ACTUALLY READ IT: Black Is The New White by Paul Mooney
The fact that Paul Mooney is best known for segments on Chappelle’s Show is sort of funny in a way, because as Mooney puts it, that show was merely “passing the torch” from what he did with his good friend Richard Pryor. Quietly for decades, Mooney helped write some of Pryor’s best stand-up material in addition to the famous SNL sketch with Chevy Chase (there’s a funny story about that), Sanford And Son and The Richard Pryor Show.
In fact, most of the book is about Pryor, who Mooney portrays as an almost child-like man that is at the same time fueled and haunted by his childhood growing up in Peoria, Illnois as the son of a prostitute and a father that didn’t like him very much. A running theme throughout the book is that no matter how successful and famous he is, he consumes cocaine and alcohol at a rapid pace as if only that will make him happy. According to Mooney, he wants nothing more than to be famous, but at the same time is worried that he isn’t “keeping it real” anymore. “Richard has a love-hate thing with Hollywood,” Mooney writes. “I just settle on hating it.” While there isn’t exactly any new information about Pryor here, the book gives a glimpse into his mindset as his career progressed from the clean Cosby-wannabe comic to the groundbreaking social comedian to the movie star to the man that set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. Pryor died in 2005 not of his extensive drug and alcohol use, but because of multiple sclerosis.
Race is just as much a topic in this book as it is in Mooney’s stand-up material and. He sees Hollywood as a place not as liberal as it makes itself out to be. As he comes up as a stand-up comic at the famed Comedy Store in the 70s (which he helped unionize to force payment for performances), he sees his fellow comedians all get their big breaks in television and film, yet he never gets his. “I know that producers who pass me by are leaving millions of dollars on the table. They say the profit motive is sacred, but it’s not true. Racism trumps capitalism. Hollywood prefers to pass up a program that I know I can make a hit, rather than work with a proud black man like me. I make them too nervous. I freak them out.”
No matter what the subject, there are plenty of great stories about Hollywood in the 60s and 70s and the Los Angeles comedy scene in this book that a fan of comedy will enjoy. It’s written like how Mooney speaks on stage, “the place where I feel more alive.”
Comments
Mike Rainey
January 15th, 2010 at 11:39 am
I love Paul Mooney’s joke about how black people are different than white people. Oh wait, that’s his entire act.
Jeffrey
March 10th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Anyone who sees Mooney’s act as simply comparing black and white people does not get his act…or perhaps how race and racism work in this country today and historically. There’s a reason so many white people have walked out angry at this shows. It’s not because he is/was being perceived as “hack.” It was out of fear and the dislike of being implicated in racism. He’s an old man and some of his stuff has not developed with his age, but he is a pivotal figure in the history of comedy.
Mike Rainey
June 14th, 2010 at 8:03 am
His act is just tired and lazy. He’s a bitter old man clinging to the fact that he wrote for Pryor. Such witticisms as “White people love Mark Twain. Well, I’m dark Twain.” are just lame. He is an angry dope.