DISGRACELAND - Richard Pryor: Stabbing, Shooting, F***ing, Burning, and Freebasing

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Richard Pryor was one of the funniest people who ever lived. He elevated stand-up comedy to an art form. But the real life that informed his stand-up – a life of pool halls, brothels, stabbings, shootings, and lots and lots of cocaine – was a source of constant pain. A pain that he managed with a freebase habit so out of control it nearly killed him before he was even 40 years old.This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including descriptions of domestic violence and suicide. If you're thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.Which comedian from your childhood cracked you up the most? Why? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about a child raised in a brothel, who went on to become one of the biggest stars in the world. It's about a stabbing, a shootout, a drug bust.

It's about a man on fire. This is a story about Richard Pryor, a comedian who made some of the funniest films of all time. A man who played his role on stage as a stand-up like a great musician would play his instrument. And great musicians, of course, make great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called This Man's On Fire, MK, 2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Funky Town by Lips Incorporated.

And why would I play you that specific slice of puffy parted cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 9, 1980, and that was the day that Richard Pryor nearly died after he set himself on fire, winding up in the hospital covered in third-degree burns. On this episode, stabbing, shooting, burning, free basing, and one of the greatest to ever do it, Richard Pryor.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Richard Pryor was in pain. Most of his body was burned. The worst of it, the third degree burns. They were on his chest, his back, his arms, his neck, and his face. They oozed pus and blood. The doc gave him a one-and-three chance.

chance of survival. And if he did survive, Richard Pryor would have to face something else besides the pain. He would have to face the fear. The fear that after years of searching, from Peoria to Germany, Youngstown to Pittsburgh, Vegas to Berkeley, and New York to Los Angeles, he had finally found him, the real Richard Pryor. And that guy scared the shit out of him. They all said that Richard Pryor was fearless, that he was a pioneer when he came to what could be said on stage or what could be written for the screen, that after the paradigm shift ushered in by groundbreaking black comedians, including Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby,

Richard Pryor was a new kind of comic for a new age. But even Richard Pryor knew that there was a fine line between being fearless and being incapable of living in moderation. And being incapable of moderation was what got him here, covered in third-degree burns, fearing that the real Richard Pryor was about to be revealed to the world. That guy, the real him, he stepped right out of a wall at Richard's home. He stood there in his underwear looking at Richard looking back at him, like a reflection

in a mirror. And then he said he was the devil, which meant they were both the devil, since Richard and this thing were one and the same. Are you really me? Richard asked him just to make sure. Yes, I am you. It replied. And then it disappeared back into the wall. At first, Richard wrote it off as the state of his mind.

It was just a hallucination, paranoia. Night was day, up was down. And there were no more friends and family anymore, just people in the walls and on the other side of the windows out to steal his money and maybe even his mind. That was 100% cocaine talking. And I don't mean a couple of lines shared at some chic industry party. I'm talking rocks of pure coke,

heated up with a bick lighter, until the vapors start to rise and you just breathe in deep. I'm talking freebase, just like Dirty Dick taught him. Dirty Dick had been dealing Richard the good shit, for years and hadn't steered him wrong yet. So Richard steered himself right into an empty room and locked the door behind him. Fuck that other guy in the wall. Richard hit the pipe and didn't stop. The binge lasted for, what, two, three days? He dipped a cotton swab and rum and lit it with his lighter. This was his torch. He didn't want to use an actual lighter to heat up the pipe or else he'd be

inhaling lighter fluid. The rum made it less toxic. Thus was the logic of a junkie in the throes addiction. But this rum was 151 proof, and Richard Pryor was capital F. Ficked. Fucked up, that is. Before long, the rum was everywhere. It was all over him. And all it took was one flick of that Bick letter, one spark, for it all to go up in flames. Richard Pryor literally set himself on fire, just like that monk did protesting the Vietnam War. But Richard Pryor was no monk, Jack. Richard Pryor didn't abstain. He indulged in everything. Pussy, boo, boo, cocaine. Cocaine, man, that shit be fucking with you. That shit brought on an entirely different person when you were on it. Or maybe it was the person you truly were on the inside that

finally emerged, like that apparition from inside the wall, the person you hid from everyone else. And as much as you want to deny it, that person is real. But just what was real? Peoria was real. If it played in Peoria, it could play anywhere, or so that old vaudeville saying when. They called Peoria the model city. But as Richard Pryor himself said later in his stand-up act, the ones calling his hometown the model city were the ones keeping Peoria's black residents in their place. In the 1940s and 1950s, that place was light years from the bullshit family life that played out on Father Knows Best. sitcoms like that were science fiction. Over on North Washington Street, in the black part of town, Peoria was populated with pimps, drunks, bootleggers,

and sex workers. Richard's grandfather owned the local pool hall. His grandmother ran the town brothel. His own mother worked at the brothel. And so, as a kid, Richard Pryor saw some shit. He saw a baby in a shoebox, deader than a motherfucker. He saw a man who lost a knife fight

struggling to push his guts back into his stomach. He saw his own mother in bed with a John. He also saw his mother get hit by his father, and that only happened twice. After the first time, she told him, okay, motherfucker, don't hit me no more. And after the second time, she didn't need words. She took one look at Richard's father standing in front of her poo bearing

and wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear, and she swung her long fingernails at his crotch. Richard's father screamed. Blood ran down his leg. She ripped his nut sack right open. Yes, that actually happened. Look it up. In Richard Pryor's Peoria,

this is how you handled your shit. You did it fast, and maybe with your fingernails. even better with a knife or a gun. When some guy talked shit to Richard's grandfather in the family tavern, a place called The Famous Door, Richard's father drew a pistol and emptied every last round into his ass. And that motherfucker hit the floor bleeding and screaming, but he wasn't dead.

He dragged his bullet-ridden body across the floor, pulled out a knife, and sliced Richard's father right across his leg. And between that and the torn nut sack, dude was good and fucked up for the rest of his life. And that wasn't the life Richard wanted to live, though. Work your ass to the bone in the pool hall and the cat house or the slaughterhouse every day, only to get shot up when you were busy trying to get fucked up at the end of a long night. Fuck that.

We joined the army and you get the hell out of Peoria. But even in the service, even in Germany, in Europe, where the world was supposed to be enlightened and free, shit was still the same. 150 bars in Kaiser Slotten and only three of them allowed black people to walk through the door. And that shit surprised him. What didn't surprise him was that when his unit was, was taking in some R&R and watching a melodrama about race and class in America. One of his fellow soldiers, a white guy, laughed a little too hard at the wrong part.

And while you could take Richard out of Peoria, you sure as hell couldn't take Peoria out of Richard. Richard pulled a switchblade. He stuck it in the white soldier's back, deep, and then he pulled it out, and the blade glistened with blood, and Richard stabbed him again, and again, and again. He stabbed that dude six or seven times each time, hoping it would be the final blow, and that this backwards pack a head honky would just fucking die. But just like the guy Richard's father shot back in the whorehouse in Peoria, this kid lived, and they tossed Richard in a jail cell. He spent his final days as an enlisted man on a cold cement floor. He received the mercy of a base commander more concerned with his own retirement than actually dealing with Richard's mutin his ass.

And then he received an early discharge, and he was shipped back home. It was the first time Richard Pryor cheated death, but it wouldn't be the last. Richard Pryor was a born performer. He'd been putting on a show since he was just a kid. And ever since he was a kid, there was incentive to perform. First, it was the reward of the performance itself. His elementary school teacher cut him a deal. If he could actually get to school on time every day,

then each Friday afternoon, he could perform a stand-up set in front of the class. The next incentive was laughter. Tasted sweet, like revenge. But you could get it without violence. And now, in 1967, at 26 years old, the incentive for Richard Pryor was money. Get on stage, say something funny, make him laugh, get paid, and get the fuck out. Didn't matter if Richard's stand-up at the time was a faint echo of Bill Cosby's shtick. He got paid, didn't he?

But as much of a born performer as Richard Pryor was, as much as he learned on the stages of Greenwich Village and beyond, it was always that occasional tough crowd. Like the one at United States Customs on the Mexican Board. order. The customs agent didn't have a laugh or a smile or he didn't say shit. That dude just looked at Richard from behind his raybans. One long look as Richard slowly inched his car closer and closer to the checkpoint. There was no turning around now. No takebacks. Richard was in this and he was fucked. He pulled up to the checkpoint and applied the brake and the agent got close, crammed his neck to look in the back of the car. What were you doing in Mexico? Just visiting. Seeing the sites,

It was good, real good, movie bueno. Richard didn't say anything about the Tijuana brothel he visited or the women he fucked or the tequila that flowed like an honorary body fluid. And the agent kept on with that long look. And then he pointed to an area off to the side. Pull over. Richard Pryor had been in Tijuana because he was running away. Not unlike he had run away from Peoria to the army all those years ago. But now he was running from responsibility.

