If you have not seen this tape -- you have not seen stand-up comedy at its finest. Even the great George Carlin, long my personal favorite, has never been this funny. In my first viewing of this tape -- at home on HBO with my family around 25 years ago (I was twenty-one) -- I was sober and I couldn't stop laughing through the entire tape. Twice I fell off the couch laughing (a personal record). I rented it this week after he died and watched it twice more (up to around 6 or 7 viewings by now). My eyes watered up with laughter three times and I knew all the lines. Obviously, Pryor is a comic genius and is at his peak here in both material and delivery. (I could do without the liberal use of the n-word (a word he soon afterwords stopped using) and motherf----r, but it flows naturally from his mouth and is not excessive.) I am amazed that Bill Hicks' Relentless has an average rating of 9.6 (never saw a rating that high) and this tape has only a 7.8 average rating -- if ever a comedy tape deserves a 10 -- this is it (with all due respect to Bill Hicks the laugh-o-meter is not close with this tape winning hands down).
Pryor talks about his troubled life with honesty and hilarity. The beauty of his comedy is that you think he is just telling stories when in actuality he is introducing a variety of premises which contain well crafted jokes and characters who bring the visual images to life. His bit in which he describes a kid lying to his parent ("and you know he's lying") about how something broke is as funny as stand-up comedy gets. Other outstanding bits include white people (I'm white) acting tough, white people being nice when black people are around, women going to the bathroom in the woods, his heart attack, his father dying having sex, him having sex, his pet monkey, and a long bit about boxing with jokes about Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks. (I've read (not seen) that in the DVD version the sound mix is off, so I recommend the VHS tape.) Get a group of your friends (preferably mixed race -- his white/black insights are superb) and be ready to laugh like you have never laughed before. You can thank me later while you pay homage to a comedy legend if there ever was one. Enjoy.
Pryor talks about his troubled life with honesty and hilarity. The beauty of his comedy is that you think he is just telling stories when in actuality he is introducing a variety of premises which contain well crafted jokes and characters who bring the visual images to life. His bit in which he describes a kid lying to his parent ("and you know he's lying") about how something broke is as funny as stand-up comedy gets. Other outstanding bits include white people (I'm white) acting tough, white people being nice when black people are around, women going to the bathroom in the woods, his heart attack, his father dying having sex, him having sex, his pet monkey, and a long bit about boxing with jokes about Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks. (I've read (not seen) that in the DVD version the sound mix is off, so I recommend the VHS tape.) Get a group of your friends (preferably mixed race -- his white/black insights are superb) and be ready to laugh like you have never laughed before. You can thank me later while you pay homage to a comedy legend if there ever was one. Enjoy.