The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Marcos El Malo — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:53:30 -0000

Don't forget Belushi.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

DaveinHackensack — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:21:57 -0000

This is great writing, Ta-Nehisi, and pretty insightful to boot. An impressive post.

I had the same reactions to Raw (funny) and Sunset Strip (not). Maybe I'll give Sunset Strip a second look.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:04:12 -0000

You're lucky. The voice in my head sounds like Bobcat Goldthwait.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

brucds — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:52:40 -0000

I've often wondered why Pryor made so many shitty movies and immediately realize...duh! Cocaine habit, big checks and Hollywood trying to figure out what to do with him = lots of movies that suck. Happens to a lot of great - or even just promising - comedians when they hit the big time from Whoopi, to Robin W to Steve Martin.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Connor — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:33:33 -0000

I have this great recording of him in the late 60s or early 70s doing a prolonged (and perfect) impression of HAL 9000's death while the audience, baffled and clearly not digging it, is almost completely silent.

It's fucking great is what it is.

Anyways, good post, Ta-Nehisi. I'm glad you hit on Pryor's intense vulnerability and how he worked it into his act, creating a narrative of a broken man seeking redemption. People don't talk much about it, but that's why I keep going back to him (you could say the same about Bill Hicks, my second favorite standup of all-time).

That and the complete public disintegration of machismo (which I guess is pretty much a part of male vulnerability), something that really stands out seeing as how it's coming from a 1. straight 2. black man 3. in the 1970s. Try finding that on Def Comedy Jam. The dude is confessing shit that should be making us squirm in our seats.

Sidenote: In the mornings, I leave on a Richard Pryor playlist before me and my fiancee leave for work. For some reason, it soothes our dog. The few times I've forgotten to leave it on, I come home and she's peed and gotten into the garbage.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

cormacmahoney — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:23:20 -0000

dude wearing a beanie and a backpack had pulled a gun on someone a couple blocks over- they were rounding everyone up who was wearing a hat and a pack. alleged perp was black so they weren't holding whites (me) and hispanics after checking them out briefly- I had my kniferoll on me and guy next to me was sweating cuz he had just come out of his dealer's spot holding. but once they checked ID's, people walked and they kept up with the swarm- so many cops and lights for about 30 minutes before my bus came. the whole experience has helped inform my thinking on some ish; the Pryor thread took me back today.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

anna perez — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:30:10 -0000

It's hard to calibrate the impact of Bill Cosby's role on "I Spy" (let's all try to forget the Eddie Murphy remake) on my then young teenaged brain. HUGE! Later, watching "The Cosby Show" with my husband and our young children (same ages and genders as Theo and Rudy) it was as if Kelly Robinson was what I wanted to be and Cliff and Claire was what I had become.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

anna perez — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:08:53 -0000

So far, so good!

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

motownjunk — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:32:48 -0000

Irony is the only book of his I've read so far, but I'd like to read more. I've read more books ABOUT him than by him, ironically. :-) A good one to check out is The Constant Dialogue by Martin Halliwell, which situates Niebuhr in relation to some of his contemporary intellectuals and writers: John Dewey, William James, James Baldwin, etc. It's an academic book and a bit heavy-going, but really helpful in explaining the various strands of Niebuhr's thought, including the influences behind Irony.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Fax Paladin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:27:48 -0000

Heading into a way different category, a section of Genius, James Gleick's biography of the physicist Richard Feynman, deals with one of the sadder sides of Feynman's larger-than-life stature -- the frequency with which budding physicists who met him suddenly decided that physics wasn't for them, for how could they compete with that?

It's an easy trap to fall into, and one you have to avoid. I'm starting to suspect that this may be much of the point behind the Buddhist idea that if you meet the Buddha on the road to enlightenment, you have to kill him to progress. Learn dauntlessly.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

brucds — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:24:21 -0000

Uh..surely, not surley. And that was Twain's travels, not Huck's.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

brucds — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:20:09 -0000

"the love child of Mark Twain and Moms Mabley" - this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Twain was a fervent afficiando of "Negro spirituals" and often sang and danced to black songs when he was entertaining friends. And he was surley one of the originators of the "marginalized voice" as narrator that is a feature so much great black literature - and comedy . It's probable, in the research of one prominent Twain scholar, that the inspiration for Huckleberry Finn's manner was actually an extremely voluble black kid he encountered in his travels (See "Was Huck Black?" by Shelley Fisher Fishkin.)

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Fax Paladin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:17:34 -0000

OK, you've got me hooked (er, so to speak). What did the cops want?

