By Trent Lakey
As part of its popular Summer of ’86 series, the Independent Picture House will feature comic legend Richard Pryor’s most personal film, JO JO DANCER, YOUR LIFE IS CALLING.
Few comics have reached the level of success and influence of Richard Pryor. He was like Thelonious Monk or John Coltrane, an innovator of his form. Within the confines of stand-up comedy, Pryor was a revolutionary force of brash cultural honesty, confronting racial disparity, poverty, local winos, and his own abuse and near self-destruction. He performed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and many others, starred in studio films such as STIR CRAZY, THE TOY, and BREWSTER’S MILLIONS (as well as dramatic roles, as in Paul Schrader’s BLUE COLLAR), and released numerous classic comedy albums. What separated Rich from the likes of Redd Foxx, Rodney Dangerfield, and other comic luminaries was that he always jumped straight to the bleeding heart of things and swam in its bloody waters for an hour, whether it was the world or himself that was bleeding. You always got a strong sense of who the man onstage was. And he was funny as hell.
After his near-fatal, highly publicized freebasing incident, in which Pryor doused himself in liquor and attempted suicide by fire, he began a long road of physical recovery, personal healing, and sobriety. Part of that journey involved making JO JO DANCER, YOUR LIFE IS CALLING, a semi-autobiographical film spanning his life to that point. Pryor co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the picture, the only directorial effort of his career. The film begins with the aforementioned incident, then follows him to the hospital, where doctors treat his second- and third-degree burns. Jo Jo (Pryor’s alter ego) is not expected to survive, suspended between life and death. His spirit departs his body, dressed in black, urging Jo Jo to look back on the tumultuous events that led him to his potential end.
Jo Jo first revisits his childhood in Morton, Ohio, where he grew up in a brothel run by his grandmother. He then recalls his departure for Cleveland after his father’s vehement disapproval of his dream of becoming a comic, his early days in show business, his friendship with a burlesque dancer named Satin Doll (Paula Kelly), and an incident in which he pulls a gun on mafia members who withheld performers’ wages. The final stretch of memories follows Jo Jo after he achieves stardom in Los Angeles, as he descends into addiction, cycles through a series of marriages, and succumbs to the self-loathing that leads to his fateful self-immolation.
His memories flit in and out, sometimes unfinished, in a nonlinear progression. Pryor wanted to reflect the true nature of memory, as fallible and fleeting as it is. His life stops and starts, marked by great personal sacrifice in exchange for great success, often cutting in and out like a used car with a fresh coat of paint. He relives his story in a manner not unlike Marcel Proust, whose In Search of Lost Time scoured the author’s own memory through madeleines and high-society soirées as he sought to reclaim his life through undiluted remembrance. But where Proust dwells in a misty, poetic-philosophical realm of revelation and self-fulfillment, Pryor always returns to the stage he inhabits and the personal connection it offers. Stand-up, already a vehicle for cultural catharsis, becomes one for personal catharsis as well.
The film offers a myriad of pleasures and moving passages through Jo Jo’s (and Pryor’s) tumultuous life, from colorful escapades to excessive indulgence. But its greatest virtue is watching a man sift through his memories as he tries to understand how to live and survive as himself. In an interview with Dick Cavett promoting the film, Pryor observed, “There’s no place to teach us about feeling in school. They don’t teach us that.” Perhaps it is the role of artists like Pryor, and films like this, to do just that.