CHAPTER 22
Once again, Richard hands over the keys to the Caddy. He wants me to do all the casting for his comedy series (which, in a stroke of originality, NBC is calling The Richard Pryor Show). I begin by signing up some young comics I see at the Store or down at the Improv, a club that opens in the mid-1970s on Melrose.
The Store is my true playground. I am there almost every night. At about this time I start using a phrase in my act that spreads like wildfire all over the country. Whenever I catch some homeboy trying to front in some outrageous way, I have a two-word reality check for him: “Nigger, please.”
Those two words have a lot of history to them. I think back on Mama. Whenever I say something that’s obviously a lie, she just checks me with a look. Not quite a scowl, just an expression that immediately establishes that Mama ain’t going to take not one bit of shit from a silver-tongued grandson like me.
Everybody raised by a black grandmama knows that look cold. It makes me smile just thinking about it. It’s the “nigger, please” expression. Yes, I know what you just said, I speak English, I recognize the words coming out of your mouth, but if you think for one single second I am going to buy any of that nonsense, you are out of your pea-picking mind.
The N word in “nigger, please” is more of an identifier than a racial insult. What it’s saying is, Listen, we’re all in the same community. We grew up on the same streets. We know all the scams, all the dodges, all the bullshit. So don’t try to run none of that on me. As I sometimes say, “I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night, so I know something.”
The reason “nigger, please” catches on so fast, the reason the phrase is revolutionary, is that it is the first time black-on-black criticism goes public. We are usually so careful to back up the brothers and protect the sisters in front of the white folks. The attitude is, We don’t need to air our dirty linen in public. The white folks are going to cut us down with insults soon enough.
Between us, of course, the insults fly, the dozens go down, the long knives come out. Ain’t nobody can call black people on their bullshit like a black person. But “nigger, please” drags that business into the open. It says, See? We’re strong enough to dish it and take it, we can give each other reality checks better than anyone. We’re keeping it real.
The phrase becomes the “Where’s the beef?” of the black community. What’s great is that even though white people have been feeling the sense of it for years, they can’t say it anymore in public unless they’re some cracker racist redneck who doesn’t care if he gets a beatdown.
As soon as I start dropping the phrase into my show, it becomes a virus. The timing is weird, because during this period I’m traveling cross-country for the first time to appear at comedy clubs in New York—the Improv, Catch A Rising Star, and the Comic Strip Live. And when I start hanging out in the city, my trademark phrase starts showing up everywhere in my wake.
“Nigger, please.” I hear it from the mouths of other comics in the clubs, on the streets, and in the subways. I should have copyrighted that shit. I could be retired on royalties.
I say it to Richard all the time. “I’m not feeling this comedy series, Mr. Mooney,” he says. “It’s gonna be shitty, shitty, shit-tie! The worst show ever on TV. I can’t do it! I’m in a trap. I cannot do this shit!”
Nigger, please. Take the money and run with it.
Casting the series, I give Robin Williams his first television job, long before his appearances as Mork on Happy Days and his own starring role doing the same character on Mork & Mindy. I see Robin all the time at the Store. He and Richard are f*cking the same waitress. I always like Robin’s act, but I am not crazy about him the way other people are.
Happy Days producer Garry Marshall, who gives Robin his job as Mork, is the guy who usually gets credit for discovering him. Richard is there first, but anyone who is at the Store in those days knows Robin has great potential. I introduce him to Richard, and we use him on the series because he’s funny and can do any part we send his way. We sign Sandra again, too.
Other people I sign up are Marsha Warfield, who goes on to play Roz on Night Court, “Detroit” Johnny Witherspoon, Tim Reid, and the comic who will go on to Everybody Loves Raymond, Brad Garrett. Garrett’s young as shit when we hire him, not even twenty years old, just starting out, years away from winning Star Search and breaking out on The Tonight Show.
We work on the Pryor Show scripts up at Richard’s house in Northridge, upstairs in the study. It’s a big room with lots of chairs and couches, and overlooks the rest of the house and the mountains beyond. The whole arrangement makes it easy for Richard. He never has to be away from his comfort zone.
A stenographer sits there, taking down our every word, no matter how stupid. “Richard picks his nose—write that down!” Richard says, making the secretary his straight man. Rocco Urbisci, the producer, sits in, and some other writers, including David Banks, Richard’s record producer. It’s a classic spitball situation, with everybody throwing out ideas and seeing what sticks.
“Mr. Mooney’s the only one telling me no,” he shouts at everybody. “The rest of you sit there and motherf*cking nod like a bunch of bobble-head dolls!”
His screaming at them makes no difference. They continue to suck up to the star. It makes for an uneven atmosphere, but eventually we come up with a thick sheaf of ideas for skits, sight gags, and parodies. Like he insisted on for the special, Richard wants a mix, not just comedy, but drama and even political sketches, too.
Not many people know it, but before she becomes the Clinton-inauguration poet laureate and Oprah’s friend, Maya Angelou is a singer, dancer, and actress. She’s already well known for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I introduce her to Richard, who had never heard of her before.
We cast her to do a great dramatic riff, a black woman doing a monologue over the body of her passed-out drunken husband—Richard as a wino. Maya plays it straight, and even the first time we do it in rehearsal, it’s great. I see women in tears afterward. Maya writes the monologue herself, and it gets to the soul of what goes on between black men and black women.
But all of a sudden, it looks as though the show is going nowhere. NBC tosses a wrench into the works by reneging on a clause in the contract. Richard demands that the show go on late, so we can do more adult-oriented bits. He even gets it in writing. But instead of scheduling the show after “family hour,” NBC announces it as going on at 8 o’clock on Tuesday evening.
Richard freaks. He pulls the plug. The Richard Pryor Show is over before it ever gets started.