Paul Mooney Touches on Race and His Best Friend Richard Pryor In His New Book "Black is the New White"

Imus noticed that in his book Black is the New White, Paul Mooney, one of the most influential African-American comedic writers ever, thanked H.B. Barnum.

"He brought me to Hollywood," said Mooney, who is most famous for his work with Richard Pryor, and for writing for television shows Saturday Night Live and Sanford and Son, among others. "The people who helped you, you have to remember."

Imus also knew H.B. Barnum, who he met at a talent show at the California Club in the 1960s. Barnum had played the piano at intermission of the show, where Imus performed a song he had written called "Gunfight on the Sunset Strip."

"You were ahead of your times," Mooney said. "They have those there now."

Mooney met Pryor, one of the most prolific comedians of all time, black or white, for the first time in a hotel room in Los Angeles.

"Richard dated a girl that my half-sister was dancing with at the 'Whisky-A-Go-Go,'" Mooney recalled. "He came to the apartment and he said, 'Let's all get in bed together.'"

Mooney promptly threw Pryor out, but the two reconnected at a concert a few weeks later. They would become best friends, despite Pryor's raging drug habit.

Imus noted that in Black is the New White, Mooney called Pryor "a junkie first," adding that it drove everything he did. But Pryor was hardly alone. At that time, all the great minds of comedy — Lenny Bruce, Red Foxx, and others — were doing drugs. Raised by his grandmother in Louisiana, Mooney always abstained.

"I'd brush the cocaine off and put [the thousand dollar bills] in my pockets," said Mooney. "I made a lot of money."

Despite all the paranoia and mistrust that comes with drug use, Mooney knew Pryor really loved him because he never seduced him into doing drugs.

"He would tell all the drug dealers, 'Paul doesn't do drugs. Give me his share. More for me, more for me,'" he said.

Mooney was Pryor's biggest fan, and was honored to write for him. "I wanted Richard to be the funniest he could be," he said. "I looked up to him."

Mooney came up with several key phrases that can't be written out or spoken, here or anywhere. They mostly contain the N-word, which, in later years, Pryor stopped using.

"He said he was tired of white people coming up to him, hip white people, thinking they could say that to him," Imus observed.

But the issue of race was rarely absent from Mooney's and Pryor's material, specifically from skits they wrote in the 1970s for Saturday Night Live. He recalled one particular skit where a white family sat down to dinner and the father complained about all the black people moving into the neighborhood.

"They were eating dinner and someone would say, 'I'm going into the kitchen to get something,' and they'd come back black," Mooney said. "By the time the meal was finished, the father was the only white person there!"

Mooney did some research before appearing with the I-Man today, and was impressed. "You do a lot for kids, black and white," he told Imus. "I don't know what people think or know, but you're a good guy."

Mooney might be hilarious, but his naiveté is disturbing. Buy his book anyway.

-Julie Kanfer