(typing sound)
(crowd cheering)
- [Dave] Richard Pryor revolutionized comedy.
- If you don't know who Richard is,
or even tried to look up Richard,
then you shouldn't be doing comedy.
- Mr. Richard Pryor.
- Richard Pryor.
(audience cheering and applauding)
- He's the goat.
It's like going to church without a Bible. (chuckles)
- The only way to understand a white man's problems was
actually to become a white man.
(audience laughing)
- [Dave] Exposing America's darkest impulses
like no other comic before him.
- He pushed those boundaries.
He didn't know how much trouble he was gonna get in.
- You ever notice how nice white people get
when there's a bunch of niggas around?
(audience laughs)
- Oh my God
How is this gonna air live on TV?
(beep)
- Dead hunt.
(audience laughing)
- [Dave] Now while he shined a light on American racism
and hypocrisy.
- Your humor offends white people.
- [Dave] He battled his own demons privately and publicly.
- Comedian Richard Pryor,
turned himself into the police last night.
The police were looking for him as we told you last night
because his neighbor said he just flipped out.
- Richard was using drugs to mask
or self-medicate whatever pain
and whatever difficulty he was going through.
- Small countries being supported by Richard Pryor
because he was doing tons of drugs.
- Every time I get in trouble,
it's because I end up drinking too much.
I end up snorting too much.
I just wanna say this, like, look, I like drugs.
I do.
- He was just trying to survive.
He was just trying to stay alive for a day.
- [Kathy] He had moods.
He had dark sides.
Richard had a hair trigger.
- [Dave] Richard Pryor stepped into the abyss
of America's subconscious and changed comedy forever.
But it almost cost him his life.
- I put the pipe down, it jumped back in my hand.
If I lose track of the fact
that I'm a drug addict
and an alcoholic.
If I ever think that I'm not, I'm in trouble.
- Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to be entertained.
- Getting the laugh is the greatest addiction.
- They want more of it. They want more of it.
- She was getting death threats.
- It (beep) with your head.
- That's what took her down.
- This is a crazy story.
- [Dave] Born on December 1st, 1940,
Richard Pryor is raised in Peoria, Illinois,
surrounded by crime, sex and racial segregation.
- We knew that he was raised in a brothel.
Basically his mother was a whore
and that he saw some pretty rough things as a child,
with his mother having relations with men
and his grandma took care of him
and you know, he was really kinda left on his own.
- Who believed in you?
Who cared about you?
- Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor
- You were 15 years old?
- 14
- When your first child was born?
- Yeah, that was, yeah.
- And then after she was born.
- I didn't know my father was making love to her too,
but him in a room.
- Richard Pryor's childhood was horrific.
I mean, he was abused by his father.
His grandmother was pretty much ran brothel.
He had uncles that were pimps, hustlers.
They raised him.
He didn't have a normal family.
- When I was a kid, I got disciplined.
You know, like most kids, you know, get spankings, you know,
and little whippings.
I got beatings.
No, my old man punched me out.
That was it you know,
and he'd brag around the neighborhood.
You know, "My son never cries when a whoop him. (chuckles)"
- [Dave] Desperate for attention
and an escape from his brutal family life.
Young Richard finds comedy in the dark corners of Peoria.
- He told me that he learned drama
from being in the streets.
He said, "We didn't have a drama class."
So you couldn't express ideas about being an actor.
You just have to pick up what you got from the streets.
- [Dave] But the bright lights of Hollywood
are a world away from segregated Peoria.
And after a brief stint in the army,
Richard returns home
and begins performing at local venues,
catering to African-American audiences,
eventually graduating to the Chitlin' Circuit.
- The Chitlin' Circuit guys, let me see, it's black.
The Chitlin' Circuit was basically the
You had Red Fox,
you had Dick Gregory,
you had Moms Maybley.
You had all of these amazing comedians
that was the black circuit
because they were not allowed to perform to white audiences.
You know what I mean?
- [Dave] But the segregated Chitlin' Circuit
existed in the shadow
of America's mainstream entertainment industry,
offering little financial reward.
- Most comedians built their reputation in those days
by selling albums.
That's how people got to know them or
if you saw them on television,
you can build an audience from that.
And that's where the most money and fame is.
- [Dave] Eager to cross over to a white audience.
