Furious Cool

Furious Cool PDF Author: David Henry
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616204478
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Provides a rare glimpse into the life of an outrageously human, fearlessly black, openly angry and profanely outspoken comedic genius whose humble beginnings as the child of a prostitute helped shaped him into one of the most influential and outstanding performers of our time.

Furious Cool

Furious Cool PDF Author: David Henry
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616204478
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Provides a rare glimpse into the life of an outrageously human, fearlessly black, openly angry and profanely outspoken comedic genius whose humble beginnings as the child of a prostitute helped shaped him into one of the most influential and outstanding performers of our time.

Becoming Richard Pryor

Becoming Richard Pryor PDF Author: Scott Saul
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062123335
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
A major biography—intimate, gripping, revelatory—of an artist who revolutionized American comedy. Richard Pryor may have been the most unlikely star in Hollywood history. Raised in his family’s brothels, he grew up an outsider to privilege. He took to the stage, originally, to escape the hard-bitten realities of his childhood, but later came to a reverberating discovery: that by plunging into the depths of his experience, he could make stand-up comedy as exhilarating and harrowing as the life he’d known. He brought that trembling vitality to Hollywood, where his movie career—Blazing Saddles, the buddy comedies with Gene Wilder, Blue Collar—flowed directly out of his spirit of creative improvisation. The major studios considered him dangerous. Audiences felt plugged directly into the socket of life. Becoming Richard Pryor brings the man and his comic genius into focus as never before. Drawing upon a mountain of original research—interviews with family and friends, court transcripts, unpublished journals, screenplay drafts—Scott Saul traces Pryor’s rough journey to the heights of fame: from his heartbreaking childhood, his trials in the Army, and his apprentice days in Greenwich Village to his soul-searching interlude in Berkeley and his ascent in the “New Hollywood” of the 1970s. Becoming Richard Pryor illuminates an entertainer who, by bringing together the spirits of the black freedom movement and the counterculture, forever altered the DNA of American comedy. It reveals that, while Pryor made himself a legend with his own account of his life onstage, the full truth of that life is more bracing still.

Pryor Convictions

Pryor Convictions PDF Author: Richard Pryor
Publisher: Barnacle Book
ISBN: 9781947856059
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Originally published by Pantheon Books in 1995.

Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor PDF Author: Audrey Thomas McCluskey
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253220114
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
"This anthology captures the spirit, zest, and cultural impact of Pryor's complex artistry."--Back cover.

Jokes My Father Never Taught Me

Jokes My Father Never Taught Me PDF Author: Rain Pryor
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061745960
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The loving, witty, yet brutally honest memoir of the daughter of comedy legend Richard Pryor. Rain Pryor was born in the idealistic, free-love 1960s. Her mother was a Jewish go-go dancer who wanted a tribe of rainbow children. Rain’s father was Richard Pryor, perhaps the most compelling and brilliant comedian of his era, a man whose self-destructiveness was as legendary as his groundbreaking comedy. Jokes My Father Never Taught Me is an intimate, harrowing, poignant, and often hilarious memoir that explores the divided heritage and the forces that shaped a wildly schizophrenic childhood. It is the story of a girl who grew up adoring her father even as she feared him—and feared for him, as his drug problems got worse. Both lovingly told and painfully frank, it is an unprecedented look at the life of a comedy icon, told by a daughter who both understood the genius and knew the tortured man within. Praise for Jokes My Father Never Taught Me “Rain Pryor pulls no punches . . . Using the same profanity-laced wit her father perfected, she unspools darkly comic stories . . . but never devolves into self-pity or bitterness.” —Entertainment Weekly “Vital, entertaining and appalling, Pryor has fleshed out a familiar dysfunctional family refrain—”It was a lot easier to love him if you didn’t know him”—with bravery and wit.” —Publishers Weekly

On the Real Side

On the Real Side PDF Author: Mel Watkins
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1569767602
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 638

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Book Description
This comprehensive history of black humor sets it in the context of American popular culture. Blackface minstrelsy, Stepin Fetchit, and the Amos 'n' Andy show presented a distorted picture of African Americans; this book contrasts this image with the authentic underground humor of African Americans found in folktales, race records, and all-black shows and films. After generations of stereotypes, the underground humor finally emerged before the American public with Richard Pryor in the 1970s. But Pryor was not the first popular comic to present authentically black humor. Watkins offers surprising reassessments of such seminal figures as Fetchit, Bert Williams, Moms Mabley, and Redd Foxx, looking at how they paved the way for contemporary comics such as Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy, and Bill Cosby.

