Topic: Pioneering Comedian Richard Pryor Dies
- Dec 11, 2005 07:50am by NRG - livin the art that is life !
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Pioneering Comedian Richard Pryor Dies
Dec 10, 4:41 PM EST
Pryor dies at 65
The Associated Press
Richard Pryor, the caustic yet perceptive actor-comedian who lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off, died Saturday. He was 65.
Pryor died shortly before 8 a.m. of a heart attack after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
"We loved him and will miss you," his ex-wife, Flynn Pryor, said from her Florida home.
Pryor was regarded early in his career as one of the most foul-mouthed comics in the business, but he gained a wide following for his expletive-filled but universal and frequently personal insights into modern life and race relations.
His audacious style influenced an array of stand-up artists, including Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Damon Wayans, as well as Robin Williams, David Letterman and others.
A series of hit comedies in the '70s and '80s, as well as filmed versions of his concert performances, helped make him Pryor one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. He was one of the first black performers to have enough leverage to cut his own Hollywood deals. In 1983, he signed a $40 million, five-year contract with Columbia Pictures.
His films included "Stir Crazy," "Silver Streak," "Which Way Is Up?" and "Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip."
Throughout his career, Pryor focused on racial inequality, once joking as the host of the 1977 Academy Awards that Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were the only black members of the Academy.
Pryor once marveled "that I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that."
In 1980, he nearly lost his life when he suffered severe burns over 50 percent of his body while freebasing cocaine at his home. An admitted "junkie" at the time, Pryor spent six weeks recovering from the burns and much longer from drug and alcohol dependence.
He battled multiple sclerosis throughout the '90s.
In his last movie, the 1991 bomb "Another You," Pryor's poor health was clearly evident.
Pryor made a comeback attempt the following year, returning to standup comedy in clubs and on television while looking thin and frail, and with noticeable speech and movement difficulties.
In 1995, he played an embittered multiple sclerosis patient in an episode of the television series "Chicago Hope." The role earned him an Emmy nomination as best guest actor in a drama series.
"To be diagnosed was the hardest thing because I didn't know what they were talking about," he said. "And the doctor said 'Don't worry, in three months you'll know.'
"So I went about my business and then, one day, it jumped me. I couldn't get up. ... Your muscles trick you; they did me."
While Pryor's material sounds modest when compared with some of today's raunchier comedians, it was startling material when first introduced. He never apologized for it.
In his 1977 NBC television series "The Richard Pryor Show," he threatened to cancel his contract with the network after NBC's censors objected to a skit in which Pryor appeared naked save for a flesh-colored loincloth to suggest he was emasculated.
In his later years Pryor mellowed considerably, and his film roles looked more like easy paychecks than artistic endeavors. His robust work gave way to torpid efforts like "Harlem Nights," "Brewster's Millions" and "See No Evil, Here No Evil."
Pryor was married six times. He and Flynn Pryor had a son, Steven. Previous children included another son, Richard, and daughters Elizabeth, Rain and Renee.
Daughter Rain became an actress. In an interview in 2005, she told the Philadelphia Inquirer that her father always "put his life right out there for you to look at. I took that approach because I saw how well audiences respond to it. I try to make you laugh at life."
from associated press
- Dec 11, 2005 04:12pm by NRG - livin the art that is life !
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If Richard Pryor, who died yesterday at age 65, were alive and well and working in the limelight today, the focus would be on his language. Not on how he turned the single word "motherfucker" into a jazz-like mother lode with which anything could be expressed, but about how he's a foul-mouthed enemy of society, which evidently is so weak that the well-chosen words of an Illinois bordello boy can crumble it. This is how infantile we have allowed cultural discussion to become since Richard Pryor elevated it toward the heavens in the 1970s.
From the October 2000 issue of Rock & Rap Confidential:
"You should not even get on stage and attempt to be funny," Chris Rock said recently, "unless you realize you're never going to be as funny as Richard Pryor."
Anyone who doubts the truth of that statement is referred to ...And It's Deep Too! The Complete Richard Pryor Warner Brothers Recordings (1968-1992), a nine-CD box set just out on Rhino. Especially on the three complete concerts included, Pryor is revealed as not just the funniest man who ever lived, but an actor, a mimic, and a student of American history with few peers as well.
All of this only partially explains why millions of people love Richard Pryor so much. The rest of the answer lies in Pryor's love of humanity, which he sends out both as explicit valentines and in the way he pokes savage fun at human foibles, always beginning with himself. If a guy as cool as Richard Pryor can be so fucked up and still love himself, that makes it possible for the rest of us to walk through that door with confidence, knowing that whatever private party our demons want to throw for us, Pryor will be there with us in spirit.
What gets lost in all the hoopla about Pryor's brilliant routines about sex and drugs is that he's also the most incisive political entertainer we've ever had. He started out as a Cosby clone, a regular guest on Ed Sullivan (thankfully, none of his early material is included on the boxed set) and was having considerable success until he decided that he was tired of being irrelevant in a world that was going up in flames.
Unlike today's phony "political" comedians like Bill Maher, Richard Pryor took sides. He was always with the poor against the rich. Above all, he hated the police, whom he saw as inherently vile and brutal. He could sum up complicated realities in a heartbeat: "The Japanese sent people to UCLA and UC Berkeley. There wouldn't have been no Pearl Harbor if they had sent people to the University of Alabama or the University of Mississippi."
