Pryor Convictions by Richard Pryor

Author:Richard Pryor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2018-03-22T19:28:15+00:00

Eighteen

Back in LA, I started working out again at Redd Foxx’s club. One night Redd gave me a fedora to wear. It was more than a friendly gesture. I saw it as the passing of a torch. The master had given me his blessing.

I took it seriously. My first concert film, Smokin’, filmed at the Improv in New York, in April 1971, contained new bits like “Black Cat with Neat Hair,” “Colored Guys Have Big Ones,” and “Dracula and the Brother.” My second album, Craps After Hours, also explored race, sex, and drugs, but with even more shape and sting.

I knew routines dealing with getting high, fucking my wife’s girlfriend, and rednecks looking for pussy were different from anyone else’s. But I didn’t want merely to shock people. I also wanted to be good. I wanted my stand-up to be like a night at the theater.

Mooney was the one who told me what people thought about me. I was hot in the black community long before I cracked the mainstream. But word spread. Clubs were packed whenever I played. My shows were events, sojourns into territory considered dangerous, taboo, and, as all of us know, true to life.

That’s part of what made it so damn exciting. Me and the audience were breaking new ground.

People don’t talk about nothing real. Like you talk about shit that’s real. Like jackin’ off.

A lot of people say they don’t jack off.

I did.

I used to jack off so much I knew pussy couldn’t be as good as my hand.

I didn’t see why that shit I talked about was considered controversial. It didn’t make sense.

You can’t talk about fucking in America. People say you’re dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that’s cool.

My personal life had no brilliances either. I lived with Casey in a house overlooking the Sunset Strip. It was not a scene that could be described as loving or tranquil.

We had a birthday party at a fancy restaurant once. Invited a lot of people. Got dressed up.

But Casey and I arrived fighting and continued yelling through dinner. Finally, the waiter served the cake. I blew out the candles and then smashed the cake in Casey’s face.

As I got up to leave, the waiter offered her a towel. In a deliberate, ladylike fashion, she cleaned herself up and then to the waiter said, “I’ll have my coffee now.”

That was tame compared to the other shenanigans that went on when the Contessa wasn’t around. Sometimes I spent days at a time hanging out, snorting cocaine, and bullshitting with Mooney (the only one who never got high), Dirty Dick, and Prophet, an artist friend who resembled Miles Davis. When the air cleared, we ventured down the hill to the Candy Store or the Daisy, exclusive private clubs in Beverly Hills.

I wasn’t a star, but they still let us rub elbows with a crowd that included Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Lawford, and Sal Mineo. Once, I saw a drunk Richard Harris chase Bobby Darin out of the Daisy.

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