Becoming Richard Pryor (88 page)

445   
“Much too often”:
Ibid.;
“Being a black homosexual”:
“Pryor’s Performance: The Rights and Wrongs,” p. 47;
the city’s biggest gay disco:
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons,
Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians
(New York: Basic Books, 2006), pp. 234–38;
Tomlin was closest to this third camp:
Author’s interview with Lily Tomlin, Nov. 4, 2010;
“When you hire Richard Pryor”:
Orth, “The Perils of Richard Pryor,” p. 60.

445   
“didn’t like it”:
Liz Smith, “Rolling in Daddy’s Tracks,” (New York)
Daily News
, Sept. 20, 1977, p. 6; Todd Everett, “‘Star-Spangled Night’ Gets a Taste of Pryor’s Verbal Rights,”
Daily Variety
, Sept. 20, 1977, pp. 1, 4.

445   
“presumably fictitious Midwestern homosexual”:
Kisner, “Pryor Adds Fireworks to Star-Spangled ‘Gay Night,’” pp. 54–55.

446   
Wilbur Harp was a gay teenager:
Author’s interview with Cecil Grubbs, Nov. 11, 2010; author’s interview with Hillis Grismore, Nov. 17, 2010;
“In my neighborhood whatever you were was cool”:
Murphy, “Richard Pryor,” p. 27.

446   
left him reeling:
Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, p. 108;
“My feeling is that they cannot pay me”:
Cleaver, “Richard Pryor Lashes Out at ‘Gay’ Rally,” p. A10.

446   
The Lockers . . . kept out of the fracas:
Author’s interview with Don Campbell.

Chapter 23: Can I Speak to God Right Away?

448   
When a star in a galaxy:
Laurence Marshall,
The Supernova Story
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

448   
defeated
Superman
:
David Felton, “Richard Pryor’s Life in Concert,”
Rolling Stone
, May 3, 1979, pp. 54–55; Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond, eds.,
Contemporary American Cinema
(New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), pp. 186–87.

449   
possessing her:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 155–57;
“There is a very special lady out there”:
“Richard Pryor’s Sensational New TV Show,”
Jet
, Sept. 29, 1977, p. 61.

449   
“seen things”:
Pryor Convictions,
p. 157;
Jennifer had grown up:
Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, pp. 3–93;
slightly aloof intelligence:
The Man in the Glass Booth
, directed by Arthur Hiller (1975).

449   
their first date:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 154; Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, pp. 108–9.

450   
At summer’s end:
“Audience Q&A,”
Richard Pryor TV Show
DVD.

450   
“I told her”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 155–56.

450   
“We can’t shoot without you”:
Author’s interview with Rob Cohen, Aug. 18, 2010.

451   
“You’re getting married, right?”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 156–57.

452   
“had to be revived”:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 157;
wore black:
Author’s interview with Patricia Heitman, Sept. 11, 2011;
a construction site:
Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, p. 109;
“Thank God you were drunk”:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 157.

452   
their wedding reception:
Jet
, Oct. 13, 1977, p. 33; “Pryor Stuns Friends with Wedding,” pp. 56–57;
he’d assumed Pam Grier was the bride . . . “shoot his ass”:
Author’s interview with Rocco Urbisci, Aug. 30, 2010.

452   
“This is the first time”:
Roger Piantadosi, “Personalities,”
Washington Post
, Sept. 24, 1977, p. C3;
“I’m still in shock”:
“Pryor Stun Friends with Wedding,” p. 57.

453   
airborne honeymoon suite:
Author’s interview with Cohen.

453   
The next day in New York City:
Robbins and Ragan,
Richard Pryor
, pp. 124–25; Author’s interview with Cohen.

453   
Cohen tried to convince Richard:
Author’s interview with Cohen;
plenty of material to work with:
Dee Wedemeyer, “The Emerald City Comes to New York,”
New York Times
, Sept. 23, 1977, p. 29.

453   
Then Cohen had an idea:
Author’s interview with Cohen;
Richard Pryor: This Cat’s Got 9 Lives!
, p. 125; William Brashler, “Berserk Angel,”
Playboy
, Dec. 1979, p. 296.

454   
The second-to-last episode:
Episode three,
The Richard Pryor Show
, Sept. 27, 1977.

455   
famously sensual eating scene in . . .
Tom Jones
:
Author’s interview with Reid.

