Peace out, Richard
It’s apparently my sad duty to announce to the Crap Filter audience that comedian Richard Pryor has died.
If you’ve ever seen his act, you’ll know that Richard Pryor was one of the filthiest mutherfuckers ever to stand in front of a brick wall. A lot of people, especially those too young to observe the rise of his career, know him mostly from his movies, like Brewser’s Millions and The Toy, which are far from his best stuff. Hopefully he’ll be best remembered for his foul-mouthed stand-up routines, without which he would have never made mediocre fodder for Comedy Central Saturday afternoons.
Without Richard Pryor to lead the way, we would probably have never gotten those he influenced, like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Pryor’s good sense of humor got him through some incredibly rough personal times, and the world benefited. I think this says it all:
Pryor lived dangerously close to the edge, both on stage and off.
He was regarded early in his career as one of the most foul-mouthed comics in the business, but he gained a wide following for his universal and frequently personal routines. After nearly losing his life in 1980 when he caught on fire while freebasing cocaine, he incorporated the ordeal into his later routines.
Yeah, that’s awful, but c’mon — you know you think it’s funny even now. His IMDb profile says he’s admitted it was actually a suicide attempt and a story cooked up by his management to cover it up, which is maybe a little less funny, but you know that Richard Pryor would have laughed if it had happened to you.
December 11th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
another great one bites the dust.