richard pryor

search immediately: And It's Deep Too!, Rhino's 9CD set of Pryor's Warner Bros. albums. really amazing from beginning to end, one of the great comic ouvres ever. few writers dig as deep as him, and make it seem so offhand.

Discuss.

Donut Christ recently said he picked up the DVD set of The Richard Pryor Show from the mid-seventies and indicated it's as great as rumor had long had it.

the best video of his stand up routine is the live and smokin one i think. there is one that was recently made that people made a big fuss over - but its one from almost a decade later, and not as good. its more crowdpleasing and less edgy.

an episode of Pryor's Place can be seen on that Sid and Marty Krofft dvd set, it's not that good.

I couldn't find a CD or digital copy of Richard Pryor's classic, That Nigger's Crazy, so I got a cassette and digitized it myself and uploaded it for listening here:

http://boomp3.com/listen/ej6ks1v/richard-pryor-that-nigger-s-crazy

I wouldn't normally share a file like this, but it appears to be otherwise (digitally) unavailable, so I hope it's ok with ILX policy to post it.

That's on the box set, actually.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:aifpxql0ldde

Oh, well. Go ahead and delete that post, then.

I still listen to the Pryor box set regularly.

Pryor would even admit he owes a lot to Lenny Bruce, but I don't go back and re-listen to Bruce all the fucking time like I do with Pryor.

(anyways, I know there's an RIP Pryor thread, but for the record here, R.I.P. Funniest Man Ever)

WHAT?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/27/eddie-murphy-to-play-richard-pryor

...in "Harlem Days and Nights: The Docudrama"

will suck

Pryor couldn't even make his own biopic a good one.

I admit I am sorta lolling at the idea of Eddie Murphy refusing to do any dicksucking scenes tho

r u referencing RP's stage confession "I tried homosexuality, and I didn't like it?"

also, Eddie is crowding 50, is he going to play Pryor from 25 on? This could be Spacey as Bobby Darin all over again...

the dicksucking when dude was a kid and unless they were going to do some ill-advised Wayan's brothers Little Man shit there I assume Eddie Murphy wouldn't be portraying the part.

there's a word missing there but you get the gist.

This might not be awful. Eddie Murphy can sort of act when he puts his mind to it.

r u referencing RP's stage confession "I tried homosexuality, and I didn't like it?"

hmm don't remember that one - there is an onstage moment from some mid-70s perf I have where he acknowledges having sucked dick as a lad. Dude was raised in a whorehouse, remember.

megalolz if they go the Little Man route! haha

I've read his autobiog and it's this horrible child abuse moment when dude forces him to suck his dick. He mentions meeting the guy when he was older and the guy was totally unapologetic and just like excited to meet him like "hey, you're famous, I knew you when you were a kid!" kind of thing.

whoah

dude is straight up one of the greatest performers ever but man so much pain in his life

of this NYC film retro, the titles I am least familiar with are Some Call It Loving and Dynamite Chicken.

http://www.bam.org/film/2013/a-pryor-engagement

Oh man, would love to see Live In Concert on the big screen.

yeah, the concert movies and Blue Collar are p much the essentials of what I've seen. (I did see him do standup -- more like dramatic monologue by that time really -- once, at Radio City Music Hall on the tour that became the Here & Now film.)

he was badly served by a lot of his film material, unfortunately. agree about the concert movies + Blue Collar. the rest is pretty expendable.

and his linkage bits in Wattstax.

(are hilarious, i mean)

oh yeah. love that whole doc

is this by C0l1n B. from here?

http://brooklynrail.org/2013/02/film/the-uses-of-richard-pryor

I am curious to see Which Way Is Up?