An ambitious Pryor, sets his sights
on the comedy clubs of New York city,
following in the footsteps of another black comedian.
- As a grownup, I think that the Frankenstein
and a mummy are about the two slowest guys in the world.
I don't understand how they could even catch people
(Bill talking like zombie)
I'd have so much fun with guys like,
"Yeah, come on, guys, guys."
(audience laughs and applauds)
- Bill was the most successful comedian
in the business at that time.
Huge, huge audience.
He was talking about things
that are most relatable to a white crossover audience.
Every comic was trying for that
because that's where the biggest audience is.
- In order to get to the mainstream you did,
you had to be in routine.
You couldn't be too black.
And if you did talk about the black experience,
you had to make it to where it was clear.
And they understood.
Bill Cosby was this,
you know, clean cut temple university educated guy,
good looking guy,
doing clean comedy, you know, and Richard wanted to be him.
And Richard was like,
"I wanna be like that, dude, man,
"that dude is (beep) amazing."
(crowd laughs)
- All my people have to do to live forever
is follow these 10 simple rules
I have written on this plaque.
Ah, come on, Moses, you're putting us on.
(audience laughs)
Mind if I read them first?
Yeah that's (mumbles)
That's cute (chuckles)
(audience laugh)
(Richard continues mumbling)
Are you serious?
(audience laughs)
- [Dave] Pryor's squeaky clean act works,
a little too well.
- I was working for Bill Cosby
and Bill thought that Richard was copying some of his act.
(audience laughs)
We had to call him into our office to tell him
that he shouldn't do that.
- Did you even unconsciously
pick up from somebody's line and use it?
- Oh, on purpose?
- Oh, I mean, actually... (crowd laughs)
- I made a lot of money as Bill Cosby.
- Yeah. (crowd laughs)
- [Dave] Undeterred,
Pryor draws the attention of the late night shows
and soon becomes a regular.
- And he kept popping up with his little tiny routines
and then we showed up a little bit more, a little bit more.
We had a few shows, a lot of shows
but there weren't very many people of darker,
darker pigmentation on the show.
- And as one liners were great and he was a very good guest.
He was pretty much a regular in several of those shows.
- My mother's Puerto Rican and my father's Negro
and we lived in a real big Jewish tenement building
(crowd laughs)
in an Italian neighborhood.
(crowd laughs)
Every time I go outside, the kids say,
"Get him he's all of them."
(crowd laughs and applauds)
- Richard was on his way to building a crossover audience.
- [Dave] New York gives Richard access
to a huge new audience,
but it also gives him access to a drug
that will haunt him for the rest of his career.
Cocaine.
Pryor had experimented with drugs since his teens,
but the highly addictive narcotic
quickly becomes an obsession for the burgeoning comic.
- Many comics do not do drugs.
Me, David Brenner, Steve Landesburg, Robert Klein,
Bette Midler, none of us did drugs,
but Richard Pryor did drugs.
- I like New York city.
I've been working in the village in coffee houses.
And I like it because they don't serve any booze,
just coffee, ice cream, weird pills.
And... (crowd laughs)
- [Dave] Despite escalating drug use,
Pryor makes a name for himself with white audiences.
But that fame comes at a price,
especially for black performers.
- It's exhausting performing for white people. (whimpers)
I can tell you for black comedians,
there's a lot of pressure
because even if you're not necessarily
the urban Chitlin' Circuit
sort of comic, right,
you still feel pressure to be that
because sometimes white people don't wanna receive you
unless you shuck in and jive in,
you know, it's sort of like relegating
all these black comics to one spot.
- He had to, at the beginning,
do some maneuvering to be able to get the next booking.
So maybe he doesn't tell the joke he wants to tell
that might even be about the white people or something
because he might offend the manager
who might not have him back.
- [Dave] Securing a residency
at the Aladdin hotel in Las Vegas,
Pryor, now commands $3,000 a week in fees
and the respect of Sin City's Showbiz Elite,
but in the fall of 1967,
Pryor reaches a breaking point.
- I was a show girl working in shows in Las Vegas
in the late sixties when he was there performing.
The only people working in Vegas that were black
were the janitors and the kitchen staff
and people like that.
He got up on the stage and he looked down
and he saw these white people.
It was all white.
