richard pryor

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.

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
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