NYT piece on this retrospective was interesting. (oddest detail was the bit about the Comedy Store picket line and who did/didn't cross it - wtf)

http://theseconddisc.com/2013/03/28/shout-factory-to-release-nine-disc-richard-pryor-box-set/

Following the idea of Shout! Factory’s terrific The Incredible Mel Brooks box, No Pryor Restraint will feature an exhaustive look at Pryor’s career with seven CDs and two DVDs, including two hours of previously unreleased content on top of his most classic albums. “The best material from Pryor’s classic albums for the Laff, Stax & Warner Bros. labels” will be featured, as well as compilation-only material, including tracks from:

Richard Pryor (Dove/Reprise, 1968)
‘Craps’ (After Hours) (Laff, 1971)
That N—–’s Crazy (Partee/Stax, 1974)
…Is It Something I Said? (Reprise, 1975)
Bicentennial N—– (Warner Bros., 1976)
Wanted: Richard Pryor Live In Concert (Warner Bros., 1978)
Live on the Sunset Strip (Warner Bros., 1982)
Here and Now (Warner Bros., 1983)
…And It’s Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings 1968-1992 (Warner Bros./Rhino, 2000)
Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years 1966-1974 (Warner Bros./Rhino, 2005)

The box will also contain the concert films Richard Pryor Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Richard Pryor Here and Now (1983). There will also be a book inside the package, featuring “rare photos, multiple essays, exclusive celebrity tributes, a discography, a filmography, and a personal note penned by Richard’s widow, Jennifer Lee Pryor.”

Those who pre-order from Shout! Factory directly get a tenth bonus disc – the unreleased Live At The Comedy Store, October 1973 CD – and will see it ship in mid-May, well ahead of its June 11 street date.

Arrg, already have most of that (everything pre-burn), really want just the 1973 disc.

possibly NSFW even tho it aired on NBC in '77

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJkhEcQ44k

Arrg, already have most of that (everything pre-burn), really want just the 1973 disc.

^^^^this. the And Its Deep Too box is one of my most cherished possessions. am coveting this new box, but there's no way I could justify the expenditure.

http://www.amazon.ca/No-Pryor-Restraint-Life-Concert/dp/B00C6P7I8Y/ref=pd_rhf_pe_p_t_1_FDFC

Amazon.ca has the No Pryor Restraint set selling for $14.99 today. Why? Because who knows. Buy it before they figure out what happened.

Oh, it's gone up to $19.98 now.

From a new book, the job interview behins the SNL "Job Interview" sketch with Chevy Chase.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/03/saturday_night_live_and_richard_pryor_the_untold_story_behind_snls_edgiest_sketch_ever/

Lee Daniels to do biopic. Not sure i've seen this Epps guy in anything.

http://flavorwire.com/newswire/lee-daniels-casts-mike-epps-in-richard-pryor-biopic

Another biography (586 pages), here reviewed by Janet Maslin.

It’s surprising that his early role models were so mainstream: Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, Jerry Lewis. He aspired to such a clean, white-guy style that his early image was that of an also-ran Bill Cosby — at a time when there was room for only one Bill Cosby in show business. (At that stage in his career, Pryor actually thought he was clean enough to emulate what Mr. Cosby called his “Joe Q. Public” persona.)....Mr. Saul has also found a lot of people who had violent conflicts with the famously mercurial Pryor but did get to see him at very close range.

Especially women. Their stories about him are anything but funny, and not even knowledge of what Pryor must have learned during his boyhood can erase the horror that he inflicted as an adult. The stories of beatings are just business as usual; the woman beaten about the head with two brandy bottles, one in each fist, takes it up a notch. Those who chose to stay with him had to get used to coming home and finding him in bed with somebody else (usually female, but not always; he acknowledged his bisexuality). Sometimes, they were ordered to participate, willingly or not. One escaped for a while but was eventually wooed back with gifts including a chinchilla coat. She came home a while later to the ghastly smell of chinchilla on fire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/books/becoming-richard-pryor-scott-sauls-biography.html

pryor has a routine where he talks about shooting the tires of his car in order to prevent his wife from leaving the house. he recounts it as an amusing anecdote, but only a total moron could look past the horror of what that scene must have looked like. this recognition, really, is what he is going for. the emotional experience he was trying to impart to his audience was way more complicated than just laughter, as has been said a million times, i know, but it's true and what makes him different from other comedians. he wasn't always trying to endear himself to the audience either. he confronted them with himself.