There were no black people in the show
coming to see the shows in Vegas,
even coming to see these black people.
(crowd applauding)
It hit home, I mean, it,
you know, it messed with your head.
- So he just said,
"(beep) this, I can't take this shit anymore."
Because he was just tired of not being himself.
He was tired of not telling the truth.
- [Dave] Then Richard does the unthinkable.
He walks out on the packed house
and ultimately on his lucrative residency.
- He basically was like,
"I'd rather be never do comedy again and homeless
"than please whitey again."
- [Dave] In 1967, Pryor risks losing it all,
walking away from a successful act
that catered to white audiences.
- If he did that today,
it would be an equivalent to
Chappelle walking away from a show.
It was that big.
- And everyone thought he was never gonna have a career.
- As a black person to do that.
It's like he will never work this town again.
That is, was, that was instant black ball.
- [Dave] Searching for deeper truths about himself
and America.
Richard moves to Berkeley, California
to learn from the counterculture movement
and black power leaders.
- The major enemy is the honky
and his institutions of racism.
(crowd applauding)
- We feel that the problem,
number one, of the black man in America
is beyond America's ability to solve.
- I will neither go to the army nor will I go to jail.
- I think he was just trying to find himself,
you know, growing out his Afro,
wearing beads and dashikis and shit.
That's the example of what trauma is.
It's like just trying to find something,
trying to belong somewhere.
- I was teaching at Berkeley.
I spent a lot of time
talking about African-American folklore
and I talked to Richard about it.
And so I was to tell him
that I thought our culture comes from our old traditions.
And Richard reacted to that.
- Richard was discovering his true voice
because the events were making him discover his true voice.
There was a lot of protests going on.
A lot of people speaking out.
- I always had fun being black, I guess y'all never know,
but that's the price you pay for being white.
- Being around Huey P.Newton
and all these black nationalists, they
"Nah, man, speak your truth, man."
"(beep) that
"and get up there and tell them what the (beep) time it is."
And that probably pushed him like, "Hell yeah! Yeah!"
- His album "Craps" is released in 1971.
- [Richard] 'Cause was in my neighborhood,
cops was dangerous.
'Cause we had like, eye spy cops, right?
You know, white cop and black cop worked together
and the black cop had to do more shit to keep his job.
(crowd laughs)
He had to work more niggers than the white cop, you know,
"I ain't gonna lose work. Catch her nigger."
(audience laughing)
- Daya Cosby was actually gonna be very lucrative for him.
So for him to strike it out on his own and,
and really delve into who he was himself,
I think that's an incredibly brave thing.
- [Dave] No longer catering to white America.
Pryor draws from his own experiences as a black man
to create a provocative new brand of humor
intended for a black audience.
- [Richard] You know, niggers and white people fight.
I always be rooting for the nigger.
Even if he bad,
please whoop the white folks.
I don't want white folks to win nothing.
Even Jerry West.
I wish that mother (beep) couldn't play basketball.
(crowd laughing)
- The "N" word and you know of course I used it
but I think that was just a key to the hidden language
that blacks have.
You know, black language is a language.
- The word nigger
is just thrown around all the time in black communities.
I grew up with that word you know,
"Hey, nigger this, hey nigger that."
We didn't, it didn't, it wasn't a bad slang word.
And it was such just part of the comedy Richard's comedy.
- Police got a choke hold they use out here though man,
they choke niggers did that.
Yeah, two grab your legs, one grab your head, snap!
"Oh shit he broke."
(crowd laughing)
"Can you break a nigger, is it okay?"
(crowd laughs)
"Let's check them in."
"Oh yep, page eight, you can bring a right there, see?"
Cut.
- It's revolutionary because Richard resisted,
resented and made his comedy as a weapon to fight it.
- [Dave] But Pryor's creative breakthrough
did nothing to curb his drug use.
If anything,
they provided him with new material.
- He continued to do Coke.
- Small countries being supported by Richard Pryor
because he was doing tons of drugs.
- Got into drugs,
got heavy into acid and coke and just sort of disappeared.
He melted away into that lifestyle.
- [Dave] Despite his album "Craps",
receiving critical acclaim,
Richard's drug use adds to his reputation
as an erratic artist
and work becomes difficult to come by.
(groovy music)
- He was not working in standup.
