Comic Roxanne Reese is on stage at the Comedy Store, finishing her act.
”And now,” she says, ”a real big welcome for a man who`s too legit to quit.”
A big welcome it is. The audience stands, claps and cheers.
And then, from the corner, he enters. Richard Pryor, the angry, profanity-spewing comic who started it all for angry black comedians.
It`s a really big welcome for a man who now looks very little, shuffling onto the stage, holding the arm of his assistant. There is a dazed little grin on his face. He looks like a shy child at his birthday party.
”I`m happy to be here,” says Pryor, grasping the mike for support as his assistant carefully lets go.
”I`m happy everybody sees me alive.”
His appearance is a shock. He has had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative nerve disease, since 1986. He appears very weak, unable to stand very long.
He is painfully gaunt, down to 115 pounds, and his hair is short. Behind thick glasses, his eyes are deep-set, staring straight ahead.
Pryor is here to do, of all things, stand-up comedy. He can`t stand up, and what can be comic?
Pryor has always been able to laugh at his troubles. In the past, he managed to wring stand-up hilarity from a near-fatal heart attack. Then there was the infamous free-basing cocaine ”accident,” whereby Pryor set himself afire and nearly burned to death. His friends called it a suicide attempt. That, too, became part of the comedy act.
Pryor has hardly worked for years. He tried an unfortunate film,
”Another You,” with Gene Wilder last year. So he`s gone back to his roots, stand-up comedy, honing an act at the Sunset Strip`s Comedy Store.
Some of Pryor`s friends are calling it a comeback. That seems unlikely.
Still, Pryor`s mind is funny, though trapped in a body that is flaccid and frail.
”Man, it`s weird,” he says. ”You can imagine (stuff), and then you come out and your body won`t do it.”
But he`s out there. The man who came out of a wretched childhood, using an authentic street vernacular that white producers feared, opened the doors wider for all, especially black comedians, who enshrine him. They have been coming to pay homage to his genius and to his courage. It`s the indomitable courage that has taken center stage.
”Yeah, everybody thinks I`m dead!” he begins. It gets a laugh because Pryor, 51, is expecting it, but most of the crowd is just staring, their hearts in their throats.
”They been calling my house. They ask my maid, `Is he dead?` ”
Pryor sits down in a chair that has been placed at the microphone. He keeps talking, but he can tell that the crowd is not able to decipher what he is saying, something about a possum.
”What`s he talking about?” he says with a grin to a face in the front row. He can`t see beyond the front row.
”I got this disease. It`s called MS. If you got it, everybody knows it. It`s an embarrassing disease.
”They gave me an eye test. Is there anybody here who can`t see the `E`
? I can`t see the `E.` There was a little kid. He could read the eighth line. It was embarrassing, man.”
And now the laughs are more genuine. The man is vulnerable but not pathetic. You can still recognize the comic mind, the self-deprecating humor. It`s really amazing.
Bit by bit the pity lifts, and Pryor begins connecting with his audience. Yeah, multiple sclerosis can be funny.
And, then, Pryor moves into more pain, talking about last year`s triple bypass surgery.
He flails his arms as he talks about his hallucinations while under anesthetics.
”My bed is a trout stream. I`m fishing in a trout stream. And then Sister Rose, this nun from my school, is there. And I say, `Hey, Sister Rose, you standing in my trout stream.` ”
Hilarious, no. But Pryor gives hints of the old technique, his arms swinging about for a moment.
But then his arms tire and flop to his lap, refusing to play their part any longer. There is a towel next to the mike and Pryor wipes his brow, kidding about his need to do it.
When the audience responds, he says: ”I love you so much. I`m here on a stage, and my energy . . . that wasn`t there . . . is here.”
Backstage after the show, the Green Room is swarming with people.
Pryor is seated in the middle of a large, semi-circular booth, looking fragile, exhausted, his eyes darting, then staring. There are four or five people seated on each side of him, including Marilyn Staley, his new assistant, who never leaves his side.
All sorts of people come up to pat Pryor on the back, shake his hand and pose for pictures with him.
There`s TV talk-show host Arsenio Hall, who lauds the comedian. There`s comic Byron Allen, director John Singleton (”Boyz N the Hood”). And Ray Townsend of the Los Angeles Raiders, laughing loudly, hugging Pryor. Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Eddie Murphy have all come in previous weeks.
They pose for one group picture after another. Everybody wants to be in a shot. Others just reach out to touch Pryor, trying to get his attention. He looks overwhelmed, vulnerable, caught in the middle of the crush.
Pryor has agreed to an interview, and we are going to talk in his limousine, as it drives around town. Finally, after about 40 minutes backstage, Pryor is half-led, half-carried to the limo.
Two men place Pryor in the rear seat. Then Staley and Yvette Lippie, Pryor`s makeup artist, get in.
Inside the limo, Pryor tries to relax. But he can`t.
Marilyn is there to light his cigarette-he smokes incessantly-and hand him some pills. Pryor apologizes for smoking. He has trouble swallowing the pill.
”I`m gonna do this thing,” he says, ”and then I`m gonna take a break.
`Cause I wanna live. That`s the only reason.
”The people tonight. They were so great. They were really into it. It made me feel juiced.”
`It`s nice workin`. This is the best weapon I got-I can get up on stage. A lot of people can`t get up on a stage.”
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (named for four of his mother`s favorite pimps) was raised by his grandparents, who ran a pool hall and the whorehouse where Pryor`s mother worked. The 1986 film ”Jo Jo Dancer: Your Life Is Calling,” which Pryor directed and co-wrote, is a biography that details it all.
There were successful gigs on the talk shows, the hit ”Silver Streak”
with Gene Wilder, the now-classic concert films. In the meantime there was Pryor the mean, angry rebel. He served a term in prison for tax evasion. He stabbed a man with a fork, and shot up one wife`s car.
What do you think about these days, when you`ve got time, at home?
”Death. I think how it`s gonna be dying. Then I think that`s so far off. No, I`m gonna live a long time. But I think, you know, you gonna be dead soon. No matter how long it is, it ain`t enough. And I think of my father, mother, stepmother, grandmother, my uncles-they gone. They all gone.”
The talk moves to Pryor`s six kids. Rain Pryor had a role in ”Head of the Class.” Richard Pryor Jr., 29, is getting married in April in Peoria.
”I called him up, and I said the same thing to him that my father said to me. I said, `Richard, you don`t have to do this.`
”But he`s in love. I can tell from the way he talked.”
Pryor says he wishes he had talked more with Richard.
”I shoulda told him: `I love you so much. You`re my firstborn.`
”I wish my father had told me about love, about bein` in love. He never told me about that. He told me about women. In a man`s way. Nobody tells you about love. Understanding. Feelings.”
The limo ride is almost over. There`s talk about all the books written about Pryor (eight) and the bio he is writing.
There`s talk about fear, which was so much a part of Pryor`s life. And the pain.
”The pain is a laugh. It`s like God`s gift. He said I`ll give you pain, but it`s like a treasure chest.”
