● Becoming Richard Pryor By Scott Saul Harper, 608 Pages, $27.99 Richard Pryor’s personal history has already been relentlessly mined by numerous biographies as well as in the comedian’s stand-up acts and memoir. Still, Scott Saul’s new biography “Becoming Richard Pryor” adds a lot of new information. In his author’s note, Saul takes particular pride…
Jerry Seinfeld is in trouble. He’s been under attack on the web for the last week or so, accused of racism. The complaints focus on the lack of gender and racial diversity among the guests on his web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” More specifically, critics are steamed over a televised interview with Peter…
Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir Bruce Jay Friedman Biblioasis, 275 pages $29.95 Bruce Jay Friedman was sent to a charity sleep-away camp in Peekskill, N.Y. each summer. It was sponsored by the Central Jewish Institute and staffed by Israelis counselors. Like most Jews born and bred in the Bronx, Friedman didn’t take well to the…
Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in ‘Lenny’ (1974). Courtesy Toronto Jewish Film Festival Nearly 50 years after his landmark Carnegie Hall performance, and 44 years since his drug-related death, Lenny Bruce still has the power to shock. And as long he’s onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from Elan Gale’s Looking for Lenny, a new…
Comedy, explained Aristotle, has a vague history, because at first no one took it seriously. We cannot know for certain if Aristotle was deadpanning, but his observation would amuse Saul Austerlitz. According to Austerlitz, American film comedy has not been taken seriously, either. In fact, the author quips, it is American film’s “bastard stepchild.” With…
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