Chris Rock can sense when a film is going to be a box-office flop. "You know it the week before," he says. "You start to run around trying magically to turn it around."

That is one of the autobiographical details milked by the 50-year-old US comedian in his latest movie, Top Five.

Rock plays Andre Allen, a comic in crisis who attempts to forge a serious film career with a movie about a bloody slave rebellion in Haiti. But fans prefer him fighting crime dressed in a bear suit or followed by a film crew as he prepares to marry reality-television star Erica Long, played by Gabrielle Union.

The US comedian, who shot to prominence more than two decades ago on Saturday Night Live, says his character's desperate attempts to publicise his ill-conceived historical drama are drawn from real life.

"Well, I mean the whole selling the movie is pretty much how it is … Chasing a flop when you have a flop," he says.

But Rock says life has not imitated art in the case of Top Five, which he also wrote and directed. The film has received largely positive reviews – New York Times  critic Manohla Dargis called it "fast and blisteringly funny" – and has earned $25.3 million at the US box office since its release in December.

As pointed and profane as his stand-up gigs, Top Five riffs on celebrity, race and hip-hop as Rock's character spends a day sparring with journalist Chelsea Brown, played by Rosario Dawson, reliving past scandals and suffering a very public meltdown.

Rock praises his co-star for carrying the dramatic weight of the film."The movie isn't just a silly joke-to-joke movie because of her," he says.

The opening scene lands the first of many comic punches as Rock and Dawson have a running conversation – in which the N-word is liberally used – about the state of race relations.

Dawson's Brown predicts a tolerant future when the US can be led by a Latina lesbian, Asian or handicapped President, while Rock's Allen argues African-American men cannot even hail a New York cab – a claim that is swiftly proven wrong.

Later, Allen returns to the poor neighbourhood where he grew up and argues which rappers make his top five with friends, played by Tracy Morgan, Sherri Shepherd and Jay Pharoah, to name a few of the stars who make cameo appearances.

Rock tackled the question of race in a provocative article penned for The Hollywood Reporter in December, calling Hollywood "a white industry". "Just as the NBA is a black industry. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. It just is."

He also labelled Los Angeles a slave state: "It's the most liberal town in the world, and there's a part of it that's kind of racist – not racist like 'F--- you, nigger' racist, but just an acceptance that there's a slave state in LA that doesn't exist anywhere else."

In an interview with Vulture, he said Barack Obama's ascent to the presidency was "not black progress. That's white progress."

"The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced."

Rock, who has two daughters, Lola and Zahra, says talented people tend to succeed regardless of colour but racial (and gender) inequality impacts upon those with limited talents.

"Do I have to be as funny as Eddie Murphy to have a career?" he asks.

"Most white people are OK, some are great, but most are just all right ... Most white writers don't write as good as James Baldwin. If you're black, it's harder if you're not great."

Success is a heavier burden on black shoulders, he adds. "It represents more. It represents hope, a way out. Hugh Jackman is just an actor for you, but Denzel [Washington] is a god," he says. "Laurence Olivier won four Oscars but he doesn't mean what Sidney Poitier means to people."

Based on these criteria, Rock must carry a heavy burden. He grew up in an underprivileged neighbourhood in Brooklyn and was bused to an all-white area to attend a school where he was bullied and beaten. His stand-up career began in 1984 when he auditioned at a comedy club after missing out on tickets to an Eddie Murphy gig at Radio City Music Hall.

After a stint on Saturday Night Live and an aborted career in Hollywood in the early 1990s, Rock made a series of award-winning comedy specials for HBO that established his reputation as a comedian as well as the critically acclaimed autobiographical sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, which ran from 2005 to 2009.

Rock was a provocative host of the 2005 Oscars, mocking actors such as Tobey Maguire and Jude Law, and taking a camera crew to a black neighbourhood to ask moviegoers if they had seen any of the films nominated for best picture (most hadn't).

He has had supporting roles in films such as Lethal Weapon 4 and Nurse Betty and starred in The Longest Yard, Bad Company and Down to Earth. He also directed the well-received documentary Good Hair, about the black hair industry.

But Rock credits his Broadway debut in the 2011 Tony-nominated black comedy The Motherf***ker with the Hat with inspiring him to create a film that tackles the issues he jokes about in his comedy.

"I thought I'd made it already but around this group of people I realised I had so much further to go," he says.

Rock says he had never experienced the level of rehearsal required for the stage.

"The play taught me about preparation," he says. "I didn't know how to prepare for anything. Honestly, I'd never prepared like that."

Rock says he was also on a learning curve when it came to handling his own script for Top Five. Hollywood can be cavalier in its treatment of writers, and Rock adopted that approach.

"The director really beat up the writer on this movie," he says. "Other movies I've been so pompous and thought my scripts were great and wanted everyone to say what I wrote. But this movie comes from doing the play and realising it's about the actors. Even though it's my script, it's their part, and you've got to let them create their character."

Spectrum Now's special event starring Chris Rock – In Conversation with Richard Glover is at Hoyts Cinema Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park, Sydney on March 5. Top Five opens on March 12.