At first blush, Danny Hoch--a New York Jew--seems to be the American Ali G. In the 1999 feature film "Whiteboyz", which he co-wrote with Marc Levin, he plays a rural Iowan who dreams of being a gangsta rapper. A year later, "Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop" appeared. Based on past Hoch performances on stage and television, he once again portrays a Black rapper wannabe as well as a number of other characters drawn from the streets of New York and rural poverty-stricken areas like the one depicted in "Whiteboyz".
However, Hoch is no clown. His main interest is not in making people laugh (although he can be very funny), but in making them think about race and class, the fault-lines of American society exposed by Hurricane Katrina. He is in the performance art tradition of Eric Bogosian and John Leguizamo, two other New Yorkers who have portrayed down-and-out characters on stage. And like these two, he is constantly being tempted by Hollywood to go mainstream. And unlike them, he has had the inner resources to resist them. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/12/12/danny-hoch/ -- www.marxmail.org
