Becoming Richard Pryor: How Groundbreaking Research Reveals the Comic Genius Who United Black Power, Counterculture, and Hollywood

Becoming Richard Pryor: How Groundbreaking Research Reveals the Comic Genius Who United Black Power, Counterculture, and Hollywood

“Becoming Richard Pryor is a book that breaks new ground. . . . Saul details the amazing way that Richard found his way out of the life for which he seemed destined and into the world of the performing arts.”  —New York Times Richard Pryor may have been the most unlikely star in Hollywood history. Raised in his family’s brothels, in Peoria, Illinois, by a grandmother who often threatened to kick him upstairs with her size-twelve shoes, he always considered himself a bottom dog. He took to the stage originally to escape the tough realities of his childhood but later discovered he could alchemize his stand-up by delving fully, even painfully, into the “off-color” life he’d known. He brought that vitality to a movie career whose best moments—Blazing Saddles, Blue Collar, the buddy comedies with Gene Wilder—flowed directly out of his spirit of creative improvisation. The major studios considered him dangerous. Audiences felt plugged directly into the socket of life. Built on groundbreaking research, Becoming Richard Pryor brings into sharp focus the man and his genius as never before. From his heartbreaking childhood, his trials in the army, and his improv days in Greenwich Village to his soul-searching interlude in Berkeley and his rise in the “New Hollywood” of the 1970s, Becoming Richard Pryor sheds light on an entertainer who, by uniting the spirits of the Black Power movement and the counterculture, forever altered the cultural DNA of America. How did a boy raised in a Peoria brothel become one of the most revolutionary and influential comedians in American history? A Peoria Upbringing: An unflinching look at Pryor’s childhood in his family’s brothels, shaping the "bottom dog" worldview that would fuel his life and art. - The Counterculture and Black Power: Discover how Pryor’s time in Berkeley and Greenwich Village allowed him to unite the spirits of two major movements, forever changing comedy. - Creative Genius at Work: Go behind the scenes of his trailblazing stand-up, his buddy comedies with Gene Wilder, and his legendary work on films like Blazing Saddles . - Groundbreaking Research: Built on new interviews and extensive archival work, this biography sheds new light on the rise of an American icon. “Magisterial....Brilliantly reveals the glorious highs and lows of Pryor’s life.... Becoming Richard Pryor reveals itself to be not simply a biography, but the compassionate map of a terra incognita.” - Independent “Magisterial…Brilliantly reveals the glorious highs and lows of Pryor’s life.” - Bonnie Greer, The Independent (UK) “The Richard Pryor biography we’ve been waiting for.” - Deadspin “Drawing on interviews with family and friends, unpublished journals and court records, Saul jauntily chronicles the year-by-year, and almost day-by-day, evolution of Richard Pryor. Glaringly honest, Saul shines a light on a revolutionary stand-up comic who perfected the art of dramatizing his own imperfections, and the world’s.” - Booklist (starred review) “Insightful and expansive, Scott Saul’s remarkable biography of the now legendary comic chronicles how a sensitive brilliant man with a hardscrabble past mined his personal life for American entertainment, revolutionizing stand-up along the way.” - Playboy, "This Winter's Best Books" “ Becoming Richard Pryor is a book that breaks new ground...Saul details the amazing way that Richard found his way out of the life for which he seemed destined and into the world of the performing arts.” - New York Times Book Review “A pop-culture masterpiece of exhaustive reporting, psychological insight and elegant writing.” - Cleveland Plain Dealer “Absorbing, incisive....With skill and insight, Saul shows how both the best and the worst of Pryor could merge into a great body of work unmatched by anyone who was ever paid to make people laugh.” - USA Today “The most detailed and rigorously researched work on the comic’s life and performances....Pryor was both the quintessential hipster and the vulnerable, damaged witness of his age... Becoming Richard Pryor captures these dimensions of the persona and the man behind it very well.” - Washington Post “Sharply observed....lays out the case that Pryor was not only a comic genius but ‘a bellwether of the great changes of postwar American life, some of which he helped incite.’...Riveting.” - TIME magazine “A gripping read....The only book you need on its subject.” - Sunday Times (London) “Masterful.” - Newsweek “ Becoming Richard Pryor is a compulsively readable book that sets a new gold standard for American biography. Scott Scaul’s research is extraordinary; his writing his taut, elegant, and insightful; and he captures both the hilarity and pain that made Richard Pryor such a towering figure.” - Debby Applegate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for biography and author of the forthcoming Madam: The Notorius Life and Times of Polly Adler “This is a well-executed study that gives Pryor due credit as pioneer, intelle