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Furious, Genius or Legend?
Authors examine Richard Pryor's life and work in compelling new biography
By
Michael Shashoua / Jester editor-in-chief
“Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him,” by David Henry and Joe Henry, published November 5,
is a page-turning take on the life and comedy of Richard Pryor. The
Henry brothers, a screenwriter and singer/songwriter respectively,
are big fans of Pryor who set out to write a biopic and instead, at
least so far, have produced this book.
The result, “Furious Cool,” benefits from the outside perspective
its authors have about Pryor, giving the reader insight and
objectively surveying the comedy pioneer’s work in a way that Pryor
himself could not really do in his own autobiography or the
autobiographical movie, “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.”
The brothers identify and chronicle the way Pryor broke out of just
performing as a Bill Cosby clone early in his career – through a
soul-searching time Pryor spent in San Francisco with fellow comic
and writer Paul Mooney. This is where Pryor found his true voice as
a stand-up and planted the seeds that grew into the multiple
characters he used to populate scenes and stories onstage. Pryor
didn’t play one character at a time, as some do, but rather put many
all into the same piece.
“Furious Cool” correctly and fairly assesses Pryor’s hits and
misses. The hits, to the Henrys and to most, are Pryor’s 1970s
stand-up work and the first one or two concert documentaries he
made, as well as dramatic turns in serious dramatic movies during
those same years. The misses are Pryor’s later stand-up work, after
hard living began taking its toll on him and his energy and
inventiveness waned – also the later 1980s movies that he did mostly
for the paychecks, such as “The Toy,” “Brewster’s Millions,” and
even in some respects, “Superman III,” although that one did find
Pryor being more entertaining and less of a self-parody.
The authors also unearth accounts of some very telling TV
appearances Pryor did, like one where he sabotaged Chevy Chase on
The Tonight Show and another where he revealed raunchy details about
Milton Berle right to his face on the Mike Douglas Show, as Berle
got red-faced and aggravated. The Henrys show that Pryor was also
ahead of his time when it came to generating interesting and
controversial media events – well before Howard Stern would take the
same tack on David Letterman’s show.
But one of the most surprising insights, that make the Henrys’
effort so compelling, is one gained from Kathy McKee, a girlfriend
of Pryor’s. “His personal skills, his relationship skills just for
living his life as a human being, they weren’t there,” McKee tells
the authors. “He was a strange person and he had a very dark side.
When you were alone in the room with Richard in bed at night, there
was no laughing, there were no jokes. He was a completely different
person. A very dead personality. If you asked him a question, he
would answer yes or no.”
It’s often thrown around that the level of genius exhibited by any
comedian is often equal to the level of darkness in that person.
Pryor was off the charts in both ways, as this assessment by McKee
and the authors illustrates. With “Furious Cool,” as a survey of
Pryor’s life and career, the authors show how his personality,
influences, ideas and desires all collided with the imperatives of
show business and the limitations that drug abuse imposed. That
turns out to be the most illuminating way to appreciate Richard
Pryor objectively, or for fans of his work to learn more about him.
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Feedback? Email shashouamedia@gmail.com or michael.shashoua@jesterjournal.com
© 2005-2018 Michael Shashoua