455   
a sketch that Rocco Urbisci and John Moffitt considered a disappointment:
Author’s interview with Urbisci; author’s interview with Moffitt.

456   
a curious backstory to match:
Author’s interview with Kres Mersky, Sept. 30, 2010; author’s interview with Urbisci. Mersky’s monologue was adapted from Marcia Blumenthal, “Tearing,” in the feminist short story anthology
Bitches and Sad Ladies
, ed. Pat Rotter (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1975), pp. 394–402. Interestingly, Blumenthal’s original story involved a relationship between a woman and a man; it was Mersky’s idea to keep alive the question of sexual violation but transfer it onto a relationship between a woman and a woman.

457   
They settled on an ingenious solution:
Author’s interview with Urbisci;
a rollicking example of the sexual confusions:
Mary Beth Hamilton, “Sexual Politics and African American Music: or, Placing Little Richard in History,”
History Workshop
(Autumn 1998): 161–76. There’s no reason to think that Richard knew specifically that Little Richard had performed as a drag queen, or that “Tutti Frutti” was originally written as a paean to “good booty,” or that “Miss Molly” was slang for a gay man, but there’s also no reason to think, given his friendship with Wilbur Harp and his time sharing the bill with female impersonators at Harold’s Club in Peoria, that he was unperceptive on these and related matters.

457   
NBC tried to kill the segment:
Author’s interview with Kres Mersky.

458   
The Richard Pryor Show
had shed viewers:
“Soap, Betty White Debut amid Top 10,”
Los Angeles Times
, Sept. 21, 1977, p. I18; Gary Deeb, “Rickles Earning Top Loser Stripes with ‘Sharkey,’”
Chicago Tribune
, Oct. 27, 1977, p. A13;
“sleight of comic imagination”:
Lelyveld, “Off Color,” p. 44.

458   
the comic roast:
“Richard Pryor Roast,”
The Richard Pryor Show
, Oct. 20, 1977.

459   
Richard took the podium:
“Richard Pryor Roast.”

459   
hears each gun talking:
“Gun Shop,”
The Richard Pryor Show
, Oct. 20, 1977.

460   
pistol-whipped an early manager:
see chapter 12;
shot up his first gold record:
see chapter 18;
an arsenal that encompassed:
Felton, “This Can’t Be Happening to Me,” pp. 40–41.

461   
at a New Years’ Eve party:
“Gun Charge Dropped, Pryor Faces ‘Assault by Auto’ Rap,”
Jet
, Mar. 9, 1978, p. 55;
California v. Pryor
.

461   
the final sketch:
“Rebuttal,”
The Richard Pryor Show
, Oct. 20, 1977.

462   
the most stinging mainstream reviews:
Richard Cuskelly, “Richard Pryor Misfires, Again,”
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
, Nov. 7, 1977; Charles Champlin, “Wall-to-Wall Stereotypes.”
Los Angeles Times
, Nov. 4, 1977, p. G27;
Producer Steven Krantz had fretted:
Marilyn Beck, “Pryor Power,”
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
, Nov. 7, 1977;
“Pryor’s career seems”:
Arthur Murphy, “Which Way Is Up?,”
Variety
, Nov. 2, 1977, p. 17.

462   
though Universal partly dumped the movie:
Mark A. Reid,
Redefining Black Film
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 39–40;
the most commercially successful black film in history:
“Calls ‘Which Way Is Up?’ Top Black Grosser; Pryor Not Hurt,”
Variety
, Apr. 26, 1978, pp. 7, 40;
Village Voice
hailed the film:
“Which Way Is Up?,”
Village Voice
, Nov. 14, 1977;
“false and empty macho images”:
“The Black Male Image Wins in ‘Which Way Is Up,’”
Cause
, n.d., pp. 22–24, in “Which Way Is Up” production file, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.

463   
there had long been a comic tradition:
W.T. Lhamon Jr., “Whittling on Dynamite: The Difference Bert Williams Makes,” in
Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music
, ed. Eric Weisbard (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); W. T. Lhamon Jr.,
Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Watkins,
On the Real Side
; Camille Forbes,
Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America’s First Black Star
(New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008);
expressed interest in making a biopic about the black vaudevillian:
Brown, “ Remembering Richard Pryor.” Richard also committed to a biopic of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, which suggests another, competing tradition that attracted him: the black avant-garde. Kenneth L. Geist, “The Charlie Parker Story,”
Films in Review
, May 1989, pp. 279–84.

