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February 5, 2009
David Alan Grier in Time Out Chicago
Time Out Chicago talks to David Alan Grier about his show "Chocolate News," being a new parent, the other David Alan Grier, and drug use. When asked who recently made him ask the "Chocolate News" catchphrase, "Have you lost you damn mind?" DAG replies, "Most recently, O.J. Simpson. He got away with double murder, and, yes, he's now serving life for stealing his own football." DAG also explains the one-year discrepancy in his age: "There's another David Alan Grier who's from Detroit who's a computer scientist born on my same day. His father had the same name my father has. They had offices across the street from each other, but they didn't know each other. Our birthdays are one year apart. Google it. He's a professor. "
When asked how he feels about the sillier roles he's taken, like in "Boomerang" and "Jumanji," he replies: "Oh, I got a better one: I'm in the new Wayans Brothers' movie ["Dance Flick"], and I play a thousand-pound evil dance-flick guy. I really act. I mean, you could think of it like that, or you could think of it like, I could be doing iambic pentameter at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival. Is that my life? No. My life is a varied artistic endeavor. Much like the country, I'm evolving and constantly changing."
When asked about becoming a parent later in life (at 52), he says, "Oh, it's awesome. My daughter just celebrated her one-year birthday. But when you have a kid, everybody gives you coded advice. When she was born, you get: 'You're not sleeping, huh?' 'Hey, how much sleep are you getting?' 'You're probably up all night.' And now it's like, 'Ohh, if only you could keep her at this age--but you can't. And that's the really sad thing.' And you're like, What? That's--what are you--that's not--what am I, what am I in for? It's like when I used to do drugs, like, when you take Ecstasy: 'Uh-oh.' 'You're gonna have fun.' 'Look out!' 'Drink a lot of water!' They just want to mess with your business."
This led to the inevitable question of whether David did a lot of drugs at one point, to which he replied: "No, I experimented like any intelligent--this is a trap! You are trying to nail me. Just for perhaps less than six months and then I went on to my studies--at Yale. I didn't know anything about that Ecstasy."
Click here to read the full interview.
Posted February 5, 2009
