(3 of 4)
At his best, Pryor is still the naughty little boy, acting mean to mask the raging fear in his eyes, transforming everyday existence into a dangerous and beautiful night world. People, animals, things talk to him—talk through him. In his two concert films, this profane Pentecostalist speaks in tongues of bad black dudes, whining white liberals, Mafia hitmen and a stuttering Chinese. He conjures a menagerie of horny monkeys, a neurotic Doberman, a scared and suspicious deer, a killer rabbit, two suave malamutes in need of an exorcist. Physical pain is a constant—and chatty—companion. It may visit him as a sharp twinge while he jogs, and speak in the argot of an officious tax accountant: "Hello! I'll be messin' with you the next hour or so. I'll be moving from side to side, down your groin and up your ass. When you drop dead, I will stop." Onstage, Pryor re-creates his 1977 heart attack, and now pain arrives as an all-business mugger: "Don't breathe. Was you tryin' to talk to God behind my back?" Sometimes the pain turns to fear, and his mind tells his body: "Run!"
"Run!"—a strangulated scream that sends his body shivering like a savvy Stepin Fetchit—set the tone for the movie roles that, gradually, made Pryor a star. He had appeared in half a dozen parts before winning an Oscar nomination for his performance as the piano player in Lady Sings the Blues (1972). Silver Streak, which his presence enlivened into the surprise hit of 1977, was his 15th film; Stir Crazy was his 25th. Compromise was the dues paid on this long climb—minimal roles in marginal movies—but from it emerged a Richard Pryor the movie audience found ingratiating, droll, poignant, even cute.
Many of these parts offered Pryor nothing more than the chance to outshine his material. And when he was powerful enough to control his films, the results were mixed. Bustin' Loose is too shamblingly agreeable, with its easy gags and its busload of orphans. Even Some Kind of Hero, despite its street slang and high ambitions, is standard stuff; it swings from farce to melodrama to human comedy to oblivion. But Pryor is superb, expertly moving his audience as this born loser determines to be born again a winner, and earning every laugh and tear he is bound to get. These films invest Pryor with a soft core of strength everybody's aunt can respond to. The concert films are the hard stuff—the stuff he is made of.
"I am no day at the beach," Pryor confides to his Sunset Strip listeners. The danger some moviegoers feel watching unadulterated Pryor—the danger that is surely the dark side of his power and appeal— has been felt offstage by friends and strangers. A man who in the '50s stabbed a fellow U.S. Army soldier in West Germany, who in 1967 assaulted a Hollywood motel clerk, who in 1978 threatened his new wife (he has had four) and shot a car full of holes with a .357 magnum—this is a soul who seems desperately late for a blind date with chaos.