The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  I was fed up. It’s all bullshit. That’s the only fight that I really regret. Spinks didn’t belong in the same ring with me. And I cut him up pretty good. If I cut someone, he’s finished, but I was a walking dead man that night and didn’t know it.

  I did know it, I did know it. I remember telling a friend of mine before the fight, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” And so that was the beginning of the end. I moved out to East Hampton, and I met this old guy out there, and we went and drank every day. One day I woke up and said, “I got to give this shit up. Who’s in charge, man? What’s going on?” The next day I woke up the same way. I turned on the TV and there just happened to be an infomercial for this rehab out there. I call them up and say, “Listen, I might have a problem,” and they say, “Why don’t you come on down?” So I go see this guy and he walks me around the place and says, “You don’t have to stay here, but if you can’t make it out there, you can come back.” I’m thinking, “I don’t want to be here,” so I gave it up. I just gave it up on my own. No rehab.

  I remember someone telling me, “You got to be careful. You get three, four, five months, you’re gonna think you’re all better,” and I said, “Not me, man, not me.” And two months later I’m back out there drinking again. For me it was the best thing that could have happened, because it had to be proved to me that I was not in control. So I drank for two months, and then one day I’m going to my office. I say, “Let’s go have breakfast,” and I see an IHOP over there. This guy I knew was there and we start talking. He tells me he hasn’t had a drink in three years, and that’s when I heard it. That was sixteen years ago, and I straightened out right then. April 1988.

  It’s been a long journey. I tell this story all the time. You can be anything you want, but you have to put your hand out. It’s been a miracle, magical. I’ve been to Africa, watched the sun rise from a hot air balloon, sailed to Central America on a giant sailboat, traveled through the rain forest, been to Trinidad, to Europe on my honeymoon, and I live “one day at a time.” And I love my life.

  I have a friend who’s seventy-five years old. He’s getting weak. He’s thirty-something-years sober. He has to go get iron taken out of his blood once a week, and I’m seeing him lose it a little, and it’s killing me. You know, I’m really feeling for him.

  I wish that I had known back then what I know now, so I could have fully appreciated it. I would have been heavyweight champion of the world! And I would have handled things differently. I had this friend, Bob Waters. He was a great writer for Newsday. He told me, “You know, Gerry, if I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself!”

  So I’m a work in progress. I’m a blessed guy. I’ve got a lovely wife, two great kids, and I roll with the punches. Aside from hearing bells now and then …

  What though the radiance which was so bright

  Though nothing can bring back the hour

  Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

  We will grieve not, rather find

  Strength in what remains behind.

  —William Wordsworth, “Ode”

  Richard Pryor

  (comedian)

  * * *

  ARE THERE WORDS TO tell you how much I loved Richard Pryor? He made me laugh, he made me think, and he often scared the shit out of me. I thought I had a special appreciation of black people and their plight while I was growing up in the late fifties and early sixties. Integrated schools, equal-housing opportunities, “one man, one vote,” freedom marches, integration of sports, “would you want your sister to marry one?”—hell yeah, I married one myself. These were all issues of great importance to me. However, Richard told me that unless I were black, I didn’t have a clue. Whitey could appreciate all he pleased, but he couldn’t walk in a black man’s shoes. This was the kind of thing that Richard talked about and chewed to the bone.

  I first met Richard in 1975 when I was producing my first motion picture, Car Wash. A character in the film was patterned after the legendary Reverend Ike, who once proclaimed, “The best way to help the poor is not be one of them!” We tried to get the good reverend to play himself in the movie, and it appeared as if he would do it. But after a lengthy negotiation, he informed us at the last possible moment that God had instructed him not to be in the movie. I think it had more to do with our refusal to pay the fee he was asking, but I could be wrong.

  We were scrambling around to find someone to take his place, when someone suggested Richard Pryor. “Wow, what a great idea!” we all responded. Aside from being the funniest man alive, I knew Richard to be a legendary cokehead, so I got word back to him that if he would do the movie for a reasonable fee (and we promised it would only take one day), a nice surprise would be waiting for him in his dressing room. Richard quickly agreed, and a day or two later, we shot what turned out to be one of the highlights of the film. Richard played Reverend Ike better than Reverend Ike would have. And man did we get high. Just watch Richard’s performance in the film sometime, and you’ll see the manic energy that coke gave him.

  The one-day shoot extended into a second day, but Richard was enjoying the experience so much that he agreed to come back without charging us. This is pretty unusual, in my experience, because actors or their agents will almost always take advantage of a situation like this to get as much money as they can. Not Richard though. At least not in this movie. Maybe it was all that good coke floating around the set, but Richard was back the next day and did a hell of a job.

  Richard had been clean and sober for several years at the time we compiled this book, but his multiple sclerosis prevented him from participating directly. Jennifer Lee, his life partner, suggested that I find existing material from his albums, films, and books. This composite, I believe, reflects the best of Richard’s riffs on his drug use and the culture he helped create. Richard Pryor died on December 10, 2005.

