Dave Chappelle accepts Mark Twain Prize for American Humor: "I love this genre, it saved my life"

The New York Times

Jon Stewart described Chappelle as the "black Bourdain" during Sunday's ceremony, which PBS will broadcast on Jan. 7. "He’s the man that seeks out people and experience and knowledge and wants to touch it and feel it and be with it on the ground,” said Stewart, “so that he can then channel that for his art and redirect that back to you as something completely different and new.” Comedians celebrating Chappelle included four SNL-ers (Lorne Michaels, Colin Jost, Michael Che and Kenan Thompson), plus Sarah Silverman, Tiffany Haddish, Aziz Ansari, Trevor Noah, Sarah Silverman and Chappelle's Show co-creator Neal Brennan, who delivered the best speech of the night. “Your fearlessness to entertain the way that you want to has definitely pierced my life, to the point where I played a werewolf choreographer last night," said Brennan. In his acceptance speech, Chappelle said: "I love my art form because I understand every practitioner of it, whether I agree with them or not, I know where they’re coming from. hey want to be heard, they got something to say, there’s something they notice. They just want to be understood. I love this genre, it saved my life.”