I've had dreams with Richard Pryor. He has been a spirit guide for me since I first heard and saw him. He was an uncannily brilliant comic, an emotionally deep actor and the cowriter of one of my favorite movies of all time, "Blazing Saddles." In my dreams, he has guided me toward the conquering of pain, fear and ignorance. In life he showed how our own folly can lead us to the truth and the redemption we seek. Richard's was an often painful life, one he almost left behind when he purposely set himself ablaze during a cocaine binge delirium in 1980. Sadly, he also later developed multiple sclerosis, but I'm glad he lived on after his near-suicide to inspire us all. I personally loved seeing him in the brilliant David Lynch film "Lost Highway." How random yet inspiring! Confined to a wheelchair yet still in the thick of things.

The following are a couple of articles from the Associated Press and the New York Times. There are better and worse articles to read, of course, but, if you haven't already, I recommend exposing yourself directly to the painful hilarity and sweet humanity that was Richard Pryor; one of my all-time greatest heroes. Get a copy of the breakthrough 1974 stand-up album "That Nigger's Crazy." At one point on the album, someone in the back of the audience shouts out, "You CRAZY!" To which Pryor's response was, "YEAH!" Or a later concert film showing him obviously high on stage, joking about selling oral sex for money to buy drugs. I almost pissed myself laughing while crying at the rage and naked humanity in his work. Only Richard could do this. He was and IS simply the best. I hope I continue to dream with and learn from this strange and magnificent soul.

-Spark

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December 11, 2005
Richard Pryor Made Audiences Laugh, Think
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It is one of those indelible images from the late 1960s 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, Nigger.''

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.''

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The New York Times
December 11, 2005
Richard Pryor, Iconoclastic Comedian, Dies at 65
By MEL WATKINS

Richard Pryor, the iconoclastic standup comedian who transcended barriers of race and brought a biting, irreverent humor into America's living rooms, movie houses, clubs and concert halls, died Saturday. He was 65.

Mr. Pryor, who had been ill with multiple sclerosis, suffered a heart attack and died at a hospital in Los Angeles, his wife, Jennifer Lee Pryor, told CNN.

Mr. Pryor's health had been in decline for many years. Episodes of self-destructive, chaotic and violent behavior, often triggered by drug use, repeatedly threatened his career and jeopardized his life. "I couldn't escape the darkness," he acknowledged, but he was able to put his demons at the service of his art.

Mr. Pryor's brilliant comic imagination and creative use of the blunt cadences of street language were revelations to most Americans. He did not simply tell stories, he brought them to vivid life, revealing the entire range of black America's humor, from its folksy rural origins to its raunchier urban expressions.

At the height of his career, in the late 1970's, Mr. Pryor prowled the stage like a restless cat, dispensing what critics regarded as the most poignant and penetrating comedic view of African-American life ever afforded the American public. He was volatile yet vulnerable, crass but sensitive, streetwise and cocky but somehow still diffident and anxious. And he could unleash an astonishing array of dramatic and comic skills to win acceptance and approval for a kind of stark humor.

"Pryor started it all," the director and comedian Keenen Ivory Wayans said. "He made the blueprint for the progressive thinking of black comedians, unlocking that irreverent style."

For the actor Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor was simply "better than anyone who ever picked up a microphone." The playwright Neil Simon called him "the most brilliant comic in America."

An Innovative Approach

Mr. Pryor's body language conveyed the ambivalence - at once belligerent and defensive - of the black male's provisional stance in society. His monologues evoked the passions and foibles of all segments of black society, including working-class, church-going people and prostitutes, pimps and hustlers.

He unleashed a galaxy of street characters who traditionally had been embarrassments to most middle-class blacks and mere stereotypes to most whites. And he presented them so truthfully and hilariously that he was able to transcend racial boundaries and capture a huge audience of admirers in virtually every ethnic, economic and cultural group in America. In 1998, he received the Kennedy Center's award for humor, the Mark Twain Prize.

Mr. Pryor's crossover appeal derived largely from his innovative approach to comedy - what Rolling Stone magazine called "a new type of realistic theater." It was essentially comedy without jokes - re-enactments of common human exchanges that not only mirrored the pretensions of the characters portrayed but also subtly revealed the minor triumphs that allowed them to endure and even prevail over the bleak realities of everyday living.

"Comedy," he said, "is when you are driving along and see a couple of dudes and one is in trouble with the others and he's trying to talk his way out of it. You say, 'Oh boy, they got him,' and you laugh. I cannot tell jokes. My comedy is not comedy as society has defined it."

