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Richard Pryor: Stabbing, Shooting, F***ing, Burning, and Freebasing · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
0:03
Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
0:08
Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about
0:21
Speaker 1: a child raised in a brothel who went on to
0:24
Speaker 1: become one of the biggest stars in the world. It's
0:27
Speaker 1: about a stabbing, a shootout, a drug bust. It's about
0:31
Speaker 1: a man on fire. This is a story about Richard Pryor,
0:37
Speaker 1: a comedian who made some of the funniest films of
0:40
Speaker 1: all time, A man who played his role on stage
0:43
Speaker 1: as a stand up like a great musician would play
0:46
Speaker 1: his instrument. And great musicians, of course, make great music.
0:51
Speaker 1: Unlike that music I played for you at the top
0:53
Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
0:57
Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called this Man's on Fire MK.
1:02
Speaker 2: Two.
1:03
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
1:06
Speaker 1: rights to Funky Town by Lips Incorporated. And why would
1:10
Speaker 1: I play you that specific slice of puffy parted cheese.
1:14
Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
1:18
Speaker 1: song in America on June ninth, nineteen eighty and that
1:22
Speaker 1: was the day that Richard Pryor nearly died after he
1:25
Speaker 1: set himself on fire, winding up in the hospital covered
1:28
Speaker 1: in third degree burns. On this episode stabbing.
1:33
Speaker 2: Shooting, Burnie freebasing and one of the greatest to ever
1:37
Speaker 2: do it, Richard Pryor. I'm Jake Brennan and this this
1:43
Speaker 2: disgrace Sland.
2:10
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor was in pain. Most of his body was burned,
2:15
Speaker 1: the worst of it the third degree burns. There were
2:17
Speaker 1: on his chest, his back, his arms, his neck, and
2:19
Speaker 1: his face. They oozed pus and blood. The doc gave
2:24
Speaker 1: him a one to three chance of survival, and if
2:26
Speaker 1: he did survive, Richard Pryor would have to face something
2:29
Speaker 1: else besides the pain. He would have to face the fear,
2:34
Speaker 1: the fear that after years of searching from Peoria to Germany,
2:37
Speaker 1: Youngstown to Pittsburgh, Vegas, to Berkeley in New York to
2:41
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, he had finally found him, the real Richard Pryor,
2:46
Speaker 1: and that guy scared the shit out of him. They
2:51
Speaker 1: all said that Richard Pryor was fearless, that he was
2:53
Speaker 1: a pioneer when he came to what could be said
2:55
Speaker 1: on stage or what could be written for the screen.
2:58
Speaker 1: That after the paradigm shift ushered in by groundbreaking black
3:01
Speaker 1: comedians including Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby. Richard Pryor was
3:05
Speaker 1: a new kind of comic for a new age. But
3:08
Speaker 1: even Richard Pryor knew that there was a fine line
3:10
Speaker 1: between being fearless and being incapable of living in moderation.
3:15
Speaker 1: And being incapable of moderation was what got him here,
3:19
Speaker 1: covered in third degree burns, fearing that the real Richard
3:22
Speaker 1: Pryor was about to be revealed to the world. That
3:26
Speaker 1: guy the real hymn, he stepped right out of a
3:29
Speaker 1: wall at Richard's home. He stood there in his underwear,
3:31
Speaker 1: looking at Richard, looking back at him like a reflection
3:34
Speaker 1: in a mirror, and then he said he was the devil,
3:36
Speaker 1: which meant they were both the devil, since Richard and
3:39
Speaker 1: this thing were one and the same. Are you really me?
3:43
Speaker 1: Richard asked him, just to make sure, yes, I am you,
3:47
Speaker 1: it replied, and then it disappeared back into the wall.
3:52
Speaker 1: At first, Richard wrote it off as the state of
3:54
Speaker 1: his mind. It was just a hallucination, paranoia. Night was
3:58
Speaker 1: day up was down, and there were no friends and
4:00
Speaker 1: family anymore, just people in the walls and on the
4:03
Speaker 1: other side of the windows. Out to steal his money
4:05
Speaker 1: and maybe even his mind. That was one hundred percent
4:08
Speaker 1: the cocaine talking. And I don't mean a couple of
4:10
Speaker 1: lines shared at some chic industry party. I'm talking rocks
4:13
Speaker 1: of pure coke heated up with a big lighter until
4:16
Speaker 1: the vapors start to rise and you just breathe in deep.
4:19
Speaker 1: I'm talking freebase, just like Dirty Dick tott him. Dirty
4:23
Speaker 1: Dick had been dealing Richard the good shit for years
4:25
Speaker 1: and hadn't steered him wrong yet. So Richard steered himself
4:29
Speaker 1: right into an empty room and locked the door behind him.
