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-- Richard Pryor 1940 - 2005
Richard Pryor 1940 - 2005
R.I.P. 
His personal life was a mess but he always made me laugh...
(you may want to actually click the IMDB source; there's lots of links in this article)
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: A groundbreaking standup comic who became a major screen personality, Pryor's personal life has been more dramatic than anything a screenwriter could concoct. After dropping out of school, Pryor (who claimed to have grown up in a brothel) served a two-year hitch in the Army, then started working in nightclubs, eventually making a name for himself. Variety and talk-show appearances on TV led to occasional movie work (in 1967's The Busy Body 1968's Wild in the Streets and 1971's Dynamite Chicken) and a prominent supporting role with Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues (1972). He also worked as one of the writers of Mel Brooks' classic comedy spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). As censorship barriers began to fall, Pryor came into his own; his profane but sharp-eyed observations about American life and the black experience made him hugely popular. An unexpurgated film record of a 1979 performance was released as Richard Pryor-Live in Concert which showcases the comedian at his very best. (Subsequent concert movies, glitzier to be sure, were not quite as good: 1982's Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip and 1983's Richard Pryor Here and Now.) Meanwhile, Hollywood was trying to find a way to capitalize on this formidable talent. Television was not ready for Pryor; his NBC comedy series was canceled after just a handful of shows in 1977. He seemed to fare best in supporting roles, as in Car Wash, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (both 1976), The Wizand Blue Collar (both 1978), though even in that capacity he was often let down by bad material, as in California Suite (1978, teamed with Bill Cosby), In God We Trust (1980, as God), and Wholly Moses (also 1980). His starring films were a very mixed bag: Which Way Is Up?, Greased Lightning (both 1977), Bustin' Loose (1981), Some Kind of Hero, The Toy (both 1982), Superman III (1983), and Brewster's Millions (1985). At their best, they gave Pryor a stage for some moments of high comedy; at their worst, they straitjacketed him into a Hollywood formula that suppressed his comic instincts. One of Pryor's best opportunities came in the romantic comedy thriller Silver Streak (1976), in which he supported the film's star, Gene Wilder. Their scenes together were so good, and their chemistry so obvious, that they were reteamed (under Sidney Poitier's direction) for a costarring comedy, Stir Crazy (1980), which was an even bigger hit. (Unfortunately, their reteamings a decade later, in 1989's See No Evil, Hear No Evil and 1991's Another You were pathetically poor.) Pryor's career came to a temporary halt at the start of the 1980s; while preparing a highly volatile cocaine mixture called freebase, he lit himself on fire, suffering third-degree burns over half his body. (He was about to start filming Mel Brooks' History of the World-Part I and was replaced at the last minute by Gregory Hines.) The comedian made an amazing recovery, and reflected on his tumultuous life in the autobiographical comedy-drama Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which he cowrote, produced, and directed. His subsequent films-Critical Condition (1987), the bland but amusing Moving (1988), and the Eddie Murphy fiasco Harlem Nights (1989)-were unable to restore the luster to his once red-hot movie career. Failing health (he is a victim of multiple sclerosis) made it difficult for him to get through his last film with Gene Wilder in 1991, but he managed somehow; it just seemed a shame to expend that effort for a movie that (like so many others before it) failed to make the most of his unique comic gift. By 1992, Pryor seemed to be headed for retirement. In addition to accolades for his screen work, Pryor has won several Grammy awards for his comedy recordings. |
R.I.P. - one of the great pioneers of standup comedy.
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r His personal life was a mess but he always made me laugh... |
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| Originally posted by ogvh5150 Whether he uses his experience trying to kill his car after arguing with his wife or the match on fire is Richard running down the street with his head on fire representing his bad episode of freebasing, he always made humor of his life. I've seen almost all his movies and hope people who've never seen his films try to rent one and see for themselves how much of a pioneer he was. No one could ever touch his style. He used racism but was never angry about it. One particular movie that he co-wrote was Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles which is a comedy classic. |
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| Richard Pryor Made Audiences Laugh, Think By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer LOS ANGELES - It is one of those indelible images from the late 1960's that remains locked in the minds of those who were there. It's a comedy album photograph of a nearly naked Richard Pryor, dressed in a loincloth, with bones through his nose and beads around his neck like a stereotypical African bushman from an old "Tarzan movie." But there is a glare on the comedian's face on 1968's "Richard Pryor" album that seems to say, "I'm here and I'm going to change your thinking about race relations in every way possible." That's what Pryor, who died Saturday of a heart attack at age 65, did for people all across America in the 1970s, his breakthrough decade and a time when the country was hotly divided not only by the Vietnam War but by the civil rights battles of the 1950s and '60s that preceded it. He did it by bringing black and white audiences together to laugh as one, at least for the length of a concert or a comedy album, at the madness all around them. "He was a brilliant and incredibly courageous performer," recalled humorist Paul Krassner, whose magazine "The Realist" once published an essay by the comedian commenting on the disproportionate number of black soldiers that seemed to be fighting the Vietnam War. Pryor headlined it, "Uncle Sam Wants You, ******." It was a word he would use frequently in the 1970s, even using it in the name of his second album as he tried to take the sting out of the epithet by repeating it over and over. After a visit to Africa in 1980, however, he would renounce it and say he no longer wanted to hear the word, either from his "hip white friends" or his fellow blacks. A subsequent recording was titled "That African-American is Still Crazy," with the offending word crossed out. Such upfront, no-holds-barred, socially conscious commentary won Pryor the admiration of seemingly every black comic who followed him, an admiration perhaps best summed up by Keenen Ivory Wayans, who once said Pryor demonstrated "you can be black and have a black voice and be successful." Pryor's comedy also drew equally warm reactions from white comedians, including Bob Newhart, who on Saturday called Pryor "the single most seminal comedic influence in the last 50 years." Although he was not the first comedian to liberally use the N-word or the F-word or any number of other once-unspoken-in-public words, Pryor seemed to use them to greater comedic effect than anyone else. When he was at his best he was not just funny, he was laugh-out-loud, falling-down, tears-in-your-eyes funny. Twisting and writhing his body into any number of contortions, Pryor would switch effortlessly from accent to accent as he told stories that made fun of every ethnicity and nationality he'd encountered. In one of the routines from his classic 1981 performance, "Live on the Sunset Strip," the comedian recalled working for a Mafia-run nightclub that wasn't paying him the money it had promised. Grabbing a gun and doing "my best black s---" he tried to rob the club owner, only to find that his performance, one that he recalled "usually scares" the average white person, provoked only laughter from an Italian-American mobster. "Do it again, Rich, put the gun up here," he had the mobster telling him before going on to regale Pryor with stories of all the people he'd rubbed out. Like Bill Cosby, Pryor would often draw on such personal experience for his comedy, but his material was far darker. The life he lived provided him a wellspring of material. Raised in a Peoria, Ill., brothel that was run by his grandmother, he would grow up to be not only the highest paid black entertainer in the country in the 1980s but one of the most troubled as well. "I was a drug-addicted, paranoid, lonely, sad and frustrated comedian who had gotten too big for his britches," Pryor, who had gone into seclusion in recent years as he battled multiple sclerosis, said in the liner notes to the 2000 album, "And It's Deep Too!" Among other things, he shot up a car in 1978 while two of his wife's friends were sitting in it. In 1980, he nearly burned himself to death while freebasing cocaine. He would go on to joke about both incidents, noting of the first that he put down the gun when the police arrived because he knew they would be far more likely to shoot a black man than a car. Returning to the stage after the cocaine incident, he struck a match, waved it in front of his face and said, "What's this? Richard Pryor running down the street." He could also do broader comedy, a talent that was displayed clearly in his best nonconcert films, "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy" with Gene Wilder. He even handled the occasional dramatic turn well, and he won an Emmy as a writer for one of Lily Tomlin's TV comedy specials. But standup, where he was left unbridled by censors, would become his legacy and win him five Grammy Awards for comedy album. Fellow comedian Steve Martin noted upon Pryor's death: "By expressing his heart, anger and joy, Richard Pryor took comedy to its highest form." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051211...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl |
A true comic legend. R.I.P brother.
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| Originally posted by ogvh5150 I've seen almost all his movies and hope people who've never seen his films try to rent one and see for themselves how much of a pioneer he was. No one could ever touch his style. He used racism but was never angry about it. One particular movie that he co-wrote was Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles which is a comedy classic. |
Genius....absolute Genuis.
R.I.P.
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