since pryor's life was so difficult -- so much more difficult than mine -- i would feel weird calling him a monster or something but then again, if i heard of someone today bashing their wife over the head with a glass bottle i wouldn't hesitate to condemn them. so, i don't know. my view is that it's useful to know about what kind of person an artist was insofar as it sheds light on the meaning of their work, but if they were a "good or bad" person is irrelevant to the strength of the work, which is determined by other, intangible qualities. pryor's storytelling transcended comedy. he's as indispensable to american culture as miles davis, another abuser. it would have been better if he was punished for this bottle incident, at least, but he is dead and that's not where we are.

nobody's arguing about not listening to pryor's albums, i know. i am just writing about this because it's been a rough year in terms of being forced to face horrible things about artists i've admired.

"I am no day at the beach"

never seen this before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLgzuFvT2v8

From the book... Rich is hired to play a "glossy," discreet gay-rights fundraiser in '77, and...

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/11/richard-pryor-great-meltdown-racist-hollywood-bowl

Wow. I'd heard his dick sucking bit from other performances, bur had never heard of this incident.

Yeah, I remember something similar from ...Is It Something I Said?

I'd heard about the Hollywood Bowl thing before, but the account I'd read portrayed Pryor as nothing more than a vicious homophobe (which obviously didn't jibe with what I'd heard on his records, so I wasn't sure if I was getting the whole story).

Reminds me that earlier today a coworker asked if I'd ever seen The Toy. Nnnnnope. "You haven't?! Oh, it's a classic! Don't you like Richard Pryor?"

I can't even imagine other bad Richard Pryor films being as bad as The Toy.

There's stuff about the Hollywood Bowl show in If I Stop I'll Die from a couple of decades ago, but in nowhere near so much depth. Really want to read this new book.

Live and Smokin is fucking amazing if anyone in this thread hasn't seen it yet

I've got a torrent of "Some Call it Loving", bit of a cult thingy starring Zalman King (who went on to be an erotica auteur supremo). Haven't seen it yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Call_It_Loving

Pryor's filmography is total shit for th most part so hoping this does the trick

Live and Smokin is fucking amazing if anyone in this thread hasn't seen it yet

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 5:35 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I only saw it once, maybe 25 years ago, and I remember it being really sad. He's obviously not all there, and it feels like he's stuck in the junkie character, only it's not a character.

It's sad and fuckin amazing and you should see it again

I was unaware of that filmed set, and as it was at the NYC Improv, I'd be very interested as I usta perform there.

xxpost You might be surprised watching it again - he's razor sharp. It is incredibly sad because of some of the places he goes to, the characters he's inhabiting, but I don't know if I've ever seen him quite as on top of his game as that, as far as truly expressing the full range of what he's capable of

well he was not yet HUGE in 1971, possibly not doing as many drugs.

The two lines I remember from that set are among my favorites ("Kiss my ass!...truck!" "There is nothing like the claaap!"), so yeah, I suppose I should see it again.

The live one where he's in the red suit and talking about shooting his car (Richard Pryor In Concert?) was the first I saw, and is still my favourite.

OK, watched a couple of clips of Live & Smokin', and I have no idea how I so colossally misremembered this. I recognize some of this material from Craps and his 1974 record, and yeah, Pryor's totally on.

Live and smokin is revelatory

this sentence has got to be one of the understatements of the year:

Peoria, Illinois, in the 1950s, at a time when there was little in the way of a gay community there

that was a fascinating article, btw. thank you for sharing it.

also, re the anecdote RP tells in the set -- in 1952, he was twelve.