  From Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences

  (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995)

  You can’t tell nobody not to snort no cocaine. Mother fucker’s gonna snort it anyway. It took me a long time to learn that shit’ll kill you. Once a big booger came out my nose. A mother fucking black one this long. Scared the shit out of me. I said, “Goddamn, please, I’ll quit. Just let it stop.” (139–40)

  Then I fell in love with the pipe. It controlled my very being. This mother fucker say, “Don’t answer the phone. We have smoking to do.” Or the pipe’s talking about “Now come on, don’t put me down anyplace where I might fall. It’s two in the morning and it’s hard to get one of me.” (183)

  Somebody told me if you put coke on your dick you could fuck all night. Shouldn’t have told me. My dick got a Jones. Six hundred dollars a day just to get my dick hard. (78)

  Neither Maxine [former girlfriend] nor I had tried LSD before, so we didn’t know what to expect. We started out at a rock concert, but by the time that shit kicked in we had made it back to the safety of our home. Thank God.

  I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like had we stayed out, because once I started tripping, I got into a thing with our kitty. Ordinarily, me and the cat didn’t have much to do with each other. We put up with each other.

  “Hi, kitty. How ya doin’?”

  “Don’t talk to me, asshole. I see how you treat women.”

  Suddenly, this cat follows me around as if we were attached, as if the cat was my shadow. Real close. Too close. Particularly for somebody on LSD. Wherever I went the cat crept right beside me, rubbing, touching, meowing. I thought the cat was fucking with me, you know?

  “Get the fuck away.”

  “Fuck you, Rich.”

  I swear, me and that cat got into an argument. (79)

  I remember Redd Foxx and I spent an entire night and most of the next morning at a little table in his club, battling each other for the attention of a sexy waitress, listening to jazz, and snorting cocaine by the spoonful. I kept asking for more, more, more and Redd kept giving it to me, u
ntil finally I was too tired to inhale.

  “Hey Redd, why do I always want more?” I asked.

  He laughed as if to emphasize my ignorance.

  “Because you’re a junkie.”

  Then it was my turn to laugh.

  “Bullshit.”

  I just didn’t see. (101)

  Needless to say, going over to [dope dealer] Dirty Dick’s house meant I had one thing on my mind, and it was no secret to anybody, because I was so God-damn open about using cocaine that it had become a cornerstone of my act, such as it was. When I walked into his place one afternoon, I saw him going through this complicated process to fix up a fine rock of 100% pure coke and then smoke it.

  It transfixed me. My feet might as well have been in cement blocks. I stared and tried to comprehend the nuances of the ritual. It was like watching someone do a new dance step. It looked cool, the expression on his face, total bliss, real out there, and when the mother fucker came down from that rocket blast, he looked at me like he’s just come.

  “Oh, man,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, Rich. You know, I just seen God.”

  “God?”

  “Mother fucking God.”

  When I first did it, I knew it was going to fuck me up, but I had to do it. Had to be hip. Mother fucker said, “You ever try this?”

  I thought, He’s going to string me out. He’s a dope dealer who needs me to get hooked so he can get some freebase. This dude used to snort a little coke. But I saw him and said, “What’s wrong with you?”

  He said, “Have you ever freebased?”

  “Say what?”

  “Freebased?”

  He told me he saw Jesus.

  Dirty Dick didn’t have to ask if I wanted to try it. From the look in my eye, he just started to cook the rock.

  “I’ll do everything,” he said. “You just suck on the pipe.”

  Honest to God, I was scared that first time. I thought it was going to be something else. But it was nice.

  That was the worst part.

  That it was nice. (179)

  It started out innocently enough. Every now and then. A little bit. “Naw, not now. No base. Fuck it.” Pretty soon, I noticed I wasn’t walking as far away from the pipe as I used to. I used to put the pipe down and go.

  If you’re unlucky, you sit and wait for someone to fix your rocks, and that’s all you think about—when am I going to get my turn? The person who cooks has got all the power. I was fortunate. I had money. I cooked it myself. I was fascinated with shaking up the shit, cooking it, watching it bubble down, you know?

  I was like a kid watching magic.

  Performing it myself.

  Spellbound by the power of turning powder to rock.

  You put it on the paper end and—dink—it turns into a rock. (180)

  After freebasing without interruption for several days in a row, I wasn’t able to discern one day from the next. Night and day became shades of gray. Nor did I care about such details as time. But after waking from a short, unrefreshing, troubled sleep I drove into Hollywood, where I entered my bank and demanded all the cash from several large accounts I had there.

  My brain was strung out. That morning’s smoke-a-thon rekindled my paranoia that people were stealing from me.

  I wanted my money.

  While I was ineffectually arguing with the bank manager, who explained that he needed prior notice for such a transaction, Jennifer called my house and pleaded with my Aunt Dee to get me help. She’d never seen me so wasted and sickly. When Aunt Dee reassured her that I was fine, Jenny made a beeline out to [my home in] Northridge in order to confront me herself. But the sight of me in the dark, clutching my pipe, told her it was useless.

  “I know what I have to do,” I mumbled. “I’ve brought shame to my family. I’ve hurt you. I’ve destroyed my career. I know what I have to do.”

