richard pryor

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.

Some Call It Loving
Uptown Saturday Night
Car Wash

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