Obviously there is an audio recording, at least, somewhere.

pryor spoke frequenly about losing his virginity at a young age -- he was raised partly in a whorehouse, no?

yes, his grandma's

indeed, i recall that he said he was sexually abused as a small child, although i'm not sure he used the word "abused."

he should have been a film critic:

According to a 1999 profile about Pryor in The New Yorker, Pryor was incarcerated for an incident that occurred while stationed in Germany. Angered that a white soldier was overly amused at the racially charged sections of Douglas Sirk's movie Imitation of Life, Pryor and some other black soldiers beat and stabbed him, though not fatally.[29]

they could wipe out half the screenings these days

i need to get this:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Pryor-Restraint-Life-Concert/dp/B00C6P7I8Y/

hilton als discusses the hollywood bowl incident a bit in the pryor chapter of 'white girls' - also goes into a little more depth re: his friendship with lily tomlin

where does pryor talk about losing his virginity?

i love richard pryor, but thinking of him makes me so terribly sad

[/emo] amazing excerpt, morbs - thanks for posting it

came to me via ex-ilxor Casuistry btw

where does pryor talk about losing his virginity?

― NI, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:16 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like he has versions of that story in a few routines, but i can't point to one album or video specifically right now.

/lazy

i know he talks about childhood sexual abuse in his memoir, can't recall a specific anecdote re: virginity but it likely comes up in there as well

have begun the Saul book. He idolized Jerry Lewis and Sid Caesar, as a kid growing up in the '50s reasonably would. (And he became a great physical comedian, doing standup.)

(that physicality is what made the concert films a more complete experience, in some ways, than the LPs.)

Yeah, as brilliant as the records are, there's always moments of "[silence] [explosive laughter]" where presumably he did some hilarious physical comedy.

One of my favorite moments in Richard Pryor Live In Concert doesn't come across on record too well:

"...snake..."

The opening 30 pages or so about his family background and Peoria in the first half of the 20th century is just so bleak and heartbreaking. The roots of everything that inspired and traumatized him are completely laid bare.

i should read this.

a key sketch from a 1973 CBS Lily Tomlin special (Alan Alda pops in too). It's totally character-driven, and per the Saul book, Lily had to fight to get it on over the course of a year; the network said it "wasn't funny." Pryor connected with Tomlin, loved her work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKi7myNZb4o

I'd never heard of this before a few months ago and thankfully found it on youtube. I watched it several times over the course of the day. It's unlike anything I've ever seen on television, and though she had to fight with the network to get it on in 1973, it would never get out of a pitch meeting in 2015. It's astonishing.

Pryor's mockery of the social-work types is deft and not at all heavyhanded. He won an Emmy for co-writing one of these Tomlin specials, not sure which.

is the saul book god, morbs?

bought a VHS of this entire special off ebay years ago, but i think i've since lost it

it's probably the definitive book, for now, on Pryor in the '70s and his early life.

It makes clear RP was ambivalent at best about his crossover vehicles, eg Silver Streak, his breakthrough hit film, which he nearly quit the day before the "Gene Wilder blacks up with shoe polish" scene. Fortunately Wilder and Arthur Hiller let Pryor essentially rewrite and take over the scene.

i'll definitely check it out, thanks for the tip-off

Thanks for posting that clip, Morbs; just got to that point in the book yesterday and was about to seek it out.

And Morbs otm re: the new bio. Absolutely definitive, and Saul's take on "That N-----'s Crazy" is spot-on where he talks about the multiple layers revealed with each listen. I've practically got that record memorized and I still hear something new every time.

should i read the saul book first, or his autobiography?

I actually found his autobio a little thin, but the excerpts in Saul's book make me want to revisit it. That said, I'd still read Saul first.

ok thanks, i'll do that

that bit was great but network dudes otm about it not being funny

xp

it has some rich HUMOR along with the pathos and slice-of-life, but the obv question would be is it trying to be ha-ha funny.