He had taken a job being a punch up writer
for "Sanford And Son".
And that's how he was making a living,
making very little money.
Several managers had worked with him
and didn't want to take him on.
So I said I would help him.
(Interviewer asks question)
- His unreliability.
I'm talking about substance abuse,
but he was not able to control it.
It went off the deep end.
There were a lot of things going on in his mind,
a lot of conflict,
but Richard always had an idea
that he wanted to aim for the top.
You know, he aimed high.
He wanted big.
(pensive music)
- Good evening.
I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
- Three months before President Nixon's resignation,
after his involvement in the Watergate scandal,
Richard Pryor releases a new album.
- Pryor was working on himself,
coming out of that clean image.
And then you got "Craps" where he's like,
"Okay, I'm gonna put this on a record."
Boom!
Now I'm gonna do "That Nigger's Crazy".
I'm coming all out.
I'm going all out.
And that was where we saw the real Richard Pryor.
- [Richard] White folks (beep) quiet too.
(crowd laughs)
Nigger like, "No I'll be, oh, you mother (beep)."
Oh, that damn bell!
(crowd laughs)
(Richard speaking indistinctly)
- [Dave] With his follow up to "Craps," Pryor doubles down,
exploring controversial issues like police violence,
interracial dating
and drug addiction in the most profane language possible.
- [Richard] When you get your shit together,
you work all week, right?
And you go out, get clean, be driving with his old lady,
going out to a club and police pull over.
"Get outta the car! There was a robbery.
"That nigger look just like you."
"All right, put your hands up, take your pants down.
"Spread your cheeks."
(audience laughs)
Now, what nigger feels like having fun after that?
- Yeah, I think that when it,
when it comes to any sort of social political commentary,
Pryor gave the...
The go ahead and,
and sort of unlocked the key where these floodgates opened
in being deeply honest
on top of being funny.
- [Dave] That "N" words crazy is so radical
that it transcends the racial divides
that Pryor exposes in his comedy.
He has crossed over to a white audience once again,
only this time on his own terms.
- You know, you you'd be hard pressed
to see a lot of white people come out to see a black comic.
And he was able to do that.
- [Dave] The album shoots straight
to the top of the billboard music charts
and wins a Grammy for "Best Comedy Album".
Cementing his status as America's most fearless comic.
In a post Vietnam, post Watergate,
post Civil Rights America
Pryor speaks to an entire generation
of cynical disenfranchised Americans of all ethnicities.
Suddenly America was ready for Richard Pryor
leading to a string of Hollywood movies
and sold out shows across the country.
- Would you welcome the very inventive for Richard Pryor,
- Mr. Richard Pryor.
- Richard Pryor.
- Thank you, thank you ladies and gentlemen.
(crowd applauding)
- Soon after that, we had a gig in Richmond, Virginia,
the manager of the venue before the show came up to me
and he said, "You cannot curse on our stage."
I said, "You can't curse on the stage?"
I said, "If you know him and you know what his act is about,
"he does curse."
So I said to Richard, "Richard, do what you wanna do?"
- [Dave] Despite being the biggest comedian in the US,
he's still a second class citizen.
- So went up and did a great show.
Just a terrific show.
Went back to the hotel.
Sure enough, forget a knock on the door.
And guy says to me,
"You're Richard Pryor? I wanna talk to you."
And it was a cop.
- [Dave] After a show in Virginia.
Richard Pryor is arrested for uttering obscene language.
- So went down to the station.
We walked in,
there were three or four other African-American cops there.
I mean, you can see the sadness and sort of the disgust.
They said to me, "Man, you know,
"I don't wanna deal with this, but this is my job."
They booked him on a dumb charge, indecent language,
which never really,
really stuck.
So the whole thing was erased.
And he said, "Listen, they didn't have enough to hold him,
"but you know what this is about man."
I said, "Yeah, that's pretty disgusting."
And I said, "I'm not gonna let this go unnoticed.
"And Richard's gonna talk about it."
- [Dave] Ahead of Richard co-hosting
"The Mike Douglas Show" in Philadelphia.
He appears at the press conference.
- And to be part of pose the question,
and then Richard told a little bit of the story.
It was in the evening edition of the Philadelphia choir.
Absolutely fantastic.
- Richard's film and television career is thriving.
