Becoming Richard Pryor

by Scott Saul

  371 “For what?”: Author’s interview with Badham; Badham and Modderno, I’ll Be in My Trailer, pp. 10–12.

  372 Once, Richard observed Williams: Author’s interview with Badham; “If there was a vagina”: Author’s interview with Cohen.

  372 talking often of bringing his gun . . . “You got to calm the guy down!”: Author’s interview with Cohen; “We had to move him away”: Author’s interview with Badham; a collective sigh of relief: Marilyn Beck, “Beck’s Show Business Beat,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, Sept. 3, 1975, p. 5C.

  373 “We work hard”: West, “The Bingo Long All-Stars,” p. H2.

  373 Richard felt at home: Author’s interview with Badham; expressed their love: Maslin, “‘Didn’t Cut Nobody’s Throat,’” p. 76. Notably it was Pryor, not his costars, who organized a batting and throwing contest for some ninety kids in the neighborhood of the Bingo Long shoot—a contest complete with real prizes, such as a trip to the World Series (Dave Distel, “Ashford Behind Plate in Front of Camera,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30, 1976, p. A6).

  373 running suit: Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” p. 55.

  374 amped to play a more intimate club: Author’s interview with Murray Swartz, Mar. 30, 2011.

  374 “one of my best ever”: Pryor Convictions, pp. 143–44.

  374 No. 1 . . . Top 15: . . . And It’s Deep Too, booklet.

  375 Richard’s hosting of Saturday Night: Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, p. 116.

  375 Lorne Michaels was feeling the heat: Ibid., pp. 116–17; “If I’d known”: Pryor Convictions, p. 145.

  375 The show that Richard delivered: Saturday Night, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC); Richard said “ass” twice: Hill and Weingrad, Saturday Night, p. 118.

  376 photos of his grandmother, uncle, and children: Saturday Night, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC).

  376 Richard and . . . Paul Mooney had noticed: Mooney, Black Is the New White, p. 161.

  376 In “Samurai Hotel”: Saturday Night, aired Dec. 13, 1975 (NBC). Richard, who had his own collection of samurai swords, had loved Belushi’s imitation of Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, and the writers had created “Samurai Hotel” as a vehicle for it.

  378 “Dead honky” defeats the “nigger” trump card: Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (New York: Pantheon, 2002), pp. 24–25.

  379 the sketch was his response . . . “Easiest sketch I ever write”: Mooney, Black Is the New White, pp. 159–65; “the doll-baby”: Steve Echeverria Jr., “Paul Mooney on Pryor, Chappelle and the State of Black America,” Tampa Herald-Tribune, May 26, 2006. “like an H-bomb”: Mooney, Black Is the New White, pp. 159–65;

  379 “Richard’s attitude to it”: “He Was Chevy Chase, and You Weren’t,” Hollywood Outbreak, Mar. 15, 2013; “asking Richard for as many slang words”: . . . And It’s Deep, Too!.

  380 “What do you expect to do,” “What the fuck”: Author’s interview with Cohen.

  381 modern black version: Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Picador, 1991), p. 75

  381 Badham coaxed unexpected nuances: Jay Cocks, “Infield Hit,” Time, Aug. 2, 1976.

  382 “irresistible”: Gary Arnold, “A High-Flying ‘Bingo Long,’” Washington Post, July 16, 1976, p. B1.

  382 “dizzy old cinematic devices”: John Simon, “Batting Average,” New York, July 26, 1976, p. 55; positive notices: Vincent Canby, “Film on Black Baseball Is a ‘Bingo,’” New York Times, July 17, 1976, p. 10; Joy Gould Boyum, “Playing Ball in Jim Crow’s Day,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 1976, p. 7; Gene Siskel, “‘Bingo’ Scores in an Off-the-Wall Fashion,” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1976, p. B3; Andrew Sarris, “‘Bingo Long’ Deserves Wider and Whiter Distribution,” Village Voice, Aug. 2, 1976, p. 93; seeded articles on the Negro Leagues: See, e.g., West, “The Bingo Long All-Stars,” pp. H1–H2; “Baseball Barnstormers Remembered,” Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, July 17, 1976, p. 3D; exposition game: Karen Jackovich, “It’s a ‘Jovial Battle’ When Bears Tangle with Bingo’s Boys,” Valley News, June 20, 1976, pp. 4–5; “the best movie I’ve ever seen”: Bingo Long advertisement, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1976. The film’s handling of race did provoke a few critics to pan the film. See Stephen Farber, “Minstrels on the Mound,” New West, Aug. 2, 1976, p. 103; Robert Taylor, “‘Bingo Long’—A Mixture of Slapstick and Violence,” Oakland Tribune, July 21, 1976, p. 22.

