Previewing Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic

I am of the age that when I think of Richard Pryor I think of such great films like The Toy, Brewster’s Millions and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Okay, I realize now looking back that The Toy was hugely racist considering it was about a rich white kid who “buys” a black dude to entertain him. I bring this up because this part of Pryor’s career was basically breezed over in the documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic premiering Friday at 9:00 on Showtime. The film comes from director Marina Zenovich who also did the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

Since I missed his “golden age” when he was the greatest stand up alive, it is nice to look at retrospectives like this to see the comedian at his best and not how I usually remember him when I was a kid and he had already “sold out.” We first see Pryor in the film at the start of his career in 1963 with his first trip to The Tonight Show (it is weird to watch these old talk shows and hear the N-word flow so frequently when today you do not even hear black people say it except occasionally when it is unbleeped on basic cable talk shows) and his attempt at being a more “mainstream” comedian in Vegas before transforming his act into the comic’s comic he would become.

This is a warts and all documentary that does not shy away from Pryor’s more erratic behaviors like of course the time he lit himself on fire, his fights with NBC over his television show (which will probably have you searching Amazon after hearing about it) where he had a consultant to make sure he was “Black enough”, how the movie studio would not let him star in Blazzing Saddles, and a bizarre set he gave at a Gay rights rally.

The documentary features his contemporaries and followers like George Lopez, Bob Newhart, Mike Epps and more but most of the commentary comes from Pryor’s lawyers, agents, wives, girlfriends and the friends who knew him best. If you only remember Pryor from his awesomely cheesy eighties movies or are even younger than me and only know him by name if at all, you definitely will want to check this out to see why most comedians think Richard Pryor was the greatest stand-up comedian to ever live.

Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic premieres Friday at 9:00 on Showtime.