Remember Richard Pryor?

[kentuck]

From DailyKos:

[AtomicKitten]

1. He was a great talent.

"I'm not addicted to coke, I just love the way it smells."

[louis-t]

2. "When you are on fire, people will get out of your way."

Miss that guy.

[brewens]

3. "They should use fire in the olympics" was another one of his lines. Along with, "Cocaine

is Gods way of telling you, you're making too much money!" Good on him for being able to joke about it.

[WinkyDink]

5. The cocaine line was from another comedic genius, Robin Williams:

http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000245/quotes

[madashelltoo]

4. A profoundly honest talented comedian.

Really miss Richard's humor.

[Politicalboi]

6. Or the joke he talked about

Where people hold a lit lighter or match and say what's that? Richard Pryor running down the street.

[WillyT]

7. More Here:

Amazingly, Pryor matured on this issue, making me sing hallelujah. In 1979, he flew to Kenya. It was a trip recommended to him by his psychiatrist after his wife Jennifer hauled him out of a house full of hookers and drugs.

After touring Kenya's national museum, Pryor sat in a hotel lobby full of what he described as "gorgeous black people, like everyplace else we'd been. The only people you saw were black. At the hotel, on television, in stores, on the street, in the newspapers, at restaurants, running the government, on advertisements. Everywhere."

That caused Pryor to say: "Jennifer. You know what? There are no niggers here. ... The people here, they still have their self-respect, their pride."

In "Pryor Convictions," Pryor said that he left Africa "regretting ever having uttered the word 'nigger' on a stage or off it. It was a wretched word. Its connotations weren't funny, even when people laughed.

"To this day I wish I'd never said the word. I felt its lameness. It was misunderstood by people. They didn't get what I was talking about. Neither did I. ... So I vowed never to say it again."

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15iht-edjackson.html?_r=0

Bonus Video:

[iandhr]

10. That was after Blazing Saddles

Last edited Thu Aug 21, 2014, 10:37 AM - Edit history (1)

Mel Brooks gave an interview where he said Pryor kept encouraging using the word more.

[Whiskeytide]

11. But in Blazing Saddles...

It was not used gratuitously. It was used to demonstrate the ignorance and racism of those who used it. Comedy can be powerful.

But you're right. BS was several years before Pryor's decision to no longer use it in his routines.

[TimeToGo]

8. Well,

Well, it's an interesting point -- and I get it, but I wish he hadn't used Zimbabwe as his example. Lots of black Africans have been targeted by the regime.

[LloydS of New London]

9. K&R

Thanks for posting that.