  382 third-most popular film: “50 Top-Grossing Films,” Variety, Aug. 4, 1976, p. 12; “50 Top-Grossing Films,” Variety, Sept. 22, 1976, p. 9; Even in its release at the Apollo: “Bway at Slow Crawl but ‘Bingo Long,’ in 41, Big 300G,” Variety, July 28, 1976, p. 8.

  383 $11.8 million in rentals: Cook, Lost Illusions, p. 500; impressive box office totals: Frank Segers, “Will ‘The Wiz’ Ease on Down the Road to Box-Office Ahs?,” Variety, Oct. 10, 1978, p. 2.

  Chapter 20: Hustling

  384 “I’m not a success yet”: Debbi Snook, “Richard Pryor Thinks Things Are Coming His Way,” Albany Times-Union, May 23, 1976, p. G2.

  384 a sleek office: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 58; “Black Press Mailer,” Richard Pryor folder, Jack Hirshberg Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, p. 3; a hefty down payment in cash: Author’s interview with Patricia Heitman, Sept. 11, 2011; a Spanish-style hacienda: Jennifer Lee Pryor, Tarnished Angel (New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1991), pp. 97–98; Pryor Convictions, p. 151; Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” pp. 57–58; Gertrude Gipson, “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,” Los Angeles Sentinel, Mar. 17, 1977, p. B; “A New Black Superstar,” Time, Aug. 22, 1977; Robinson, “Richard Pryor Talks,” p. 116.

  384 it had been thirty years since Northridge: Kevin Roderick, The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times Books, 2001); Kevin Roderick, “Hometown Memories,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24, 1994; Dana Bartholomew, “Oakie House Saved from Destruction,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 30, 2010; Laura Barraclough, Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).

  385 lived in the guesthouse: Gibson, “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,” p. B; a recurring dream: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic,” p. 58; “because nobody asked me”: Joyce Maynard, “King of the Scene-Stealers,” p. 11; “modern Willie Best”: Guy Flatley, “Peoria’s Booty Star Plays a One-Man Film Festival,” New York Times, Aug. 6, 1976, p. C4.

  385 screenwriter Colin Higgins’s original conception: “Colin Higgins,” Cinema Papers, Dec. 1982, p. 535.

  386 four hundred thousand dollars: Charles Higham, “What Makes Alan Ladd Jr. Hollywood’s Hottest Producer,” New York Times, July 17, 1977, p. D9. For a list of the films that inspired Higgins, see the early notes wherein he calls both The Lady Vanishes and North by Northwest “The Big One!” in “Super Chief,” Box 115, Folder 3, Colin Higgins Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Library, UCLA, n.p. (hereafter “Colin Higgins Papers”).

  386 “Bullshit! I got a high school diploma”: “REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” Box 40, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, p. 86; “Hey, brother”: “Silver Streak script, master,” Box 114, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, p. 141.

  387 “Achilles’ heel” . . . “I told Laddie”: Gene Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), p. 163; they considered hiring two black actors: Patrick Goldstein, “Higgins: Writer-Director on a Hot Streak,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24, 1981, p. B15; Wilder also advised Higgins: “Inter-office Correspondence, Twentieth Century Fox,” Box 116, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, n.p.; “That is one crazy nigger”: “REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” p. 116.

  387 On their first day of shooting together: Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, pp. 164–65. Two of Pryor’s most telling ad libs, which get at how he made his role more multidimensional: First, when the
villain calls Grover an “ignorant nigger,” he doesn’t reply by revealing his own ignorance but instead pushes back, with savvy, against the other side of the insult: “You don’t know me well enough to call me no nigger! I’ll slap the taste out your mouth!” Second, when George confesses how quickly he’s fallen for Hilly, Grover doesn’t say excitedly, “That’s the way it is with love. Fast! I always feel like I swallowed the Fourth of July.” Instead, he ruminates, more poetically, “I always lose my memory when I fall in love” (“REVISED—‘THE SILVER STREAK’—4/2/76,” pp. 70, 85–86).

  388 “I didn’t want to lose the spontaneity”: E-mail communication from Arthur Hiller, May 25, 2011.

  388 May 13: “‘The Silver Streak’ Shooting Schedule,” Box 116, Folder 4, Colin Higgins Papers, pp. 14–15.

  388 “I’m going to hurt a lot of black people”: Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, pp. 165–66.

  388 Fifteen minutes later: Ibid., p. 166; “you might be in pretty big trouble”: Silver Streak, directed by Arthur Hiller (Paramount, 1976).

  389 “What? Are you afraid”: Silver Streak.

  389 “All the police look for”: Alex Thein, “Color No Problem for Black Comic,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 17, 1976, p. 16.