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Brian L — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:16:54 -0000

I've never read Niebuhr but it sounds like I should. Especially since about a year ago I came to the conclusion that irony is THE governing force in the universe.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

PBomb — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:19:08 -0000

Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, and George Carlin are my top 3 favorite comedians of the past. Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams round out the top five. You could throw some Redd Foxx in there too.

As for modern comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock would be it really.

There are some others like Louis CK and Margaret Cho. Wanda Sykes has moments. But nobody really comes to mind.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

cormacmahoney — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:59:09 -0000

so I'm sitting at the 5th and Hill bus stop across from Pershing Square in LA one night after work, headphones up loud, head down in whatever I was reading. lights hit me and I look up to see an LAPD cruiser cutting across Hill to t-bone the bench I was on. two cops jump out of the car, guns drawn, yelling something I can't hear because I got the music too loud. my hands are in the air- amazing TV conditioning or natural instinct?- and I am frozen because it is the first time this kid has had a couple 9's pointed his way. the cops are still yelling at me to do something- sit down? turn around?- and my mind is looping 'I'm gonna get shot by LAPD, I'm gonna get shot by LAPD...' when Richard Pryor's voice materializes, speaking calmly in my head, telling me what to do: I yell very loudly and slowly 'I AM GOING TO REACH DOWN AND REMOVE MY HEADPHONES SO I CAN UNDERSTAND YOU- I AM GOING TO REACH DOWN FOR MY HEADPHONES! PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT ME!'

whenever I think about that incident, I am always a bit amazed that it was Richard Pryor who took control of my fight-or-flight mechanism and not the myriad other influences and educations of my life. that dude was a human's human.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:03:34 -0000

Cos is great, and doesn't even Pryor cite him as an influence? The think that, I think, grates on people is his idea that all comedians should adhere to his standard. The Wanda Sykes thing is a good example.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

ST — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:56:49 -0000

I always thought if I wrote an autobiography I would call it, "the things I used to believe".

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Jennifer D. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:55:23 -0000

Yeah, that talking pipe is right on.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Faivel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:55:05 -0000

How odd: I was listening to this very show two days ago -- there's an audio version, too -- and I was struck, among other things, by what a great person Jim Brown was. Pryor talks him at length elsewhere. What a mensch -- what a man -- Brown is.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Jennifer D. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:52:53 -0000

Anna, you have had an enviably interesting life!

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:24:05 -0000

I didn't mean to jump on you, Ogdred. My response was more about the discourse around Cosby and Pryor. As you say, it's hipper to cite Pryor, although lots of comedians, of all races, borrow from The Cos, it's actually unhip to cite him. It's also been hip, and easy, to make fun of Cosby. A little of it's earned (there's a classic SNL bit with Eddie doing a Cosby whose references were no longer recognizable), but most of it is thoughtless. And it leads to ugly moments like the Wanda Sykes-Cos kerfuffle, with the great man ungenerously backhanding a younger talent who's unthinkingly disrespecting him.

Cosby didn't change the artform in the way Bruce did. But he did integrate the artform, and that's a pretty serious change. And while he was at it, he integrated American TV. Cosby may be one of the few African-American trailblazers in the 20th century whose contribution actually gets underrated, who's a more singular figure and less one part of a movement than the hagiography makes him.

It's hard to describe how big the transition from pre-Cosby to post-Cosby is. He's the first black comedian who can attract a wide multiracial following without playing the subordinate role at all. You may not think his work was confrontational enough, but if you watch it again it's impossible to be embarrassed by it. And before him you can't really say that about any black comedian in front of white American audiences. Cosby doesn't play the ingratiation card. Period. Before him, everybody had to, and after him they don't.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

anna perez — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:20:19 -0000

Richard Pryor is the love child of Mark Twain and Moms Mabley. He was pure genius and as American as apple pie.

In the early '70's, I was a stewardess (that's what we were called and I still prefer it to flight attendent) for United Airlines which had a non-stop from NYC to Portland Ore with a 36 hour crew lay-over. Flight crews stayed at the Benson Hotel, the best in town. One the hotel's door men, a young Radar (from "Mash") look-a-like always had great "weed" and of course, he loved the stewardesses as much as we loved his "weed." One night he invited us all over to his apartment for dinner, just him and about 6 of us. First he broke out the weed, then the Richard Pryor ('That Nigger is Crazy.) I was the only Black person in the room but we were all on the floor, laughing til we cried. The best part, I didn't have to translate one word.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

brucds — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:04:33 -0000

You know, this isn't very cool, but I loved that guy with the puppet head in the box, Senor Wences. He cracked me up. Also remember seeing Mike Nichols and Elaine May when they were sort of weirdos doing very low-key, off-beat humor.

Re: Time For Some Smoke, Rich

LCrawfty — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:39:47 -0000

Did I say also twice? Wow, super.