The book says it ran with canned laughter on the broadcast.

lol idk where you would even put the "laughs" in that sketch

you underestimate TV lifers

from the NBC show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sunsLde_ZWY

Robin Williams as the "classy" and (I'm assuming) Nazi guns?

“Oprah Winfrey will play Pryor’s grandmother, who ran a brothel and raised the iconic comic there; Eddie Murphy will play Pryor’s father, Leroy ‘Buck Carter’ Pryor. Kate Hudson is set to play Pryor’s widow, Jennifer Lee Pryor.”

http://deadline.com/2015/08/richard-pryor-oprah-winfrey-eddie-murphy-mike-epps-kate-hudson-lee-daniels-harvey-weinstein-1201509601/

blech

we'll see how many beatings, by grandma and RP, make it in

ditto blowjobs

ditto blow

it IS Lee Daniels, ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN

would have been 75 today

here's the 1966 Merv Griffin Show discussed in the Saul book (whereafter he was cornered by Groucho Marx at a party at Bobby Darin's (!) and asked, "Young man, do you want a career you’re proud of, or do you want to end up a spitwad like Jerry Lewis?").

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31pmoy

Probably being played up for the cameras, but interesting tension between Pryor and Lewis there. Fascinating footage, thanks Morbs.

wow never seen that before

lol'd at Merv/Jerry "Am I Jewish now?" exchange

Pryor in Regular Showbiz Land is a fascinating era.

he seems understandably nervous, almost shy

well showbiz was still an essentially segregated affair, and he was meeting one of his idols

he bridles at some moments with lewis though. fascinating footage.

Try if you will but you'll never be able to unpack Richard Pryor into any sort of 21st century understanding of a "problematic" artist. The pain and suffering he endured/caused can't be grasped in today's digital screen-world of virtue-signalling & Nazis. pic.twitter.com/zC1S74mHFU

— K D R (@kdr_2020) February 8, 2018

People acting surprised about the Pryor thing when dude made the most true, beautiful short film about interracial same-sex love that I've ever seen: https://t.co/lQU1oIsvIn

— BANDZ STACKHAGE (@NickPinkerton) February 8, 2018

The Scott Saul biog from a little while back - which is mostly brilliant - is explicit about Richard's sexuality being fluid.

Luv thread revives that talk around a thing without ever making explicit mention of the thing they're talking around. Luv them.

I figured everyone knew! Pryor and Brando got it on, per Quincy Jones and Pryor's widow.

I'm always the last to learn about secret celebrity fucking. Sigh.

subscribe to my newsletter!

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/11/richard-pryor-great-meltdown-racist-hollywood-bowl

i read this last night, seems relevant

yep (posted it 3 years ago -- I again recommend the book)

Best film criticism of 1959: Teenaged Richard Pryor, in the Army, stabs a fellow soldier for laughing at Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life.

— BANDZ STACKHAGE (@NickPinkerton) December 18, 2012

Thx Quincy Jones for giving me the opportunity to share a light-hearted Marlon Brando-Richard Pryor story that suggests why they were birds of a feather @jasondashbailey pic.twitter.com/6fPH2EYsjs

— ScottSaul (@scottsaul4) February 7, 2018

more champagne!

Can I just say once more what a fabulous read that Scott Saul biog is? I've read a number of Pryor-related tomes over the years, including his own memoir, and this is the best.

from the AOC thread (never mind)

Blue Collar is the only movie Pryor is in that isnt bad

Some Call It Loving
Uptown Saturday Night
Car Wash

And Superman 3.

Wattstax

i've been meaning to check out Which Way Is Up? for a couple years, since I saw The Seduction of Mimi (its origin)

as I posted in the AOC thread:

Wild In The Streets
Lost Highway

also The Muppet Movie, and iirc The Mack is entirely capable at what it's aiming to do

I should have been more specific, limited it to films he stars in.