  390 “goose[d] it into some semblance of life”: Molly Haskell, “The Orient Express It Isn’t,” Village Voice, Dec. 20, 1976; “One suspects”: Howard Kissel, “Arts and Pleasures,” Women’s Wear Daily, Dec. 7, 1976, p. 16; “For about fifteen minutes”: Pauline Kael, “Processing Sludge,” The New Yorker, Jan. 17, 1977, p. 98; “What furtive sprightliness”: Jay Cocks, “Milk Train,” Time, Dec. 13, 1976.

  391 “Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor take a train ride”: New York Times, Jan. 25, 1976, p. D10.

  391 he shut himself up in his dressing room: “Black Press Mailer,” p. 2. Pryor’s screenplay about a black God never came to fruition; Oh, God!, with George Burns as the deity, was released late in 1977 and became that year’s seventh-highest-grossing film. Mel Brooks had visited his buddy Gene: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic,” p. 62.

  391 “Don’t trust too many white folks”: Gipson “The Serious Side of Richard Pryor,” p. B.

  392 “I was looking to hustle”: Maslin, “‘Didn’t Cut Nobody’s Throat,’” p. 76; he mentioned Silver Streak only glancingly: Pryor Convictions, pp. 146, 149; they never met outside the context of their working relationship: Wilder, Kiss Me Like a Stranger, pp. 182–83.

  392 “It didn’t seem like an interesting movie”: “Reporter’s Transcript of Proceedings, Vol. IV,” Pryor v. Franklin, Case No. TAC 17 MP 114 (Mar. 3, 1982), pp. 56–57.

  392 Hollywood dissidents: Barbara Zheutlin and David Talbot, Creative Differences: Profiles of Hollywood Dissidents (Boston: South End Press, 1978).

  393 “woman with no patience for trifles”: Linda Gross, “She Battles for Minorities,” Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1977, p. F14; longtime activist . . . Third World Cinema: Dale Pollock, “Woman Studio Chief Is Remembered,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 14, 1984, p. C7; Michael Seiler, “Hannah Weinstein Dies at 73,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 11, 1984, p. A14; Steve Neale, “Swashbuckling, Sapphire and Salt: Un-American Contributions to TV Costume Adventure Series in the 1950s,” in Frank Kurtnik et al., eds., “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), pp. 199–204; Third World Cinema: “Ossie Davis Gets Unions to Allow Trainees on Set,” Daily Variety, Feb. 23, 1971, pp. 1, 13; A. H. Weiler, “The Whole ‘World’ in Their Hands,” New York Times, Jan. 2, 1972, p. D9; Gregg Kilday, “Women as Film Producers: A Success Story,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1974, pp. E1, E11; Barbara Campbell, “Third World Pins Movie Hopes on ‘Claudine,’” New York Times, June 5, 1975, p. 49; Gross, “She Battles for Minorities,” p. F14; “Four-Yr.-Struggle Behind Filming of Black Comedy-Drama ‘Claudine,’” Daily Variety, Apr. 15, 1974.

  393 It was Van Peebles: Haskins, Richard Pryor, p. 110.

  393 “Who do you want me to play?”: Pryor Convictions, p. 149.

  394 committed to the film: “Pix, People, Pickups,” Daily Variety, June 25, 1976, p. 1.

  394 While preparing for the role: “Universal Acquires Wertmuller Comedy,” Hollywood Reporter, June 30, 1976; an Italian sex-and-politics satire: Peter Biskind, “Lina Wertmuller: The Politics of Private Life,” Film Quarterly (Winter 1974/1975): 10–16; into the context of black life: Sheila Benson, “Richard Pryor, Who Is Co-Starring with Richard Pryor and Richard Pryor in Michael Schultz’s Next Film,” Mother Jones, June 1977, p. 52; director of choice: Author’s interview with Michael Schultz, Sept. 4, 2010. Steve Krantz was himself something of an iconoclast—a former joke writer for Milton Berle who became an impresario of countercultural and black filmmaking, producing Fritz the Cat, the first X-rated animated feature, and Schultz’s directorial debut, Cooley High. In the spirit of Richard’s comedy, Fritz the Cat used actual winos, junkies, and Black Panthers to voice the lines of street people and militants (“Obituaries: Steve Krantz, 83,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 15, 2007, p. B11; Earl Gottschalk Jr., “What If They Showed Cartoons and No Kids Could Come?,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 1971, pp. 42–43; Earl Gottschalk Jr., “Move Over, Mickey—Sex, Drugs, and Violence Come to Cartoonery,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 13, 1971, pp. 1, 29).

