{"id":1890,"date":"2014-02-08T22:26:42","date_gmt":"2014-02-09T06:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1890"},"modified":"2014-02-08T22:26:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T06:26:42","slug":"review-furious-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1890","title":{"rendered":"Review: Furious Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David and Joe Henry are Richard Pryor fans of the first order, and even they can&#8217;t make his life into a happy story. <em>Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him<\/em>, tells the well researched and sad story of Pryor&#8217;s rise to become one of the most popular and respected comedians of the late 70&#8217;s and early 80&#8217;s and his subsequent decline. Though that long title promises some inquiry into the state of the world, Pryor holds center stage throughout.<\/p>\n<p>The Henrys do a good job of describing the depth and honesty that made Pryor, briefly, one of the most dynamic and deep comedians in the world.\u00a0 I am not a Richard Pryor superfan, but I remember seeing his concert films and realizing that his honesty and comedic chops made him something special.\u00a0 With a reference or a few words from a bit, the Henrys bring those moments to life and reawaken the possibility of those clear, raw, moments.<\/p>\n<p>Then they have to talk about the relentless drug abuse and lure of big money and bad films that turned Pryor into a has been too soon. It&#8217;s hard to decide which is sadder, the personal self-destructive urge to light himself on fire in mid-binge or presenting a shadow of himself in awful film after awful film just to get the money.<\/p>\n<p>Through it all the Henrys keep the narrative moving though the tone can be grim.\u00a0 There are a few spots than could stand to see more aggressive editing, but overall the book holds your attention keenly and pulls you along.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David and Joe Henry are Richard Pryor fans of the first order, and even they can&#8217;t make his life into a happy story. Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him, tells the well researched and sad story of Pryor&#8217;s rise to become one of the most popular and respected comedians of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1891,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions\/1891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}