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thatcrazycajunRichard Pryor is dead. I say the words and I can hardly believe them. Goddamnit to frigging hell. We lost another of the really good ones.
Drugs couldn't kill him. His violent temper didn't kill him. Racism didn't kill him, though God knows it tried. A jealous husband didn't kill him. Setting himself on fire and the resulting surgical ordeals didn't kill him. Multiple heart bypass surgery didn't kill him. Not even multiple sclerosis could kill him. In the end, it was a simple, common fucking heart attack. How depressingly plebeian an end for a true entertainment giant and American cultural icon. The best you can say is that in his recent debilitated state, it may have been a mercy for him to go when and how he did.
Despite having had a childhood so white-bread I should have come in a plastic wrapper with WONDER stamped on it, in a steeped-in-racist-culture, deep-deep-DEEP South family, somehow we managed to have two or three of Pryor's albums in the house when I was growing up. For which I thank God under all Her many names. Much of what little I know about how African-Americans see the world, I learned from him. And he could make you laugh with stuff that wasn't even race-based, but that came from people and things we all could recognize: "I love how these TV preachers talk like they know God personally: 'Ah first met God in 1946 in Chicago. I was eatin' a tuna-fish sammich. And suddenly Ah heard a voice speak to me, and the voice had power and majesty. And the voice said, 'Psst!' And Ah said, 'What?' And then the voice got MAG-NIF-UH-CINT, and HOL-EY, and RE-SOUN-DED-DUH, and the voice said...'Gimme some'a' that sammich.'" That has always been one of my favorite Pryor bits, as an example of a joke that got the kind of laughter that is the most revelatory, the most profound: the laughter of recognition. "Yeah, I been there, I seen that, I know that feeling."
Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (www.ajc.com) contains an appreciation of Pryor which notes that there is an irony here which Pryor himself would have milked for all it's worth: that nearly everything he ever said that made him worthy of such fulsome tributes in major daily newspapers, magazines, TV and radio shows and Web sites cannot be quoted in any of these eulogies. As the AJC reporter noted, "It's like Richard's last, expletive-deleted joke on us all."
All of the comedians, black or not, working today who push the envelope a little bit further -- Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, the Wayans brothers, John Leguizamo, Margaret Cho, Eddie Griffin, Denis Leary and the late Sam Kinison, and the list goes on -- owe this man a debt that can never be repaid for blazing the trail. And they would probably be first to say so. But beyond that, all of us in the larger society owe Richard Pryor a debt as well: a debt of thanks for pushing us just a little bit closer to Dr. M. L. King's dream of a truly color-blind America, freed from the shackles of racism, sexism, classism and all the other destructive "isms." For he did indeed contribute to making that dream finally happen; not the way King or Rosa Parks or Stokely Carmichael or John Lewis did, by marching or speechifying or running for office or blowing shit up. He did it the far more insidious, more clever, more effective way that all the greatest comedians and satirists and humorists have done throughout human history: by simply holding up a mirror to let us see ourselves and our society, warts, flaws, foibles, prejudices and all, to see them for the truly ridiculous things they are and learn to laugh at them. By holding our collective feet to the fire on our own failings and those of America as a nation toward people not lucky enough to be born with European forebears and white skin, forcing us to acknowledge certain truths most of us would sooner have taken a red-hot poker up the ass than face. The folks at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recognized this when they awarded Pryor the first-ever Mark Twain Prize for comedy. It's just a damn shame if it takes his death to make everyone else see it at last.
I just pray to whatever God or gods there may be that now, at long, long last, freed from the physical pain and psychological demons that plagued him throughout his life, Richard's soul will finally be at peace, wherever it may now reside. Thanks to the miracle of recording technology, his work will always be with us. And if you've never heard him riff, for Chrissakes go out right this goddamn minute and get yourself a copy of THAT NIGGER'S CRAZY or IS IT SOMETHING I SAID? or BICENTENNIAL NIGGER or any of his many other recordings, or rent one of his films such as BLAZING SADDLES (which he co-wrote with Mel Brooks but couldn't star in because the studio was too nervous about his coke habit) or LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP or SILVER STREAK (the first of several he did with longtime partner-in-crime Gene Wilder) or even SUPERMAN III or THE TOY, and give yourself a good laugh. Because he could never have accomplished all he did if he hadn't, at the root of it all, simply been one laugh-out-loud, fall-off-your-chair, tears-in-your-eyes, gasping-for-breath funny motherfucker.
Here's hoping he hooks up with Lenny Bruce, Redd Foxx, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison for one long eternal par-tay.
