The Treat: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

0:00I'm Elvis Mitchell. Welcome to The Treat. Professor Elizabeth Pryor recently wrote a most revealing and revelatory book about life with her dad, comedian Richard Pryor. It's called Something We Said, Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me. For The Treat, she looks at a live performance film that revolutionized the genre in ways that is still being felt decades later. This is Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, and this is The Treat. Good evening. I am very inspired by my father's 1979 concert film, Live in Concert. And I am really personally happy to see anybody come out and see me, especially much as I done f***ed up this year.

0:46This film is not only brilliant and funny, but it's really one of the first of the stand-up set genre that even exists. The critics loved it. They called it comic gold. You know, you can get dogs from the dog home, save them from killing them. You know, I got him from the dog home, and somebody had abused him real bad because every time I'd call him, he'd freak out. I'd say, hey, champ, what the f***? Jesus Christ. What are you doing, man? Don't do that s***. I'm telling you, s*** with my head. It's a real bummer, Richard. God, please. They're like that, dogmas. They're like that. My father uses the entire stage, you know, to do this stand-up.

1:30You know, he imitates animals, monkeys, dogs, his own heart having a heart attack, and uses the space so expertly. I don't want to never see no more police in my life. At my house, taking my ass to jail. For killing my car.

1:59What I love most about it, though, is that he makes fun of his own failures. You know, so it starts out with him talking about how he had spent one New Year's Eve shooting at his wife's Mercedes as she tried to leave him. And he uses a gun shooting at her. She wasn't hurt. but the cops did come to the house the next day and he somehow both is able to acknowledge his failures and acknowledge what a hot mess he was and make it sound hilarious by really walking us through his brain. And I had one of them big old magnums, you know how that noise they make when you shoot something, I shout at the car and said,

2:53It got good to me. I shot another one.

3:00And that vodka I was drinking said, go ahead, shoot something else.

3:06I guess last of all, what I like about this and feel inspired about is that I recognize so many moments in this particular film from my own life with my father. I remember the details. He even brings us kids into the act at the end by talking about how we laughed at him when he was almost drowning in the pool. And I was swimming my ass off in one spot. I wasn't going no place. And my kids was watching me, right? And my kids think everything I do is funny. They're just looking down, he's drowning! Oh, God! Daddy, you're so funny! It's like, kick your legs, Daddy! Kick your legs! But as an artist and a writer and a historian, I think I'm inspired by the ability to be in the depth of feeling of your own life, but also to step back from it and figure out a way to create something out of it that is also different and separate from yourself at the same time.

4:20So that's why I love it.

4:27Author Elizabeth Pryor, whose new book is Something We Said, Richard Pryor, Notorious Word, and Me, on one of the most important live event films ever made, 1979's Richard Pryor, Live in Concert. The Treat is produced by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilgrest still reeling from live in concert I'm Elvis Mitchell it's The Treat