His girlfriend was nine months pregnant and she wanted Richard to commit. She wanted Richard to settle down and start a family. He'd already done that once before. Didn't end well. He didn't feel like doing it again. Not right now. So instead, Richard jumped in a car and just drove. Getting over the border was easy enough.

Coming back, there's another thing altogether. There wasn't a joke or a well-rehearsed routine that was going to get him out of having his car searched. We didn't even try. The customs agent poked around and found a little grass. All right, that was Richard's fault. He should have smoked the rest of it before he hit the road. And the agent examined it with his eyes and decided it was an ounce.

An ounce? Damn, there was barely enough to roll a joint. An ounce his ass. Running away from his problems was proven to be a less than brilliant plan for Richard Pryor. Thankfully, business was booming. He was making that money, so his wallet was fat. He could afford to pay his own bail. So maybe 1967 would be all right after all.

In 1967 was the year Richard met Paul Mooney. The man who would become his co-writer in one of his close. closest friends. It was also the year he met Dirty Dick, the dealer with the top shelf stuff, the cocaine that Richard was dishing out won $200 a day for. In 1967 was also the year that he had the epiphany. It happened in Vegas. Dean Martin and those other rap pack dudes half-drapped laughing in the audience, Richard up on stage, telling jokes, getting laughs, getting paid. He had an appearance on Ed Sullivan to thank for this opportunity, or maybe it was the Carson show, but he knew it was all an act, literally. The more he went through the motions, the more jokes didn't resonate

with him. They weren't about his life. What was the people said? Write what you know? Richard Pryor wasn't writing what he knew. And what did he know? He knew Peoria. He knew junkies and drunks, pimps, and pushers. He knew sex. He knew pain. And he knew what it was like to be a black man navigating a world of ignorance and fear. The lights on the Vegas stage were bright, and they burned into his eyeballs. They flooded his peripheral vision. Soon, all I could see was the blinding light. It stopped him dead in his tracks. Must have looked like a goddamn idiot just standing there. What the hell am I doing here? He realized after the fact that he had actually said that line out loud. It was a rhetorical question. He already knew the answer. He turned around and walked off the

stage. They told him he'd never work in Vegas again and you know what? That was just fucking fine with him. He didn't want to be that guy. He wanted to be Richard Pryor, the real Richard Pryor. They weren't going to believe their ears. He would shock them. He would make them pissed themselves laughing until their slacks were soaked, and not just because what he said was funny or because it was provocative, but because it was real.

Just like Miles. Miles Davis did whatever the hell he wanted. But whatever the hell Miles Davis wanted to do was 100% the opposite of what everyone else wanted him to do. You think Columbia Records wanted Miles Davis doing what he did? No fucking way, man, but Miles did Miles, period. no two ways around it. And when Miles Davis and Richard Pryor did some shows together in New York City, Miles flipped the script.

Those shows weren't your typical shows, with a comic warming up the crowd before the musician took the stage for a headlining set. Miles told Richard, hey man, I open for you. And that was Far O. That was Miles Davis giving Richard Pryor's blessing. That was Miles saying, I see what you're doing. I hear you. I feel you.

But just as Richard Pryor's realness was having a profound effect on his career, and on the evolution of American comedy, it was making everything else in his life worse. Every year was some new bullshit. He was arrested again for getting in a fight with the guy working at the desk at his apartment building. That dude sued Richard for $75,000 and won. And then there were the girlfriends and the ex-girlfriends

and the wives and the ex-wives. They were piling up. Some were coming after Richard for child support. Some were coming for blood. Some had lawyered up. Some had warrants. And as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, Richard Pryor was a wanted man. But Richard Pryor wanted something else.

He wanted to do more cocaine. He wanted to get drunk. He wanted to fuck. He wanted to unpack all the dark corners of his life. All those junkies, pimps, and scary family members of his past. His grandmother, his mom, all the dope he was doing and the sex he was having. Get it all out of his head. Get it down on paper.

And transform it all into a comedy juggernaut that had never been seen before. To do all that, he had to get away. So in 1971, Richard Pryor once again got behind the wheel of a car, this time with his pal Paul Mooney had his side, and he escaped, away from his obligations, away from the soul-sucking traps of places like Las Vegas, and away from the people trying to catch him, the people trying to stop him. And Richard Pryor didn't stop running until he reached Berkeley, California, that freaky-dinky place on the edge of the world with the Black Panthers, brawburners,

musicians and poets were all conspiring to do whatever it took. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. The gun was on the nightstand inside his Northridge home, 357 Magnum, big motherfucker. It wasn't small like his 380 automatic. It wasn't unwieldy like his shotgun, or useless like his antique flintlock. This was the showpiece.

