Black Is The New White Part 13

I go along, but I don't buy it. I've seen too much of Rich-ard's behavior to believe in accidents. The man's been committing slow-motion suicide ever since I've known him, and suddenly he has an accident? Drug use of the kind Richard indulges in is always suicidal, pure and simple. Or impure and unsimple.

Every time Richard makes an insane, messed-up move, I always respond by saying the same thing. I say it when he shoots up Deborah's car, and I say it when he won't rest after his heart attack. I wind up saying it to Richard at least a half dozen times over the course of our friends.h.i.+p.

"Stop trying to rush death," I tell him. "Just wait. It's coming to you. You don't have to rush it."

How does that rum get all over Richard? Does he spill it on himself by "accident"? Or is he totally psychotic and pours it over his own head before lighting himself on fire? Whether it is a spill or a pour that sets him ablaze, Richard's trying to kill himself up there alone in his master bedroom in Northridge. He's trying to commit suicide.

I don't tell anyone this at the burn center, and I sure as h.e.l.l don't talk to anyone like Jim Brown about it, but I have my own private theory about the fire.

Richard wants to burn himself black.

I've never seen anyone more messed up over success than Richard Pryor. For him, it's a constant battle between success in the white world and keeping it real for his black self.

Richard is more successful than ever. Deep in his mind, that means he's more white than ever. He can't fight his way out of this bind. He loves the money, he loves the approval and women and celebrity, but it costs him his soul. So he lights himself on fire. He's freebasing himself, burning off the white impurities. He figures he can only be real if he's a cinder. Let Hollywood try to cast him then.

When shrinks talk to suicidal people who have survived their attempts, you know what they find? They talk to a leaper, say, one who lands on an awning or something and somehow survives. The leaper says, "You know, doc, as soon as I jumped out that fourteenth-floor window, I had this overpowering thought. 'I don't want to die.'"

Steve Lubetkin probably has that same thought as he's tumbling down off the Continental Hyatt to the Comedy Store parking lot. I know Richard has that thought as soon as the flames engulf him. That's why he runs. He decides he wants to live after all.

The LAPD traffic cops who first approach ask him to stop running. "I can't," Richard says. "If I stop, I'll die."

CHAPTER 27.

Richard's in the burn center, and I'm back and forth visiting him all the time. The problem is, when we're together, we can't help ourselves from cracking each other up. We cannot not laugh.

Say that Richard in another lifetime is hiding in the river thicket from the Klan, and he knows that if they hear him, he's one lynched black man. But he sees a doodlebug that looks at him funny and he laughs out loud. He's discovered and strung up by the Klan, all because it is impossible for him to keep a laugh inside.

He laughs more than anyone I ever meet. His laughter is as contagious as a G.o.dd.a.m.n hospital. When I am with him, everything is funny. A fat man bending over a sandwich case at a deli, sticking his big a.s.s out a mile wide into the aisle, cracks us up. Everything's funny.

When Richard is recovering in Northridge, I tell him a joke. I light a match and pa.s.s it in the air in front of me. "What's this?" I ask him. He shakes his head, but he looks as though he knows what's coming. "Richard Pryor running."

He stares at me out of that scarred face. His lips and one ear are all burned, he's getting grafts off his legs and a.s.s to transfer skin to his upper body. He looks at me and, even in the sorry shape he's in, he laughs. He laughs because it's funny. Sick, but funny.

I witness Richard's toughness during his burn treatments, procedures where the dead skin has to be scrubbed off with a rough sponge. It's one of the most painful procedures in all of medicine. Richard bears up under it. When I talk to him, it's like a paradox. He's as happy as I've seen him in a long while. He can't drink and drug, so those demons are laid to rest, at least for a little while. He is full of future plans.

He wants to tell his life story in a movie. He wants to do it all, growing up in Peoria, the chitterling circuit, the marriages, Hollywood. "I want you to help me write it, Paul," he says.

