How practise you top your ain legend? In Richard Pryor "Live on the Sunset Strip" (1982), Pryor doesn't quite make information technology -- but he comes awfully close.
A bit of groundwork for the uninitiated: Pryor, already a huge success via his earthy 1970's one-act albums, made film history with "Richard Pryor Alive in Concert." A modestly filmed recording of a 1979 concert he did in Long Beach, CA., it put many of that year'south Hollywood blockbusters to shame with its rich characterizations and incisiveness; countless comics however cite it as their impetus for doing comedy.
Unfortunately, Pryor was a volatile man with a severe drug habit. About a year after the concert film was released, Pryor was freebasing and caught himself on fire. (He later acknowledged it as a suicide attempt.) Therapy and cosmetic surgery helped to restore him, simply information technology left him with a quandary: How does a comic whose act was based on fear and hostility acknowledge the dear and support of his audience? Unlike its ground-breaking predecessor, the '82 picture show takes a while to become going. The credits, as simple as they are (Pryor produced the film and wrote the material), seem to terminal forever. And in that location'southward more than longeur when Pryor makes his mode to the phase via the audience, who can't finish their standing ovation and glad-handing of him.
When he does finally reach the spotlight, Pryor appears a bit unsettled at first. The '79 film showed Pryor prowling the phase, his shirt visibly drenched in perspiration. In "Dusk Strip," he'south dressed nattily in a flaming red suit -- ostensibly intended as a visual pun on his fire incident, but so spiffy that even he acknowledges that it sick-suits him. He initially throws out random observations, hoping something will stick.
He finally hits his stride in a riff about male-female person relationships, both casual (his meet with a Playboy Bunny who gets turned on when Pryor does kiddie voices) and emotional (he tearfully calls upwardly a recently estranged girlfriend who coolly advises him, "Don't do this to yourself"). He also hits pay clay with his account of filming the 1980 comedy "Stir Crazy" at the Arizona Land Penitentiary; at first he is moved past the plight of his blackness "brothers" until he is apprised of their graphic crimes, at which point he declares, "Give thanks God...we got...penitentiaries!" He also does a great routine almost a contempo visit to Africa, in which he imitates jungle animals in the manner of the menagerie of impersonations in his '79 film. Subsequently this, he begins to soften, as he realizes that his homeland visit has caused him to forever negate his use of the notorious N-give-and-take. He follows this with what he claims is "the final appearance" of his street character Mudbone (Pryor lied; he revived the character in his third concert pic), who chides his creator Pryor for his fire incident. Critic Pauline Kael was put off by these passages, saying in essence that Pryor was kissing up to his audience with these observations. She might accept been on to something, only considering that this comic narrowly escaped expiry and establish some lacerating revelations on the other side, possibly he was entitled to a little self-indulgence.
All of this, naturally, leads to the moving-picture show's showpiece: Pryor'southward account of his 1980 immolation. He prefaces it with a joke about how it "really" happened: When he had milk and cookies in bed one night, he mixed whole milk with skim milk, "and the southward*** blew up!" But when he launches into the truthful business relationship of the events leading upward to and post-obit the fire, he pulls no punches. His gift for bringing inanimate objects to life gets downright eerie when he does the voice of his reassuring freebase pipe, which he came to regard every bit his just true friend. When I saw this movie upon its initial release, I saturday open up-mouthed at this routine, unable to laugh -- simply not because it was poorly washed. On the contrary, information technology was and then forthright and honest that it went beyond comedy, to a point where you lot could imagine Pryor observing his self-destructive beliefs from outside of himself. (Indeed, that was the approach Pryor took when he dramatized the incident in his autobiographical 1986 flick "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.") Pryor lived for over two decades after this pic, until multiple sclerosis permanently stilled his demons. But in 1982, "Richard Pryor Live on the Dusk Strip" inspired well-earned laughter likewise as gratitude that a rich talent such as Pryor was still with us. The movie nevertheless stands as a remarkable comedic document -- non quite as great as its '79 predecessor, but still caput and shoulders above most of the brain-dead comedy from then and now.
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