4:32
Speaker 1: Fucked out of the guy in the wall. Richard hit
4:34
Speaker 1: the pipe and didn't stop. The binge lasted for what
4:37
Speaker 1: two three days. He dipped the cotton swab and rum
4:41
Speaker 1: and lit it with his lighter. This was his torch.
4:44
Speaker 1: He didn't want to use an actual lighter to heat
4:46
Speaker 1: up the pipe, or else you'd be inhaling lighter fluid.
4:50
Speaker 1: The rum made it less toxic. Thus was the logic
4:53
Speaker 1: of a junkie in the throws of addiction. But this
4:56
Speaker 1: rum was one hundred and fifty one proof, and Richard
4:58
Speaker 1: Pryor was capitalized. Fucked fucked up, that is, before long
5:03
Speaker 1: the rum was everywhere, it was all over him, and
5:05
Speaker 1: all it took was one flick of that big letter,
5:08
Speaker 1: one spark for it all to go out in the flames.
5:13
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor literally set himself on fire, just like that
5:17
Speaker 1: monk did protesting the Vietnam War. But Richard Pryor was
5:20
Speaker 1: no monk Jack. Richard Pryor didn't abstain. He indulged in everything.
5:26
Speaker 1: Pussy booze, cocaine, cocaine. Man, That shit be fucking with you.
5:31
Speaker 1: That shit brought on an entirely different person when you
5:33
Speaker 1: were on it, or maybe it was the person you
5:35
Speaker 1: truly were on the inside that finally emerged, like that
5:38
Speaker 1: apparition from inside the wall, the person you hid from
5:42
Speaker 1: everyone else. And as much as you want to deny it,
5:45
Speaker 1: that person is real. But just what was real? Peoria
5:51
Speaker 1: was real? If it played in Peoria, I could play anywhere,
5:54
Speaker 1: or so that old vaudeville same way. They called Peoria
5:58
Speaker 1: the model city. But as rich Pryor himself said later
6:01
Speaker 1: in his stand up act, the ones calling his hometown
6:03
Speaker 1: the model city were the ones keeping Peoria's black residence
6:07
Speaker 1: in their place. In the nineteen forties, and nineteen fifties.
6:10
Speaker 1: That place was light years from the bullshit family life
6:13
Speaker 1: that played out on Father Knows Best. Sitcoms like that
6:17
Speaker 1: were science fiction. Over on North Washington Street, in the
6:21
Speaker 1: black part of town, Peoria was populated with pimps, drunks, bootleggers,
6:25
Speaker 1: and sex workers. Richard's grandfather owned the local pool hall,
6:30
Speaker 1: his grandmother ran the town brothel. His own mother worked
6:33
Speaker 1: at the brothel. And so as a kid, Richard Pryor
6:37
Speaker 1: saw some shit. He saw a baby in a shoe
6:40
Speaker 1: box deader than a motherfucker. He saw a man who
6:43
Speaker 1: lost a knife fight struggling to push his guts back
6:45
Speaker 1: into his stomach. He saw his own mother in bed
6:48
Speaker 1: with a john. He also saw his mother get hit
6:51
Speaker 1: by his father, and that only happened twice. After the
6:54
Speaker 1: first time, she told him, Okay, motherfucker, don't hit me
6:57
Speaker 1: no more, and after the second time, she didn't need
6:59
Speaker 1: her words. She took one look at Richard's father standing
7:02
Speaker 1: in front of her poop bearing it, wearing nothing but
7:04
Speaker 1: a T shirt and underwear, and she swung her long
7:06
Speaker 1: fingernails at his crotch. Richard's father screamed, blood ran down
7:10
Speaker 1: his leg. She ripped his nutsack right open. Yes, that
7:14
Speaker 1: actually happened. Look it up in Richard Pryor's Peoria. This
7:19
Speaker 1: is how you handled your shit. You did it fast
7:21
Speaker 1: and maybe with your fingernails, even better with a knife
7:25
Speaker 1: or a gun. When some guy talked shit to Richard's
7:28
Speaker 1: grandfather and the family tavern, a place called the Famous Door,
7:31
Speaker 1: Richard's father drew a pistol and emptied every last round
7:34
Speaker 1: into his ass, and that motherfucker hit the floor, bleeding
7:37
Speaker 1: and screaming. But he wasn't dead. He dragged his bullet
7:40
Speaker 1: written body across the floor, pulled out a knife and
7:43
Speaker 1: sliced Richard's father right across his leg. And between that
7:46
Speaker 1: and the torn nutsack, dude was good and fucked up
7:48
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. And that wasn't the
7:51
Speaker 1: life Richard wanted to live. Though work, you're asked to
7:53
Speaker 1: the bone in the pool hall and the cat house
7:55
Speaker 1: or the slaughterhouse every day, only to get shot up
7:58
Speaker 1: when you were busy trying to get fucked up at
7:59
Speaker 1: the end of a long night. Fuck that. He joined
8:03
Speaker 1: the army and he get the hell out of Puria.
8:07
Speaker 1: But even in the service, even in Germany, in Europe,
8:11
Speaker 1: where the world was supposed to be enlightened and free,
8:13
Speaker 1: shit was still the same one hundred and fifty bars
8:16
Speaker 1: in Kaiserslat and only three of them allowed black people
8:19
Speaker 1: to walk through the door. And that shit surprised him.
8:22
Speaker 1: What didn't surprise him was that when his unit was
8:24
Speaker 1: taking in some rn R and watching a melodrama about
8:27
Speaker 1: race and class in America, one of his fellow soldiers,
8:31
Speaker 1: a white guy, laughed a little too hard at the
8:33
Speaker 1: wrong part, and why you could take Richard out of Peoria,
8:36
Speaker 1: you sure as hell couldn't take Peoria out of Richard.
8:39
Speaker 1: Richard pulled a switchblade. He stuck it in the white
8:41
Speaker 1: soldier's back deep, and then he pulled it out, and
8:44
Speaker 1: the blade glistened with blood, and Richard stabbed him again
8:48
Speaker 1: and again and again. He stabbed that dude six or
8:51
Speaker 1: seven times, each time, hoping it would be the final
8:53
Speaker 1: blow and that this backwoods pack ahead honky would just
8:55
Speaker 1: fucking die. But just like the guy Richard's father shot
8:58
Speaker 1: back in the whorehouse in Puria, this kid lived, and
9:01
Speaker 1: they tossed Richard in a jail cell. He spent his
9:04
Speaker 1: final days as an enlisted man on a cold cement
9:07
Speaker 1: floor he received the mercy of a base commander more
9:10
Speaker 1: concerned with his own retirement than actually dealing with Richard's
9:13
Speaker 1: mutinous ass. And then he received an early discharge and
9:16
Speaker 1: he was shipped back home. It was the first time
9:19
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor cheated death, but it wouldn't be the last.
9:49
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor was a born performer. He'd been putting on
9:52
Speaker 1: a show since he was just a kid, and ever
9:55
Speaker 1: since he was a kid, there was incentive to perform. First,
9:59
Speaker 1: it was the reward, the performance itself. His elementary school
10:02
Speaker 1: teacher cut him a deal. If he could actually get
10:05
Speaker 1: to school on time every day, then each Friday afternoon
10:08
Speaker 1: he could perform a stand up set in front of
10:09
Speaker 1: the class. The next incentive was laughter. Tasted sweet like revenge,
10:16
Speaker 1: but you could get it without violence. And now, in
10:19
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, at twenty six years old, the incentive
10:22
Speaker 1: for Richard Pryor was money. Get on stage, say something funny,
10:27
Speaker 1: make him laugh, get paid, and get the fuck out.
10:30
Speaker 1: Didn't matter if Richard's stand up at the time was
10:32
Speaker 1: a faint echo of Bill Cosby's shick, he got paid,
10:35
Speaker 1: didn't He But as much of a born performer as
10:37
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor was as much as he learned on the
10:40
Speaker 1: stage as a Greenwich village and beyond. It was always
10:42
Speaker 1: that occasional tough crowd, like the one at the United
10:46
Speaker 1: States Customs on the Mexican border. The customs agent didn't
10:49
Speaker 1: have a laugh or a smile, or he didn't say shit.
10:52
Speaker 1: That dude just looked at Richard from behind his ray bands,
10:56
Speaker 1: one long look as Richard slowly inched his car closer
10:59
Speaker 1: and to the checkpoint. And there was no turning around, now,
11:03
Speaker 1: no take backs. Richard was in this and he was fucked.
11:07
Speaker 1: He pulled up to the checkpoint and applied the brake,
11:09
Speaker 1: and the agent got close, craned his neck to look
11:12
Speaker 1: in the back of the car. What were you doing
11:14
Speaker 1: in Mexico? Just visiting, seeing the sights? It was good,
11:17
Speaker 1: real good movie bueno. Richard didn't say anything about the
11:21
Speaker 1: Tijuana brothel he visited her, the women he focked, or
11:23
Speaker 1: the tequila that flowed like an honorary body fluid. And
11:26
Speaker 1: the agent kept on with that long look, and then
11:29
Speaker 1: he pointed to an area off to the side pull over.
11:33
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor had been in Tijuana because he was running away,
11:36
Speaker 1: not unlike he had run away from Peoria to the
11:39
Speaker 1: army all those years ago, but now he was running
11:41
Speaker 1: from responsibility. His girlfriend was nine months pregnant, and she
11:45
Speaker 1: wanted Richard to commit. She wanted Richard to settle down
11:48
Speaker 1: and start a family. He'd already done that once before,
11:52
Speaker 1: didn't end well. He didn't feel like doing it again,
11:55
Speaker 1: not right now. So instead, Richard jumped at a car
11:58
Speaker 1: and just drove. Getting over theer was easy enough. Coming back.
12:02
Speaker 1: There's another thing, altogether. There wasn't a joke or a
12:05
Speaker 1: well rehearsed routine that was going to get him out
12:07
Speaker 1: of having his car searched. He didn't even try it.
12:10
Speaker 1: The customers agent poked around and found a little grass,
12:13
Speaker 1: all right, that was Richard's fault. He should have smoked
12:16
Speaker 1: the rest of it before he hit the road, and
12:18
Speaker 1: the agent examined it with his eyes and decided it
12:20
Speaker 1: was an ounce. An ounce, damn, there was barely enough
12:23
Speaker 1: to roll a joint an ounce his ass. Running away
12:27
Speaker 1: from his problems was proven to be a lesson brilliant
12:29
Speaker 1: plan for Richard Pryor. Thankfully, business was booming. He was
12:33
Speaker 1: making that money, so his wallet was fat that he
12:36
Speaker 1: could afford to pay his own baill, So maybe nineteen
12:39
Speaker 1: sixty seven would be alright after all. Nineteen sixty seven
12:45
Speaker 1: was the year Richard met Paul Mooney, the man who
12:47
Speaker 1: would become his co writer and one of his closest friends.
12:50
Speaker 1: It was also the year he met Dirty Dick, the
12:52
Speaker 1: dealer with the top shelf stuff, the cocaine that Richard
12:55
Speaker 1: was dishing out one two hundred dollars a day for
12:58
Speaker 1: the Nineteen sixty seven was also of the year that
13:00
Speaker 1: he had the epiphany. It happened in Vegas. Dean Martin
13:04
Speaker 1: and those other rap pack dudes half drunk, laughing in
13:06
Speaker 1: the audience. Richard up on stage, telling jokes, getting last
13:10
Speaker 1: getting paid. He had an appearance on Ed Sullivan to
13:12
Speaker 1: thank for this opportunity, or maybe it was the Carson Show,
13:16
Speaker 1: but he knew it was all in act. Literally. The
13:18
Speaker 1: more he went through the motions, the more jokes didn't
13:21
Speaker 1: resonate with him. They weren't about his life. What was
13:24
Speaker 1: the people said, write what you know, Richard Pryor was
13:27
Speaker 1: it writing what he knew? And what did he know?
13:30
Speaker 1: He knew Peoria, He knew junkies and drunks, pimps, and pushers.
13:34
Speaker 1: He knew sex, he knew pain, and he knew what
13:36
Speaker 1: it was like to be a black man navigating a
13:38
Speaker 1: world of ignorance and fear. The lights on the Vegas
13:42
Speaker 1: stage were bright, and they burned into his eyeballs, and
13:45
Speaker 1: they flooded his peripheral vision. Soon all I could see
13:49
Speaker 1: was the blinding light. It's talking dead in his tracks.
13:52
Speaker 1: Must have looked like a goddamn idiot just standing there.
13:55
Speaker 1: The hell am I doing here? He realized after the
13:58
Speaker 1: fact that he had actually said that line out loud.
14:01
Speaker 1: It was a rhetorical question. He already knew the answer.
14:05
Speaker 1: He turned around and walked off the stage. They told
14:08
Speaker 1: him he'd never work in Vegas again, and you know what,
14:10
Speaker 1: that was just fucking fine with him. He didn't want
14:13
Speaker 1: to be that guy. He wanted to be Richard pryor
14:15
Speaker 1: the real Richard Pryor. They weren't gonna believe their ears.
14:18
Speaker 1: He would shock them, He would make them piss themselves,
14:21
Speaker 1: laughing until their slacks were soaked, and not just because
14:23
Speaker 1: what he said was funnier, because it was provocative, but
14:26
Speaker 1: because it was real, Just like Miles, Miles, Davis did
14:31
Speaker 1: whatever the hell he wanted but whatever the hell Miles
14:34
Speaker 1: Davis wanted to do was one hundred percent the opposite
14:36
Speaker 1: of what everyone else wanted him to do. You think
14:38
Speaker 1: Columbia Records wanted Miles Davis doing when he did, no
14:40
Speaker 1: fucking way, man, But Miles did Miles period, no two
14:43
Speaker 1: ways around him. And when Miles Davis and Richard Pryor
14:46
Speaker 1: did some shows together in New York City, Miles flipped
14:49
Speaker 1: the script. Those shows weren't your typical shows with a
14:52
Speaker 1: comic warming up the crowd before the musician took the
14:54
Speaker 1: stage for a headlining set. Miles told Richard, hey man,
14:57
Speaker 1: I opened for you. And that was far out. That
15:01
Speaker 1: was Miles Davis giving Richard Pryor his blessing. That was
15:04
Speaker 1: Miles saying, I see what you're doing, I hear you,
15:07
Speaker 1: I feel you. But just as Richard Pryor's realness was
15:11
Speaker 1: having a profound effect on his career and on the
15:13
Speaker 1: evolution of American comedy, it was making everything else in
15:17
Speaker 1: his life worse. Every year was some new bullshit. He
15:21
Speaker 1: was arrested again for getting in a fight with the
15:23
Speaker 1: guy working at the desk at his apartment building. That
15:26
Speaker 1: dude ensued Richard for seventy five thousand dollars and won.
15:30
Speaker 1: And then there were the girlfriends and the ex girlfriends,
15:32
Speaker 1: and the wives and the ex wives. They were piling up.
15:35
Speaker 1: Some were coming after Richard for child support, some were
15:38
Speaker 1: coming for blood, Some were the lawyered up, some had warrants.
15:42
Speaker 1: And as the nineteen sixties turned into the nineteen seventies,
15:45
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor was a wanted man. But Richard Pryor wanted
15:49
Speaker 1: something else. He wanted to do more cocaine. He wanted
15:52
Speaker 1: to get drunk. He wanted to fuck. He wanted to
15:55
Speaker 1: unpack all the dark corners of his life, all those junkies, pimps,
15:59
Speaker 1: and scary family members of his past, his grandmother, his mom,
16:02
Speaker 1: all the dope he was doing, and the sex he
16:04
Speaker 1: was happy, get it all out of his head, get
16:06
Speaker 1: it down on paper, and transform it all into a
16:09
Speaker 1: comedy juggernaut that had never been seen before. To do
16:12
Speaker 1: all that, he had to get away. So in nineteen
16:15
Speaker 1: seventy one, Richard Pryor once again got behind the wheel
16:19
Speaker 1: of a car, this time with his pal Paul Mooney
16:21
Speaker 1: at his side, and he escaped away from his obligations,
16:26
Speaker 1: away from the soul sucking traps of places like Las Vegas,
16:29
Speaker 1: and away from the people trying to catch him, the
16:31
Speaker 1: people trying to stop him, and Richard Pryor didn't stop
16:35
Speaker 1: running until he reached Berkeley, California, that freaky diey place
16:38
Speaker 1: on the edge of the world where the Black Panthers, Bradburgers,
16:41
Speaker 1: musicians and poets were all conspiring to do whatever it
16:45
Speaker 1: took to feel free. We'll be right back after this.
16:51
Speaker 3: We're we're where.
17:01
Speaker 1: The gun was on the nightstand inside his north Ridge home,
17:04
Speaker 1: three point fifty seven magnum, big motherfucker. It wasn't small
17:08
Speaker 1: like his three eighty automatic. It wasn't unweely like his shotgun,
17:12
Speaker 1: or useless like his antique flintlock. This was the showpiece.
17:17
Speaker 1: This was the what the fuck did you say? Gun?
17:21
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor picked it up. This was the piece Richard
17:24
Speaker 1: waved around when it was clear he was losing another
17:26
Speaker 1: argument with his wife. You're gonna shoot me, then shoot me,
17:29
Speaker 1: his wife told him. Richard pointed it away from her.
17:32
Speaker 1: He didn't actually want to shoot her, which didn't mean
17:34
Speaker 1: he didn't want to shoot something, and she told him
17:37
Speaker 1: to put the gun down. Fuck you, he said, and
17:39
Speaker 1: then he told his wife to round up her friends
17:41
Speaker 1: and get the hell out of his house. It was
17:43
Speaker 1: just minutes in a New Year's Day nineteen seventy eight.
17:46
Speaker 1: The party that Richard Pryor and his now third wife
17:49
Speaker 1: were hosting had gone as flat as day old champagne.
17:52
Speaker 1: What had started out as a celebration was now all
17:55
Speaker 1: out domestic warfare. Moments ago, Richard and his wife had
17:59
Speaker 1: shared midnight kiss, and now they were at each other's throats.
18:03
Speaker 1: Didn't help that they were drunk and high on some
18:05
Speaker 1: a dirty dick's supply. Richard decided that his wife and
18:08
Speaker 1: her friends weren't moving fast enough. He pointed the magnum
18:11
Speaker 1: at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The gun fired,
18:14
Speaker 1: and the bullet blew apart the ten thousand dollars Tiffany,
18:17
Speaker 1: she had a leer hanging from above, and the women
18:19
Speaker 1: moved faster. Now outside, they piled into a buick. Richard
18:23
Speaker 1: got into the Mercedes, turned the key in the ignition,
18:26
Speaker 1: put it in drive, and then he drove it straight
18:29
Speaker 1: into the buick, over and over. The women screamed, they
18:33
Speaker 1: ditched the buick. Richard falled soon and stepped out of
18:36
Speaker 1: the Mercedes. He didn't know what his wife's next move
18:38
Speaker 1: would be. Maybe she'd push him aside and take the bence,
18:41
Speaker 1: get the fuck out. Maybe it would be the last time.
18:45
Speaker 1: Maybe she wouldn't come back. Richard didn't care, but all
18:48
Speaker 1: the same, he didn't want her getting in that car,
18:51
Speaker 1: not because she'd leave, because if she did, then she'd win,
18:55
Speaker 1: and Richard Pryor wasn't about to lose another argument. Fuck that.
18:59
Speaker 1: So we jumped between his wife and the Mercedes, pulled
19:02
Speaker 1: back the hammer on the magnum, pointed it at one
19:04
Speaker 1: of the tires, and pulled the trigger. A few years
19:12
Speaker 1: earlier before, he had a house in northrich back when
19:15
Speaker 1: he was making his Great Escape to Berkeley with Paul Mooney,
19:18
Speaker 1: Richard felt like he'd found a new lease on life,
19:21
Speaker 1: creatively and personally. Here in the Bay Area, hippies were
19:25
Speaker 1: protesting the war. Black people like him were declaring that
19:29
Speaker 1: there were somebody. He started hanging out with freedom fighters
19:32
Speaker 1: like Angela Davis and Hughey Nue, with poets like Ali
19:35
Speaker 1: Young and Ishmael Reid. Intellectualism didn't have to be a
19:39
Speaker 1: dirty word. You could be smart and cussed. Like one
19:42
Speaker 1: of the women who worked at his grandmother's brothel. The
19:44
Speaker 1: two weren't mutually exclusive. That was the lesson, along with
19:48
Speaker 1: the realization that he had a lyce Worth material to
19:51
Speaker 1: draw from, a lesson he took with him when he
19:53
Speaker 1: moved down to Los Angeles. It was all about being fearless.
19:57
Speaker 1: There was again that word fearless, the word that everyone
20:01
Speaker 1: was using to describe him. In reality, Richard Pryor just
20:05
Speaker 1: didn't give a shit anymore. He didn't give a shit
20:07
Speaker 1: that his material was obscene, that it was profane, but hey,
20:11
Speaker 1: selling over a million copies of a live comedy record,
20:13
Speaker 1: holding on the number one spot on the Billboard arm
20:15
Speaker 1: B chart for four straight weeks for a live comedy record,
20:19
Speaker 1: and then winning a Grammy Award for a comedy record
20:22
Speaker 1: that he could give a shit about because now he
20:26
Speaker 1: was in demand, and because now the money was rolling
20:29
Speaker 1: in more than it ever had, which meant more money
20:31
Speaker 1: for Calrossier and cocaine. But whether it was getting profound,
20:34
Speaker 1: getting laughst getting famous, or getting high, Richard Pryor did
20:38
Speaker 1: nothing in moderation, which was exactly why mel Brooks hired
20:43
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor to help write a script for his next film,
20:46
Speaker 1: a Western satire about a black railroad worker who's appointed
20:50
Speaker 1: sheriff of an all white town. Mel Brooks wanted this
20:53
Speaker 1: movie to not just be funny, to be outrageously shockingly funny.
20:58
Speaker 1: The jokes, the lane, which, the lines that were crossed,
21:01
Speaker 1: the whole thing had to be no holds. Barren blazing
21:05
Speaker 1: Saddles was a perfect assignment for Richard Pryor. He threw
21:09
Speaker 1: himself into the script he wrote with utter abandon. He
21:12
Speaker 1: helped create not just one of the funniest mel Brooks movies,
21:15
Speaker 1: but one of the funniest American comedies of all time.
21:18
Speaker 1: And he did it while under the impression that he
21:20
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor would also play the lead role of Bart,
21:24
Speaker 1: the black sheriff. Richard often acted out lines and scenes
21:27
Speaker 1: in the writer's room. Everyone involved in the movie could
21:30
Speaker 1: see it. He was the obvious choice, but at the
21:33
Speaker 1: last minute the studio revealed that they thought otherwise. They
21:36
Speaker 1: claimed that Richard lacked acting experience, but there was something else.
21:41
Speaker 1: His reputation was equally lacking, his drug use, his run
21:46
Speaker 1: ins with the law, the simple fact that he was,
21:48
Speaker 1: by nineteen seventy four or one of the most controversial
21:51
Speaker 1: people in Hollywood. Warner Brothers took the safe bet for
21:55
Speaker 1: a movie that was all about taking huge risks, and
21:58
Speaker 1: they cast Richard's friend Little as Barne instead. Richard walked
22:04
Speaker 1: away from the experience confused and disappointed and more than
22:07
Speaker 1: a little mistrustful of the powers of being in Los Angeles.
22:11
Speaker 1: He felt used, used by mel Brooks, used by the studio.
22:16
Speaker 1: He wanted to prove them all wrong, that not only
22:18
Speaker 1: was he not an unreliable cokehead, but that he could act,
22:21
Speaker 1: and not just in a mel Brooks satire. He took
22:24
Speaker 1: a lead role in Blue Collar, the directorial debut by
22:28
Speaker 1: Paul Schrader, then best known for his screenplay for Martin
22:31
Speaker 1: Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Along with Harvey kai Tel, Richard Pryor
22:36
Speaker 1: played a disgruntled autoworker who decides to rob his union local.
22:40
Speaker 1: It was a role unlike anything he played before, and
22:43
Speaker 1: he never did anything like it ever again, because it
22:45
Speaker 1: was painful. He had a look inward to act in
22:48
Speaker 1: a drama like that, go deep into the recesses of
22:51
Speaker 1: your own mind. Not that that was different from comedy,
22:55
Speaker 1: but at least the payoff in comedy was a laugh.
22:58
Speaker 1: There was a release when how many hits. Richard once said,
23:01
Speaker 1: it's as close to flying as man gets when you're
23:04
Speaker 1: on and rolling. Nothing comes close, not cocaine, not even
23:08
Speaker 1: pussy capital a acting wasn't pussy or cocaine, and assure
23:14
Speaker 1: shit wasn't comedy. Richard was exhausted when the Shoe was over,
23:19
Speaker 1: just like Blazing Saddles. He walked away from Blue Collar, confused, disappointed,
23:23
Speaker 1: and frustrated. The movie didn't go anywhere. Critics loved him
23:28
Speaker 1: in it, but critics didn't pay the bills. So in
23:31
Speaker 1: order to not feel much of anything, Richard did more cocaine,
23:34
Speaker 1: and then he did some more, and by New Year's
23:37
Speaker 1: Morning in nineteen seventy eight, he wasn't even sure what
23:40
Speaker 1: he was supposed to feel anymore, and honestly, he didn't
23:44
Speaker 1: give much of a fuck. The second bullet hit another tire,
23:49
Speaker 1: the tire hissed aggressively. Richard Pryor reloaded the magnum. He
23:53
Speaker 1: aimed it at the Mercedes again and fired. Fucked this car,
23:57
Speaker 1: fucked this marriage. He reloaded and fired again, and by
24:00
Speaker 1: the time the police got there, the car was shot
24:03
Speaker 1: to shit. They took Richard downtown assault with the deadly weapon.
24:08
Speaker 1: Pretty soon wife number three would be ex wife number three,
24:11
Speaker 1: but not before wife number three's friend, sporting a new
24:13
Speaker 1: neck brace, walked into La Superior Court with the story
24:16
Speaker 1: of how Richard orchestrated a quote unprovoked attack when he
24:20
Speaker 1: chased them from his house in the early hours of
24:22
Speaker 1: New Year's Day. She sued into the tune of seventeen
24:25
Speaker 1: million dollars if she gets it, Richard said it, meaning
24:29
Speaker 1: his money, I'll marry her. On June ninth, nineteen eighty,
24:50
Speaker 1: Richard Prior's addiction to freebasing cocaine reached a harrowing new low.
24:55
Speaker 1: That was the day he set himself on fire. Neighbors
24:58
Speaker 1: watched as he ran down the street, screaming, his body
25:01
Speaker 1: engulfed in flames. It took six weeks of skin grass,
25:05
Speaker 1: plastic surgery, and physical therapy, and even then it was
25:08
Speaker 1: still a long, hard road to recovery. On July twenty fourth,
25:13
Speaker 1: during his first interview after being rushed to the hospital,
25:16
Speaker 1: Richard denied that he was freebasing cocaine when the accident happened.
25:20
Speaker 1: In this version of the story, someone accidentally spilled some
25:23
Speaker 1: of that high test rum on him, and when he
25:25
Speaker 1: went to innocently light a cigarette. He was on fire.
25:30
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the truth. That was a story meant
25:33
Speaker 1: to hide the real Richard Pryor from the public. Years later,
25:37
Speaker 1: in his nineteen ninety five autobiography Prior Convictions, Richard described
25:41
Speaker 1: how he had smoked so much rock that day that
25:44
Speaker 1: he actually ran out. He was alone, miserable, afraid. He
25:48
Speaker 1: just needed to get higher, to smoke more. Cocaine was
25:51
Speaker 1: always the answer, no matter the question. But with no
25:54
Speaker 1: drugs in the house, what was he going to do?
25:57
Speaker 1: He started to laugh, and then he was crying. He
26:00
Speaker 1: needed to do something, something to make him feel less. Feelings,
26:04
Speaker 1: feelings hurt, Feelings dragged you down, Feelings took you back
26:07
Speaker 1: to places like Peoria, into jail cells in Germany. He
26:11
Speaker 1: grabbed the bottle of booze and dumped the entire thing
26:13
Speaker 1: on himself. He was still alone, but he no longer
26:16
Speaker 1: felt scared. He stood in silence and waited for his
26:20
Speaker 1: moment of sin, and then the door to the room
26:22
Speaker 1: flung open. His cousin stood in the doorway. He saw
26:25
Speaker 1: that Richard was holding his big lighter in his hand,
26:28
Speaker 1: and that he was soaked. Wait, Richard, what the fuck
26:31
Speaker 1: are you doing? Don't be afraid, Richard said, and then
26:35
Speaker 1: he flicked the lighter. His body was swallowed by fire.
26:39
Speaker 1: And by Richard Pryor's own account, that accident was no accident,
26:43
Speaker 1: and by the account of his fifth wife and widow,
26:45
Speaker 1: Jennifer Lee, it was very deliberate. In the twenty nineteen
26:49
Speaker 1: documentary about Richard's life, Jennifer Lee said that he had
26:52
Speaker 1: tried to take his own life, but instead of dying,
26:55
Speaker 1: he lived. He lived to become front page news for
26:59
Speaker 1: all the wrong reasons. He lived to become a cheap punchline.
27:02
Speaker 1: He lived to make a bunch of bullshit movies, cringey
27:05
Speaker 1: comedies like The Toy that I actually loved by the way,
27:08
Speaker 1: pointless franchise cash ins like Superman three. He lived to
27:12
Speaker 1: make money, and in fact, that's why he kept saying
27:15
Speaker 1: yes to the movie rolls for the money, just like
27:18
Speaker 1: back when he was another funny guy on a Vegas
27:19
Speaker 1: stage with a pocket full of stupid gags. Fuck her.
27:23
Speaker 1: This wasn't Berkeley in nineteen seventy one. This was Hollywood
27:26
Speaker 1: in the me decade. Who cares if most of the
27:29
Speaker 1: movies he made were disposable. He got paid, didn't he
27:32
Speaker 1: those disposable comedies also served as a cover for the
27:34
Speaker 1: real Rochard Pryor, the one who couldn't stop, the one who,
27:38
Speaker 1: even after his near death experience, couldn't shake the habit.
27:41
Speaker 1: Even when he got ms, he still chased pussy and
27:44
Speaker 1: cocaine from the confines of his wheelchair right up until
27:47
Speaker 1: the day he died in two thousand and five a
27:49
Speaker 1: heart attack at the age of sixty five, zero moderation.
27:53
Speaker 1: Those who knew him best weren't surprised, and the least
27:57
Speaker 1: as his great friend and co writer Paul Mooney once said,
28:00
Speaker 1: Richard is a junkie first and a genius second. Always
28:06
Speaker 1: it's a disgraceful truth about one of our greatest comics.
28:11
Speaker 3: I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland.
28:28
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Speaker 1: of the week is which comedian from your childhood cracked
28:39
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Speaker 3: He then