Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
You might not have known Paul Mooney, but you’ve definitely heard him, or at least his comedic philosophy, as told through multiple generations of Black comedians.
Mooney wrote for and with the late great Richard Pryor, served as the initial head writer for FOX’s In Living Color, and provided commentary for Chappelle’s Show in the segments “Ask A Black Dude” and “Negrodamus.” Mooney died today at 79, reportedly from a heart attack in his home in Oakland, Calif., although he had been sick for the past several years after a cancer diagnosis and a stroke. His earliest TV credits also included writing for Sanford and Son and Good Times.
I only got to see Mooney perform live late in his life and career, when he’d often perform at Carolines on Broadway in a co-headlining gig with another late comedic legend, Dick Gregory.
Promoting his memoir, Black Is The New White (which featured a foreword from Dave Chappelle), Mooney told NPR in 2009 about meeting Pryor through Joe and Eddie, a folk duo Mooney was opening for at the time. “I was living at a very cheap apartment on Sunset in Hollywood, where Gladys Knight and the Pips stayed. A bunch of people stayed with us, you know… A bunch of people would come and stay because nobody had any money, and we let them all sleep on the floor and in the bathtub or wherever they wanted to sleep. And I met Richard – a friend of my sister’s who was moonlighting with her, who was dancing at a go-go club, at the Whiskey a Go-Go, had dated Richard and brought him to the apartment. And so it was during that whole era of, you know, that hippie, that, you know, that Bob, Ted, Alice -everybody sleeping with everybody – and Lassie, and whoever else we could get into bed. And Richard had come in and said, well, why we don’t just all get into bed and have an orgy? And I threw him out of the apartment. And he had said before in his book that he didn’t know that was my sister.”
Pryor openly joked about their sexual openness in a roast to celebrate the end of the short-lived The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, on which Mooney served as head writer, and which served as an early big break for the likes of Robin Williams, Tim Reid, John Witherspoon, Sandra Bernhard, Vic Dunlop, Edie McClurg, and Marsha Warfield. Talk about a murderer’s row of talent who NBC really deemed “not ready for primetime.”
(A couple of years ago, one of Pryor’s former bodyguards alleged that Mooney improperly abused one of Pryor’s sons. Richard Pryor Jr., for his part, revealed he had been raped as a child but never named his abuser.)
Mooney also claimed credit for perhaps Saturday Night Live‘s most infamous sketch, pairing Pryor with Chevy Chase for “Word Association.” Mooney said he used SNL’s “cross-examination” of his own comedy credentials for writing for Pryor as the premise for the sketch.
A decade and a half later, Keenen Ivory Wayans turned to Mooney to help mold the voice of his groundbreaking sketch series, In Living Color, in 1990. The breakout recurring character of Homey D. Clown, who didn’t want to be held down by the White man “Homey don’t play that,” was inspired by Mooney’s persona.
A decade after In Living Color, Chappelle turned to Mooney to educate White people through the “Ask A Black Dude” segment (here’s Mooney uncensored talking about walking), and predict the future in his “Negrodamus” segments. Comedy Central doesn’t have Mooney’s bits on YouTube officially, but you can watch him via Paramount+ and elsewhere through full episodes of Chappelle’s Show.
This appearance on Late Show with David Letterman at the beginning of the 2008 presidential election cycle is even more fascinating in retrospect. Mooney and Letterman had known each other since their early nights at The Comedy Store in the mid-1970s. Mooney didn’t think Barack Obama’s campaign stood a chance, believed Hillary Clinton would win even then, and talked in-depth about Michael Richards using “the n-word” onstage, and how he supported Richards after that, in the wake of what now would be short-handed as cancel culture.
Don’t take my word for it on Mooney’s legacy?
Chappelle stopped to shout him out for TMZ today:
See what In Living Color star David Alan Grier had to say.
Or Bill Burr, who co-starred on Chappelle’s Show.
Or CNN host W. Kamau Bell.
Or Hari Kondabolu.
Or Marc Maron.
And for Mooney’s impact on Black entertainment at large, here’s Ava Duvernay and Viola Davis:
