Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic Page #6

---

a motherf***er now.

Richard was very intense...

..about his personal pride. And

he didn't care where it took him.

There was a huge benefit for gay

pride at the Hollywood Bowl.

A lot of performers

were at the Hollywood Bowl

to lend their support,

Richard being one of them.

Richie came on, and the audience

was waiting for him.

Great applause, and he said,

"You know,

"I've sucked some cock myself." That

was the first thing that he said.

I thought, "Uh-oh. Here we go." But

the audience, of course, cheered.

And then he went on to just

really go a little nuts.

They wanted to shock,

because it was the truth.

And the truth defends itself.

And it was quiet.

It was quiet. You could hear a rat

pissing on cotton in Georgia.

I mean, it was real quiet.

Y'all can just kiss my rich,

black ass.

And walked off. So...

Centre stage. Hello, everybody.

I'm terribly embarrassed

and I don't know what to

say about what just happened.

But I do think...

May I please finish talking?

They stood up.

Booing, hissing, throwing some

chairs.

It was the scariest event

that I've ever been at.

Everyone in showbusiness was there.

I thought, "We're never going

to hear from him again."

I got a call from David Franklin,

and he said, "Ce-Ce-Cecil,"

cos he stuttered.

He said,

"R-Richard f***ed up l-last night."

So I drove over to Richard's house,

and nobody was in the house.

I went out, and he was

sitting by a swimming pool.

He was smoking a cigarette,

and he had a scotch

and an orange juice

and vodka was his drink.

And I said, "Man, what happened?"

He said, "Man, f*** it, man.

He said, "I just told them to kiss

my ass." "But why?"

He said,

"If that's the way they want me,

"I don't have a career

any damn way."

It wasn't Hollywood that beat him

in any way.

He defeated himself

with what his bad habits were.

Pryor went to court

because of an incident

at his home on New Year's Day.

He's been charged with two counts

of assault with a deadly weapon

and one count of felony

malicious mischief.

I don't want to never see no more

police in my life.

At my house.

Taking my ass to jail.

For killing my car.

I shot the motor. The motor fell

out of the motherf***er.

The motor say, "F*** it."

Then the police came.

I went into the house.

Cos they got Magnums too.

And they don't kill

cars... they kill nigg-ah.

You know, Richard Pryor

was always in the news.

Richard Pryor shoots his car.

Richard Pryor has a heart attack.

He ran into these tragedies

one after another.

But you also knew that three months

would go by or six months

would go by or a year

would go by, and then

he was going to bring

this experience back to you.

Anyone here ever had a heart attack?

Them motherfuckers hurt.

I'm not bullshitting, man.

I was walking in the front yard.

I was just walking along,

and something said, "Don't breathe."

I said, "Huh?"

"You heard me, motherf***er.

"I said, 'Don't breathe.'"

"OK, I won't breathe."

"Then shut the f*** up, then." "OK.

"Don't kill me." "Get on one knee

and prove it." "I'm on one knee."

"Thinking about dying now, ain't you?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking about dying."

"You didn't think about it

when you was eating all that pork."

We was on the road

and seen Marie Carter

every day while she was dying.

We'd do the shows,

go check on his grandmother.

She said, "You watch out for my boy."

She was dying, and basically they

said, "You have to get here now."

So we rushed there.

We went into her hospital room.

I remember she touched

his camel-hair coat.

And said, "That's blue azure.

"Is it warm enough?"

And he said,

"Yes, Mom, it's warm enough."

We went back to the hotel,

and she died a few hours later.

Like my grandmother, Marie,

used to say, "They can kill you,

"but they can't eat you."

I love you, Grandmother.

Wherever you are.

She was his conduit to reality,

to the world.

To everything that tethered him

to earth.

And I really think that that's

when he started to come apart.

Dr Al Canning came

and told Richard and he said,

"When you finish going

through this...

"..go to Africa. You need to find

out something about yourself."

MUSIC:
"Stand Up"

by Lee Fields and Sugarmen & Co

# Stand up

# Let's get it right

# Stand up

# Let's keep it tight. #

I went home to the motherland.

I was going to find my roots.

700 million black people - not

one of them motherfuckers knew me.

I looked in every

phone book in Africa.

I didn't find one goddamn Pryor.

What he saw was black people

who were walking around.

Everybody was professional, everybody

had their own lives and purpose.

And he felt really at home

on that land.

I was sitting in the hotel,

and a voice said to me, he said,

"Look around,"

said, "do you see any n*ggers?"

I said, "No." "You know

why? Cos there aren't any."

And it made me think,

"Oh, my God. I've been wrong.

I said, "I ain't going to never

call another black man n*gger."

APPLAUSE:

He really had this epiphany

that he was never going to use

the word again.

When he came back, he said,

"I'm not going to use that no more."

And he stuck with it.

When he went to Africa,

the word had no meaning.

But on the streets of Detroit,

it might be something else.

He'd tell the same joke,

just take n*gger out.

"Oh, he's not funny no more."

So, the punchline

was n*gger for y'all?

And that bothered him that

some people just wouldn't elevate.

He was at such a point

of a growth spurt.

And he didn't want the job.

You know, I'm a f***ing artist. I do

what I do. Leave me the f*** alone.

And shortly thereafter

freebase was introduced.

At the time,

everybody was doing cocaine.

We were snorting cocaine.

A lot changed when everybody

switched from snorting cocaine

to freebasing cocaine.

Somehow, everybody knew that

this was a really bad thing,

that turned dark.

And he found freebase.

And after two weeks of watching him

get really addicted to this stuff,

I moved out, because it was clear

the drug had moved in and it had

become his lover, his everything.

And I didn't exist any more.

Richard wasn't an addict.

He was a flat-out full-blown junkie.

I mean, he might be clean for

four days but be drinking booze.

Be clean for a week

but just snorting a little coke.

So he was not honest with himself.

June 9th, 1980.

Richard had walked off the set

of Stir Crazy a few days earlier.

The freebase had been escalating.

He was not able to stop.

Richard was so coked out that he

began withdrawing large sums

of money out of the bank.

And I'm talking like 500,000,

100,000, another 250,000.

He was hiding it at his house.

Rashan had called.

He was calling and recruiting several

people that he felt were close

enough to Richard to come to the

house.

To rescue Richard to try to get

Richard to stop.

Richard was in a very scary place.

Richard didn't just have

a couple of ounces of cocaine.

I'm talking about a mound

of cocaine on his bed.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes