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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1056
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2005 - 11:39 am: | 
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Comedian Richard Pryor dies at 65
By Steve Jones, USA TODAY
Richard Pryor — who died Saturday of a heart attack at age 65 — changed the very definition of funny.
Comedian-actor Richard Pryor shown as he performs in 1977.
AP
By confronting racial differences and lampooning social mores while giving voice to people (such as himself) who grew up and lived in the margins of society, he forever altered the face of mainstream comedy. (Photos: Remembering Pryor)
Once the profane, edgy, manic Pryor bogarted his way into what had once been the province of safe, smiling, middle-of-the-road comics, it would never be the same again. Pryor was angry, confessional, insightful — and the funniest man alive. He was in your face, shaking out all of life's dirty little secrets — often through the prism of his own troubled life — and in doing so, he emboldened a generation of humorists to tackle edgy material.
"By telling the truth about his pain, Richard held up a mirror to society, and we were able to see our fears, our beauty, our prejudice, our wretchedness, our hopes, our dreams — all of our contradictions. He is truly the greatest comedian of our time," Damon Wayans says in the liner notes of the nine-disc Rhino box set Richard Pryor: And It's Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992).
Some imitators misunderstood his genius, seeming to think they could reach his heights by simply being foul-mouthed. But Pryor's liberal use of the F-word and the N-word (which he would renounce after an eye-opening 1979 trip to Zimbabwe) was just a residue of his self-expression. The real humor was in the meaning of what he said.
"What I'm saying may be profane, but it is also profound," Pryor was quoted as saying in Richard Pryor: Black and Blue by Jeff Rovin.
Pryor bared himself to the world using his own wild trainwreck of a life as fodder for his routines. His real-life exploits with alcohol, drugs and women were an open book. He would share his hurt and have you splitting your sides even as he horrified you.
"I had to stop drinking because I got tired of waking up in my car going 90," he joked on Inebriatedfrom the album Here and Now.
In 1978, he famously shot up fourth wife Deboragh McGuire's Buick with his .357 Magnum as she tried to leave him. On New Year's Eve, from Wanted/Richard Pryor — Live in Concert, he joked about how he got in trouble for "killing a car" with his .357 Magnum, but confesses that he quietly went into the house when the cops showed up.
"They got Magnums too," he said of the police. "But they don't kill cars. They kill nig-gars."
Pryor was nothing if not a survivor. The father of seven was married six times. He had two heart attacks and had quadruple bypass surgery after the second one. Again, he found comic inspiration — "You thinking about dying now, aint'cha?" his rebellious heart says to him. "Why didn't you think about when you were eating that pork, (expletive), drinking that whisky and snorting that cocaine."
A 1980 suicide attempt in which he doused himself with rum, flicked a lighter and went fleeing down the street left him with third-degree burns over the top half of his body. "You know what I noticed? When you run down the street on fire, people will move out of your way," he would later joke on Hospital.
He was addicted to drugs and alcohol and had a voracious sexual appetite. And in 1986, while filming Critical Condition with Gene Wilder, he was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which became increasingly debilitating over the years. Though the illness eventually took him from the spotlight and robbed him of his ability to work — he was a mere shell of himself in 1989's Harlem Nights, with Eddie Murphy, and could barely deliver his lines 1991's Another You, with Gene Wilder — he remained defiant.
"Rather than surrender to forces beyond my control, I've decided to hang on till the end of the ride," he said in his 1995 autobiography, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences.
Even as he spent years out of the spotlight, Pryor's classic material remained timeless. When it didn't find him talking about his own foibles, he skewered society's conventions through a colorful assortment of bums, junkies, barflies and the like. And whether the speaker was Mudbone (his most famous invention — an aged spinner of "fascinating stories") or a random wino giving Dracula the business, truth was delivered with side-splitting hilarity.
Pryor's upbringing, another great source of material, was anything but funny. He was the son of an abusive pimp and a prostitute who left the family when he was 10. He was raised in the brothels run by his stern grandmother. He was sexually abused in an alley with he was 7 and kicked out of school when he was 14. At 16, he had his first child, with a girl who was also sleeping with his father. He joined the Army and was kicked out, and did several menial jobs in Peoria until he started telling jokes at local nightclubs.
He eventually made a decent living playing the black club circuit in the Midwest. In the early 1960s, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where his act as a wholesome Bill Cosby clone brought him a measure of success and he started showing up on various variety shows.
But he grew increasingly dissatisfied with his safe routine, reportedly experiencing a nervous breakdown and fleeing the stage of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969. A year later, he moved to Berkeley, Calif., where he socialized with such activists and intellectuals as Huey Newton, Cecil Brown and Ishmael Reed. When he re-emerged as a comic, he was both more profane and more political.
He had made his film debut in the comedy Busy Body in 1967 and also appeared in 1968's Wild in the Streets. His career really took off in the 1970s with such films as Lady Sings the Blues, Car Wash, Uptown Saturday Night, The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings, Greased Lightning, Silver Streak, The Seduction of Mim, The Wiz and Blue Collar.
In the 1980s, however, he suffered several health-related setbacks and the quality of his work also took a turn for the worse. He appeared in such losers as Superman III (he was paid $1 million more than Christopher Reeve) and played a willing slave to the bratty son of millionaire Jackie Gleason in The Toy.
With the exception of his excellent concert films, the movies never quite captured Pryor at his best. He did win five Grammy Awards, however, for his remarkable recordings.