I tell him what he should do is a children's show. He needs a new image after the fire, as far away from drugs and freebasing as he can get. "You think they'll let me?" he asks. On the face of it, Richard hosting a children's show is not a slam dunk. People know him for his mouth, with "motherf.u.c.ker" coming out of it every other second. And they know him as the star who lit himself on fire with the rum he was using as a freebasing solvent.

But kids love Richard. In almost every episode of The Richard Pryor Show The Richard Pryor Show, we have a kid's segment. He's a child himself, so he has a natural rapport with children. And actually, the top-grossing Richard Pryor film, beating out even Silver Streak Silver Streak, is The Muppet Movie The Muppet Movie, where he has a cameo as a balloon vendor.

CBS loses their long-running Sat.u.r.day morning kid's cartoon from Bill Cosby, Fat Albert Fat Albert, so they sign on for Pryor's Place Pryor's Place. It's an inner-city Sesame Street Sesame Streetstyle live-action thing with puppets, and we have a good time writing characters for it. My favorite is Chill the musician, who Richard plays in his finest rasta jazzman style. The theme song has a funk groove: "Whoa, oh, let's get on over to Pryor's Place/Whoa, oh, we're gonna party so don't be late."

In later days, when he is back at the bottle, the pipe, and the cigarettes, I hear Richard singing the chorus of that children's song as he pulls the mirror toward him. He gives me a sly sideways look and laughs. I'm probably the only one present who knows where that line comes from. The rest of the people Richard parties with never get up before noon, so they would never have seen Pryor's Place Pryor's Place.

But our real work in those days is always on Richard's biopic. Rocco Urbisci, Richard and I settle into his upstairs office, just down the hall from the bedroom where he set himself on fire, and write the script together. Even though I learned to type in high school, it's easier for us to have a stenographer in the room. It's how we work on the Pryor Show Pryor Show, and that's how we work now. We fling bits around, situations and one-liners, trying to crack each other up. The stenographer lady has a hard time keeping up. If we can make her laugh, we know we're in the right place.

Richard is golden in Hollywood because of his concert films. Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip and and Richard Pryor: Here and Now Richard Pryor: Here and Now both hit big. Audiences are still looking for the same laughs they found when they watched both hit big. Audiences are still looking for the same laughs they found when they watched Live in Concert Live in Concert. People love them some Richard Pryor, but they love him best only one way-behind the microphone. His dramatic features, like The Toy The Toy (his comeback film after the suicide attempt), don't do as well. (his comeback film after the suicide attempt), don't do as well.

His pet project through all this is the movie of his life. What comes out of our script sessions is Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. We come up with a freaky way to put the film together, approaching it as though Richard is cut loose from time, drifting through episodes of his life while he lies dying from burning himself up. We come up with a freaky way to put the film together, approaching it as though Richard is cut loose from time, drifting through episodes of his life while he lies dying from burning himself up.

On set: The producer Rocco Urbisci, Richard, and me during the filming of Jo Jo Dancer Jo Jo Dancer It's some of the bravest s.h.i.+t I've ever seen anyone do on film. During the shoot, Richard puts himself through the whole fire episode again. The audience actually gets to witness his suicide attempt on-screen, watch him pour the rum over his head, see him light himself on fire.

Watching him act out that scene in Jo Jo Dancer, Jo Jo Dancer, I am floored by the level of pain Richard had to be feeling in order to do something so extreme. That is some horrible misery he is in. It's like he wants to transfer the emotional pain inside of him to physical pain on the outside. When he's all scarred up and burnt to s.h.i.+t, we get to see what it's like on the inside of Richard's skin. I am floored by the level of pain Richard had to be feeling in order to do something so extreme. That is some horrible misery he is in. It's like he wants to transfer the emotional pain inside of him to physical pain on the outside. When he's all scarred up and burnt to s.h.i.+t, we get to see what it's like on the inside of Richard's skin.

Not all the scenes are as scarifying as the fire. My favorite parts of the movie are the childhood episodes in the wh.o.r.e-house in Peoria. Richard has so much juice in Hollywood that he packs up the whole production to film on location in his old hometown.