The Mack counts then, and I'm prepared to believe that Blue Collar (by Schrader) and Silver Streak (d. Arthur Hiller, w. the writer of Harold & Maude) are non-terrible

saw See No Evil, Hear No Evil when I was a kid bcz Wilder/Pryor were supposed to be good, and that was definitely fuckin awful

Any way you cut it, the disparity between Pryor's talent and the quality of his films is off the charts. Hard to think of many people who were so poorly served by their choice of material.

Blue Collar probably is his best starring role.

God only knows how many times I watched the horribly offensive The Toy as a kid.

Blue Collar was good. Others I tried, I couldn't stay awake. I read the bio "Furious Cool" that makes it sound like a miracle he managed to make any films.

Thread reminds me to give his "semi-autobiographical" film "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling" a try. Anyone seen that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUIKBlT_Ef8

Hard to think of many people who were so poorly served by their choice of material.

You can only do what you're offered! Hollywood had no idea what to do with him.

Thread reminds me to give his "semi-autobiographical" film "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling" a try. Anyone seen that?

It's a mess, but a brave and fascinating mess.

Watched Which Way Is Up? last year, following that great biog that came out the year before, and it is really hard to watch, especially as the Pryor character's romantic approach is to stalk the female lead in a really creepy way, and then she inexplicably falls in love with him. It's a bad movie.

I recently read Jenny Lee Pryor's memoir from the 90s, which I'd owned for years but never cracked open. It's not very well written, but vivid, and it's a gruelling read, as Pryor basically abuses her terribly and she keeps leaving him but then going back to him, and then getting psychologically and physically abused by him again. He seems to have been a real horror-show to be around, a towering inferno of self-doubt, paranoia and anger, onto which he poured the gasoline of drugs. It reminded me of that thing on the internet a bunch of years ago written by a scriptwriter working on a movie with him, where he basically came into writing sessions completely out of it and raging with paranoia and violence.

I had no idea about this material - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution/Revolution

Was relistening to this on a long drive recently. The first disk is fascinating and well-titled, as you hear Richard morph from gifted Cosby/Allen copyist into his own sublime thing. The later stuff is great too, mostly taken from the releases Laff put out alongside the LPs Richard was doing concurrently for Warners, and very much of a piece (if not sonically as clear or clean). The comp is up for streaming IIRC, if you don't fancy tracking down a CD.

Soz, I meant the Laff stuff was released at the same time as the Warners records, but the material and recordings often date earlier, before he was signed to Warners iirc

Seem to recall a (silent?) sketch where he plays a whiskey doctor. He needs to have a drink to steady his hand for what one expects is going to be dealing with a bullet wounds but instead the joke is he delivers a baby. Hard to google, wonder if I dreamt it.

Some Call It Loving
Uptown Saturday Night
Car Wash

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings

https://www.criterion.com/films/30975-jo-jo-dancer-your-life-is-calling

Have never seen this, and have always been curious to.

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert is still the best film he's ever done, and probably the greatest film of a stand-up performance ever (including HBO specials broadcast for television).

Agreed.

For curious stateside viewers, Jo Jo Dancer is on Tubi rn.

All three of the concert films that I've seen were amazing---the audience in New Orleans gets pretty out there at times---one guy brings him a goldfish---can't remember if it's in a bag or a bowl, but he holds it and improvises from the goldfish's POV, while looking a bit stunned, but then it is NOLA, so I guess he was kinda ready for something like that, as much as he could be. Unless I pipedreamed it, that's in Richard Pryor: Here and Now(1983).

Good in everything I've seen, which is most of it, as far back as 1968's happenin' Wild In The Streets, about a rock star leading a Youth Revolt,which includes dosing Congress with LSD (Congress loves it);his Keith Moon-like drummer is RP.
Also great in Lady Sings The Blues, as Piano Man: a composite character, apparently, since at least one of her pianists, Jerome Hopkins, long survived her, also came back to hometown Tuscaloosa, still playing, in the 70s, when I was there (and saw a lot of Pryor movies).