In recent years, Pryor's public appearances were limited, though he was often honored for his work. He received the NAACP Hall of Fame Award in 1996 and was the initial recipient of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor in 1998. In 1995, he appeared with daughter Rain in an episode of the medical drama Chicago Hope as a patient with multiple sclerosis.
In 2003 he hosted Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, which featured clips from concerts and appearances by fellow comics. The show's title was a reference the persistent rumors he'd hear over the years that he had died.
"Sometimes they used to have that on the news that I was dead," he said on his routine M.S. "That to me is the weirdest (expletive), to be assumed dead and you still be alive."
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1683
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 11:19 am: |
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Man I remember when I first saw him. He was on like Ed Sullivan back in the Early Sixties. He did a sort of riff on Bill Cosby then-- lot of softened memories from his childhood--he was good without even being controversial or using blue language--he had timing, voices, mimicry, the faces. I remember he was in this movie with Sid Ceasar--wasn't it the Busybodies?--He had never done any acting in movies before and he really carried off the role of a comic black police detective--
He was good. He had it made in that sort of Cosby, Nipsey Russell, Godfrey Cambridge way--
He had this routine where he put on a school play by himself--he was everybody, the teacher, several little kids in the play--this guy was fanstastic, like watching a whole show in one package-- he did this line "My name is Rumplestiltskin and I'm a meanie and he sounded and acted like a little kid and his body language was right--
Then he sort of dropped off the map. And he came back with them albums--before That Nigger's Crazy.
Richard and Willie and the SLA. That album with him as a bushman with a bow and arrow--
Man! Mind blowing. You were quoting them lines. And then that string of albums.
I mean this was a guy people did his routines on the street. "We are gathered here today." "This is Mr. Gilmore's Property." "You got to up the Flying saucer, baby"
I remember he did this one, where they are in the bar, and he is everybody in the bar. I mean this guy convincingly plays a whole room full of people, you forget you are listenign to one guy all these voices talk
And to make it totally legit he has this woman going through named Bertha. Yes, she got a big butt. He said she weighed three hundred pounds and 290 of it was butt. Just some impossible shit but you get it.
And then he has her going through the crowd, shoving people out of the way with her butt, and just saying "kiss my ass, motherfucker" to guys making comments about her and I had known and heard that woman. She lived in many places and times.
He spoiled me on Comedy. This to me is the package you gotta have to be a top flight comedian--Eddie, Martin, Chris, Dave and others have all had their moments but they have rarely been where everything they did was funny.
This guy everything was funny. He shot his wife's car and went to jail and it was funny. He set himself afire and it became a joke.
I guess that's what should have been the tip off that it had to burn itself out, long before now. Yes, for almost twenty five years Rich was on the sidelines, we forget, couldn't help it. Think you could blaze like that forever? |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 1059
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 12:56 pm: |
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Chris,
My brother, who died during a car accident ten years ago, was a huge fan of Richard Pryor. He had ALL of Richards stuff, including albums. Yesterday, when I first heard of Richard's death, the first thing that went through my mind was "wow, I better call Raymond (my brother) to let him know that Richard Pryor is dead...." For a few moments I actually forget that my brother himself was dead.. not only that but for ten years. I even reached for the phone before it dawned on me.... It was really, really strange, you know!?!....
Anyway, it took a quite awhile for me to pull myself together afterwards.... That's how Richard's death effected me.
Tonya |
Kola_boof
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 951
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 02:19 pm: |
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I studied his life and career several years ago for research.
I watched t.v. performances, his films, listened to all his albums and read about 100 interviews.
During the 1970's he was at his apex.
His talent superceded brilliance. He was socially, politically and psychologically---the voice of the people, IMO.
Breathtaking clarity to his 1969-1978 wit.
The drugs were his down turn and he just fell into mediocrity and stopped having anything to say--just like Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston.
But that whole 70's period was MASTERFUL.
He was cheated out an OSCAR for "Lady Sings the Blues", "Which Way Is UP" and I forget the other film I saw.
He was BRILLIANT. The most gifted comedian I have ever seen if you like social revelance.
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Troy
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 313
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 01:07 am: |
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Tonya that is some story. You obviously loved your brother. He got your message.
Richard Pryor standup, during the 70's, was the standard (http://authors.aalbc.com/richard_pryor.htm). I just finished listening to 8 of his CD's (while working on the web site). I really have a keener appreaciation for his work now than when I was a teenager, hearing him for the first time.
Given 30 years has past since that time. His stories, our stories, still ring true today. Once line I just heard, and I paraphase; You know we [black people] must be crazy; cause we have not killed all of y'all [white people] after all the shit you've done to us... You know white would not have put up with that shit for five minutes let alone 400 years... White people would have been in the street killing babies....
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3122
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 01:49 pm: |
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Like everybody else who was around when he first appeared on the scene, Richard Pryor's humorous persona cracked me up. But, to me, he was a man for his times, which is to say that in the present when I listen to or see any of his old stand-up routines, I just manage an amused grunt, amazed at how vulnerable he comes across as. Also, a lot of his broad humor depended on its shock value especially when it came to the use of the "f" and "n" words. As the originator of the schtik comparing how white people react to things as opposed to the way a brotha or a sista does, Pryor does deserve credit for being the prototype for today's black comics. But I'd venture to say that his movie career was where he came into his own in his roles as a comedic actor. IMHO. |
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