In his autobiography, "Pryor Convictions," written in 1995 with Todd Gold, he allows Mudbone, the down-home raconteur who was perhaps Mr. Pryor's most unforgettable character and in many ways his alter ego, to comment, "the truth is gonna be funny, but it's gonna scare . . . folks."

In fact, Mr. Pryor's often harsh observations and explicit language did offend some audiences. But he insistently presented characters with little or no distortion. "A lie is profanity," he explained. "A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth, especially about oneself."

A Childhood of Characters

Richard Pryor, the only child of Leroy Pryor and Gertrude Thomas Pryor, was born in Peoria, Ill., on Dec. 1, 1940, and raised in a household where, as he wrote, "I lived among an assortment of relatives, neighbors, whores and winos - the people who inspired a lifetime of comedic material." His parents and grandmother ran a string of bars and bordellos that catered to a constant influx of transients who moved in and out of town, which was such an important stop on the black and white vaudeville circuits that it inspired the expression, "Will it play in Peoria?"

A frail child, he learned how to use his quick wit and belligerent humor to gain respect from street gangs and bigger, more aggressive peers. But the antic behavior that served him well in the streets did not translate to the classroom, and he was expelled from school in the eighth grade despite his obvious talent and intelligence. During the remainder of his teens, he worked as a truck driver, a laborer and a factory worker, then joined the Army, where he served in Germany until he was discharged after stabbing another serviceman during a fight.

He returned to Peoria, married, became the father of a son, Richard Jr., and, inspired by the television appearances of Redd Foxx and Dick Gregory, began performing in local nightclubs. In 1962, a variety act offered him a job as a master of ceremonies; leaving his wife and child behind, he began touring, appearing at small black nightclubs in East St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Youngstown.

In 1963, after honing his craft on the "chitlin circuit," Mr. Pryor decided to take a crack at New York City. He felt ready to compete with the "big cats" and to try to emulate the success of Bill Cosby, the comedian he most admired. Soon, he was appearing at Greenwich Village clubs like Cafe Wha?, The Living Room, Papa Hud's and the Bitter End.

Mr. Pryor made his national television debut on Rudy Vallee's "On Broadway Tonight" in 1964. He had, in his own words, "entered the mainstream," presenting "white bread," nonoffensive humor that freely copied the styles of other comedians, particularly Mr. Cosby. He worked the Catskills resort hotels and opened for the singer Billy Eckstine at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Big-time television appearances followed on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." Two years after his arrival in New York, he had a national reputation.

Despite his growing popularity, Mr. Pryor was frustrated. "I made a lot of money being Bill Cosby," he recalled, "but I was hiding my personality. I just wanted to be in show business so bad I didn't care how. It started bothering me - I was being a robot comic, repeating the same lines, getting the same laughs for the same jokes. The repetition was killing me."

In 1967, Mr. Pryor stormed off the stage of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, shouting, "What am I doing here? I'm not going to do this anymore!"

In his autobiography, he recalled: "There was a world of junkies and winos, pool hustlers and prostitutes, women and family screaming inside my head, trying to be heard. The longer I kept them bottled up, the harder they tried to escape. The pressure built till I went nuts."

Despite resistance from club owners, booking agents and advisers, he began listening to those voices, developing new material during the next few years served straight from the black experience, even embracing the street vernacular use of the word "nigger."

His first comedy album, "Richard Pryor" (1967) revealed his new direction with such routines as: "I always wanted to go to the movies and see a black hero. I figured maybe on television they'll have it - Look, up in the sky! It's a crow. It's a bat. No, it's Super Nigger. Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound; faster than a bowl of chitlins."

Becoming Himself

By 1970, he had gone underground to reassess his life and his comic approach.

When he returned to show business in Los Angeles, his comedy had changed radically. After seeing his revised act, Mr. Cosby said: "Richard Pryor took on a whole new persona, his own. Richard killed the Bill Cosby in his act, made people hate it. Then he worked on them, doing pure Pryor, and it was the most astonishing metamorphosis I have ever seen. He was magnificent."

Some of his new material appeared on his second album, "Craps (After Hours)" (1971), which was recorded at the Redd Foxx Club in Hollywood. He boldly engaged sensitive racial topics, mocking police harassment of blacks and exploring differences between white and black sexual attitudes.

