Actor-comedian Tracy Morgan riding high

If you're a Tracy Morgan fan, you know how he sounds even if you're never quite sure where he's coming from.

The comedian is on a career crest, riding high on NBC's "30 Rock" and using his breaks for stand-up -- including a Saturday stop at the Hard Rock Hotel -- or movies such as "Cop Out" and "Death at a Funeral."

Ask Morgan on the phone if he tries to plan out his show-business future, and the answer reads best if you can do it with his voice in mind, the one which manages to sound both emphatic and a bit adrift at the same time:

"You have to take it as it comes. You can't plan the (stuff), man. You could wake up dead one morning. You have to just live it to the fullest. If you could get it down to 10 minutes at a time, then you're in the moment. You just try to stay in the moment -- (an aside to someone else in the room) scratch my back for me, babe -- you stay grounded and you love your family, you do what you do. Your arts and everything.

"It's hard to plan life. You can't. Who does that? Takes all the spontaneity out of it. Things come. Things pop up in show business. It's like going to the doctor. You feel good. Then you go to the doctor one day and he says, 'You've got six weeks to live.' You never know.

"It's truly what Forrest Gump said, man: 'Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.' I wish people would understand that. Try to stay in the moment, and you won't miss nothin'. If you stay in the moment, you're livin' life to the fullest. Keep your mind open. Don't be prejudiced about nothin'. You try everything.

"I keep my mind open about all of this stuff, man. I'm not prejudiced about acting. I'm not prejudiced about stand-up. It's all good. It's all to the good."

Got it?

Fans have fun trying to parse out the differences between Morgan and Tracy Jordan, the head case he plays on "30 Rock." But there are no guessing games when he's onstage.

"Characters that I do on TV have nothing to do with my stand-up. My stand-up is personal. My stand-up is mine," he says. "Sometimes, people expect these characters I do, and they're disappointed. But when I do stand-up, I'm talking about my experiences."

"30 Rock" is "not really based on my life, because Tracy Jordan's got 300 million dollars," he says. "It's based on someone else's imagination. I just bring the energy. Tracy Jordan has the same energy as Tracy Morgan, but no, I'm nothing like that character. I'm not going to run down the street in my underwear with my light saber."

Morgan says a lot of people don't know he began as a stand-up, assuming he came up in sketch comedy because of his "Saturday Night Live" years.

In last year's autobiography, "I Am the New Black," the 41-year-old Morgan recounts his childhood in the Bedford-Stuyvesant projects of Brooklyn, and his father's AIDS death from drug abuse. He writes, "You think I got funny watching 'The Little Rascals'?... I got funny for one reason: I got funny to survive."

He says now, "I just told my fiancee this morning: I was raised in a war zone. There were casualties. That stuff stays with you.

"That book was closure. A lot of it was closure for me," he adds. "I meet people in real life (who say), 'I didn't know.'

"I know you didn't know, because I never told you. You didn't know me, period. I was just playing a character on your TV set."

Is it ironic to him that much of the avid cult following for "30 Rock" is drawn from people who identify more with Fey, viewers who probably never sold crack as their high school job?

"The things that have happened to me happen in life. It happens to suburban people. I think people identify. Funny is just funny," he says. "I'm not up there trying to make people cry, I make people laugh. No different than what Richard Pryor did.

"I try to bring the audience into my world. If they didn't know me, then I bet they're gonna know me now. When they leave, they will have a piece of me."

And on that, like all things, he is emphatic.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.