And in 1975,
the producers of a new NBC show
called "Saturday Night Live,"
come knocking on his door.
- Starring Richard Pryor.
- Richard was that talented in that skill that his talent
broke him through 'cause for Lauren Michael to go,
"I gotta have this guy."
You know, he just saw this guy's just (beep) funny.
- Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Pryor!
(crowd cheering)
- Richard will only host the show
under the condition that more black talent is hired,
including singer Gil Scott-Heron
his girlfriend, Kathy McKee, and his writing partner,
Paul Mooney.
- Mooney was a performer and a writer.
He was more of an underground kind of guy.
Paul Mooney was not the guy
that was going to try to be crossover.
Paul when he was speaking a lot of his feelings
through Richard Pryor, 'cause Pryor could do it.
Pryor just had the chart.
He made it palatable for people.
You know what I mean?
- Can white writers write for you?
- If they write for the human being then yes,
if they write,
if they try to write for some idea they have
of what I would be as a black person,
they usually cannot do that.
- [Dave] While Richard's popularity
has finally traversed racial lines,
behind the camera, little has changed.
- A lot of these shows were all white writers,
you know white writers
trying to write about the black experience.
Like it doesn't (beep) make sense.
Not saying that you can't write for somebody,
but,
the inequality on these shows was so (beep) unbalanced
that Rich was like, "I need some black people, man.
"(beep) this,
"I need some black people,"
so they can show some real authenticity to this shit.
- Motion?
- [Dave] By insisting on his own writer
and having control over the content,
Pryor is able to force conversations
about race onto prime time.
- The only way to understand a white man's problems
was actually to become a white man.
(audience laughing)
(Interviewer asks question)
- Oh God, do I ever?
Oh my God.
I just, I, you know, I remember when they were doing it
and it was hysterical,
but everybody's wondering,
how is this gonna air live on TV?
(crowd applauding)
- All right, Mr. Wilson,
you've done just fine on the roar shock.
Your papers are in good order.
The file's fine, no difficulty with your motor skills.
And I think you're probably pretty ready for this job.
We got one more
kind of psychological test we always do here.
It's just a word association.
I'll throw you out a few words.
Anything that comes to your mind, just throw back at me.
Okay? Just kind of an arbitrary thing.
Like if I said dog, you'd say...
- Tree - Tree
(audience laughing)
- Dog
- Tree
(audience laughs)
- Tree gotta pee on the tree.
- Fast
- Slow
- Rain
- Snow
- White
- Black
- Bean
- Pod
(audience laughs)
- Negro
- Whitey
(audience laughs)
- Tar-baby.
(audience laughing)
- What'd you say?
- Tar-baby.
- Ofay
(crowd laughs)
- (laughs) That's weird funny.
- Bird head
- Cracker
(audience laughs)
- Spear chucker
- White trash
(audience laughs)
- Jungle bunny
- Hunker
(audience laughs)
- Spade
- Honkey, honkey
(audience laughs)
- Nigger - Dad hunter.
(crowd laughs and applauds)
- It was great to call attention to an issue.
Part of the humor sometimes with black people is
we have to show how we lose to win.
And then some of it is also us trying to
vindicate ourselves
in a way that probably wouldn't happen in reality.
- I think that's reflective of what had already happened
in this country
to put black people in such horrible positions
that to get a janitor's job.
And then Richard was reacting to that.
- How about a starting salary of $5,000?
- Yo mama.
(audience laughs)
- And everyone was like, "Yo, Richard Pryor has come."
Literally dissecting America, literally dissecting race,
dissecting the urban life,
which he came from and people were relating to this shit.
So Richard was really laying it down
and everybody was able to come to a common place going down.
He got us.
Shit!
- [Dave] But behind the politics and humor,
Richard's friends are alarmed
at his growing dependence on cocaine.
- When you're on stage you're like free,
you're character or some shit.
And then you're getting adulation for this shit.
You know what I mean?
When you're by yourself with your own thoughts,
it's reality. There ain't no clapping,
there ain't no nothing.
You're dealing with your own thoughts.
And the only time I'm dealing with it is
when I'm doing cocaine or shit like that.
- And it was covering up the pain in the suffering.
You have to find a way out of that.
And Richard never was able to find a way out of that.