Pryor's relentless spotlight on hypocrisy was presented as a challenge to be met, not just cynical poking in an open wound. On a disc of outtakes here, That African-American's Crazy: Good Shit From the Vaults, Pryor tells in hushed tones of a conversation with God, who has asked to see Emmitt Till. Pryor has to tell God that Till was lynched in 1957. God gasps, takes a step back, and murmurs, "But he was such a good young man."
"Well, then," God finally says, "I'd like to see my son. How's my kid doing?"
Whatever the subject, Richard Pryor told the truth. As he wrote in his autobiography, Pryor Convictions, "You start telling the truth to people and people are going to look at you like you was askin' to fuck their mama or somethin'. The truth is gonna be funny, but it's gonna scare the shit out of folks."
- Dec 11, 2005 08:42pm by NRG - livin the art that is life !
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Comedian Richard Pryor dead at 65
Nothing was off limits for Richard Pryor
Groundbreaking black US comedian Richard Pryor has died after almost 20 years with multiple sclerosis.
He died at the age of 65 of a heart attack at Encino hospital near Los Angeles, his wife Jennifer Pryor said.
A series of hit comedies in the 1970s and 1980s - including Stir Crazy and Silver Streak - helped make him one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars.
He blazed a trail for black performers, earning enough clout to negotiate his own deals in Hollywood.
A five-year contract with Columbia Pictures in 1983 earned him $40m (£23m).
Foul-mouthed
But he first came to prominence as a pioneering stand-up comic.
His uncompromising, foul-mouthed brand of humour focused on his personal insights into modern life and race relations.
"I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that," he said.
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He could make you laugh so hard that it hurt
James, Warrenton
In quotes: Richard Pryor
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His comedy influenced black artists such as Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Damon Wayans, as well as Robin Williams, David Letterman and others.
His health also became material for his stand-up routines.
In 1992 he asked an audience: "Is there a doctor in the audience?"
Finally, when a hand went up, he said: "Doctor, I need to know one thing. What the [expletive deleted] is MS?"
The condition he wanted described is a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
In 1995, he played an embittered multiple sclerosis patient in an episode of TV series Chicago Hope. The role earned him an Emmy nomination as best guest actor in a drama series.
'I got greedy'
He also became addicted to drugs and alcohol.
In 1980, he suffered serious burns over about half his body when he set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine - dissolving it over a flame and inhaling the fumes.
He later said the incident was actually a suicide attempt.
But he later incorporated the event into his routine, joking that igniting yourself "sobers you up pretty fast".
He admitted that some of his later films were weaker than his earlier ones.
"I didn't think Brewster's Millions [1985] was good to begin with," he said. "I'm sorry, but they offered us the money. I was a pig, I got greedy."
He followed that film with the autobiographical work Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is calling, which he also directed and co-wrote.
His wife Jennifer said he was not in pain when he died.
"He did not suffer, he went quickly and at the end there was a smile on his face," she said.
"I'm honoured now that I have an opportunity to protect and continue his legacy because he's a very, very, very amazing man and he opened doors to so many people."
and from Lenny Henry actor comic:
Pryor 'was one of the greatest'
By Lenny Henry
Comedian and actor
Richard Pryor died on Saturday of heart failure
British comedian Lenny Henry spoke to BBC Radio Five Live about the influence Richard Pryor, who has died aged 65, had on his career.
I never got to meet Richard Pryor but I did a TV documentary on him about 10 years ago.
I wanted to meet him but he had multiple sclerosis and he was living in his house in Los Angeles in a dark room, not wanting to speak to anybody, and we thought we'd best respect his wishes.
I thought he was one of the greatest comedians who ever drew breath. I started listening to him in 1977, when a guy in a record shop had this album called That Nigger's Crazy. He showed it to me and I was going to punch him, but he said, "Listen to it, that guy's really funny".
Apart from the use of the word "nigger", apart from the prodigious swearing, I thought, "This guy's a genius". He documented every pain, every abuse he'd ever suffered in his life, and he made it funny.
One of my favourite albums has a picture of him on the front, and there's hooded men, obviously in the Ku Klux Klan, holding torches and dancing around a stake. It's called Is It Something I Said?
He was an incredibly sad figure, but throughout it all he kept a live comedic journal and he shared it with the audience
Lenny Henry on Richard Pryor
I listened to that a lot and thought, "This guy's brilliant - his finger's on the pulse, he hates Richard Nixon, he talks about pimps, pushers, prostitutes, winos and junkies, he tells it like it is and he's from the street".
In the way that young comedians worship the preacher-like coruscating act of Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor did all that and more for me.
He made several films. The best is Live In Concert. It was filmed in Long Beach, California. When I saw it I wanted to pack it in, because I thought, "Oh God, this guy's a genius".
When you see him perform, he is a character comedian on a par with Chaplin. He could do things with his body Rowan Atkinson could only dream of.
When he was on stage, it gave him strength. The people's love and laughter gave him the strength to be incredibly confessional. He had a terrible childhood. He was sexually abused by an uncle as a little boy, his mother was a prostitute and he saw her with white customers.
He was beaten prodigiously by his father and grandmother. He was an incredibly sad figure. But throughout it all he kept a live comedic journal and he shared it with the audience.
I just feel very privileged that I was alive at the same time as him. He was a brilliant comedian.
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