Becoming Richard Pryor (85 page)

372   
talking often of bringing his gun . . . “You got to calm the guy down!”:
Author’s interview with Cohen;
“We had to move him away”:
Author’s interview with Badham;
a collective sigh of relief:
Marilyn Beck, “Beck’s Show Business Beat,”
Cedar Rapids Gazette
, Sept. 3, 1975, p. 5C.

373   
“We work hard”:
West, “The Bingo Long All-Stars,” p. H2.

373   
Richard felt at home:
Author’s interview with Badham;
expressed their love:
Maslin, “‘Didn’t Cut Nobody’s Throat,’” p. 76. Notably it was Pryor, not his costars, who organized a batting and throwing contest for some ninety kids in the neighborhood of the
Bingo Long
shoot—a contest complete with real prizes, such as a trip to the World Series (Dave Distel, “Ashford Behind Plate in Front of Camera,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 30, 1976, p. A6).

373   
running suit:
Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” p. 55.

374   
amped to play a more intimate club:
Author’s interview with Murray Swartz, Mar. 30, 2011.

374   
“one of my best ever”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 143–44.

374   
No. 1 . . . Top 15:
. . .
And It’s Deep Too
, booklet.

375   
Richard’s hosting of
Saturday Night
:
Hill and Weingrad,
Saturday Night
, p. 116.

375   
Lorne Michaels was feeling the heat:
Ibid., pp. 116–17;
“If I’d known”:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 145.

375   
The show that Richard delivered:
Saturday Night
, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC);
Richard said “ass” twice:
Hill and Weingrad,
Saturday Night
, p. 118.

376   
photos of his grandmother, uncle, and children:
Saturday Night
, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC).

376   
Richard and . . . Paul Mooney had noticed:
Mooney,
Black Is the New White
, p. 161.

376   
In “Samurai Hotel”:
Saturday Night
, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC). Richard, who had his own collection of samurai swords, had loved Belushi’s imitation of Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, and the writers had created “Samurai Hotel” as a vehicle for it.

378   
“Dead honky” defeats the “nigger” trump card:
Randall Kennedy,
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
(New York: Pantheon, 2002), pp. 24–25.

379   
the sketch was his response . . . “Easiest sketch I ever write”:
Mooney,
Black Is the New White
, pp. 159–65;
“the doll-baby”:
Steve Echeverria Jr., “Paul Mooney on Pryor, Chappelle and the State of Black America,”
Tampa Herald-Tribune
, May 26, 2006.
“like an H-bomb”:
Mooney,
Black Is the New White
, pp. 159–65;

379   
“Richard’s attitude to it”:
“He Was Chevy Chase, and You Weren’t,”
Hollywood Outbreak
, Mar. 15, 2013;
“asking Richard for as many slang words”:
. . . And It’s Deep, Too!
.

380   
“What do you expect to do,”
“What the fuck”:
Author’s interview with Cohen.

381   
modern black version:
Pauline Kael,
5001 Nights at the Movies
(New York: Picador, 1991), p. 75

381   
Badham coaxed unexpected nuances:
Jay Cocks, “Infield Hit,”
Time
, Aug. 2, 1976.

382   
“irresistible”:
Gary Arnold, “A High-Flying ‘Bingo Long,’”
Washington Post
, July 16, 1976, p. B1.

382   
“dizzy old cinematic devices”:
John Simon, “Batting Average,”
New York
, July 26, 1976, p. 55;
positive notices:
Vincent Canby, “Film on Black Baseball Is a ‘Bingo,’”
New York Times
, July 17, 1976, p. 10; Joy Gould Boyum, “Playing Ball in Jim Crow’s Day,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 19, 1976, p. 7; Gene Siskel, “‘Bingo’ Scores in an Off-the-Wall Fashion,”
Chicago Tribune
, July 16, 1976, p. B3; Andrew Sarris, “‘Bingo Long’ Deserves Wider and Whiter Distribution,”
Village Voice
, Aug. 2, 1976, p. 93;
seeded articles on the Negro Leagues:
See, e.g., West, “The Bingo Long All-Stars,” pp. H1–H2; “Baseball Barnstormers Remembered,”
Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
, July 17, 1976, p. 3D;
exposition game:
Karen Jackovich, “It’s a ‘Jovial Battle’ When Bears Tangle with Bingo’s Boys,”
Valley News
, June 20, 1976, pp. 4–5; “
the best movie I’ve ever seen”:
Bingo Long
advertisement,
Los Angeles Times
, July 23, 1976. The film’s handling of race did provoke a few critics to pan the film. See Stephen Farber, “Minstrels on the Mound,”
New West
, Aug. 2, 1976, p. 103; Robert Taylor, “‘Bingo Long’—A Mixture of Slapstick and Violence,”
Oakland Tribune
, July 21, 1976, p. 22.