I put a lot of myself into Jo Jo, Jo Jo, too. In the scene at the wh.o.r.ehouse where Richard's mama talks to her friend the psychic, I name the friend Miss Amerae and give her the vibe of my own mama's voodoo-spell-casting best friend. too. In the scene at the wh.o.r.ehouse where Richard's mama talks to her friend the psychic, I name the friend Miss Amerae and give her the vibe of my own mama's voodoo-spell-casting best friend.

Once again, Richard hands over casting duties to me. I bring in one of my favorite singers, Carmen McRae. Billy Eckstein plays another singer, one with whom the young comic Jo Jo shares a burlesque-show stage. The beautiful Dianne Abbot, Robert DeNiro's wife, plays Jo Jo's mother. Paula Kelly acts the part of Richard's fantasy figure, the Satin Doll, the hooker with a heart of gold, the same character we also put into his TV special. There's a montage sequence tracked by Richard's Berkeley theme song, "What's Going On," which plays over street scenes and Jo Jo's rise as a comic.

But it's all too close to the bone. Scoey Mitch.e.l.l is Jo Jo's father, who puts him down with the exact words Richard heard from LeRoy Pryor during his youth: "This boy ain't s.h.i.+t and his mama ain't s.h.i.+t, either!"

We watch Richard rob his way out of a mob nightclub, destroy the car of one of his wives ("That car's going to need a tune-up," cracks his alter ego character, after Richard drives the Cadillac off a cliff), and crawl on his hands and knees trying to pick bits of rock cocaine out of the carpet in his bedroom.

Richard and I get to write his obituary in Jo Jo Dancer Jo Jo Dancer. In the last scene, he puts on his preacher-man voice and does a stand-up riff around his own funeral, pretending to gaze down at his own burnt-up corpse.

He tore his a.s.s on the freeway of life. The boy was a mess. He run through life like s.h.i.+t run through a goose. And now he rests here with a smile on his face. I guess that's a smile. I hope that's his face. You sure that isn't his a.s.s? It look like his a.s.s! Some people lead with their chin. Life kind of forces you to do that-to lead with your chin. But this man here, he led with his nuts. If his nuts wasn't in a vise, he wasn't happy.

Only Richard could burn himself up and still be able to crack jokes about how his a.s.s resembles his face. When we're writing the script, I keep thinking I am going too far, that Richard will draw the line somewhere. He never does. That's some b.a.l.l.sy s.h.i.+t. Richard is fearless all the way through Jo Jo Dancer, Jo Jo Dancer, confronting the episodes of his life that dog him. Nuts in a vise. confronting the episodes of his life that dog him. Nuts in a vise.

This boy ain't s.h.i.+t! That line has to be what is echoing somewhere in Richard's head, right at the moment when he pours 151-proof rum over himself. It's an awful curse to give to a young child. As f.u.c.ked-up as Richard is from his child-hood-and his craziness runs long and deep-I always think the real miracle is that he can laugh at his life at all. That line has to be what is echoing somewhere in Richard's head, right at the moment when he pours 151-proof rum over himself. It's an awful curse to give to a young child. As f.u.c.ked-up as Richard is from his child-hood-and his craziness runs long and deep-I always think the real miracle is that he can laugh at his life at all.

CHAPTER 28.

Yvonne wants her own business, so I set her up in a juice bar way down on the eastern end of Sunset. We call it Mooney's Juices Plus, and we name all the drinks after everyone we know. The Richard Pryor. The Rick James. The Eddie Murphy. We throw a grand opening, but Richard doesn't show up.

He's p.i.s.sed off because I didn't tell him ahead of time that I was planning on opening the spot-like a child, jealous of secrets being kept from him. The whole juice-bar business represents something in my life that he doesn't know about. I don't mean to spring it on him, but I'm busy, and it just happens. It's Yvonne's thing. It reminds me of the time Yvonne and I buy a brand-new Cadillac. When we drive up to Northridge in it to see Richard, he reacts as though we've somehow p.i.s.sed him off by not telling him about the car beforehand. I think he feels his life is out of control enough as it is. He doesn't need surprises from his friends.

