Chris Rock believes that tough love from one of Hollywood’s most notorious, half-cancelled figures helped make him a better filmmaker.
Following a triumphant Toronto International Film Festival premiere for his latest directorial effort “Misty Green,” Rock sat for a keynote chat on Sunday to discuss his expansive career. The comedian told the crowd his chops were elevated by Scott Rudin, a former producing kingpin who disappeared after harrowing accounts of bullying, verbal abuse and being an “absolute monster” in a 2021 exposé.
In conversation with TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey, Rock recalled the last film he directed: the 2014 comedy “Top Five,” in which he starred with Rosario Dawson. Rock wrote the film in 2012 during production on “Grown Ups 2,” using his ample downtime thanks to that film’s large ensemble shoot.
“Being number three or four on the call sheet of a ginormous movie means you’re going to have a lot of days off. I wrote [“Top Five’}, and yeah, it’s got a lot of Woody [Allen] in it. It’s got a lot of Mike Leigh in it. It’s got a lot of Alexander Payne in it,” said Rock. “Scott [Rudin] produced it, and he really pushed me in a way. I know people have whatever stories about Scott, [but] I need hard coaching.”
Before his public reckoning, Rudin was known to have the grace and subtlety of a chainsaw, especially in giving feedback to talent. Rudin, after all, coined the phrase that came to define the 2014 Sony Pictures hack when he called Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat” in leaked emails (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler would later memorialize the phrase in one of their Golden Globes host monologues).
