my life growing up
in
Detroit
and reliving all that time when Barack was first
elected. It was like the country went on vacation for
about 48 hours and everybody was happy."
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