But Mooney's juice bar does okay without Richard's help. A lot of Hollywood folk come by to buy. Denzel Was.h.i.+ngton, Debbie Allen, Rick James, Diahann Carroll, and Bette Midler are all customers. But in the same way it happens for a lot of couples, the new business marks the end of my marriage to Yvonne. It's like a cliche. Start a new business, move into a new house-sure enough, it'll bust up your relations.h.i.+p.

Healthy business: Yvonne in our shop in Hollywood, Mooney's Juices Yvonne and I used to live near a rich white couple who have broken up but still live together. They're separated, but friends. She lives upstairs in their house, he lives downstairs. They invite us over to dinner every once in a while.

Yvonne and I tell each other that's how we always want to be. Those people are the coolest. Everyone who breaks up and hates on each other-that's bulls.h.i.+t. We want to be cool with it. No messy divorce-court battles. We stay friends, just like the upstairs-downstairs neighbor couple. We concentrate on our children.

It's a crazy mash-up of a family, but somehow it works. My daughter Lisa is a big part of our lives. I bring her down from Oakland every summer to live with me. I also get to know my oldest sons, Daryl and Duane, much better than I ever did before. They are living in Los Angeles now, so I see them fairly often. One time, I bring the star of one of their favorite horror films, the rat-based fright flick, Willard, Willard, up to their bedroom to wish them good night. When they see Willard himself, the actor Bruce Davison, come into the room, they freak out. up to their bedroom to wish them good night. When they see Willard himself, the actor Bruce Davison, come into the room, they freak out.

The other kids are all crazy about the youngest member of the brood, Symeon, the last child Yvonne and I have before we break up. Symeon looks more like Yvonne, while Shane and Spring look like me. Symeon, like Symeon the Righteous from the Bible. The other kids always make a big deal of him, he's their little pet.

One evening we're out as a family at El Coyote, the famous Mexican restaurant in Hollywood. Five-year-old Symeon solemnly checks out the patio, which is dominated by gay males, laughing and drinking. He turns to me.

"Daddy, where are all the mommies?" The whole family cracks up laughing. Out of the mouth of babes.

All the kids have their daddy's show business blood in their veins. Duane and Daryl are already making noise that they want to follow their old man into comedy. Right around this time, Shane lands a role in the second-generation Roots Roots series, making his family proud. series, making his family proud.

This is the hardest period of my friends.h.i.+p with Richard. He goes all scattered and remote on me. Finally, he tells me what's up with him. The tingly feeling he has in his limbs, which we always wrote off as nerve damage from the fire, winds up being the first signs of multiple sclerosis. The dreaded MS. A disease that slowly attacks the nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord, so that you get more and more messed up, until you can't breathe, can't talk, can't live. There's no cure.

MS happens at different rates for different people, and Richard is convinced he will have the slow kind. He's got healthy years ahead of him, he tells me. It doesn't work out that way. From the middle of the 1980s onward, MS steals a little more from Richard, week by week, month by month. If I don't see him for a little while, and then I go up to Northridge, I am always shocked by the change. My best friend is falling apart right in front of my eyes.

"MS is a motherf.u.c.ker, Mr. Mooney," he says. "I wouldn't wish it on Annette Funicello." There are rumors back then that the Beach Blanket Bingo Beach Blanket Bingo actress has MS, too. actress has MS, too.

"I know why G.o.d gave me MS," Richard says. "I was a bad guy. I was into drugs. But how could G.o.d give it to Annette Funicello? She never did nothing bad. She's a Mouse-keteer! I mean, come on, G.o.d!"

As Richard is fading, other comics are coming up who idolize him. I first meet Eddie Murphy in New York in 1985, on the set of Richard's movie Brewster's Millions Brewster's Millions. Eddie's been on Sat.u.r.day Night Live Sat.u.r.day Night Live since the early 1980s. By the time I meet him, he has already broken out as a big movie star in since the early 1980s. By the time I meet him, he has already broken out as a big movie star in 48 Hrs., Trading Places, 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and and Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop. He comes onto the set as a guest of Richard's costar on Brewster's, Brewster's, John Candy. John Candy.