  394 “My theory is”: Zheutlin and Talbot, Creative Differences, pp. 191, 197–203; Cooley High, directed by Michael Schultz (American Independent Pictures, 1974); Car Wash, directed by Michael Schultz (Universal, 1976); an inner-city version of Robert Altman’s Nashville: Author’s interview with Michael Schultz.

  395 he signed on for the Wertmüller adaptation: “Universal Acquires Wertmuller Comedy”; “I hope you can shoot this better”: Author’s interview with Michael Schultz.

  395 around the beginning of July: “U Signs Richard Pryor as Actor and Scripter,” Daily Variety, July 7, 1976; relaxed enough to lounge on a long white sofa: Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” p. 57; a college student in North Carolina: Zheutlin and Talbot, Creative Differences, p. 147; an artist in SoHo: Maureen Orth, “Hollywood’s New Power Elite: The Baby Moguls,” New West, June 19, 1978, p 20; “the focal point”: Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), p. 338; a particular reputation for stuffiness: Charles Schreger, “Killer Shark Gets Lampooned,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 4, 1979, p. G12.

  396 “It is pure junk food”: Zheutlin and Talbot, Creative Differences, pp. 150–51;

  396 unprecedented terms: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 58; an eye-popping three million dollars . . . “We believe it is possible” . . . “Well, I guess”: Weston, “Richard Pryor: ‘Every Nigger Is a Star,’” p. 57; Will Tusher, “Richard Pryor’s Contractual Way of Life: Pay or Play or Vice Versa,” Daily Variety, Aug. 21, 1979, p. 6.

  396 one of Hollywood’s “baby moguls”: Orth, “Hollywood’s New Power Elite,” pp. 20, 23–24.

  397 “I’m through actively messing with my body”: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 58; “holistic living”: “John Williams interview with Claude Brown.”

  397 less than two weeks . . . “It’s not my best work”: Gene Siskel, “Cary Grant’s First Acid Trip—and Other Untold Star Tales,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 5, 1977, p. A1; Bicentennial Nigger, Warner Bros. BSK 3114 (1976).

  398 title track: “Bicentennial Nigger,” Bicentennial Nigger.

  399 “Twenty-third century”: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 64; a three-year moratorium: Snook, “Richard Pryor Thinks Things Are Coming His Way,” p. G2; “I don’t really want to go”: Jacobson, “Richard Pryor Is the Blackest Comic of Them All,” p. 64.

  399 A few weeks later: “Bridges, Julien to Costar in Third World Cinema Pic,” Hollywood Reporter, July 1, 1976.

  399 worried about how he could absorb a part: “Pam Grier interviewed by John Wildman” (
video), Walter Reade Theater, New York City, Mar. 16, 2013; “take care of things”: Pryor Convictions, p. 150; setting off firecrackers: Author’s interview with Schultz; “When I was a kid”: Flatley, “Peoria’s Booty Star Plays a One-Man Film Festival,” p. C4; he would pull over a chair: Richard Pryor: A Man and His Madness, p. 111.

  399 “were creating all kinds of havoc”: Author’s interview with Schultz.

  400 wanted to thread an element of fantasy: “Pam Grier interviewed by John Wildman”; felt the film was rattling off course: Sue Reilly, “Schultz Directing Wendell Scott Pic,” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 19, 1976, pp. 1, 13; Gregg Kilday, “Substitutions,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 1976; Weinstein was not drawn to formal experimentation: Zheutlin and Talbot, Creative Differences, pp. 203–4.

  400 “Here’s my star”: Author’s interview with Michael Schultz; reshoot 80 percent of it: Zheutlin and Talbot, Creative Differences, pp. 203–4; In Pryor Convictions, Pryor recalls that Van Peebles was fired because he wanted there to be more blacks on the crew. In interviews with the author, Schultz and Van Peebles remembered differently, and the press reports of the time all point to “creative differences.” It seems unlikely, too, that Weinstein and Van Peebles would butt heads on this score, as she had been a leading advocate of minority-led casts and crews (Pryor Convictions, p. 150; author’s interview with Melvin Van Peebles, Sept. 30, 2010).

  401 “This is an opportunity”: “Pam Grier interviewed by John Wildman.”

  401 “Pam Grier, you’re just a farmer”: Pam Grier, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010), p. 160.

  401 “He was beautiful”: Maynard, “Richard Pryor, King of the Scene-Stealers,” p. 11; “was different from how I would do it”: Jean-Claude Bouis, “Richard Pryor Returns from a Busy ‘Vacation,’” Toledo Blade, Sept. 18, 1977, p. G1; Jerry Wayne Williamson, Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 142–43; Gold, “Richard Pryor Finds a Lot Not to Laugh About,” p. 12.