This was the, what the fuck did you say, gun? Richard Pryor picked it up. This was the piece Richard waved around when it was clear he was losing another argument with his wife. You're going to shoot me? Then shoot me, his wife told him. Richard pointed it away from her. He didn't actually want to shoot her, which didn't mean he didn't want to shoot something. And she told him to put the gun down.

Fuck you, he said. And then he told his wife to round up her friends and get the hell out of his house. It was just minutes into New Year's Day, 1978. The party that Richard Pryor and his now third wife were hosting had gone as flat as day-old champagne. What had started out as a celebration was now all-out domestic warfare. Moments ago, Richard and his wife had shared a midnight kiss, and now they were at each other's throats. Didn't help that they were drunk and high on some of dirty dicks' supply.

Richard decided that his wife and her friends weren't moving fast enough. He pointed the magnum at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The gun fired and the bullet blew apart the $10,000 Tiffany Chantelier hanging from above. And the women moved faster now. Outside, they piled into a Buick. Richard got into his Mercedes, turned the key in the ignition, put it in drive.

And then he drove it straight into the Buick, over and over. The women screamed. They ditched the Buick. Richard followed suit and stepped out of the Mercedes. He didn't know what his wife's next move would be. Maybe she'd push him aside and take the bends. Get the fuck out.

Maybe it would be the last time. Maybe she wouldn't come back. Richard didn't care. But all the same, he didn't want her getting in that car. Not because she'd leave, because if she did, then she'd win. And Richard Pryor wasn't about to lose another argument. Fuck that.

So he jumped in between his wife and the Mercedes, pulled back the hammer on the magnum, pointed it at one of the tires, and pulled the trigger. A few years earlier, before he had a house in Northridge, back when he was making his great escape to Berkeley with Paul Mooney, Richard felt like he'd found a new lease on life, creatively and personally. Here in the Bay Area, hippies were protesting the war. Black people like him were declaring that they were somebody. He started hanging out with freedom fighters like Angela Davis and Huey Newton,

with poets like Al Young and Ishmael Reed. Intellectualism didn't have to be a dirty word. You could be smart and cussed like one of the women who worked at his grandmother's brothel. The two weren't mutually exclusive. That was the lesson, along with the realization that he had a liceworth material to draw from, A lesson he took with him when he moved down to Los Angeles. It was all about being fearless. There it was again.

That word, fearless. The word that everyone was using to describe him. In reality, Richard Pryor just didn't give a shit anymore. He didn't give a shit that his material was obscene, that it was profane. But hey, selling over a million copies of a live comedy record, holding on the number one spot on the Billboard R&B chart for four straight weeks for a live comedy record, and then winning a Grammy Award for a comedy record, that he could give a shit about.

Because now he was in demand. And because now the money was rolling in more than it ever had, which meant more money for Cavassier, cocaine. Or whether it was getting profound, getting laughs, getting famous, or getting high, Richard Pryor did nothing in moderation. Which was exactly why Mel Brooks hired Richard Pryor to help write a script for his next film.

A Western satire about a black railroad who's appointed sheriff of an all-white town. Mel Brooks wanted this movie to not just be funny, but to be outrageously, shockingly funny. The jokes, the language, the lines that were crossed, the whole thing had to be no-holds barred. Blazing Saddles was a perfect assignment for Richard Pryor. He threw himself into the script. He wrote with utter abandon. He helped create not just one of the funniest Mel Brooks movies, but one of the funniest American comedies of all time. And he'd did it while under the impression that he, Richard Pryor, would also play the lead role of Bart, the Black Sheriff.

Richard often acted out lines and scenes in the writer's room. Everyone involved in the movie could see it. He was the obvious choice. But at the last minute, the studio revealed that they thought otherwise. They claimed that Richard lacked acting experience, but it was something else. His reputation was equally lacking. His drug use, his run-ins with the law,

The simple fact that he was, by 1974, one of the most controversial people in Hollywood, Warner Brothers took the safe bet for a movie that was all about taking huge risks, and they cast Richard's friend Clevon Little as Bart instead. Richard walked away from the experience, confused and disappointed, and more than a little mistrustful of the powers of be in Los Angeles. He felt used, used by Mel Brooks, used by the studio. He wanted to prove them all wrong, that not only was he not an unreliable cokehead, but that he could act, and not Justin and Mel Brooks satire.

