Episode 1274 - Jennifer Lee Pryor
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I feel like I am strained.
Marc:I am weak.
Marc:I'm a bit.
Marc:It's not tired.
Marc:I feel a weight on my cells because I got my booster.
Marc:I got boosted yesterday.
Marc:I got boosted.
Marc:I'm going out five nights a week, standing in front of hundreds of people, some masked, some unmasked.
Marc:I'm not wearing a mask.
Marc:I think that counts as being a relatively high risk situation.
Marc:But I'm out in the world.
Marc:I'm doing the work.
Marc:So I got my booster.
Marc:And I don't feel good.
Marc:I do not feel good.
Marc:But I feel like I did the right thing.
Marc:I feel like now I'm set.
Marc:I got the flu vaccine a couple weeks ago.
Marc:I am fucking loaded.
Marc:I am loaded.
Marc:I've had the shingles vaccine.
Marc:My cells are just they're they're ready.
Marc:They have a point of reference for most things that will come through and they'll be like, nope, no can do.
Marc:We're not going to let you run with that.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:Yeah, we we've got all the genetic information we need on on you and you can just move on through the body.
Marc:Go for it.
Marc:Today on the show, I have a nice long conversation with Jennifer Lee Pryor.
Marc:She's the widow of Richard Pryor, who she married twice.
Marc:She's also an actor, a writer, producer, and she's just worked with the with the Time Life people to curate a new career spanning box set.
Marc:Richard Pryor's work.
Marc:And going into this, I don't know anything about anybody really.
Marc:You don't know anything about anybody really until you meet them or sit with them or talk to them or engage with them for a period of time.
Marc:You make assumptions.
Marc:And I really didn't know anything about her other than she married Richard twice.
Marc:And I didn't know what that was about.
Marc:I guess I knew that she was in charge of the estate because she put this thing out.
Marc:But I just didn't have any sense of who she was.
Marc:And it's easy, I think, for us to judge the wives of famous people or the wives that end up with, you know, the estates.
Marc:It's easy to put them in a box or diminish them or whatever it is.
Marc:It's not good.
Marc:What I was presupposing or judging or, you know, assumed.
Marc:So when I met Jennifer, it was like amazing.
Marc:I mean, we went through her life.
Marc:She was in Hollywood in the 70s and the acting and where she came from and what she was up to.
Marc:Globe trotting, modeling, doing the acting, hanging out with big directors, big stars.
Marc:It was the 70s, man.
Marc:But the bottom line is, is that the reason it was such a great conversation is that she was with Richard.
Marc:At the highest point that he had, she was with Richard when he created and performed that first live in concert movie, which changed my life and also put him on the map.
Marc:I would assume globally, but certainly it was a big crossover thing.
Marc:That was the defining special of in terms of my influences around stand up for me, but just in terms of him.
Marc:And she was there through the development and shooting of that and then onward through his suicide attempt when he set himself on fire.
Marc:And then she kind of gets pushed out and brought back in again at the end of his life when he's battling MS.
Marc:And to talk to somebody who was around for both of those things or just around Richard at that time where that was the peak.
Marc:And after that, it was it was sort of a very slow process.
Marc:But defined decline and the insight that she had about him and her experience with him.
Marc:But but also like herself and what she went through with him.
Marc:It was it was much more exciting and interesting than I was prepared for.
Marc:And I really liked her.
Marc:And it was just it was great.
Marc:It was great talking to her.
Marc:And the box set's fucking amazing.
Marc:I went to a Wilco show last night, and a couple of things were revealed to me.
Marc:You know, it's like I don't know about this grief business, you guys.
Marc:I don't... You know, obviously, we've been all going through it, and you know my story, but it was weird.
Marc:It was one of those...
Marc:where I was standing there at this thing out with people and I realized like in a moment there that I made it through.
Marc:But Lynn Shelton did not make it through.
Marc:She should have been here.
Marc:She should have been there.
Marc:She should have been at the show enjoying the music.
Marc:She didn't make it through.
Marc:And there was a moment where it was sort of leveling.
Marc:that void, but I'm starting to realize, because I ran into another guy, I ran into Mike O'Brien, who's a writer, AP Bio, and he used to write for SNL, but he wrote Sword of Trust, the story, with Lynn, and I saw him, and he was right there,
Marc:And I went up to him.
Marc:I hadn't seen him since the pandemic.
Marc:And I just said, look, it's sad, man.
Marc:She should be here.
Marc:And he's like, yeah, it's terrible.
Marc:And it is terrible.
Marc:And I almost felt like bawling in front of him because of his connection with her.
Marc:They were friends and they wrote together.
Marc:But I was kind of keeping it all inside.
Marc:But I realized that I have a profound depth of anger, really.
Marc:And why wouldn't I?
Marc:About not being able to have the life that was going to happen.
Marc:Fury, anger that can go nowhere.
Marc:What do you do with that?
Marc:I mean, yeah, life is not fair.
Marc:People die.
Marc:Tragedy happens.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's the nature of it.
Marc:There's nowhere to put that anger.
Marc:You shake your fist at the sky, but it's real.
Marc:It's real.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know Tweedy is a pretty sweet presence and has a lot of heart up there.
Marc:And, you know, he said a few words and there was a vulnerability to the whole goddamn thing.
Marc:Just see the gratitude that he had for people coming out, for his crew, for, you know, not having gotten sick, any of them.
Marc:And, you know, just the nature of what was going on with everyone in masks and how bizarre it was.
Marc:But we're doing it.
Marc:We're doing what humans do.
Marc:We're doing what humans do when they...
Marc:They are together.
Marc:They are rejoicing.
Marc:They are doing a community crowd experience thing.
Marc:And it's new again.
Marc:So I felt carried by the vulnerability of that particular band in that particular moment.
Marc:But God damn it, man.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:The absence.
Marc:The absence.
Marc:So Richard Pryor...
Marc:You know, as everything kind of flies into the rearview mirror, as everything is in the rearview mirror, the rearview mirror, oddly, is everything all the time.
Marc:The rearview mirror is always present.
Marc:There is no context.
Marc:There is no history when you look into the rearview mirror.
Marc:That is your computer or whatever you're looking into to pull up whatever it is you want in that moment now.
Marc:From any period in time in the history of time, in the history of pictures, in the history of whatever has been documented or made into content, which is almost everything.
Marc:That rearview mirror, you can really get lost in it.
Marc:But for me, and I've been thinking a lot about this, not about nostalgia, about what I'm made of and where I come from.
Marc:And man, do I remember.
Marc:going to that late night showing of Richard Pryor live in concert when I was in high school with my buddy Dave.
Marc:Dave Bishop, RIP.
Marc:And I don't remember if it was a midnight movie or just a late one, but man, we went in there not knowing what to expect.
Marc:And Jesus, man, just laughed and laughed and laughed hard at the movie.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:I must have been 15.
Marc:I'd never experienced...
Marc:Anything like that.
Marc:And it changed my life.
Marc:It was the most amazing thing I ever saw, comedically speaking.
Marc:And looking back on it, as you grow with the genius...
Marc:the work of somebody else.
Marc:And you watch that thing.
Marc:You know, I probably watch it once a year.
Marc:And as I began doing comedy and, you know, you can only aspire to a certain thing.
Marc:And, you know, if people ask me, I'll say Richard's the best.
Marc:And I believe that he's the best.
Marc:And the reason I always give is not unlike many other people that give the same reason is that the humanity of prior, the vulnerability of prior, the the risk, the emotional risks he would take to talk about
Marc:the darkest shit that he went through, bringing himself up there, which is my guiding light.
Marc:I don't know if I learned it from him, but I would have to assume I did.
Marc:You bring yourself up there in all of your fucking darkness, in all of your foibles, in all of your insanity.
Marc:You bring it up there.
Marc:Bring yourself up there.
Marc:What is that story?
Marc:What do you put it on the line, man?
Marc:And he lived a life that I believe became exhausting and dangerous because of that, because of his vulnerability and because of his volatility.
Marc:But I do remember years later when I was at the comedy store in the late 80s working the door and Richard was trying to he was coming around a bit to work out some stuff.
Marc:And just to see him in the flesh.
Marc:I just remember like watching him walk down the hall with Mitzi smoking a cigarette.
Marc:And just you could feel it, man.
Marc:The weird frenetic vulnerability and the fucking humanity of the guy.
Marc:The beaten humanity.
Marc:The guy who destroyed himself.
Marc:In almost every way.
Marc:And would kind of crawl back each time.
Marc:Just to walk behind him in that hallway.
Marc:Smell his cigarette smoke.
Marc:And watch him go upstairs and sit with Mitzi.
Marc:In the belly room they were sitting.
Marc:But I did remember, and I've told this story before, watching him on stage try out some shit.
Marc:He hadn't been on stage in, I don't think, years.
Marc:And he had a hard time.
Marc:Because he was pure Richard.
Marc:And people didn't give him the respect he deserved when he went up there.
Marc:But it was all there.
Marc:Like, you know, his sensitivity, his vulnerability, and probably his fear.
Marc:Because he was the guy that said that.
Marc:And many people have said it one way or the other.
Marc:But he said the only enemy of creativity is fear.
Marc:So I have to imagine that there was some fear there.
Marc:But he was very visceral, very human, very present.
Marc:But not in a cocky way, not a swaggering way.
Marc:He put his heart on the fucking line up there always.
Marc:And I also saw him years later when he was in the wheelchair for a minute.
Marc:Boy, illness and death and aging is difficult.
Marc:But he went up there.
Marc:In that condition.
Marc:That fragile.
Marc:Near death.
Marc:To show himself in that way.
Marc:That was who he was then.
Marc:I'm going to bring myself up here.
Marc:Fragile.
Marc:In a wheelchair.
Marc:Dying.
Marc:And put my heart on the fucking line.
Marc:That's a fucking artist man.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So as I mentioned earlier.
Marc:Jennifer Lee Pryor.
Marc:Is the widow of Richard Pryor.
Marc:She married him twice.
Marc:Once in the 70s and once in the aughts.
Marc:She was with him when he passed away, which I oddly didn't talk about that moment.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I must have got caught up.
Marc:Or maybe I'm just, I don't know.
Marc:I think it's a death thing.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm having a hard time with it.
Marc:Time Life just put out this ultimate Richard Pryor collection, Uncensored.
Marc:It's got all four of his live concert films, all episodes of The Richard Pryor Show, his feature film Jojo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, two documentaries, plus hours of stand-up, late-night appearances, and interviews.
Marc:It's all of it.
Marc:It is all of it.
Marc:And it's an amazing box set.
Marc:And this was an amazing conversation for me.
Marc:I really enjoyed talking to Jennifer Lee Pryor.
Thank you.
Marc:What brought you out here?
Marc:Where are you from?
Marc:You sound like you're from New York.
Guest:I'm from upstate New York originally.
Guest:Years in New York, went to Finch College, dropped out, started working for Canon Films.
Marc:With the Goblon and Globus?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Before it was Globus.
Marc:Globus and Globus.
Guest:Yeah, Globus and Globus.
Guest:He recently died, by the way.
Marc:All right, so you're in upstate New York.
Marc:It's what, the 70s?
Guest:Well, no, I moved to New York and I went to Finch College in 69 and left after one year.
Marc:What is Finch College?
Guest:Finch College.
Guest:Trisha Nixon went there as a senior.
Guest:It's the college where rich girls can get into when their grades suck.
Marc:So you come from the fancy family?
Guest:Well, I come from privilege.
Marc:You do?
Guest:And my dad made a little endowment, and I got in.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Because my grades were sucked.
Marc:What's the background?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Dad, a lawyer.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:A lawyer.
Guest:Works for Governor Harriman.
Guest:Very well-known lawyer of state New York.
Guest:Brilliant, actually.
Guest:Mother, mentally ill, but interesting as hell.
Marc:Jewish family?
Guest:No, Irish Catholic.
Marc:Irish Catholic.
Marc:Irish Catholic, yeah.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:Yeah, blue blood on the crazy mother's side.
Guest:Yeah, Irish Catholic on the dead, tough.
Guest:Yeah, it got confusing.
Guest:It got complicated.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Especially with those martinis.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Those 50s martinis in the mill towns.
Marc:Booze all day.
Marc:Start at lunch.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Ride it out.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And all night long.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Big boozy family.
Guest:Big boozy.
Marc:So you're wired for it.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, acquired insomnia at an early age.
Guest:Oh, from the parties?
Guest:From the parties and the fisticuffs, yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was rock and roll.
Guest:So, you know, ending up with Richard was kind of a fait accompli.
Marc:Sure, yeah, familiar.
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:Yeah, so, all right, so you go to Finch and then you split?
Guest:I split and I started working at Canon and modeling.
Marc:In New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, so they were in New York originally.
Guest:Yeah, they were in New York.
Marc:So before they become this.
Guest:East 53rd Street.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:What were they doing?
Marc:Producing movies?
Guest:The Freedlanders.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Producing kind of soft porn.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And they did Joe with Peter Boyle.
Marc:Oh, great movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What a sick fucking movie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so it was an interesting place to kind of land.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:And then from there, I left and worked for some independent films.
Guest:I was behind the scenes.
Marc:Oh, oh.
Guest:Yeah, I was PA.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And just, you know, doing what I could do.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, hustling.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'm- It's the 70s.
Marc:It's groovy.
Marc:It's 70s, man.
Marc:It's New York.
Marc:Having fun?
Guest:Scrappy New York, having fun.
Guest:Met Barry Behrens and lived with her.
Guest:Then started modeling, model for Halston.
Guest:I was Dionne Furstenberg's first showroom model.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just, you know, onwards, you know.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Beautiful young women did that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, running around.
Guest:Yeah, running around.
Guest:But I was running with a certain crowd.
Guest:I just met, you meet, in the early 70s, you could meet everybody.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I met Roman and Warren and Eric, you know.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, having three sins as Warren.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's what you did in the 70s.
Yeah.
Guest:That's what everyone did?
Guest:All the girls?
Guest:Richard would say to me, you had threesomes with Roman and Warren.
Guest:Why don't you have a threesome with me?
Guest:I said, Richard, it was early 70s.
Guest:It was recreational.
Guest:You don't do it when you're in love.
Marc:Right, because it's like Lenny Bruce's bit.
Marc:You didn't have to like it that much.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:So you're living that life.
Marc:And this is before everyone was acknowledged as monsters.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Everyone was just fucking around.
Guest:We just brushed it off our shoulders, you know, and went on, moved on.
Marc:So when did you come out here?
Guest:So I started coming back and forth out here and decided I wanted to be an actress.
Guest:And I went to Stella Adler in New York.
Guest:I studied with her.
Guest:How was that for you?
Guest:You know, she was smart.
Guest:She said to me one day, the best thing I ever was told by anybody, she goes, you have a problem.
Guest:I said, well, that's fine.
Guest:The problem is you're very beautiful and you don't know yet that you didn't earn it.
Guest:I mean, the best line ever.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That comes from a deep chip on the shoulder.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I know your type.
Yeah.
Guest:She's right.
Guest:I was running with the princes.
Guest:I'd say, I got to go.
Guest:I got to go to London, you know.
Guest:I'm hanging out with that Nankashoggi.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:And she'd say, you know, she pegged me.
Guest:She looked at me and said, you're a party girl.
Marc:So you knew all these fuckers.
Guest:I knew everybody.
Marc:Oh, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was looking for love.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:But, I mean, like, did you find...
Marc:Did you like, you know, look, I did my share of blow and I've been to enough parties.
Marc:I mean, did you often feel that you were in the presence of evil or darkness or did you were you more sort of like, well, I'm just having fun.
Guest:It got dark a couple of times.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew how to make a quick exit.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was good at that.
Marc:Because there's always I always remember, you know, when you're high and you're at those certain situations, there's always a weirdness where like, where'd that guy come from?
Guest:Yeah, I had that in London with Roman.
Guest:Roman could be squirrely, you know what I mean?
Marc:Well, clearly.
Marc:Not saying anything.
Marc:Squirrely's diplomatic.
Guest:Yeah, really, really, really.
Guest:Stayed at his muse house, and I met him right after the murders.
Marc:Well, I guess that does a number on a person, too, obviously.
Marc:Shit, yeah.
Marc:I mean, how are you ever going to recover from that?
Marc:What the fuck is that going to do to your psyche?
Guest:But he was dark.
Guest:I was going to parties with him.
Guest:This is right after the murders.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember being at a party with him, and we were in the kitchen, and he picked up a knife.
Guest:And he said, you know, you're never supposed to leave a knife outside unattended.
Guest:You must put these away.
Guest:Yeah, I got to go.
Marc:And we got to blow?
Marc:Because I was going to...
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah, he was a squirrel.
Guest:He videotaped me having threesomes with him.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Do you have the rights to those tapes?
Guest:Oh, my God, yeah.
Marc:Are they around?
Marc:Yeah, really.
Marc:The weird grainy black and white videos?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But in his garage, he had floor to ceiling.
Guest:Every magazine publication on that murder was in his garage.
Marc:I mean, you know that he's obviously history has proven to make him a very unsympathetic character.
Marc:But, you know, in light of that murder, I really wonder, you know, what that fucking did to that guy.
Guest:Well, I think what what what that did was, you know, I mean, I think the the the it was, you know, his his psychology was formed as a kid when he escaped the camp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then that and then like, you know, something just broke forever.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So knife in the water.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Dark guy.
Marc:So when you come, when do you finally, like, land out here?
Marc:Were you working?
Guest:So, yeah, I would work every time I would, you know, come.
Guest:And it was a really interesting time because everybody was sort of making the move, right?
Marc:Right, in the 70s?
Marc:Late 70s?
Guest:We're talking mid-70s now.
Guest:Oh, good times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everyone's sort of slowly migrating out to California, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I remember somebody saying sort of like the Herman Hesse book, Magister Lude, there are only 800 of us.
Guest:There are 800 of us.
Guest:Like there's a tribe, you know.
Marc:Well, I always when I talk to people about Hollywood from that time, I'm very fascinated with the small town nature of it.
Marc:And that, like, you know, if you were at a certain level, you know, you were kind of around everybody.
Marc:Everyone was around.
Marc:And then there were the hangers on.
Marc:Then there were the facilitators of bad news, you know, who's to go go places, you know, bring drugs and whatever.
Marc:But but there was just this it was a small community.
Marc:It was.
Marc:And everybody seemed to be at someone's house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Someone's house in the canyon.
Guest:You got Peachwood.
Guest:You got Laurel.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then in between the Troubadour and Dantanas.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:That's really where it happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then in the homes, of course, in the canyons, you know.
Marc:So who are you running with?
Marc:Who are the people in the 70s?
Guest:I was running with John Prine.
Marc:Oh, I love him.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:And I love his wife.
Marc:I had him on the show.
Marc:I just, what a fucking... I met John.
Guest:I worked on Willie Nelson's first annual 4th of July picnic at Dripping Springs, Texas in 71.
Marc:The first one.
Guest:The first one.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I got around.
Guest:So you knew Willie a long time.
Guest:Oh, I know Willie forever.
Guest:And I met John there.
Guest:And John was performing there.
Guest:And at the end of the evening, he was sitting at the edge of the stage.
Guest:And
Guest:Everyone was exhausted, and obviously, you know, evening's done.
Guest:It went on for three days.
Guest:And I sat down next to him, and he said, the stars are so beautiful, they embarrass me.
Guest:And I fell madly in love.
Marc:I think I just did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I had a thing with him that night and it kind of went on.
Guest:It went on, you know, wherever we were.
Guest:You know, I saw him in New York.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:When he was there, I'd see him in L.A.
Guest:And it went on for quite a while.
Guest:It went on for two decades.
Marc:And that was really the context of it, though.
Marc:Like, hey, let's hang out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that's it.
Guest:It's interesting because when he died, I was so sad.
Guest:Um, and I had to look at that.
Guest:I had to say why, you know, he was the only other man I loved.
Guest:I mean, besides Richard.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I, you could not.
Marc:Yeah, no, he was a sweet guy.
Guest:He just had this fucking soul.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And such a poet.
Marc:Yes, for sure.
Guest:And he just, you know, one, one night at the,
Marc:That vulnerability seems to be what you like, huh?
Guest:The vulnerability.
Guest:Making a note of that.
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, when you try to draw a line between those two guys, you know, they were both sort of poetic spirits, you know.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's really it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember one night I was, you know, still carrying around the luggage of my childhood and
Guest:souvenir, if you will.
Guest:And he played a song called Bruised Orange for me he had just written.
Guest:And, I mean, he made me look at myself, too.
Guest:He just made me say, what am I doing?
Guest:This self-pity, this kind of, you know, self-importance that I'm getting from sadness.
Guest:Let me just abandon that.
Guest:He made me look at it.
Guest:And he was just special in every way.
Guest:So, I mean...
Marc:When he died, what happened to you?
Guest:You know, I was really, really sad.
Guest:And I had to say, why couldn't we ever get together for real?
Guest:And I think I had to look at the fact that that's the way it was kind of established.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And I wasn't ready to settle down.
Marc:It's a strange thing with people that have relationships with troubadours and performers.
Marc:I mean, you know, it is a thing.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and you know it is there are terms to it and and it's it's existed forever that's right and you know i don't know if it's a pathology it's just you know you get what you can i think yeah right and you have to respect it yeah i mean if you're if you're gonna if you can't stand the heat you know take the exit right yeah yeah yeah so so when you finally settled out here
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm out here and I'm living in a little bungalow on different little apartments.
Marc:In the 70s?
Guest:Yeah, in the 70s.
Guest:I have a little bungalow.
Marc:Are you working?
Guest:Working, yeah, here and there.
Guest:Yeah, I'm doing little bits and films.
Guest:I was in Sunshine Boys and Man in the Glass Booth and Wild Party, James Ivory.
Guest:And yeah, I'm getting work, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So one day my friend Lucy Saroyan, Williams' daughter, she was a brilliant girl.
Guest:She died about, I don't know, 20 years ago now.
Guest:Heroin overdose.
Marc:Oh, God, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When everybody was cleaning up, too, which was so bizarre.
Marc:So much dope around it.
Marc:It's like, you know, everyone cleans up.
Marc:But, you know, culturally we all identify this, you know, this cleaning up period.
Marc:But, you know, junkies are junkies and they're always going.
Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:They never stop.
Guest:It's so true.
Guest:It's so true.
Guest:But anyway, she said to me, listen, I'm working.
Guest:I was in Texas with a friend of mine, a songwriter, and we were playing in clubs.
Guest:She wanted to see if she wanted to be a performer.
Guest:went along with her and i could play guitar and sing and so we sang in clubs in in austin mainly austin and um i got back and i'm like i need a gig you know broke i need a gig and lucy said well i'm working for richard prior and she loved richard she was she was what i called a one night stand that stayed too long oh yeah and um so she said come out you can be my you know kind of sue decorator what was she doing for him
Guest:She was actually it was her idea.
Guest:She deserves credit for this.
Guest:The opening of the NBC variety show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:When he said they didn't take anything from me.
Guest:And then he's got the nude suit on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was her idea.
Marc:That was her idea.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:So she was a smart girl.
Guest:But she was forever haunted by her mother, who was Carol Soroyan Soroyan Matthau.
Guest:Her stepfather was Walter Matthau.
Guest:And her dad, William Soroyan.
Guest:Big shadow.
Guest:She was visiting him in Fresno, and he was on his deathbed.
Guest:And he said, leave me in peace.
Guest:I can't stand the smell of your perfume.
Guest:Let a dying man go in peace.
Marc:What a fucking monster.
Guest:Yeah, that's how he said goodbye to her.
Guest:So Lucy, you know, Lucy was troubled.
Guest:But anyway, so Lucy took me out to Northridge, this house that he just recently bought.
Guest:And he needed a decorator.
Guest:And so she was doing that, too.
Marc:What year is this?
Guest:We're now 77.
Guest:Summer 77.
Guest:August 77.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you met him years before you guys got married.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I watched him marry someone else.
Marc:He seemed to do that pretty often.
Guest:He did.
Guest:You know what I say about Richard?
Guest:He married to end relationships.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It seems like every marriage was two years at the most.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:A couple months, two years.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then you either, you know, you either kept in touch with him or which, of course, he recycled everybody.
Guest:You know, I mean, he just did.
Guest:But so I worked for him and I. What do you mean by recycled?
Marc:Like they were everyone was sort of there's like are you saying that outside of maybe the first couple that everyone remained in his life?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:He didn't let go easily.
Guest:I mean, even though he would kick you out, it was always temporary.
Guest:He loved to pit women against each other, of course.
Guest:That was kind of King Henry VIII.
Marc:So what, to make him feel wanted?
Guest:I think, Richard, this is the part that's hard, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I it's hard to obviously psychoanalyze a guy.
Marc:But I mean, you know, you spend time with them and there are you know, there's there are mysteries around the guy and some of those things you've talked about publicly.
Marc:But I mean, these are just whatever your feelings are.
Guest:Well, exactly.
Guest:I mean, you know, yeah, he pissed me off the way he would.
Marc:So he provoked jealousy to get, you know, people.
Marc:Manipulation.
Guest:Manipulation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a fair word to apply to.
Marc:But sure.
Marc:But it's ego driven.
Guest:Yes, of course.
Marc:And it's drama replaces, you know, true intimacy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:But, you know, what does one bring to the party, too?
Guest:So where am I lacking?
Guest:Where's my trouble with intimacy that I'm having, too?
Marc:Well, I mean, who doesn't?
Marc:But, you know, when you look at his background, you know, I think the intimacy thing is really like, you know, if your parents were untrustable emotionally, what are you going to do?
Marc:There you go.
Marc:You're going to wrestle with it.
Marc:You're going to have a few fleeting moments of vulnerability and then lash out.
Marc:Exactly right.
Marc:That was terrible.
Guest:Yeah, that was terrible.
Marc:Get the fuck away from that person.
Marc:But the interesting thing about him ultimately is that what makes him transcendent and what everyone talks around or talks directly about was essentially his vulnerability.
Marc:So when he was on stage where he seemed to feel the safest, he was willing to open up like that.
Guest:And a big price to pay.
Marc:I guess so.
Guest:A big price to pay.
Marc:Why do you think that is?
Marc:What do you mean by that?
Guest:Oh, God, because I think that when you give of yourself so deeply, you know this is a stand-up, too.
Guest:Yes, all right.
Guest:So you're poor.
Marc:But not all stand-ups do that.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:Of course not.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:No, I mean, most stand-ups, if you think about stand-up and the reason why...
Marc:he stands alone is because, you know, Harry Shearer once said to me, you know, people become comedians so they can have control or try to have control over why people laugh at them.
Marc:So, you know, for a lot of comedians, the only risk is not getting the laugh, okay?
Marc:So it's not like they're out there putting their heart on the line.
Marc:You know, they're putting their ego on the line.
Marc:But with Richard, there was a sense of that.
Marc:Even when people talk about Chappelle or how great Chappelle is, that the vulnerability that Richard had because he was such a shattered guy, he didn't have much control over.
Marc:So it was always there.
Marc:And I imagine you're saying the weight of that is that you're going to walk off feeling exploited in a way.
Guest:Well, you feel the commodification of it all.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:You feel used.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:You know, I've exploited myself.
Guest:I've done it myself.
Guest:I've exploited myself.
Guest:So who the fuck are you going to be angry at now?
Guest:Who are you going to lash out at now?
Guest:And look at me.
Guest:I've seen him.
Guest:I saw him a few times go after studio heads.
Guest:And I could understand it because he felt at times like a commodity, right?
Guest:Which I think all artists do at some point.
Guest:Well, sure.
Guest:You know, if you're in touch with any of it, you know.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Intellectually.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that vulnerability, you're right.
Guest:Not everybody does it.
Guest:A lot of people become actors, comics, I think, so they can put the mask on.
Marc:Yeah, or else they have a character on stage, you know.
Marc:And Richard, obviously, from what I could tell, had a disposition.
Marc:But it just seems after, like, reading the autobiography, which the most fascinating thing about that, what is it, Prior Convictions?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that, you know, it feels like he wrote a lot of it, you know, whether he was speaking it or not, but it was almost childlike in the way he presented his past, right?
Marc:So I feel like he somehow...
Marc:was very in touch with this sensitivity and this vulnerability that seemed very young amidst all the fucking chaos and everything else that he was... You know, the really incredible thing that you just hit upon is his journals.
Guest:And after the fire... You mean after he burned himself up?
Guest:After he lit himself on fire and tried to kill himself, let's call it what it is.
Marc:Well, yeah, let's do that because it seems like you were with him for that.
Guest:Yeah, I was with him.
Guest:I was there.
Guest:He said, if you don't leave, bitch, it's going to happen to you, too.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:Well, before we get to the journal, so you meet him in 77.
Marc:Where's he at?
Guest:He is doing the NBC Variety Show.
Guest:Pam Greer is coming in and out of the house.
Guest:I'm working.
Guest:I'm meeting workers.
Marc:And that's in the box set, the four episodes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Of his show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where he took all those comedy store people and stuck them in there.
Marc:Robin and Sandra.
Guest:Robin and Sandra.
Marc:Shirley.
Marc:Paul Mooney.
Guest:Paul Mooney.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, Mooney.
Guest:Mooney, shit, Mooney.
Guest:Goodbye.
Guest:And a love-hate thing with Richard P.S.
Marc:Well, I don't know what... I saw footage of that weird roast, that one that wasn't public, with all the sort of homosexual overtones and whatever Mooney was up to.
Marc:I don't know what the nature of that relationship was over time.
Marc:Richard?
Marc:Richard and him.
Guest:Well, Richard was honest about it.
Guest:He was...
Guest:He was giving someone a tour of his house in Northridge.
Guest:This is kind of an infamous tale now.
Guest:And he said, hey, Paul, tell him this is the room where I fucked you.
Guest:You know, hey, listen, what I say is enough dope and you'll fuck a radiator and send to flowers in the morning.
Marc:Yeah, Coke is like that.
Marc:Yeah, but the weird thing about Coke, if you're a dude, you may fuck a radiator, but it's going to take you a couple hours.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But you're going to keep working at it.
Marc:Exactly right.
Marc:Exactly right.
Marc:And once you get it done, you're like, I can't, I almost died.
Marc:It's so true.
Guest:So anyway, so here we are, 77.
Guest:And I'm meeting workers.
Guest:I'm trying to help Lucy kind of put this all together.
Guest:And so the turning point was my birthday, August 31, 1977.
Guest:Richard says, I have a gift for you.
Guest:Now, remember these were the days.
Guest:And he hands me an envelope, and it's full of Coke with a nice note.
Guest:And, of course, the three of us start doing blow.
Guest:And it gets to be late.
Guest:And he said, you can't drive home.
Guest:Go to the guest room.
Guest:And Lucy and he go to their bedroom.
Guest:And so the sun's coming up.
Guest:Lucy comes back and says, we got to go.
Guest:And I said, Lucy, I have to be here in an hour.
Guest:Why am I going to leave?
Marc:It's the worst feeling.
Guest:It's the worst feeling, right?
Marc:If I, for some whatever reason, can't get to sleep at night and I see that sun come up, I'm like, oh, it all comes back.
Guest:It all comes back.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:You just want to die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just want to grab hold of something that isn't there.
Marc:You don't feel good for two days.
Marc:No, no, at least.
Guest:And you hate yourself more and more.
Guest:So she's got the white-walled nasal nostrils, and she goes, we've got to leave.
Guest:Richard pulled a gun on me.
Marc:The first day you met him?
Guest:No, this is maybe a week or so later.
Guest:I met him on August 22nd.
Guest:This is now the 31st, my birthday.
Marc:The second date with the gun.
Guest:The second date with the gun.
Guest:He pulled a gun on me.
Guest:I said, oh dear.
Guest:She said, so we have to go.
Marc:Why would he pull a gun on you?
Guest:Apparently, he asked her for a blowjob and she turned him down.
Guest:Hence the gun.
Marc:Okay, but where are you in this?
Marc:Oh, I'm in the guest room.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Marc:I'm in the guest room.
Guest:She goes, he pulls a gun on me.
Guest:I'm like, okay, but I have to be here in an hour.
Guest:In other words, wild horses couldn't have driven me away.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So Richard comes in.
Guest:She takes off.
Guest:Furious.
Guest:Furious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Richard comes in an hour or so later with a blue terrycloth tattered robe and says to me, you have to stay and help me.
Guest:She's gone.
Guest:She quit.
Guest:I fired it, whatever this jumble of words were.
Guest:And my house is torn up and I need you to help me.
Guest:Of course I'll help you.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I'm not going anywhere.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And it's so weird that this is happening after a Coke bender.
Marc:So no one's eaten.
Marc:No.
Marc:You're saturated with booze and blow.
Marc:And there's that weird thing in the air.
Marc:And he's fucked up.
Marc:And you're like, okay, great.
Marc:It's the beginning of a great thing here.
Guest:This is absolutely, absolutely.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:I'm in.
Guest:I'm all in.
Marc:And then you've got to take a nap for a day.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:Exactly right.
Marc:So that's how it started.
Guest:That's how it started.
Guest:And then we...
Marc:Did you fuck on that day?
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Guest:We graduated to, this is kind of, well, it contradicts the whole thing with John, Brian, but this is kind of how you say, well, you don't fuck on the first day, get to know somebody, which is what happened.
Guest:Richard and I started having these long conversations.
Guest:He had this office upstairs overlooking an atrium.
Guest:And he'd say, come talk to me.
Guest:And we'd talk about everything.
Guest:And meanwhile, he was seeing Deborah.
Guest:And it was Christmas time.
Guest:He called me out to the house.
Guest:And he gave me a bonus and said, why don't you start playing chess with me?
Guest:This is Christmas now, end of 77.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Start playing chess with me.
Guest:And I said, okay.
Guest:And he had some blow and we were doing some blow playing chess.
Marc:Blow and chess.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Great.
Marc:A lot of talking.
Guest:And I start winning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he gets mad at me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he knocks the chess pieces off the thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And we, you know, start kind of on the desk a little.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then in the driveway comes Debra.
Guest:She had taken off in a huff.
Marc:Debra who?
Guest:Debra...
Guest:well prior right mcguire prior right okay okay and um african-american he married before me they were still married uh yeah they were still married actually they yeah they were still married and he started and he said i have to have you where can where can we go and i said well i'm you know right now i'm staying with john schlesinger at his house on sweet director yeah
Guest:And his boyfriend, John Michael Childers.
Guest:So I had a room over there that was living.
Guest:I moved my bungalow into... Anyway, so he followed me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we made love.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And where'd Deborah go?
Guest:And Deborah's...
Guest:Debra's probably still in the house.
Guest:Debra has a lover of her own.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So this is some 70s shit.
Guest:This is some more 70s coke shit, right?
Marc:Whenever people talk about this stuff, because I know what the cocaine time zone is, like anytime I hear these memories, it's just that weird electric haze.
Marc:Comes back.
Marc:Comes flooding back.
Marc:But that is what you're driving through.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You got to know that feeling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's not like everyone's just having a day.
Marc:No.
Marc:It's fucking insane.
Marc:It's insane.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, it's insane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, I mean, it was like, you know, strap on because you are taking a ride here.
Marc:So where's he at creatively?
Marc:Are you going to watch him do his shit?
Marc:Where's he working?
Guest:Here's where we'll go creatively.
Guest:So cut to New Year's Eve where he shoots the car, okay?
Marc:What year was that?
Marc:You were with him then?
Guest:No, okay.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Follow this.
Guest:Christmas, 77.
Guest:77.
Guest:A week later, we have New Year's 78.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Okay?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'm back east visiting family.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Visiting my crazy, fabulous family.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I'm on a plane back when he shoots the car.
Guest:And...
Guest:You know the routine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're not leaving in this.
Guest:You may be leaving, but you're leaving in those hush puppies.
Guest:And that was Deborah?
Guest:That was Deborah.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And her three friends, who all were getting in the vintage Mercedes.
Marc:Same gun, I guess, that he drew on.
Guest:Which I have, by the way.
Guest:I have that gun.
Marc:The famous gun?
Guest:The famous .357 Smith & Wesson.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Took the firing pin out.
Guest:He almost killed me with that gun, too.
Guest:Took the firing.
Guest:How many times?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Once.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Really close.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:um so okay here we are 78 yeah and um so he gets that great bit that's a that's live in concert brilliant that's that's 78 live in concert okay okay so now we're new year 78 shoots the car so he um i get back and his secretary calls me says stay away from the house it's it's all hell's broken you know he was arrested it was that whole scene and
Guest:So he calls me up and goes, where are you?
Guest:You know, it's now a week or so later.
Guest:And I said, well, I was told to stay away.
Guest:He said, please come out to the house.
Guest:So I came out and he said, you know, I'm really in trouble and things are really terrible.
Guest:And anyway, we made love.
Guest:I stayed the night.
Guest:And he said, look, I'm going to Hana, Maui tomorrow.
Guest:And I want you to come down in a week's time.
Guest:I said, love it.
Guest:Love it.
Guest:Will do.
Guest:Which is what happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, so I go to Hana.
Guest:He buys land there, and we have this incredibly lovely romantic time, right?
Guest:We come back to Los Angeles, and we're dating.
Guest:Some craziness is going on.
Guest:So I'll get to the key bit here, which is, of course, we're on Coldwater Canyon one night.
Guest:We'd been to Sammy Davis' house, and we're driving home, and he does a U-turn in Coldwater.
Guest:And I said, where are we going?
Guest:He goes, you'll see.
Guest:you know down sunset pulls in the comedy story and i had never seen him on stage before so he he plops me down at a table in the small room and um in the original the original yeah yeah his favorite room yeah and he gets on stage and mitzi's there squealing i can't believe he's back and
Guest:she loved him so much and um he gets on stage and he starts talking about the first thing he sees which is candle wax on the floor yeah and i start taking notes about what he he's just starts free-forming you know his mind is popping right things are coming out bam bam bam yeah and this was the beginning of wood shedding for live in concert in concert
Marc:That was the movie, man.
Marc:That was the one that changed my life.
Marc:And then he just stayed on that.
Marc:He kept going there and working it.
Guest:Yeah, he started... That was May.
Guest:That was May 78.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:When he started putting that together.
Marc:And it's all personal experience.
Marc:Most of that stuff in there is like... All...
Marc:And that's the great stuff with the dogs and stuff and all this stuff.
Marc:The monkeys and the monkeys in that.
Guest:Yeah, the monkeys.
Guest:And that's where Richard's genius is.
Guest:And when I see people try to manufacture sometimes stories, I'm thinking, oh, man, just tell a story about your fucking life.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Just tell the truth.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, probably a paragraph.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Unfortunately, not everybody is as chaotic and impulsive and out there as Richard, so the life gets a little limited.
Marc:Not everyone's going to shoot their car, come back with the bit.
Guest:Well, you hit on something I used to say to him, too.
Guest:Sometimes he'd start a fight, and I'd say, Richard, oh, you need material.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is the creative process.
Marc:Put the gun away.
Marc:I get it.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:We shot it.
Guest:And so, you know, at the end of the summer, midsummer, he's got it together.
Guest:He goes on the road.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went on the road with him for some of that period of time.
Marc:Dispel this rumor.
Marc:People said that like during the show that was actually shot that he turned around and did blow.
Guest:no okay good totally and this is the thing that people really get wrong about richard yeah richard really was disciplined yeah i mean when he had a mission when he had when he had his focus yeah he was focused and knew what he wanted to do and knew he had to do something he would take naps in the afternoon oh yeah he'd do it he would do it he was very disciplined not that we didn't party he wasn't gonna fuck it up though he wasn't the work was the most important
Guest:Yeah, he knew he had to dig himself out.
Guest:He painted himself in a corner with that car shooting, and he was in deep shit.
Marc:Culturally.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, people weren't returning his calls.
Guest:Everyone thought he did that Hollywood Bowl thing, too, in that interim.
Guest:That was that whole thing.
Marc:The weird anti-gay thing?
Guest:He got married in the space of a couple weeks.
Guest:He married Deborah.
Guest:He kissed my rich black ass.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:I heard a tape of that recently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's fierce.
Guest:It's fierce.
Marc:Wasn't there some sort of weird anti-gay diatribe in there, too?
Guest:Or am I making that up?
Guest:No.
Guest:He called everybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he had seen... There are different stories about what provoked him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He told me he saw some racism going on backstage.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:That's what I heard.
Guest:And the dancers.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was really upset about it.
Guest:And he lashed out.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I was hanging out with a very heavy group of gay guys at the time, Schlesinger and all those people.
Guest:And they were like, Jennifer, you're running with this guy.
Guest:And he's like, you know, he hates gays.
Guest:But he didn't hate gays.
Guest:It was just a moment of crazy shit that happened in his head.
Marc:So after he does the live in concert thing, does shit level off or what?
Yeah.
Guest:So, December shoot, live in concert.
Guest:It comes out in February, 78.
Marc:Huge hit.
Guest:Sorry, 79.
Guest:Huge hit.
Guest:Yeah, huge hit.
Guest:And he crosses over and things start to get crazy.
Marc:That was really the one, right?
Marc:That was it.
Guest:That was the one.
Guest:In fact, Scott Saul wrote a book called Becoming.
Marc:I read it.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Where does it end?
Marc:There.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Why?
Marc:Because it was called Becoming.
Marc:Yeah, I get it.
Guest:That's when the voice, it all coalesced.
Guest:It all came together.
Marc:I love that book.
Marc:You like that book?
Guest:I do like that book.
Guest:I think he did his homework.
Guest:I wished it had gone the distance, you know, only because I would have liked to have seen it well done.
Marc:What, you mean the second half?
Marc:Gone the distance how?
Marc:Like to keep going past?
Guest:You know, and I understand because, look it, the truth is, after Live in Concert,
Guest:Even though the money and the fame and all this is going up, the truth is the trajectory of Richard's life was going like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, you can feel it in the, like, I mean, I don't know when the actual disease kicks in, but I mean, like, certainly, I don't... 86th.
Marc:Eighty six.
Guest:Eighty six.
Guest:Mayo Clinic diagnosed him.
Marc:Oh, but like I can see what you're saying.
Marc:And I don't know what what caused that.
Marc:I don't know what was it within him that after after that live in concert, that must have been the beginning of him feeling exploited or seen or commodified or all the other stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Too big.
Guest:Too big.
Guest:And when you throw celebrity, come on, it's nothing new, celebrity and money and fame, bam, here it all is.
Guest:You can have it.
Guest:You can have it.
Guest:What do you want?
Guest:What means something?
Guest:You know, I mean, it's hard to be in a relationship.
Guest:Honey, take out the garbage.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's not going to work.
Marc:So what happens in that two-year period of time before him trying to kill himself when you're with him?
Marc:Like after live in concert, he does a movie or two, right?
Marc:He does, okay.
Guest:So we got married.
Marc:Not really.
Guest:We got married August 16th, 1981.
Guest:The fire was June 9th, 1980.
Guest:but right but so in 78 though 79 he does live in concert right yeah and and then but what what is when you say he starts going on a downward trajectory okay what's happened so he's doing some films yeah and and of course bust and loose um was was the film that he was working on and everything just starts to fall apart he's he discovers freebase his lovely drug he also does the muppet movie
Guest:Yes, he does.
Guest:And he does In God We Trust.
Guest:Things are happening.
Marc:Stir Crazy.
Marc:Busting Loose.
Marc:Big movies.
Guest:Yeah, Stir Crazy.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So he was high the whole time on Stir Crazy.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Freebase.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So after Busting Loose, he comes home.
Guest:We're not getting along because he's cheating on me big time with some girl in the movie.
Guest:And I'm not behaving well either.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I walk in the house one day and I smell smoke.
Guest:And I'm like, what the fuck?
Guest:And I follow the smell to the back master bedroom.
Guest:And he has accidentally, he's a little arsonist.
Guest:He always was.
Guest:He accidentally lit the mattress on fire doing this freebase, this new freebase thing with rum and cotton and cooking it and all this shit.
Guest:And he lit the bed on fire.
Guest:Mattress on fire, drag it to the bathtub, blah, blah.
Guest:This is the beginning of a nightmare.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is when Freebase comes into the house.
Guest:I eventually leave because Freebase has moved in.
Guest:It's like a woman.
Guest:The way you made love to me was a shame and a disgrace.
Guest:Your ice cold heart chilled my soul.
Guest:Your woman is Freebase.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I wasn't there anymore.
Guest:I did it with him.
Guest:I hated it.
Guest:I hated it.
Guest:You know, give me a little blow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:This is like a mallet on the head.
Marc:Yeah, it's like heroin.
Marc:It's making blow into heroin almost.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because you go out.
Guest:You just zone out.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and he just, it just took over everything.
Guest:So I moved out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's weird he didn't get into dope.
Guest:Huh?
Marc:Didn't get into heroin, huh?
Guest:Richard?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, not that he didn't try.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, there were moments.
Marc:To come down, probably.
Guest:Probably.
Guest:Yeah, there were moments, though.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But, yeah, so it was a very dark period.
Guest:I had an apartment at that point in Beverly Hills, and he would show up in the middle of the night, and just creepy, creepy shit was going on with his face.
Guest:fucking free days.
Marc:Makes you crazy.
Marc:No sleep, you could go crazy.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:And one night he said, I want you to come out and here's what I want you to wear.
Guest:And by that time, I was going to AA meetings.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I'm like, because I liked Quaaludes and I'm like, okay.
Right.
Marc:Well, you can only take so much.
Guest:You know, I got to straighten my shit out because I'm doing something every day.
Marc:You go crazy.
Guest:And I wasn't digging that.
Guest:So I was, you know, I was, remember I went to Beverly Hills meeting and Rodeo.
Guest:And they said, don't go see him.
Guest:He's crazy.
Guest:But I had this little outfit on that, you know, I was in complete denial.
Guest:I was going to Al-Anon at the same time.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Get them all going.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I go out and he goes, blink your lights, because now the family has come.
Guest:Certain members of the Klan has descended on the house.
Guest:So I walk in and the front door, come flash your lights, I'll meet you in the front door.
Guest:And he was dressed up like a member of the Gestapo.
Marc:In a Nazi uniform?
Guest:I'm not kidding you.
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Marc:Hey, well, at least he kept his sets of humor.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, shit, I got to get away from here.
Guest:Anyway, it was a really dark scene.
Guest:And so stir-crazy happens, and he walked off the set.
Marc:It's kind of a rough movie to watch.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I've never watched it.
Marc:You know, like, him and Gene did some amazing stuff.
Marc:They did a couple great movies.
Marc:And then, like, now that I think about, like, when I'm looking at the trajectory here, you know, on the page here, you know, that's really, it's interesting that when he really becomes huge with that live in concert.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:That's crossover time, too.
Marc:I know.
Marc:White audience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That changed comedy.
Marc:It changed the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then he just, it just started crumbling.
Marc:And it was really the free base.
Guest:It's really true.
Guest:I mean, that was it.
Guest:Even though, of course, the checks were bigger, the paydays were bigger, the fame.
Marc:Yeah, but he never looked at that together after that.
Guest:He never was.
Guest:It was a fucking freebase.
Guest:It's a goddamn drug.
Guest:And, you know, I mean...
Guest:It makes me really sad.
Guest:It makes me angry, too.
Guest:I'm still angry at him for doing that shit.
Guest:I'm like, you know, at some point, come on, get off it.
Guest:It's enough.
Marc:I know.
Guest:We partied.
Guest:Call it a day.
Marc:Well, that was it.
Marc:Like, right.
Marc:So you guys made it through the fucking 70s.
Marc:And then this is what the 80s became.
Marc:This is what the 80s became.
Guest:And it was a nightmare.
Marc:So when the day that he tries to kill himself... So I went out there.
Guest:He said, you know, he had walked off the set.
Guest:Of stir-crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were a couple of incidents.
Guest:I went out to try to talk him.
Guest:You know, Hannah Weinstein was one of the producers.
Guest:Can you go talk him back into, you know, we just need a couple days reshoot here and da-da-da.
Guest:And he tried to kill me.
Guest:He had his hands around my neck and said, you know, you're going to go down.
Guest:And I'm like, I'm going to go down.
Guest:And I got away.
Guest:and then I you know this is how crazy I was and my Al-Anon shit was like so crooked and twisted I went back out there one day and you know the coke on the desk this antique child's desk I bought him was this high pile of it and he's you know going through it and he said you know I'm going to I'm going to
Guest:It's over.
Guest:I know what I need to do.
Guest:And I said, Richard, Richard, now come on, you can't hurt yourself.
Guest:He said, the shit's over and I know what I have to do.
Guest:And if you don't get the fuck out of here, it's going to happen to you too.
Guest:And Richard never made an idle threat.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Personally, I know that.
Marc:Right.
Right.
Guest:So I got out of Dodge, and I got in my car, and I flew like the wind back to my apartment, and I called Jim Brown.
Guest:I said, Jim, he's going to hurt himself.
Guest:Oh, first of all, I told in the kitchen before I left, Aunt Dee and this other so-called bodyguard from the neighborhood, Peoria.
Guest:I said, he's going to hurt himself.
Guest:Get out of here.
Guest:I mean, they laughed at me.
Guest:Stupid little white girl.
Marc:Get out.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And I got back to my apartment.
Guest:I called Jim and I said, he's going to hurt himself.
Guest:He's going to do something.
Guest:And I had been in touch with Jim about trying to get him into rehab.
Guest:And Jim said, don't worry about it, Jennifer.
Guest:I'll go out there this afternoon.
Guest:I hung up with Jim.
Guest:I called the house.
Guest:I'm talking to Andy.
Guest:And the next thing I hear is a scream.
Guest:She drops the phone.
Guest:He is running through the house on fire.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:How many people are in the house?
Guest:At that time, it was Andy and the bodyguard.
Guest:I think that was it.
Guest:There may have been another person in the room.
Guest:When I heard that, I went out to the hospital, and Valley Presbyterian, which is where he was, they got him to Valley Presbyterian, picked up on the highway.
Guest:You know that whole story.
Guest:Picked up on running on fire.
Guest:And I told the...
Guest:doctors, I said, listen, you have to know he's loaded to the tits, literally on Coke and vodka and Covasier.
Guest:And I didn't want him to die.
Guest:And, you know, you start shooting somebody up with morphine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were there, of course, you know, with the psychology of you never talk, tell the truth about drugs or alcohol to the cops or anybody else.
Guest:So they were, of course, trying to push me away.
Guest:He was transferred to the burn center, which at the time was on Van Nuys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he stayed there and thank God got some help and was never the same, never the same.
Guest:He refused to see me.
Guest:He was mad at me, refused to see me.
Marc:Why do you think he was mad at you?
Guest:Oh, I know why he was mad at me.
Guest:I cheated on him with a woman and had the temerity to tell him.
Guest:And it was a hooker.
Guest:And it was like the Stockholm Syndrome.
Guest:It was when he was on Bustin' Loose.
Guest:It was very weird.
Guest:Twisted.
Guest:Cocaine shit.
Guest:Cocaine and Quaalude shit.
Guest:What can you say?
Guest:You cannot explain this.
Guest:You can't explain this.
Marc:Yeah, you can't explain it.
Marc:And it's amazing you remember it.
Guest:Oh, listen, I wrote it all down, thank God, so that I have a reference book to my life.
Guest:But, yeah, that was crazy.
Guest:I mean, I hired a hooker, just like Richard, you know, because Richard loves hookers.
Guest:And she walked in, and she had her leg in a cast.
Guest:And I said, I want my money back.
Guest:Send me another one.
Guest:And it was, you know, Coke and Quaaludes.
Guest:And, yeah, so I told him this whole thing, thinking he wouldn't be as jealous because it was a woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Oh, the worst thing was I had given him, I gave this hooker a doll that I'd given him.
Guest:I called it a frou-frou doll.
Guest:She looked like a hooker with these big tits.
Guest:And, of course, that just sent him over the edge.
Marc:And that was the end of you guys for a while?
Guest:For a while, yeah.
Guest:So he wouldn't see me in the hospital, and he was seeing everybody else.
Guest:And a nurse took me in one day and said, I see you come every day, and it breaks my heart to see you.
Guest:African-American nurse, the kindest woman ever, and said, you need to stop coming because he's not going to see you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:is the best way to punish people and i've seen it all this she's telling me this yeah and like ding a light goes on so i stop and uh he calls me up the day before the night the day before he gets out of the hospital says i want you to come see me i went out to see him and i walked in he was different he was never the same he was changed i could see the skin grafts and everything
Guest:Yeah, but the light in his eyes was gone.
Marc:The light was gone.
Marc:Now, is this where these diaries come into play that you were talking about?
Guest:Okay, so here's what happened.
Guest:So Richard and I, this is now the summer, okay?
Guest:Summer of 1980.
Guest:And I don't speak to him again.
Guest:He goes off to Maui to recuperate.
Guest:He's still doing drugs, by the way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even after he gets out of the hospital.
Guest:During.
Guest:He had somebody bring drugs in.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Blow.
Guest:Yeah, blow.
Marc:Really want to be awake for that, huh?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:Yeah, you want to stay up in the burn unit.
Guest:Hypervigilant.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:So he is now, he's given an interview to Barbara Walters and lies about the fire, which tells me, by the way, you can never correct that first impression when the media puts it out and says, this is what happened, because he tried to correct it and he never could correct it.
Marc:Or said it was an accident.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he said it was, oh, the ship blew up.
Guest:And then, of course, it became a famous joke about the cookies and the milk.
Guest:So I said, Richard, you didn't go through the burning bush.
Guest:You've got to fucking tell the truth.
Guest:You can't lose your way this badly.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:So he started writing.
Guest:He said, I want to write a book.
Guest:So he started.
Guest:He got an agent in New York.
Guest:And he started, I had bought him these beautiful leather-bound journals.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:He does sort of cop to it in prior convictions, doesn't he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And JoJo, he tried to tell the truth in JoJo.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody wanted to know the truth.
Marc:So that was the beginning of prior convictions, these diaries?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he gets to a certain point in the diaries, and I have them.
Guest:And these beautiful, you know, rice paper, leather bound, I had bought them at this wonderful shop in New York.
Guest:And he says, I don't want to write this book.
Guest:And...
Guest:He stopped writing in these journals, and I disappeared from his life.
Guest:I was not around at this time.
Guest:And he hired a co-writer, Todd Gold.
Marc:But you thought that, you know, when I brought up the child tone, you saw it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even the...
Guest:I want to publish these someday.
Guest:They're so beautiful.
Guest:And one of the most beautiful things about them is that Richard was dyslexic.
Guest:And he spells phonetically.
Guest:And I find them like Frida Kahlo's diaries.
Right.
Guest:The handwriting is so artistic and beautiful.
Guest:I showed them to a very well-known literary agent I know in New York, a friend of mine, and he said the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Guest:What?
Guest:The dumbest fucking thing I ever heard.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:What do agents know?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:He said, oh, well, it's really hard to decipher sometimes, so you have to have it typewritten, and you can't publish like this.
Marc:Oh, like he's saying you need to correct the text.
Guest:You can't have any of these missing.
Marc:Well, you have to do a nice book where there are actual pictures of the pages is what you got to do.
Guest:Yeah, exactly right.
Marc:Exactly right.
Marc:Like a Tashin book.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Like a Tashin book would be spot on with unpublished photos I have in these because it's gorgeous.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't know who published Frida, but it just has the same feel to it.
Marc:There's also that book, someone did a Diane Arbus book with a lot of the scraps.
Marc:I'll show it to you.
Marc:I think that's an art publisher.
Marc:So anyway.
Guest:So I've got to find the right publisher one day.
Guest:But that was the beginning.
Guest:So we abandoned that and then went for the okey-doke, as he would say.
Marc:The okey-doke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:The old okey-doke.
Guest:The old okey-doke.
Guest:And Todd Gold, enter Todd Gold, and he writes this.
Guest:What I think is a very dumbed-down version of...
Marc:Sure, but I did like parts of it.
Marc:It was one of those things where it's like, I think the childhood stuff is pretty solid.
Guest:Yeah, but you'll see the child in this too.
Marc:I'm sure, yeah.
Marc:I mean, he must have taken some of it.
Marc:I mean, Richard must have talked to him, and those memories are what they are, right?
Guest:Yeah, well, Todd was really, you know, Todd called me up one day and said, hey, listen, that scene in your book where he has a breakdown in Peoria with the family when they're all playing poker.
Guest:Can I have that scene?
Guest:Because I need something like that in the book.
Guest:Like a fool, I said, yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you had published a book oh I published a book yeah Tarnished Angel it's out of print where I it's all there well the interesting thing though is like that you were you were with him during this like amazing upheaval and emotional and creative catharsis and all this stuff and then you were there then you know when he started to really go down and then he does the Sunset Strip bit which is so vulnerable it's hard to watch in places the live on the Sunset Strip I mean like
Marc:him making light of this thing, having not really reckoned with the trauma, it's a little hard to watch sometimes.
Marc:It is, it is.
Marc:And then like, so what happens to your thing?
Marc:You guys just, because you reenter when he's in bad shape again.
Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:But what goes on in the interim?
Guest:So in the interim, okay, so he's out of the hospital in Hana contemplating his next move, a la book, starting to write.
Guest:And then that Christmas, New Year's Eve, he calls him.
Guest:He goes, can you meet me at the airport?
Guest:Let's go to Hana together.
Guest:And of course, I'm dying.
Guest:I'm so in love with him at this point still.
Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I went to Hawaii with him and we had a couple of good weeks.
Guest:But he's shuffling women back and forth.
Guest:So that whole thing is still going on.
Guest:Isn't he in bandages?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, but he's still healing.
Guest:I mean, I remember hearing him scratch in the middle of the night and it was just...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was skin graft stuff.
Guest:And it was hard stuff.
Guest:It was really difficult.
Guest:Enter the summer.
Guest:And I'm like, I got to get out of here.
Guest:I can't do this with him anymore.
Guest:This is such bullshit.
Guest:I'm going to go to Europe.
Guest:I've got some friends there, whatever.
Guest:I'm going to take off.
Guest:And he said, well, just come see me before you do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And control, control, control.
Guest:So, of course, I visit him and he proposes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, ah, Richard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was dating somebody at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a young lover at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A nice young lover, Venezuelan, UCLA student.
Guest:So you married him?
Guest:I did, August 16th, 1981.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So this is 81, 82.
Guest:It didn't last a couple of years.
Guest:Okay, so yeah, already a rough start.
Guest:Already wedding night, glass thrown at me.
Marc:Well, you had the whole relationship already.
Marc:You had arced.
Marc:We were on the downside.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So, Richard, did he marry me to end the relationship?
Guest:There you go.
Guest:There's my theory.
Guest:We went on a honeymoon on a boat in the Caribbean, and he was violent with me, and I said, never again.
Guest:This is the last time.
Guest:And he said, well, I've got to go see Uncle Dickie.
Guest:He's had a heart attack, and he left me on the boat.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:To go to Illinois?
Yeah.
Guest:He went to Illinois.
Guest:The boat was docked in Marigot Bay in St.
Guest:Lucia.
Guest:And I wasn't allowed to go anywhere on the boat.
Guest:The captain had strict orders.
Guest:And I'm like, well, shit, then I got to get out of here.
Guest:Went back to L.A.
Guest:and started divorce proceedings.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And, you know, my heart broke.
Guest:And I thought, I got to get out of Dodge.
Marc:It's interesting that he kept this, you know, like he did stay close to the Illinois border.
Guest:clan yes yeah well that isn't that how it works kind of in the african-american community especially one makes it you got to bring everybody along and he did right and he did i mean you know he he took everybody with him i'm i moved back to new york i'm like i gotta get out of here in 82 yeah figure out what what just happened yeah what just happened did you just sober up or what
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, I was more or less, you know, but I wasn't abusing the way I was when I was with him.
Marc:We were just coming out of that whirlwind.
Marc:It seemed like a decade at least.
Guest:I had to figure it out.
Guest:It felt like 20 years of my life, you know, because Richard, in a week in Richard's life, it's like 20 years of somebody in Iowa, right?
Yeah.
Marc:Or upstate New York.
Guest:Or upstate New York.
Marc:So, obviously, we can't get into the whole second half, but what brought you back in 2000 or 1999 or whatever?
Marc:Or when did that start again?
Marc:When did he need you again?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So, you know, he would call me from time to time, and I saw him in 86, and he asked me to read JoJo Dancer, which I thought-
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, he was diagnosed, but I didn't know it.
Guest:And so he was working on JoJo, produced JoJo.
Guest:I was not in his life at that time.
Guest:He would come to New York and I'd see him then.
Guest:1989, he came and did See No Evil.
Guest:And he asked me to help him out on that, you know, with dialogue, whatever.
Guest:And we were staying at the Plaza Tenet.
Guest:And I realized at the time that he was walking very strangely.
Guest:And I said, why are you walking like an old man?
Guest:And he said, I have MS.
Guest:This is 89.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was it.
Guest:He and I were kind of adieu for a little while.
Guest:And I had the temerity to say to him one day, hey, take a walk up Madison Avenue.
Guest:I kind of get off my jock.
Guest:You know, he was just always on me, needy, needy, needy.
Guest:And he showed me.
Guest:He picked up a sales girl, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Brought her and her little dog and the little stupid baby kibble with the little cigarettes.
Guest:I said, Richard, what the fuck?
Guest:Again, right?
Marc:Yeah, you guys had a thing going.
Guest:Oh, heaven and hell we visited.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:So in 92, I visited him again and things were, you know, he was going down the tubes and the hangers on were everywhere.
Guest:94, he was in New York staying at the Helmsley Palace.
Guest:Think of the Palo honoring him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Deborah was in tow, a couple of bodyguards, Rashawn, you know, the usual.
Guest:And he was drinking water glasses full of vodka and the pills.
Guest:And I'm like, Richard, you're going to kill yourself.
Marc:Did you get strung out on pills with the burns?
Guest:Strung it on everything.
Guest:Never really stopped.
Marc:What were the pills?
Guest:Vicodin.
Marc:Percocet, Vicodin, you know, painkillers.
Guest:And Richard, this is, you know.
Guest:And there you had Deborah asking me to go down to the jewelry store in the Helmsley Palace to get the white lady's price on a diamond ring.
Guest:That's the kind of shit that was still going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:90, 90, 94.
Guest:And he said, you know, my life's really going down the tubes.
Guest:I said, no shit.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:It's so sad.
Guest:No, just take a look.
Guest:And so I took a couple trips out to kind of see if I could do this.
Guest:And I was talking to my dad at the time.
Guest:I had to think long and hard about this because it was never easy to come back into Richard's life.
Yeah.
Guest:And the chaos that ensued.
Guest:There was always chaos, even when he was sick, even when he was going down the tubes and the locusts had descended.
Guest:He was in a rental on Haven Herbs near the Jackson.
Guest:Just to keep a roof was like 45K.
Guest:I decided, yes, I'm going to come back.
Guest:But the mess to clean up and the threats.
Guest:I had my life threatened.
Marc:By?
Guest:Oh, ex-wives, maids.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean- And this is 90-
Guest:94.
Guest:Summer of 94 I moved out.
Guest:And I had a nice duplex rent stabilized apartment on 50th and Beekman Eastside.
Guest:So I had to think about it.
Guest:But I jumped in because I saw what was happening.
Guest:He had guns everywhere.
Guest:Guns were hidden in all the cashmere sweaters.
Guest:And I knew what he was doing.
Guest:The money was going to go and he was going to kill himself.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the writing was on the wall.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He was not stranger to suicide.
Marc:And he's physically deteriorating.
Guest:Deteriorating.
Guest:Not eating, you know, vodka and the pills again.
Guest:Vodka and the pills.
Marc:And the work is, the movies are not great.
Guest:He's not really doing stand-up, right?
Guest:No, he's not doing stand-up.
Guest:Not doing anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So there are messes to clean up.
Guest:For instance, child support payments are through the roof because they were established when Richard was making big bucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you have kids?
Marc:Nope.
Guest:Smart.
Guest:Either do I. Richard had six by five different women.
Marc:I remember when I was a doorman at the comedy store doing my little cocaine shit show, Richard Jr.
Marc:was around.
Marc:And I've met Rain maybe once, but I don't know the other ones.
Guest:Yeah, they sued me, of course, when Richard died.
Marc:Yeah, I was wondering, because with this box set, which is great, we haven't really talked about it, and also all the stuff that you're doing with the estate, which is great, because there's always an ongoing resurgence of interest in Richard, that it never really goes away generationally.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I think each generation has to sort of reckon with the work, and it's really put together nicely in this box, which has almost everything in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some new stuff, too.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, but I just when you were coming over here today, I'm like, who's going to get mad about this?
Guest:They all would get mad.
Guest:And, you know, it's OK.
Guest:They'll all get mad.
Guest:You know, I'll cut to they were all given a trust.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The kids had a trust.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And but they wanted the IP.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what they wanted more than anything, of course.
Marc:The ongoing.
Marc:Intellectual property.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:And Richard left everything in my care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm glad he did, because one of the things I had to do when I came back was sue the pants off a lot of these motherfuckers who was just stealing what wasn't nailed down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And people who are smarter than me, who should have been watching the farm, business managers, lawyers, et al.,
Guest:weren't doing it.
Guest:So I had to do it.
Guest:And I learned quick, fast, and in a hurry, boy.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:And I coalesced the IP.
Guest:The laugh records you mentioned, all of those, you know, Drozen, the original guy, he was out selling them and licensing.
Guest:He didn't give a shit.
Guest:So I sued him.
Guest:We were in litigation for three years.
Guest:I got everything back.
Guest:And, you know, that's what I had to do was coalesce.
Guest:I'm still doing that with Sound Exchange with a lot of titles that are, you know, Asian.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:A lot of titles that are out there.
Guest:And I'm working with good people now.
Marc:So when you came back into his life as, you know, a caretaker.
Guest:More or less.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's what it struck me as.
Marc:Like he decided that reaching into the tunnel of his life that you were the one that was going to do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he trusted me.
Guest:And I think one of the reasons he trusted me was we had a prenup when we were married, right?
Guest:And my father, who's a brilliant lawyer, said, Jennifer, Richard, hit you.
Guest:And I want to sue him concurrently, not only for divorce, but for assault and battery.
Guest:So we'll break the prenup.
Guest:And I said, I'm not going to do it.
Guest:And he's my father.
Guest:And he said, why aren't you going to do that?
Guest:And I said, because I didn't earn that money.
Guest:It's not my money.
Guest:It's Richard's.
Guest:I made an agreement.
Guest:I signed that agreement, that prenup.
Guest:I'm sticking by it.
Guest:Why would I do that?
Guest:And I still believe I did the right thing.
Guest:Why would I do that?
Guest:For money.
Guest:And Richard trusted me.
Guest:He knew what I was made of.
Guest:And that I wasn't a shady bitch.
Guest:And that I didn't have a baby for money.
Guest:And I didn't do that shit.
Guest:And when I wrote my book and came back, people were like, she wrote a book about you.
Guest:And he said, yep.
Guest:And the bitch told the truth.
Marc:Was that where the sort of admission of his bisexuality first started coming around?
Marc:Was that in that book?
Guest:Didn't he write about it in prior?
Guest:Yeah, I wrote about it.
Guest:Didn't he write about it in prior?
Marc:Maybe a little.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's weird, like in the big picture that, you know, especially in this culture we live in now, that, you know, that really isn't sort of taken for what it is as much as you would think that, you know, because it was really part of him.
Guest:It was part of him for a long time.
Guest:I mean, he talked about it in routines.
Marc:But it's like they're little bits and pieces from older records.
Marc:They're not full explorations.
Marc:They're asides.
Guest:Exactly right.
Marc:But he did get it in there.
Guest:If you're paying attention.
Marc:So when you come back and he's sick...
Guest:And it was a mess to pick up.
Guest:So I had to lower child support payments.
Guest:They all threatened me.
Guest:All the mothers threatened me, right?
Marc:Because you're now managing the money.
Guest:Because I'm managing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:As my dad laid out for me, you've got to stop the hemorrhaging of money.
Guest:You've got to rehabilitate him physically.
Marc:So your old man's guiding you through this.
Marc:So he guided me.
Guest:The wizard.
Guest:Yeah, the wizard.
Guest:Harry was great.
Guest:Harry was a genius.
Guest:He's passed on now.
Guest:But an Irish raconteur genius.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a heavy lift.
Guest:It was a heavy lift.
Guest:But I am so proud of it.
Guest:I'm so proud of it that Richard lived the last 11 years of his life with dignity and love because he was taken care of.
Guest:He was safe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was so fragile.
Marc:He was so fragile.
Marc:And it was really sort of... I saw him for a minute at the comedy store in the chair.
Guest:In 95, he wanted to go back.
Guest:Now, Damon said to me, Damon Wayans said to me, why are you letting him do that, Jennifer?
Guest:And first of all, I said, whoa, I'm not letting him.
Guest:Let's get that straight.
Guest:This is Richard wanting to go back.
Guest:He wanted the camaraderie.
Guest:He wanted to be back at the store.
Guest:He wanted to still... See the guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He did.
Marc:I know.
Guest:And he had shit to say too.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I kind of look at it.
Guest:He says, but it's tragic.
Guest:I said, you know, Damon, it's heroic and tragic.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:It's both.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a weird thing about, you know, the male ego and about like, you know, you don't want people to see that shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, but but like it was really something because it did return him back to that state of the type of vulnerability he achieved because of the illness.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Was was now inescapable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it wasn't fleeting, you know, and it wasn't just for the stage.
Marc:He was he was that was who he was.
Guest:And I shot that and it's in the box.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've got all that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's been a journey, obviously.
Guest:And, you know, I'm working on a biopic.
Guest:Oh, the endless tortured history of the biopic.
Marc:Have you seen anybody?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:But I can't really talk about that because it's kind of what we're in the process of right now.
Marc:So how far back are you going to go with that?
Marc:Now, is that something that you consult with Scott about, Saul, or no?
Marc:Or is it just you, all you?
Guest:He's on as a consultant.
Guest:We brought him in as a consultant.
Guest:But I'm working with Kenya Barris on the script.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's just got such a fresh look at it all.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, he's such a creative genius himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but genius, the word genius.
Guest:Richard hated the word genius.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I understand why.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I just read a piece on Jasper Johns where some woman is fetching about she doesn't really know how to paint.
Guest:And he said, I never know how to paint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never know what I'm doing.
Guest:And that's Richard, too.
Guest:And Richard would call him a genius.
Guest:People would call him a genius.
Guest:He was really baffled by that, I think.
Guest:He wouldn't take it on.
Marc:I think as a comic or as an artist or as anybody, you don't want the pressure of that label.
Marc:And a lot of times when you're an artist, you're sort of like, Einstein's a genius.
Marc:I'm a con man.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:It's true.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But I think you did a great job with this box.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And I'm excited about the movie.
Marc:It was definitely exciting meeting you and talking to you.
Marc:It's been great.
Marc:Thank you for the presence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's been deep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, he deserves it.
Marc:You deserve it.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you look good.
Guest:Ah, thank you.
Marc:Take care of yourself.
Guest:Live to tell the tale.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Pretty wild, huh?
Marc:Sad.
Marc:But not so sad.
Marc:I'm glad it was, you know, it's a side that we, you know, I'm glad that she had those memories and I'm glad we talked.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's the Ultimate Richard Pryor Collection.
Marc:Uncensored is available now exclusively.
Marc:Enjoy it.
Marc:It's got everything.
Marc:Richard Pryor's show, all his specials.
Marc:jojo dancer your life is calling documentaries hours of stand-up until late night appearances and interviews it's amazing okay great let's play guitar so
Guest:guitar solo
Guest:guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.