Although "Craps" is considered one of Mr. Pryor's best comedy albums, initial sales were dismal. Even the black audience for whom it was intended largely ignored it.

Mr. Pryor persisted, however, developing his act and building a new following by returning to the small black clubs that he had abandoned with his initial success. He also appeared at better-known and challenging venues like the Apollo in Harlem and more cutting-edge comedy clubs downtown like The Improv.

The routines developed on those dates provided material for his next album, "That Nigger's Crazy" (1974), which surprised record-industry executives with its appeal to young whites as well as blacks. Despite its X-rating because of explicit language and sexual content, the record sold more than a half-million copies and won the Grammy Award for best comedy album of the year. It was followed by another X-rated album, " . . . Is It Something I Said" (1975), which also went gold and won another Grammy.

Appearances on television furthered Mr. Pryor's career. He was a popular host on "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, and two years later he agreed to do a series of television specials for NBC.

Mr. Pryor's impact was not limited to comedy performance on records and the stage. He wrote for Redd Foxx's popular television series "Sanford and Son" and for "The Flip Wilson Show"; he also collaborated with Lily Tomlin on her television specials, receiving an Emmy Award for best comedy writing for "Lily" in 1974.

After returning from a trip to Africa in 1979, Mr. Pryor told audiences he would never use the word "nigger" again as a performer. While abroad, he said, he saw black people running governments and businesses. And in a moment of epiphany, he said, he realized that he did not see anyone he could call by that name.

He appeared in 40 films during a career that began with "Busy Bodies" in 1969 and concluded with a role opposite his frequent co-star Gene Wilder in "Another You" in 1992.

His first starring role, in 1976, was as a race car driver in "Greased Lightning," and he costarred with Gene Wilder in "Silver Streak." Although he would dismiss "Silver Streak" as a "stupid film," audiences loved his performance and he became one of Hollywood's hottest box-office draws.

Comedy Sets a Standard

Mr. Pryor probably reached the pinnacle of his career in 1979 with his first concert film, "Richard Pryor, Live in Concert," a movie, filmed during an appearance in Long Beach, Calif., that more than a quarter of a century later remains the standard by which other movies of live comedy performances are judged.

The film, which was to inspire others to make their own comic performance movies, caught Mr. Pryor at peak form. He reflected often about his own tumultuous life, with monologues about a domestic quarrel in which he shot his wife's car, the death of his pet monkeys and a near-fatal heart attack, which ended with: "I woke up in the ambulance, right? And there was nothin' but white people starin' at me. I say . . . I done died and wound up in the wrong heaven. Now I gotta listen to Lawrence Welk the rest of my days."

In addition to his wife, Mr. Pryor is survived by six children: Richard Jr., Rain, Elizabeth, Steven, Kelsey and Franklin. He was married six times and divorced five times.

If he used his misadventures to earn fame and fortune, Mr. Pryor also frequently undercut his career and his life with his self-destructive behavior. In 1974, for example, he was sentenced to 10 days in jail, fined and put on probation after pleading guilty to a charge of willful failure to file an income tax return.

In 1978, a court fined him $500, placed him on probation again and ordered him to seek psychiatric care and make restitution after a New Year's Day incident in which he rammed his Mercedes into a car containing friends of his wife and then shot at it with a pistol.

In 1980, after a marathon drug binge, Mr. Pryor was critically burned in an explosion that the police said was caused by the ignition of ether being used in conjunction with cocaine. Fire Department paramedics found him walking in a daze more than a mile from his home outside Los Angeles with third-degree burns over the upper half of his body. He was hospitalized for almost two months while undergoing a series of skin grafts.

Recovering, Mr. Pryor remained a top-box office attraction during most of the 1980's. He appeared in numerous movies and released two more films of live comedy performances, but he continued to be bedeviled by drug and health problems.

In 1986, he was found to be suffering from multiple sclerosis, a disease that strikes at the central nervous system, and as the years passed he experienced its cruelest symptoms: vertigo, tremors, muscle weakness and chronic fatigue.

His performances in "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" (1989) and "Another You" (1992) with Gene Wilder revealed a frail, hesitant actor who struggled to deliver his lines. Still, in 1992, he was back at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles polishing material for a concert tour. He was no longer able to stand on stage and he delivered his monologue from an easy chair. But he was forced to cancel his tour early the next year.

"I realized that I had more heart than energy, more courage than strength," he said. "My mind was willing, but my feets couldn't carry me to the end zone."