Richard and Eddie huddle up right away. Eddie is telling him how he's been following Richard's every move since he was a little kid on Long Island. John Candy looks over to them and frets. He's jealous of their instant friends.h.i.+p.

"Richard hates me," Candy says.

"Richard doesn't hate you," I say to him, although I know for a fact that Richard cannot stand the man. It's Chevy Chase all over again.

"He never talks to me like that," Candy says, looking over at Eddie and Richard together.

"You ain't black," I say to him, giving him a blinding glimpse of the obvious. I make some excuse and leave the needy fat man to himself.

I occasionally feel resentment from my professional contacts because of my closeness with Richard. Eddie Murphy and I talk about it. "I have Caesar's ear, and they don't like that," I say. I'm one of the few people who can go up and see Richard whenever, wherever.

"I know that I used to hate you," Eddie says. "I was always seeing you with stars, and I got mad at you."

"People dislike you when you have Caesar's ear. They can't get to the king, so they get p.i.s.sed at you."

Later on, Richard asks me about Murphy. "You don't like him," he says.

"What's there to like?" I say. "He's just a kid." I harbor a secret grudge because I feel as though Eddie has lifted some of my material, or at least did some s.h.i.+t that was similar to mine. Comics always feel that way whether justified or not. It's a chronic condition with us.

I wonder if all alpha males hate on one another at the start. Richard and I don't get along the first time we meet, either, when he tries to lay that orgy s.h.i.+t on me. It takes a while. Same with Eddie. But we go on to become real friends.

"Now Mr. Mooney can get his money from Eddie," Richard says. He says it sort of mock bitterly, like he's half-hurt and half-relieved that I don't have to rely on his broke-down a.s.s for employment.

Meanwhile, Eddie has a beef with Keenan Wayans, another comic who is coming up just then. Keenan gets into Eddie's s.h.i.+t over some material each of them claims as his own. They talk about suing each other. I step in between them.

"Don't do it," I tell Eddie and Keenan both. "It's black-on-black crime, brothers. Black people fighting, you know white people love the s.h.i.+t out of that."

They resolve their differences out of court, and I wind up working with both of them. For his Raw tour in 1987, Eddie invites me to open for him.

I say, "I'm a comic, and you're a comic, and you want me to open for you?"

"That's right," he says.

Keepin' it Raw: Me with Eddie Murphy and his wife, Nicole Mitch.e.l.l Murphy It's never been done before. The hard-and-fast s...o...b..z tradition is to mix music and comedy. If the headliner is a comic, you open with a musical act. Richard always has Patti LaBelle open for him. Elvis headlines, and he puts Sammy Sh.o.r.e as the first act.

Eddie's on Oprah, Oprah, and she asks him who his favorite comic is. "Paul Mooney," he says. I have to laugh at the look of terror, disgust, and fascination that crosses Oprah's face at that moment. I am always f.u.c.king with her in my act. and she asks him who his favorite comic is. "Paul Mooney," he says. I have to laugh at the look of terror, disgust, and fascination that crosses Oprah's face at that moment. I am always f.u.c.king with her in my act.

Eddie and I go out on the nationwide Raw tour, and we kill. I can tell I am keeping him sharp. He calls the tour "Raw" because Bill Cosby gets down on him publicly, calling his language too raw. Eddie definitely doesn't tone it down in response. Somebody counts up the number of times f.u.c.k f.u.c.k is used in the movie version of his Raw act, and it turns out it's the most ever in a film since the Al Pacino gangster flick is used in the movie version of his Raw act, and it turns out it's the most ever in a film since the Al Pacino gangster flick Scarface. Scarface.

On the tour bus, they nickname me Indian and Vampire because they never see me sleep. "I have to stay awake and watch this white man drive this bus," I tell them. Any time I close my eyes, I get bus-plunge visions. It's all from my experience as an eighth-month fetus in the womb, getting roller-coastered on a road in Shreveport, Louisiana.

