Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982)

Richard Pryor was definitely a comic genius. This is the second concert film I’ve seen of his and he’s just incredible at his craft. He makes it look incredibly effortless and more like a conversation than a well-honed bit. Filmed relatively soon after his freebasing incident, there’s a nervousness, especially early in the act, that is a bit affecting. While the act covers a wide range of subjects, he has an incredible honesty about the incident and his drug addiction as a whole. There’s obviously quite a bit of internal pain there, which one can only hope that getting out provided some catharsis for him and it wasn’t just fodder to entertain the public.