He was really nuts, you know, he was cuckoo.
He was...
He had moods.
He had dark sides.
Some of his women, a couple of his wives I know,
Richard was pretty brutal with them.
I mean, he beat a lot of women up and punched them.
And I think Richard had a hair trigger.
- I used to hit women.
And I must say, I know I haven't hit anyone in four years.
- [Interviewer] Why'd you hit women?
- They piss me off.
- And he did have that kind of temper
where I guess if he got really mad,
he'd pull that gun out and start shooting it.
- [Dave] On new year's Eve, 1977,
at a party, he is throwing,
Richard in a drug-fueled state,
starts a fight with his third wife
and her two female friends.
He chases the women in his car
and shoots at them as they try to run away.
(pensive music)
- Comedian Richard Pryor
turned himself into the police last night
and then posted a $5,000 bail and was released.
The police were looking for him as we told you last night,
because his neighbor said he just flipped out.
They told the police that he fired some shots
at some women in his yard
after throwing them out of his house.
And then they say he kept ramming his car into theirs.
Pryor is scheduled for a command performance now
on January 16th in the Los Angeles courtroom.
- [Dave] On new year's day, 1978,
Richard Pryor is charged with assault with a deadly weapon
and given one year suspended sentence
and three years of probation for the shooting at his home.
The next year,
he travels to Africa in an effort to find himself.
- I went to Zimbabwe and it's a new country, right?
It's about three years old now.
'Cause it used to be Rhodesia
before they killed all them white (beep).
(crowd laughs)
I was over there with some American brothers man,
I met an American brother,
he came over there on vacation, he called home he said,
"Bitch sell all the shit."
(crowd laughs)
"I ain't never coming back to that mourning."
- When Richard went to Africa
and
got a deep sense of the idea of being black
and his idea of blackness shifting,
I understand where he was coming from
with not wanting to use the "N" word anymore.
- A voice said to me, he said,
"Look around, what do you see?"
And I said, "I see all colors of people doing everything."
You know, and the voice said, "Do you see any niggers?"
And I said, "No."
I said, "You know why?"
'Cause there aren't any, and it hit me like a shot, man.
I started crying the shit, I was sitting I said,
"Yeah, I've been here three weeks, I haven't even said it.
"I haven't even thought it."
And it made me say, "Oh my God, I've been wrong.
"I've been wrong. I got to regroup my shit."
I mean, I said,
"I ain't gonna never call another black man a nigger."
(crowd applauds)
- So he just sort of had this like third transformation
that was the first one was in front of
and maybe even two white people of,
"Guys, I can't do this anymore.
"This is crazy."
"No, I don't even live like this."
Like, "I have an interesting life that's wild.
"And I'm holding all of it back
"to tell you cookie cutter jokes about cookies."
I think he added again where he got his success
and he was having an understanding of
being a successful black man,
which is still like another shift in his life.
And then he went to Africa and when he came back,
there was just this,
this thing that had changed where he was like,
"My small part is gonna be to not use
"something that can be taken and shifted,
"twisted to be derogatory towards us anymore."
- Just the word doesn't mean anything.
Certainly shouldn't be used for people.
- You used to use the word.
- Oh yeah. I didn't know any better.
And...
I wouldn't call another black man that ever.
- For him, that was exactly the right decision.
- [Dave] He returns to the states with a new awareness,
but his old habits die hard.
Richard's cocaine use and explosive behavior
are more frequent than ever.
- Like on a, a movie set,
a white guys was eating watermelon
and he blew a seed
that hit Richard.
Richard went to his trailer.
He came back, not with one gun
with two.
(dramatic music)
They had to close the set down, okay.
And he had a lot of problems because of that.
He would see a slight, a racial slight
and he would freeze up.
Well, Richard was very sensitive about that.
- Richard was using drugs to
mask or
self-medicate whatever pain
and whatever difficulty he was going through.
- And I grew up in
seeing my mother go in the room with me
and my aunties go in the room with me.
Now I used to peek two keyholes to watch people make love,
messed me up sexually.
- When you watch how he grew up.
If I grew up in a brothel and (mumbles)
I'd be (beep) dead too.
- I never felt connected to anything or anybody.
And I never knew how to love, especially myself.
I didn't know about that.
You know, I'm a romantic person.
I like to be romantic,
but I don't necessarily like being in love
'cause I really don't understand that.
- We have such privilege, you know,
as people who grew up middle class or white
or not in poverty, it's like you don't (beep) know.
So it's just like, yeah, no, it wasn't as easy as,
"Oh, just stop doing drugs, Richard."
- Richard's life is a very dark thing.
And then you compile on the drug use.
Those are the things that shape how a person sees things.
- You know, we all deal with trauma differently.
Right?
In this case it created a comedic genius, right.
And it also created a tremendous amount of pain, right.
That's true in so many artists.
- And drugs for me was a panacea,
you know, it removed all the pain,
all the questions, all the doubt.
It made me feel sure of myself.
Even when I wasn't,
I felt like I knew I could go on forever.
And then at a point, the drugs didn't work anymore.
- [Kathy] So he was miserable.
He was suffering.
He wanted to die.
He really did.
He may say he didn't, but you, if he didn't understand,
maybe he didn't even realize in his own mind
that that's what he was aiming for, was death.
He just didn't wanna be around here anymore.
- [Dave] By the early eighties,
America's in the early stages of the crack epidemic.
And Richard has graduated from snorting cocaine
to smoking it.
A far more dangerous and addictive way of consuming it.
- Rashaan called me from Richard's house and said,
"We are all trying to get Richard to put this pipe down."
This was like a four or five day base, basing nonstop,
no bathing, no eating, no nothing.
Just sitting there doing this.
And we can't.
Maybe if you come by, if you come out,
I hadn't seen him in about two or three years.
So I get there,
I go back in the bedroom
where Richard's at sitting there on the bed,
smoking this
base pipe
with mound of cocaine on the bed.
And he's dipping this,
this self torch into this bottle of rum,
lighting it to light this pipe he's smoking.
Don't stick the thing in the bottle.
It's a Molotov cocktail you know what I mean?
So, of course Richard said to me,
in his loving kind wonderful way,
"Bitch, get the (beep) out my house
"and leave me (beep) alone.
"I'll do what I wanna do."
So I left.
- If you do enough coke and you gotta blow torch,
something's gonna happen.
- [Dave] High on cocaine,
Richard pours rum onto his shirt and sets himself a blaze.
- Two cops drove up beside him and said,
"Hey Richard, what's going on?"
He said, "What's going on, man?
"I'm running.
"I'm on fire."
(dramatic music)
- [Kathy] Four or five hours after
emergency broadcast on the news.
"Richard Pryor is in the burn center
"at the Sherman Oaks Hospital."
- He's in a hospital fighting for his life,
badly burned over half his body.
Police in LA told me that Pryor told his doctor
that he was trying to make what is called free base,
a mixture of cocaine and ether
and a fire melted his shirt right on his back.
Pryor was so delirious that he ran for more than a mile
from his house before police could catch up with him
and take him to a hospital.
Only one out of three people in the shape he is in
pulls through.
- [Kathy] For sure that was the call, that was the goodbye,
you know, Richard's dead, you know, that was,
that had to be it.
- With burns, covering over 50% of his body.
Richard miraculously survives.
- When you try to kill yourself and it doesn't work,
it's like you missed and yeah, he (beep) himself up.
- Why did you wanna kill yourself?
- I was ashamed.
- Of what? - Myself
- Of the drugs and the other...
- I had come to this guy had given me all this, you know,
and what I'd do with it.
I could only end up in a room alone,
smoking a base pipe all day long.
I couldn't stop.
I put the pipe down, it jumped back in my hand.
I couldn't stop five minutes.
Didn't stand that five minutes.
I said to myself, "All right, five minutes
"I won't smoke no more."
It wasn't a minute it would go by.
I had to pick that pipe back up.
- All these things Richard actually did
out of a very dark space
and they can't get it together
because they still trapped in that prison.
- I've been given to do so much and whatever I end up doing,
I got a base pipe in my hand
and sip of kavasa in the other
in a room all alone by myself,
loving no one and doubting if anyone loved me.
- More because they didn't give you relief?
- No, they didn't.
Just got to a point where it just was misery,
depression,
down, down, down,
but a day at a time today I'm sober and drug free.
- [Dave] In 1982,
2 years after recovering from his self-inflicted burns,
Richard Pryor records his most audacious
and personal standup to date Live on the Sunset Strip.
