That time Richard Pryor admitted to hooking up with men & called out the hypocrisy of the LGBTQ+ community
Netflix‘s fantastic new documentary Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution proves, there’s long been a community of LGBTQ+ comics at the forefront of our social revolution, even if we didn’t always know it.In director Page Hurwitz’s film, a long-overdue spotlight is shone on the queer voices who blazed new trails for us in entertainment, from early icons like Robin Tyler and Moms Mabley, to counterculture firebrands like Sandra Bernhard and Margaret Cho, to the legendary Lily Tomlin.And it’s through Tomlin’s story we’re reminded of yet another influential comedian who was part of our community, too, even if he isn’t always discussed as such: Richard Pryor.In 1977, Tomlin was one of the hosts of a show at the Hollywood Bowl called “The Star-Spangled Night For Rights,” intended as a fundraiser in opposition to Anita Bryant’s anti-gay movement, though billed as a broader “human rights benefit.”She had convinced her good friend Pryor—already a crossover comedy star who had made his way into film and television roles—to be part of the show and, when he took the stage, he wasted no time in calling out the event for being about gay rights while not really saying “gay rights.”“I came here for human rights, and I found out what it really is about is not getting caught with a d*ck in your mouth,” he joked in footage from the evening, which is unearthed in Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution.“Ain’t a motherf*cker out here [who’s] come out here and declared themselves gay,” Pryor continued. “Ain’t nobody did shit.
Everybody, as you say in politics, ‘skirted the issue.'”And that’s when he admitted it: “I have sucked a d*ck,” which was met with a roar of applause from the crowd.
What’s more, Pryor didn’t try to play it off as a mistake, or something he didn’t really want to do—he went on to describe the moment, calling it “beautiful,” and even going into detail about how this former intimate partner of his knew how to make him “c*m quick.”That admission, from one of the comedy world’s.