382   
third-most popular film:
“50 Top-Grossing Films,”
Variety
, Aug. 4, 1976, p. 12; “50 Top-Grossing Films,”
Variety
, Sept. 22, 1976, p. 9;
Even in its release at the Apollo:
“Bway at Slow Crawl but ‘Bingo Long,’ in 41, Big 300G,”
Variety
, July 28, 1976, p. 8.

383   
$11.8 million in rentals:
Cook,
Lost Illusions
, p. 500;
impressive box office totals:
Frank Segers, “Will ‘The Wiz’ Ease on Down the Road to Box-Office Ahs?,”
Variety
, Oct. 10, 1978, p. 2.

Chapter 20: Hustling

384   
“I’m not a success yet”:
Debbi Snook, “Richard Pryor Thinks Things Are Coming His Way,”
Albany Times-Union
, May 23, 1976, p. G2.

384   
a sleek office:
Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 58; “Black Press Mailer,” Richard Pryor folder, Jack Hirshberg Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, p. 3;
a hefty down payment in cash:
Author’s interview with Patricia Heitman, Sept. 11, 2011;
a Spanish-style hacienda:
Jennifer Lee Pryor,
Tarnished Angel
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1991), pp. 97–98;
Pryor Convictions
, p. 151; Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” pp. 57–58; Gertrude Gipson, “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, Mar. 17, 1977, p. B; “A New Black Superstar,”
Time
, Aug. 22, 1977; Robinson, “Richard Pryor Talks,” p. 116.

384   
it had been thirty years since Northridge:
Kevin Roderick,
The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb
(Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times Books, 2001); Kevin Roderick, “Hometown Memories,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 24, 1994; Dana Bartholomew, “Oakie House Saved from Destruction,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 30, 2010; Laura Barraclough,
Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).

385   
lived in the guesthouse:
Gibson, “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,” p. B;
a recurring dream:
Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic,” p. 58;
“because nobody asked me”:
Joyce Maynard, “King of the Scene-Stealers,” p. 11;
“modern Willie Best”:
Guy Flatley, “Peoria’s Booty Star Plays a One-Man Film Festival,”
New York Times
, Aug. 6, 1976, p. C4.

385   
screenwriter Colin Higgins’s original conception:
“Colin Higgins,”
Cinema Papers
, Dec. 1982, p. 535.

386   
four hundred thousand dollars:
Charles Higham, “What Makes Alan Ladd Jr. Hollywood’s Hottest Producer,”
New York Times
, July 17, 1977, p. D9. For a list of the films that inspired Higgins, see the early notes wherein he calls both
The Lady Vanishes
and
North by Northwest
“The Big One!” in “Super Chief,” Box 115, Folder 3, Colin Higgins Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Library, UCLA, n.p. (hereafter “Colin Higgins Papers”).

386   
“Bullshit! I got a high school diploma”:
“REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” Box 40, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, p. 86;
“Hey, brother”:
“Silver Streak script, master,” Box 114, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, p. 141.

387   
“Achilles’ heel” . . . “I told Laddie”:
Gene Wilder,
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), p. 163;
they considered hiring two black actors:
Patrick Goldstein, “Higgins: Writer-Director on a Hot Streak,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 24, 1981, p. B15;
Wilder also advised Higgins:
“Inter-office Correspondence, Twentieth Century Fox,” Box 116, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, n.p.;
“That is one crazy nigger”:
“REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” p. 116.

387   
On their first day of shooting together:
Wilder,
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
, pp. 164–65. Two of Pryor’s most telling ad libs, which get at how he made his role more multidimensional: First, when the villain calls Grover an “ignorant nigger,” he doesn’t reply by revealing his own ignorance but instead pushes back, with savvy, against the other side of the insult: “You don’t know me well enough to call me no nigger! I’ll slap the taste out your mouth!” Second, when George confesses how quickly he’s fallen for Hilly, Grover doesn’t say excitedly, “That’s the way it is with love. Fast! I always feel like I swallowed the Fourth of July.” Instead, he ruminates, more poetically, “I always lose my memory when I fall in love” (“REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” pp. 70, 85–86).

388   
“I didn’t want to lose the spontaneity”:
E-mail communication from Arthur Hiller, May 25, 2011.

388   
May 13:
“‘The Silver Streak’ Shooting Schedule,” Box 116, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, pp. 14–15.

388   
“I’m going to hurt a lot of black people”:
Wilder,
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
, pp. 165–66.

388   
Fifteen minutes later:
Ibid., p. 166;
“you might be in pretty big trouble”:
Silver Streak
, directed by Arthur Hiller (Paramount, 1976).

389   
“What? Are you afraid”:
Silver Streak
.

389   
“All the police look for”:
Alex Thein, “Color No Problem for Black Comic,”
Milwaukee Sentinel
, Aug. 17, 1976, p. 16.