When the Wayans brothers get their own show on Fox in 1990, they call it In Living Color In Living Color. Fox is still trying to break the grip of the Big Three networks back then, so it's open to edgier material than NBC, ABC, and CBS. For the show's ensemble, the Wayans hire some people who go on to be stars, like Jim Carrey, David Alan Grier, and Jamie Foxx.

I don't want to come aboard as a staff writer. But the Wayans create the character of Homey D. Clown off a riff of mine. Homey is a children's party clown who performs the job as part of a prison work-release program. He doesn't take any s.h.i.+t from kids or grown-ups. He's the oppressed figure who is comically vocal about his status.

In one sketch, Jim Carrey leads a Boy Scoutstyle group to a party with Homey.

Jim Carrey (as scout leader): Do you mind if I use a check to pay for this? Do you mind if I use a check to pay for this?Damon Wayans (as Homey D. Clown): Oh, you want to pay me with a check, huh? And have me stand in line at some d.a.m.ned bank in a clown outfit, degrading and shaming myself to cash your little peanuts? I don't think so. Homey don't play that. Oh, you want to pay me with a check, huh? And have me stand in line at some d.a.m.ned bank in a clown outfit, degrading and shaming myself to cash your little peanuts? I don't think so. Homey don't play that.

Damon slurs the line "your little peanuts" so it sounds like "your little p.e.n.i.s."

Homey has a motto, which may as well be words to live by for every comedian who doesn't want to play the c.o.o.n. "Homey may be a clown," Damon says in character more than once, "but he don't make a fool out of himself."

In Living Color is a phenomenon for Fox, delivering the young viewers the network craves. "Homey don't play that" becomes another of my catchphrases to go national. Richard loves the show. We sometimes watch it together at his place in Northridge. It feels as though our pigeons are coming home to roost. The momentum we started on is a phenomenon for Fox, delivering the young viewers the network craves. "Homey don't play that" becomes another of my catchphrases to go national. Richard loves the show. We sometimes watch it together at his place in Northridge. It feels as though our pigeons are coming home to roost. The momentum we started on The Richard Pryor Show The Richard Pryor Show is playing out with Eddie Murphy, the Wayanses, and other comics like Dave Chappelle. At the same time that the MS slowly takes away Richard's ability to talk, new voices are coming up. is playing out with Eddie Murphy, the Wayanses, and other comics like Dave Chappelle. At the same time that the MS slowly takes away Richard's ability to talk, new voices are coming up.

The black pack: a.r.s.enio Hall, me, Eddie Murphy, Robert Townsend, and Keenan Ivory Wayans

CHAPTER 29.

In spring 1992, a month after the riot against the Rodney King verdicts burns down half of Los Angeles, I'm in the green room at the Pantages Theater at Hollywood and Vine. One of the promoters of the show approaches me with a request.

"Mr. Mooney," he says, actually wringing his hands like he's in a silent movie-probably Birth of a Nation, Birth of a Nation, "could you please not mention race?" "could you please not mention race?"

I marvel that there's a person on the face of G.o.d's green earth who would have the total lack of sense to say something like that to me. It's like someone coming up and saying, "Could you please not breathe?" Who does this imbecile think I am?

I'm not one of those people out there burning down stores or boosting TVs. But I see enough LAPD bulls.h.i.+t in my life to know that this moment is a long time coming. L.A. police are the worst in the world. They're outnumbered, and they know it, so they have to act all heavy-handed to make their presence known.

Richard rents a house in Bel Air to get away from the Northridge craziness. We go up there to work. I leave the house late one night, but the streets are like a maze up there. I'm driving around lost for fifteen minutes. I see a car full of white people, and I think they're lost, too. They trail me for a little while. I finally make it down to Sunset and turn east. I approach the dogleg at the start of the Strip, right where Tower Records is back then, and there's a police roadblock waiting for me.

What the s.h.i.+t is this?

"Some citizen called it in," the cop tells me as he's checking my ID.

"Some citizen? What am I? I'm a citizen. What do you think I am, a baseball bat?"