  Shortly after she frustrated herself out the door, Deboragh [former wife] phoned me. We hadn’t spoken for almost a year, but she felt compelled to check in and see how I was doing. It was as if she and Jenny, the people who didn’t give a damn about my power trips or being cut off, sensed it might be time to say good-bye. They knew it was a scary time.

  “You’re the only one I trust,” I told her. “They’re trying to get my money.”

  “Who is?” she asked.

  “It’s not fun anymore,” I mumbled.

  “What’s not fun, Richard?”

  “I don’t think I can get out of here, you know?”

  The house was full. From Rashon [bodyguard] to my cousin and Aunt Dee, not to mention the housekeepers and cook, people were doing their thing. They were trained to leave me alone. Oh, Mr. Pryor, he’s in his bedroom. They didn’t mention that the door was locked. By late afternoon, the only reason to suspect I was present was the continuous smell of acrid smoke and the foreboding vibes that sent into the rest of the house.

  Nothing changed as darkness took the heat out of the beautiful spring day. Hovered over my rocks, pipe, cognac, and Bic lighter, I smoked and soared and crashed and smoked again, repeating the deadly cycle over and over again as if I was chain smoking Marlboros. But I didn’t allow time even for cigarettes. I’d never felt more paranoid, depressed, or hopeless.

  Hopeless.

  As if I was drowning.

  Voices swirled in my head so that I wasn’t able to tell which came from me and which were hallucinations. My conversations became animated, like those crazy people on the street. I heard people who had worked for me talking outside the bedroom window. They were loud, rude, laughing, angry. They made fun of my helplessness. I yelled at them, louder and louder, and still they refused to answer.

  “What the fuck are you doing out there?”

  As that craziness went on, I continued to smoke until I ran out of cocaine. By then, I was experiencing serious dementia. Stuck in a surreal landscape of constantly shifting emotions. No weight. Floating at the distant end of a tunnel. Miserably alone. Frightened. Voices growing louder, closing in. Wave after wave of depression. Needing to get high. Real high.

  No more dope.

  Unsure what to do, I panicked.

  “God, what do you want me to do?” I cried. “What do you want me to do?”

  I didn’t wait for a response.

  “I’ll show you.” I said with the giddiness and relief of a certified madman. “I’ll show you.”

  More laughter mixed with tears.

  “I’m going to set myself on fire.”

  Hysteria.

  “Then I’ll be safe. Yeah, then I’ll be okay.”

  Now here’s how I really burned up. Usually, before I go to bed I have a little milk and cookies. One night I had that low-fat milk, that pasteurized shit, and I dipped my cookie in it and the shit blew up. And it scared the shit out of me. Not the blowing up, but the catching on fire.

  Imagining relief was nearby, I reached for the cognac bottle on the table in front of me and poured it all over me. Real natural, methodical. As the liquid soiled my body and clothing, I wasn’t scared. Neither did I feel inner peace.

  I was in a place called There.

  Suddenly, my isolation was interrupted by a knock on the door. A bang, really. My cousin opened it and looked inside at the moment I picked up my Bic lighter. I saw him trying to figure out what I was doing.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  He zeroed in on the lighter in my hand.

  “Oh no!” he exclaimed.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  Then I flicked it. The lighter didn’t work. I tried it again and nothing. Then I did it a third time.

  WHOOSH!

  I was engulfed in flame.

  Have you ever burned up? It’s weird. Because you go, “Hey, I’m not in the fireplace. I am the fireplace!” (186–89)

  Deep down, I knew the truth. Lying in my hospital bed, I let my mind wander back to the time when I’d asked Redd Foxx why I always wanted more, more, more cocaine, and how he’
d looked at my ignorant face and told me it was because I was an addict.

  An addict.

  I didn’t tell anyone.

  As if it was a secret. As if it wasn’t true.

  But who were you fooling, Rich?

  Even then you wanted more. (204)

  You go through changes in your life and you just fucking change. Something happened in my life just fucking changed my mind about all the shit. I used to think I knew everything, man.

  I’d be fucked up and I knew it. I knew all the shit.

  And all of a sudden I didn’t know shit.

  I was one of the dumbest mother fuckers that ever lived. If you catch me on the wrong day and ask me my name, you’re gonna get trouble. (206)

  Several weeks later Richard got a call from a friend in a rehab. She wanted him to help her in recovery by participating in her therapy. He reluctantly agreed. As he remembers the situation: (207)

  One day, caught in the fervor, I stood up and admitted that I, too, was a drug addict and alcoholic. It wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. Amen. Or hadn’t known for years. Sing it brother. But to say it loud, in front of strangers, without adding a punch line, man that was like saying adios to the greatest, funniest character I ever created. My best work, you know. And it scared the hell out of me. (208)

  From Richard Pryor: Here and Now (Columbia Pictures, 1993)

  I stopped drinking.

  It’s really strange.

  I stopped after twenty years. I’ll probably die tomorrow.

  I got tired of waking up in my car driving 90.

  You ever go home drunk, trying to get to your bed, and your house starts moving?

  You know you’re fucked up when your dog won’t come to you!