He took a lead role in Blue Collar, the directorial debut by Paul Schrader, then best known for his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's taxi driver. Along with Harvey Kytel, Richard Pryor played a disgruntled auto worker who decides to rob his union local. It was a role unlike anything he played before, and he never did anything like it ever again. because it was painful. You had to look inward to act in a drama like that. Go deep into the recesses of your own mind.

Not that that was different from comedy, but at least the payoff in comedy was a laugh. There was a release. When comedy hits, Richard once said, it's as close to flying as man gets. When you're on and rolling, nothing comes close, not cocaine, not even pussy. Capital A acting wasn't pussy or cocaine,

and his sure shit wasn't comedy. Richard was exhausted when the shoe was over. Just like blazing saddles, he walked away from blue collar, confused, disappointed, and frustrated. The movie didn't go anywhere. Critics loved him in it, but critics didn't pay the bills. So in order to not feel much of anything, Richard did more cocaine, and then he did some more.

And by New Year's morning in 1978, he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to feel anymore. and honestly, he didn't give much of a fuck. The second bullet hit another tire. The tire hissed aggressively. Richard Pryor reloaded the magnum. He aimed it at the Mercedes again and fired. Fuck this car.

Fuck this marriage. He reloaded and fired again. And by the time the police got there, the car was shot to shit. They took Richard downtown, assault with a deadly weapon. Pretty soon, wife number three would be ex-wife number three. But not before wife number three's friend, sporting a new next-year-old. Brace, walked into LA Superior Court with the story of how Richard orchestrated a quote unprovoked attack when he chased them from his house in the early hours of New Year's Day.

She sued him to the tune of $17 million. If she gets it, Richard said, it meaning his money, I'll marry her. On June 9, 1980, 188. Richard Pryor's addiction to free-basing cocaine reached a harrowing new low. That was the day he set himself on fire. Neighbors watched as he ran down the street screaming, his body engulfed in flames. It took six weeks of skin grass, plastic surgery, and physical therapy, and even then it was still a long, hard road to recovery.

On July 24th, during his first interview after being rushed to the hospital, Richard denied that he was free-basing cocaine when the accident happened. In this version of the story, someone accidentally spilled some of that high-test rum on him. And when he went to innocently light a cigarette, he was on fire. But that wasn't the truth. That was a story meant to hide the real Richard Pryor from the public. Years later, in his 1995 autobiography, Prior Convictions, Richard described how he had smoked so much rock that day that he actually ran out.

He was alone, miserable, afraid. He just needed to get higher to start. smoke more. Cocaine was always the answer, no matter the question. But with no drugs in the house, what was he going to do? He started to laugh, and then he was crying. He needed to do something, something to make him feel less feelings. Feelings hurt. Feelings dragged you down. Feelings took you back to places like Peoria into jail cells in Germany. He grabbed the bottle of booze and dumped the entire thing on himself. He was still alone, but he no longer felt scared. He stood in silence and waited for his moment of Zen. And then the door to the room flung open. His cousin stood in the doorway.

He saw that Richard was holding his bick lighter in his hand, and that he was soaked. Wait, Richard, what the fuck are you doing? Don't be afraid, Richard said. And then he flicked the lighter. His body was swallowed by fire. And by Richard Pryor's own account, that accident was no accident. And by the account of his fifth wife and widow, Jennifer Lee, it was very deliberate. In the In 2019 documentary about Richard's life, Jennifer Lee said that he had tried to take his own life. But instead of dying, he lived. He lived to become front-page news for all the wrong reasons. He lived to become a cheap punchline.

He lived to make a bunch of bullshit movies. Cringy comedies like the toy, that I actually love, by the way. Pointless franchise cash-ins like Superman 3. He lived to make money. And in fact, that's why he kept saying yes to the movie roles for the money. just like back when he was another funny guy on a Vegas stage with a pocketful of stupid gags. Fuck art. This wasn't Berkeley in 1971.

This was Hollywood in the me decade. Who cares if most of the movies he made were disposable? He got paid, didn't he? Those disposable comedies also served as a cover for the real Richard Pryor. The one who couldn't stop. The one who, even after his near-death experience, couldn't shake the habit. Even when he got MS, he still chased pussy and cocaine from the confines of his wheelchair. Right up until the day he died in 2005, a heart attack at the age of 65, zero moderation.

Those who knew him best weren't surprised in the least. As his great friend and co-writer, Paul Mooney once said, Richard is a junkie first and a genius second. Always. It's a disgraceful truth about one of our greatest comics. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Hope you dug this episode. Apple podcast listeners,

make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of disgrace. And this week's question of the week is which comedian from your childhood cracked you up the most and why? Hit me up. Voicemail and text 617-90666-6638. Let me know.

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