- [Host] Ladies and gentlemen Live on the Sunset Strip,
Richard Pryor.
(crowd cheering)
- [Dave] His first performance,
since he set himself on fire two years earlier.
- He was really nervous.
And I think it's cause he'd been out so long.
(somber music)
- He stops.
I ain't feeling it.
I ain't giving it to him like I want to.
- He was like doing the set backwards.
He got all confused and he was just off his game,
like so horribly.
And at one point you see a writer.
I think it's Mooney runs on stage, whisper something to him,
like to tell him what bit to do next.
So it's really sad and he couldn't get it done.
(groovy music)
- Next day.
Same suit, same everything.
Come back next day.
And he founds it.
- This pipe used to tell me when to go to bed.
Pipe would say, "Time to get up.
"Time for some smoke, Rich.
"Come on now, we're not gonna do anything today.
"(beep) all your appointments.
"Me and you just gonna hang out in this room together."
(audience laughs)
- This is the resilience.
He's opened himself up each and every album,
but live Sunset Strip was just special.
- Now, now listen to me,
all the people you ever heard of free basin,
have you ever heard of anybody blowing up?
(audience laughs)
Why me?
(audience laughs)
10 million my (beep) free base.
I gotta blow up.
(audience laughs)
- Those jokes about him burning himself.
I mean talk about turning tragedy into comedy
and also vulnerability and weakness as humor.
I mean it's big, that's groundbreaking stuff.
- Defense mechanisms are things we employ
when we are traumatized
or when things are difficult in our life.
Most people will avoid or deny, suppress or repress.
But the standup comedian says, "I need to understand this.
"I need to work through it."
So humor becomes the vehicle
to offset adversity
or difficulty.
- But I thank God every day, Jack.
I do.
I say God, thank you for not burning my dick.
(audience laughs)
'Cause when that fire getting my ass, my dick went to work.
He said, "Emergency!"
"Please come do something!"
"Keep the fire off the ball."
- [Dave] Live on the Sunset Strip
becomes one of the highest grossing
and Pryor's final comedy special.
In 2005,
Richard Pryor,
already suffering from the effects of multiple sclerosis,
dies from a heart attack.
- The brilliant comedian Richard Pryor died on Saturday.
He died of a heart attack after an almost 20 year battle
with multiple sclerosis.
Richard Pryor was one of the most influential
comedians ever,
a cultural giant who changed comedy.
Many of his colleagues called him a genius.
He lived to become the highest paid black performer
of his time.
He spoke about race in a way that was both funny
and insightful.
- Richard overcame a lot
to become what we know as Richard Pryor.
- Real strange feeling being sober.
'Cause I got nothing to do tonight.
Like go to sleep.
(audience laughs, cheers and applauds)
- He could've easily became a pimp.
He could have gave up after he burned himself.
- Here is another one of the many talents of Richard Pryor.
♪ Once I lived a life of a millionaire ♪
♪ Spending my money I didn't care ♪
- Even though it was a lot of darkness,
it was definitely a lot of light.
- [Dave] Richard Pryor's life
could easily have served as a cautionary tale
about the burdens of fame,
but his constant determination to fight through
eventually opened a door to his candor
and it never left him.
♪ Didn't have a friend ♪
♪ No place to go ♪
- Ironically, all these decades later,
we're almost still trying to get back to this level of,
of being genuine and being honest in performance
and in life.
There's a deep, deep yearning for someone
to be as incredibly honest as it takes
to have an experience with them.
♪ Nobody wants you ♪
♪ When you're down and out ♪
And so I think he had an understanding of himself
and an understanding of the audience
that
put him ahead of his time in a way
that we're still kind of catching up to.
- Truth is truth.
Truth is what it is, man.
Truth has never been easy.
He just really influenced people to be honest with yourself,
don't let anybody tell you how you do shit.
He was able to create genius
and just to really look at ourselves
and always live our truth.
(crowd applauding)
(Richard making noises)
(Richard gags)
(crowd applauding)
- What is that? Richard Pryor running down that street.
(audience applauding)
It's not easy.
But who said it was gonna be.
♪ Nobody wants you ♪
♪ Baby when you're down and out ♪
(audience applauding)