RIchard Pryor’s Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling is a lacerating self-excoriation and radical act of self-love. After going through the Criterion Collection’s new release a couple times, that’s the sentiment I keep coming back to as I organize my thoughts on the film.
For his only feature directing effort, Pyror gives himself the It’s a Wonderful Life treatment in retelling his story from his infamous self-immolation and frack through his life leading to that point. Calling it brave or courageous feels reductive, since that was the only way Pryor knew to communicate through his art. But it’s no less powerful. Jo Jo works better as a meta textual exercise than as a straight drama, which is impressive because the film is pretty solid on its own terms.
It starts with superstar comic Jo Jo Dancer looking for crack to smoke in his home and ending up in the hospital with severe burns and slim hopes of survival. With Jo Jo laying on the gurney, his alter-ego literally pulls himself from Jo Jo’s damaged body. As the Alter Ego scolds and consoles the unconscious Jo Jo, the film jumps back to Jo Jo’s childhood. In typical biopic fashion, the film runs through Jo Jo’s upbringing at the brothel where his mother worked through his first, floundering attempts at stand-up comedy, before rising to fame and battling his demons all along the way.
The script by Pryor, Paul Mooney, and Rocco Urbisci, knows what beats it needs to hit and does so dutifully. The arc this story takes is as sturdy as they come. They don’t shy away from the harshness of life, whether it’s Jo Jo’s personal shortcomings or the general difficulty of the circumstances he rose from. The film’s best moments all deal with the Alter Ego talking to different versions of himself. It captures the futility of the “if you could give your younger self any advice” hypothetical, but it does help Jo Jo see the potential in changing his course going forward. That potential, the film argues, is what we need to keep going in the face of life’s darkest moments. Throughout the film Pryor jumps back and forth between Jo Jo’s life events and his burnt body in the hospital. Multiple times we hear doctor’s speculate that Jo Jo’s prospects are grim. Whether it’s pure survival instinct or luck that he, and Pryor, survived, the movie lingers in the reflective space of whether some lives are worth continuing. Jo Jo’s survival becomes an act of grace extended by Pryor to his fictional self. It’s not hard to view it as a kindness extended to his real self.
Criterion’s release of Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling is lighter on special features than usual, but they add a helpful perspective on Pryor, especially later in his life. There’s an interview with Robert Townsend that’s a lovely ode to Pryor from an old friend. The second feature is a 1985 episode of The Dick Cavett Show with an extended talk between Pryor and Cavett. It is completely transfixing. Pryor is so vulnerable that it’s hard to watch at times. Cavett tries to bring levity throughout the interview, but it only makes the interview more difficult. There’s a section where the two discuss their experiences being sexually abused as kids. When Pryor says that the only good thing about having money is being able to afford to see a therapist, you can practically see the weight he carried. Pryor’s status as one of the defining and most important voices in American comedy has been set long before his death in 2005. Twenty years after his passing, and he feels as vital as ever.
