Richard Pryor Live In Concert

I was having a rough day yesterday and needed some comedy. After going through the offerings on Amazon Prime and Netflix, I alighted upon Richard Pryor's 1979 concert film, simply titled Richard Pryor Live In Concert. It is in my opinion the funniest live comedy film ever made, which makes sense since I think Pryor is the best stand-up comedian ever.

This concert was filmed in Long Beach, and Pryor comments on his interesting year, which included shooting at a car and a heart attack (this was before his horrible burn accident). But most of the act concerns domestic issues. When he talks about his dad, his grandma, or his kids, it almost sounds like Bill Cosby, although with language that would peel the paint of the walls.

He starts with talking about the audience still coming to their seats following intermission (Patti LaBelle opened for him, but does not appear in the film). He jokes about the differences between white and black people, such as saying it's hilarious to him to watch white people come back to their seats to find black people in them. Pryor is a gifted mimic, doing a nasal white voice and that stick-up-your-ass walk that white people do so well.

Pryor then talks about his pets. Throughout the show he gives voices to entities that don't speak, whether they are dogs or his heart addressing him while he is having his coronary. He talks about some squirrel monkeys he had, including a male that ran up his leg and stuck him dick in his ear. "It's like a wet Q-Tip," he adds. He also had a miniature horse, which perplexed his dogs, including a visiting Great Dane. At first, Pryor says, they thought it was another dog, but then realized it wasn't. "I don't know what it is," Pryor has the Great Dane saying, "but I'm going to fuck it."

The show, of course, is raunchy to the nth degree. Their is frank talk about sex, telling us how his father died--fucking. "He was 57 and fucking an 18 year old girl!" Pryor says. "He came and he went!" He goes on to say that given a choice, he'd rather die in pussy then get hit by a bus.

Pryor effortlessly takes control of the stage, interacting a bit with the audience, and making it all seem improvised. When he talks about his heart attack, he segues into paramedics, and recounts how he woke up in an ambulance surrounded by four white faces. His first thought was that he had gone to the wrong heaven. When talking about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he says that if he found a man needing but had slobber coming out of his mouth, he would lean over and say, "I don't think you're going to make it."

Pryor was one of the great talents of the century. Film and network television really didn't know what to do with him (although his appearance on Saturday Night Live in the '70s remains that show's best effort, even with Pryor kept on seven-second delay). His best work was on a stage, with just a microphone.