Drugs couldn't kill him. His violent temper didn't kill him. Racism didn't kill him, though God knows it tried. A jealous husband didn't kill him. Setting himself on fire and the resulting surgical ordeals didn't kill him. Multiple heart bypass surgery didn't kill him. Not even multiple sclerosis could kill him. In the end, it was a simple, common fucking heart attack. How depressingly plebeian an end for a true entertainment giant and American cultural icon. The best you can say is that in his recent debilitated state, it may have been a mercy for him to go when and how he did.
Despite having had a childhood so white-bread I should have come in a plastic wrapper with WONDER stamped on it, in a steeped-in-racist-culture, deep-deep-DEEP South family, somehow we managed to have two or three of Pryor's albums in the house when I was growing up. For which I thank God under all Her many names. Much of what little I know about how African-Americans see the world, I learned from him. And he could make you laugh with stuff that wasn't even race-based, but that came from people and things we all could recognize: "I love how these TV preachers talk like they know God personally: 'Ah first met God in 1946 in Chicago. I was eatin' a tuna-fish sammich. And suddenly Ah heard a voice speak to me, and the voice had power and majesty. And the voice said, 'Psst!' And Ah said, 'What?' And then the voice got MAG-NIF-UH-CINT, and HOL-EY, and RE-SOUN-DED-DUH, and the voice said...'Gimme some'a' that sammich.'" That has always been one of my favorite Pryor bits, as an example of a joke that got the kind of laughter that is the most revelatory, the most profound: the laughter of recognition. "Yeah, I been there, I seen that, I know that feeling."
Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (www.ajc.com) contains an appreciation of Pryor which notes that there is an irony here which Pryor himself would have milked for all it's worth: that nearly everything he ever said that made him worthy of such fulsome tributes in major daily newspapers, magazines, TV and radio shows and Web sites cannot be quoted in any of these eulogies. As the AJC reporter noted, "It's like Richard's last, expletive-deleted joke on us all."
All of the comedians, black or not, working today who push the envelope a little bit further -- Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, the Wayans brothers, John Leguizamo, Margaret Cho, Eddie Griffin, Denis Leary and the late Sam Kinison, and the list goes on -- owe this man a debt that can never be repaid for blazing the trail. And they would probably be first to say so. But beyond that, all of us in the larger society owe Richard Pryor a debt as well: a debt of thanks for pushing us just a little bit closer to Dr. M. L. King's dream of a truly color-blind America, freed from the shackles of racism, sexism, classism and all the other destructive "isms." For he did indeed contribute to making that dream finally happen; not the way King or Rosa Parks or Stokely Carmichael or John Lewis did, by marching or speechifying or running for office or blowing shit up. He did it the far more insidious, more clever, more effective way that all the greatest comedians and satirists and humorists have done throughout human history: by simply holding up a mirror to let us see ourselves and our society, warts, flaws, foibles, prejudices and all, to see them for the truly ridiculous things they are and learn to laugh at them. By holding our collective feet to the fire on our own failings and those of America as a nation toward people not lucky enough to be born with European forebears and white skin, forcing us to acknowledge certain truths most of us would sooner have taken a red-hot poker up the ass than face. The folks at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recognized this when they awarded Pryor the first-ever Mark Twain Prize for comedy. It's just a damn shame if it takes his death to make everyone else see it at last.
I just pray to whatever God or gods there may be that now, at long, long last, freed from the physical pain and psychological demons that plagued him throughout his life, Richard's soul will finally be at peace, wherever it may now reside. Thanks to the miracle of recording technology, his work will always be with us. And if you've never heard him riff, for Chrissakes go out right this goddamn minute and get yourself a copy of THAT NIGGER'S CRAZY or IS IT SOMETHING I SAID? or BICENTENNIAL NIGGER or any of his many other recordings, or rent one of his films such as BLAZING SADDLES (which he co-wrote with Mel Brooks but couldn't star in because the studio was too nervous about his coke habit) or LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP or SILVER STREAK (the first of several he did with longtime partner-in-crime Gene Wilder) or even SUPERMAN III or THE TOY, and give yourself a good laugh. Because he could never have accomplished all he did if he hadn't, at the root of it all, simply been one laugh-out-loud, fall-off-your-chair, tears-in-your-eyes, gasping-for-breath funny motherfucker.
Here's hoping he hooks up with Lenny Bruce, Redd Foxx, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison for one long eternal par-tay.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-13 04:25 am (UTC)More likely, it would be a really booze-driven poker game, but yeah, I hope it happens.