Category: I’ve long kept a special place in my heart for men who can make me laugh. When I was 16, I dreamed I married Steve Martin. I also bought my very first comedy album, Richard Pryor’s …Is It Something I Said?
I listened in secret, huddled in the family car parked in our driveway. My parents wouldn’t have approved, which I’m sure as a rebellious teenager was part of the attraction. I felt like I was pulling one over on them somehow.
But ultimately Richard Pryor became much more to me than just a means to torture my parents. In the film Love Actually, actress Emma Thompson’s character explains to her husband that listening to Joni Mitchell was part of her emotional education. Listening to Richard Pryor was part of mine.
Pryor was the first person in my life who challenged me to think. He made me consider, for the first time, racial and cultural differences and the larger human world that existed outside my own little microcosm. He made me think about the kind of person I wanted to be and the things I wanted to accomplish in my life. And through it all, he made me laugh so hard I nearly peed my pants.
I enjoyed Pryor’s work in films, but for me, his stand-up comedy is what always affected me most deeply. He didn’t talk down to me. While the angry activists of the day intimidated me or made me feel ashamed and embarrassed about how little I knew or understood, Pryor hit me right where I lived. He was kind and funny, but still committed and intent. He taught me that you can believe in something and express your beliefs in an engaging way that will draw people in and set real change in motion, rather than simply living in anger over the injustice of it all. He didn’t attack me for my ignorance–he allowed me the space to examine my own heart, my own motives and my own actions.
As I watched Richard Pryor struggle publicly with drugs and illness, he also taught me lessons about what it means to be human, about resiliency and perseverance, about holding on to one’s grace and dignity under extreme pressure. These are lessons I have called upon many times in my life.
Richard Pryor and Russell Brand share some things in common — both came from difficult backgrounds, although Pryor was exposed to prostitution at an even earlier age than Brand. Both struggled with all-consuming drug addiction. Richard Pryor had a sincere and romantic love for women, as Brand does, with the difference being that Pryor seems to have married each of the women with whom he fell in love, while Brand carries on a uniquely sweet and enduring love affair with the female gender as a whole.
The fact that life did not come easily for them gave both Pryor and Brand a strength of heart that is at once touching and irresistible. I admire Richard Pryor for the same reason Russell Brand does, because he was able to find humor in even the most gut-wrenching situations. I also admire him for one of the same reasons I admire Russell Brand — Brand follows in Pryor’s footsteps not only in his ability to laugh through pain, but in his ability to shine a light on human frailty in a way that makes us feel warm and loved.
Here is Russell Brand’s BBC Radio 2 broadcast, Richard Pryor: Was It Something I Said?, aired December 11, 2007, in tribute to Richard Pryor two years after his death on December 10, 2005.
WARNING: This broadcast contains strong language, profanity and explicit content which may be offensive to some. (Running time 56:50.)
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