390   
“goose[d] it into some semblance of life”:
Molly Haskell, “The Orient Express It Isn’t,”
Village Voice
, Dec. 20, 1976;
“One suspects”:
Howard Kissel, “Arts and Pleasures,”
Women’s Wear Daily
, Dec. 7, 1976, p. 16;
“For about fifteen minutes”:
Pauline Kael, “Processing Sludge,”
The New Yorker
, Jan. 17, 1977, p. 98;
“What furtive sprightliness”:
Jay Cocks, “Milk Train,”
Time
, Dec. 13, 1976.

391   
“Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor take a train ride”:
New York Times
, Jan. 25, 1976, p. D10.

391   
he shut himself up in his dressing room:
“Black Press Mailer,” p. 2. Pryor’s screenplay about a black God never came to fruition;
Oh, God!
, with George Burns as the deity, was released late in 1977 and became that year’s seventh-highest-grossing film.
Mel Brooks had visited his buddy Gene:
Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic,” p. 62.

391   
“Don’t trust too many white folks”:
Gipson “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,” p. B.

392   
“I was looking to hustle”:
Maslin, “‘Didn’t Cut Nobody’s Throat,’” p. 76;
he mentioned
Silver Streak
only glancingly:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 146, 149;
they never met outside the context of their working relationship:
Wilder,
Kiss Me Like a Stranger
, pp. 182–83.

392   
“It didn’t seem like an interesting movie”:
“Reporter’s Transcript of Proceedings, Vol. IV,”
Pryor v. Franklin
, Case No. TAC 17 MP 114 (Mar. 3, 1982), pp. 56–57.

392   
Hollywood dissidents:
Barbara Zheutlin and David Talbot,
Creative Differences: Profiles of Hollywood Dissidents
(Boston: South End Press, 1978).

393   
“woman with no patience for trifles”:
Linda Gross, “She Battles for Minorities,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 18, 1977, p. F14;
longtime activist . . . Third World Cinema:
Dale Pollock, “Woman Studio Chief Is Remembered,”
Los Angeles Times
, Apr. 14, 1984, p. C7; Michael Seiler, “Hannah Weinstein Dies at 73,”
Los Angeles Times
, Mar. 11, 1984, p. A14; Steve Neale, “Swashbuckling, Sapphire and Salt: Un-American Contributions to TV Costume Adventure Series in the 1950s,” in Frank Kurtnik et al., eds.,
“Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era
(Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), pp. 199–204;
Third World Cinema:
“Ossie Davis Gets Unions to Allow Trainees on Set,”
Daily Variety
, Feb. 23, 1971, pp. 1, 13; A. H. Weiler, “The Whole ‘World’ in Their Hands,”
New York Times
, Jan. 2, 1972, p. D9; Gregg Kilday, “Women as Film Producers: A Success Story,”
Los Angeles Times
, May 29, 1974, pp. E1, E11; Barbara Campbell, “Third World Pins Movie Hopes on ‘Claudine,’”
New York Times
, June 5, 1975, p. 49; Gross, “She Battles for Minorities,” p. F14; “Four-Yr.-Struggle Behind Filming of Black Comedy-Drama ‘Claudine,’”
Daily Variety
, Apr. 15, 1974.

393   
It was Van Peebles:
Haskins,
Richard Pryor
, p. 110.

393   
“Who do you want me to play?”:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 149.

394   
committed to the film:
“Pix, People, Pickups,”
Daily Variety
, June 25, 1976, p. 1.

394   
While preparing for the role:
“Universal Acquires Wertmuller Comedy,”
Hollywood Reporter
, June 30, 1976;
an Italian sex-and-politics satire:
Peter Biskind, “Lina Wertmuller: The Politics of Private Life,”
Film Quarterly
(Winter 1974/1975): 10–16;
into the context of black life:
Sheila Benson, “Richard Pryor, Who Is Co-Starring with Richard Pryor and Richard Pryor in Michael Schultz’s Next Film,”
Mother Jones
, June 1977, p. 52;
director of choice:
Author’s interview with Michael Schultz, Sept. 4, 2010. Steve Krantz was himself something of an iconoclast—a former joke writer for Milton Berle who became an impresario of countercultural and black filmmaking, producing
Fritz the Cat
, the first X-rated animated feature, and Schultz’s directorial debut,
Cooley High
. In the spirit of Richard’s comedy,
Fritz the Cat
used actual winos, junkies, and Black Panthers to voice the lines of street people and militants (“Obituaries: Steve Krantz, 83,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 15, 2007, p. B11; Earl Gottschalk Jr., “What If They Showed Cartoons and No Kids Could Come?,”
Los Angeles Times
, Dec. 12, 1971, pp. 42–43; Earl Gottschalk Jr., “Move Over, Mickey—Sex, Drugs, and Violence Come to Cartoonery,”
Wall Street Journal
, Sept. 13, 1971, pp. 1, 29).