464   
“one of the few actors”:
Vincent Canby, “Comic Film ‘Which Way Is Up?’ Loses Way,”
New York Times
, Nov. 5, 1977, p. 13.

464   
courted critical disapproval and generated controversy:
Erica Renee Edwards,
Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), pp. 147–66; David J. Leonard,
Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), pp. 141–60; Catherine John, “Black Film Comedy as Vital Edge,” in
A Companion to Film Comedy
, ed. Andrew Horton and Joanna Rapf (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 343–64.

464   
“shoot me in the ass”:
Which Way Is Up?
, directed by Michael Schultz (Universal, 1977).

465   
when he and Deboragh traveled to Maui:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 159;
he kept telephoning . . . Jennifer Lee:
Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, p. 110.

465   
“I caroused with sleazy, doped-up nogoodniks”:
Pryor Convictions
, p. 159. Photographs suggest that the carousing began at Studio 54, the legendary discotheque, then at the height of its glamour. (Photograph of Richard Pryor and Deboragh McGuire, in author’s possession.)

465   
Richard flew to Peoria:
“Pryor Suffers Reported Heart Attack,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Nov. 10, 1977;
he went fishing with Deboragh:
Pryor
Convictions
, p. 159.

466   
“Mama! Mama!”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 159–60.

466   
“They were probably closer to death”:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 160–61.

466   
a radio station in Los Angeles reported that he had died:
Felton, “Richard Pryor’s Life in Concert,” p. 50;
Five hundred phone calls:
“Pryor in Stable, Good Condition,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Nov. 11, 1977;
every caller seemed to believe:
“Pryor Released, Returns to Beverly Hills Home,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Nov. 13, 1977;
“I was on a treadmill”:
Haskins,
Richard Pryor
, pp. 153–54; “Pryor Denies He Was Hospitalized for Heart Attack,”
Peoria Journal Star
, Nov. 21, 1977.

466   
had publicly destroyed his marriage:
“Gun Charge Dropped, Pryor Faces ‘Assault by Auto’ Rap,” p. 55;
“We’re going to be very happy together”:
Robinson, “Richard Pryor Talks,” p. 122.

467   
Without skipping a beat:
Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, pp. 114–27;
he used the stage of the Comedy Store . . . after a month of woodshedding:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 167–69.

467   
Richard’s account of his heart attack:
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
, directed by Jeff Margolis (Special Event Entertainment, 1979); Lee,
Tarnished Angel
, pp. 156–60;
something of a departure from his earlier concerts:
Felton, “Richard Pryor’s Life in Concert,” p. 50.

468   
In the stage version:
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
; Felton, “Richard Pryor’s Life in Concert,” p. 52.

469   
in other performances:
Richard Pryor, “Heart Attacks,”
Wanted: Live in Concert
(Warner Bros., 1978).

470   
“one of the most exhilarating experiences”:
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
pamphlet,
Richard Pryor Live in Concert
clipping file, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA;
“Working entirely without props”:
Rosenbaum, “The True
Auteur
,” p. 14;
“the only great poet satirist among our comics”:
Pauline Kael,
For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies
(New York: Penguin, 1994), p. 933;
thirty-two million dollars:
Contemporary American Cinema
, pp. 186–87;
put together in a month . . . “low-budget, short-order masterpiece”:
Felton, “Richard Pryor’s Life in Concert,” p. 54.

470   
had died from a stroke three weeks before filming:
“Richard Pryor Joins Grieving Family for Grandmother’s Funeral,”
Jet
, Jan. 4, 1979, pp. 14–16; “Pryor’s Grandma Expires,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, Dec. 14, 1978, p. A16;
“Son, you just don’t know”:
“Richard Pryor Talks about Richard Pryor (the Old, the New), Rejection That Led to Loneliness and Drugs, God, Prayer, ‘Nigger,’ and How He Was Burned,”
Ebony
, Oct. 1980, p. 36;
floated weightless:
Pryor Convictions
, pp. 171–72