BEFORE: I've reached the end of this little "Tribute" week, where I focused mainly on stand-up comedians (and an actor, and a film critic), both dead and alive. Now I'm just three films away from the end of Documentary Month - jeez, that went by quickly - and only SIX films away from Movie #3,300, which will mean that this year is 2/3 over. I know, it's only mid-July, so you'd think it would be half over, but no, in a few days the year will be 2/3 over, and I'll start the final push toward Christmas, while trying my best to keep the chain intact. This is already the longest I've ever been able to maintain a chain without a break, and if I can keep it going for another 100 films I think I'll have done something nobody has done before. Not by my knowledge, anyway.
Gene Wilder carries over, and this is why I'm kicking myself, for almost leaving out the movie "Love, Gilda" - the connection was so obvious, because who'd be likely to appear in both films? Wilder was married to Gilda Radner, and appeared in several comedies with Richard Pryor, so he'd be super-likely to appear in archive footage in both docs. I must have had trouble linking TO yesterday's film, because the outgoing connection should have been blatant. Once I saw that Alan Zweibel could carry over from "Gilbert" I had to make that happen. And if you don't like the Gene Wilder connection, there are two or three other people who carry over from "Love, Gilda".
THE PLOT: The life and times of Richard Pryor.
AFTER: There was a more recent documentary called "I Am Richard Pryor" which was released this past March, but it's not available on the major streaming platforms yet - it's on Vimeo for $4.99 but I don't want to break the bank. If I rent too many movies those $3.99's and $4.99's start adding up to a serious expense. I've got this one from 2013 that aired on Showtime, I mean, how different can they be? They're both covering the same material, interviewed the same people, and it's the same story, right? So probably one doc about Pryor is enough -
What I'm forced to conclude after this week is that the story of most every comedian, like the story of every band, is more or less the same. And it turns out that the clown is the most neurotic, reckless character in the circus, more so than the lion tamer or even that guy who shoots himself out of a cannon. Maybe I shouldn't lump ALL stand-up comics together, but all of the super-famous ones that got profiled here this week were really messed-up head cases. Going back to the circus analogy, what kind of person needs to paint on a happy face (think about it..) and wear a silly costume, then get out in front of the fans and dance around, acting silly? What kind of approval are they looking for, or have they figured out that people are going to laugh at them anyway, so if they say the right self-deprecating things and force the laughter to come, at least this way they'll be in on the joke, sort of?
In Pryor's case, he was the son of an alcoholic prostitute, and his grandmother was her madam - his father was a hustler and former boxer. He was raised in a brothel, beaten and sexually abused. After joining the army, he spent most of his service in a military prison after stabbing a white soldier who laughed at the racially-charged scenes in the film "Imitation of Life". By 1963 he was performing clubs in New York City, alongside Woody Allen and Nina Simone. He was following the track of his idol, Bill Cosby, then started doing appearances on Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson's shows. But when he got the chance to perform in Las Vegas, and saw a sold-out but mostly white audience, he walked off the stage, seemingly committing career suicide.
But he surfaced in the San Francisco area a couple of years later, had fallen in with hippies and was performing again, under a new name. Eventually he was lured back to the business to put out an album of his comedy, and that was a great success. He also began writing for TV shows like "Sanford & Son" and "The Flip Wilson Show", and shared an Emmy for a Lily Tomlin special. After a few Grammys for his comedy albums, he set his sights on movies, and famously co-wrote "Blazing Saddles" with Mel Brooks, only was not permitted by Warner Bros. to play the star role that went to Cleavon Little. Instead he embarked on that series of buddy comedies with Gene Wilder ("Silver Streak", "Stir Crazy") and also appeared in "The Wiz" - heck, this guy's line of credits is way too long for me to break down here.
You probably want to skip ahead to the part where he set himself on fire, right? You're sick that way, aren't you? Yes, when he had been freebasing cocaine for a couple days straight, he did pour a bottle of rum over himself and he lit it, then forgot all about "Stop, drop and roll" and chose to run outside and down the street instead. This has, in different circumstances, been called either a suicide attempt or a drug-induced accident, both by Pryor himself. Surprisingly he lived, and spent six weeks recovering in a hospital burn unit, with second and third-degree burns over half of his body. I can't even imagine the amount of pain he was in, yet that also became grist for the mill, a series of jokes he told about the incident in the concert film "Live on the Sunset Strip".
Then after recovering from the severe burns, Pryor was later diagnosed with M.S. - does it seem like his life had more tragic moments than a typical person's life, or do the tragedies just seem more pronounced when they happen to someone who's known for being funny? Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong, because every person's life is ultimately a tragedy, if you think about it, and sooner or later, everything gets balanced out, or so I'd like to think. Richard Pryor was married seven times to five different women, but seven marriages seems like it would have been balanced by six divorces, right? He also had seven children with six different women (some of those women he was married to) and maybe that was great, but then again, that's seven kids that he may or not have been there for when they needed him. I guess that somewhere there might be a comedian who had a great life, one or two solid relationships, and for whom everything seemed to fall into place - but that sounds like a pretty boring subject for a documentary, right?
Also starring David Banks, Skip Brittenham, Mel Brooks (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Dave Chappelle (ditto), David Steinberg (ditto), Cecil Brown, Mike Epps (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Alan Farley, Budd Friedman, Sandy Ballin, Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Gilbert"), Dr. Richard Grossman, Jesse Jackson (last seen in "Quincy"), Quincy Jones (ditto), Rashon Khan, George Lopez (last heard in "The Smurfs 2"), Lonette McKee (last seen in "The Cotton Club"), John Moffitt, Paul Mooney, Walter Mosley, Thom Mount, Bob Newhart (last seen in "Catch-22"), Jennifer Lee Pryor, Richard Pryor Jr., Ishmael Reed, Scott Saul, Paul Schrader, Michael Schultz, Stan Shaw (last seen in "Snake Eyes"), Lily Tomlin (also last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Rocco Urbisci, Robin Williams (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind") with archive footage of Richard Pryor (also last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Jack Nicholson (ditto), Muhammad Ali (last seen in "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years"), Warren Beatty (last seen in "Life Itself"), Rona Barrett, David Brinkley (also last seen in "Quincy"), Don Cornelius (ditto), Diana Ross (ditto), John Byner, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"), Chevy Chase (also last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Merv Griffin (ditto), Bill Cosby (last seen in "California Suite"), Mike Douglas (last seen in "Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words"), Redd Foxx, David Franklin, Dick Gregory, Pam Grier (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Alex Karras (last seen in "Against All Odds"), Eddie Murphy (also last seen in "Gilbert"), Barbara Walters (ditto), Dolly Parton (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Jane Pauley (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Rain Pryor, Nipsey Russell, Damon Wayans (last seen in "The Great White Hype").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Grammy nominations
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