In a Pryor Life

In a Pryor Life PDF Author: Jr Richard Pryor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781629333885
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"I survived. And that's what my book is about, a real-life story of overcoming obstacles, surviving, and thriving." - Richard Pryor Jr.

Alright, Let's Call It a Draw

Alright, Let's Call It a Draw PDF Author: John Paul Pryor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780985755003
Category : Iraq War, 2003-2011
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
Dr. John Pryor never thought he was in any real danger as a combat surgeon. After all, he wasn't going out on patrols, risking his life dodging IEDs. Unlike the grunts fighting urban combat, he remained within the safe confines of the field hospital. So, no one was more surprised than John when a rocket blast claimed his life on Christmas morning, 2008. He was 42 years old.This incredible narrative details the life of a modern-day patriot and humanitarian. Throughout his life Dr. Pryor refused to ignore that inner voice compelling him to serve, both his fellow man and the country he loved.Funny, poignant, powerful, and ultimately tragic, this vivid memoir guides you through a personal and intimate account of Dr. Pryor's lifefrom speeding in an ambulance as a teenager, to medical school in Grenada; from operating on trauma victims, to searching the rubble on 9-11and battling death as combat surgeon in Iraq.Dr. Pryor's untimely death not only cheated us of his surgical skills and medical knowledge, but the greater life lessons he championed: integrity, honesty, altruism and humanity. Alright, Let's Call it a Draw is a inspirational narrative meant to salvage these lessons to be shared with those he left behind.

If I Stop I'll Die

If I Stop I'll Die PDF Author: John Alfred Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781560250623
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
IF I STOP I'LL DIE is an incisive examination of the comedian's life and humor which not only reveals details of Pryor's troubled but brilliant career - his infamous "Las Vegas metamorphosis," his friendships with the black intelligentsia of 1960s Berkeley, his little-known contributions to the scripts in which he appeared - but also places these events within the context that shaped Pryor's outlook, personality, and opportunities. And it captures the irony that pervaded his life and career: how he could present brilliantly universal material from such a militantly black perspective; how the powers of Hollywood could force him to portray on film the very racial caricatures that he lampooned on stage; how he could publicly flaunt his private exploits, with embellished comedic versions of his drug use, sexual adventures, and bursts of violence, while fiercely protecting the real facts behind such episodes.

Unsuccessful Thug

Unsuccessful Thug PDF Author: Mike Epps
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062684914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
From Naptown to Tinseltown—legendary stand-up comedian and actor Mike Epps finally tells all in this outrageous, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir. Before starring in Def Comedy Jam and Showtime at the Apollo—before the sold-out comedy shows, Uncle Buck, and becoming his hero Richard Pryor in a biopic—there was Indianapolis. And not the good part. Mike Epps is one of America’s favorite and funniest people, but the path to fame was paved with opportunities to mess it up. And mess it up he did. Growing up in “Naptown”—what people who live there really call rough-around-the-edges Indianapolis—Epps found himself forced to hustle from an early age. Despite his mother’s best efforts, and the love of his well-behaved brother, “Chaney,” and his beloved sister, Julie, Epps was drawn to a life of crime, but as he quickly discovered, stealing and dealing didn’t really fit his sweet sensibilities. Not to mention he wasn’t very good at it—take, for example, the day he had to call the cops on himself when a dog wouldn’t let him leave a house he was burgling. After several arrests and more than a few months in jail, Epps finally realized that he was an unsuccessful thug, and instead turned to the next most obvious career path: stand-up comedy. Heading first to New York, then all over the country, and finally to Hollywood, Mike Epps carved out a unique place in American comedy, combining hysterical tales of his family and friends with a mordant take on life in the Naptowns of America. Comedy saved Mike Epps, and here he reveals exactly how he finally grew up and got out, barely. And when describing how he survived when so many of his friends didn’t, Epps makes clear what he’s thankful for and sorry about. Unsuccessful Thug is about growing up black in America, facing down racism in Hollywood, and ultimately how it feels to fail at thugdom, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and end up selling out arenas and starring in movies across the country.