Get Serious

John Ridley, who started out as a stand-up comedian, has emerged as film and TV’s sharpest chronicler of racial discord.

- David Marchese

I HAD A VERY DISTINCT plan for my career,” says John Ridley, nursing a cup of tea while sitting at a table in an atrium at Lincoln Center. “I was going to start as a comedian,” he continues, outlining a life that never was, “and by the mid-phase of my career, I’d be the biggest stand-up on the planet. Then by the time I was 50, I’d retire into a comfortable existence as a novelist.”

Ridley did become a stand-up comedian, peaking with a performance of his gently pointed material on The Late Show in 1994. (Sample joke: “The only way people would ever stop taking drugs is if you made them legal, but to get them, you had to pick them up at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”) And he did write novels, earlier than he expected and of the hard boiled variety, such as The Drift, a violent thriller about a vagrant asked to find a missing woman, or Those Who Walk in Darkness, a near-future sci-fi about genetic engineering. But instead of maturing into a gentleman author, the 51-year-old Milwaukee native has become perhaps Hollywood’s foremost creator of politically fiery, racially aware entertainment during this politically fiery, racially aware era.