Your Stupid Minds continues its "great directors making terrible films" series with Richard Donner and Richard Pryor's unfortunate The Toy!
Down on his luck Jack Brown (Pryor) is a reporter who can't get hired by the one newspaper in town because it's owned by a racist multi-millionaire (Jackie Gleason). After getting fired by Gleason after attempting to work as a "cleaning lady," Pryor does a physical comedy routine while listening to headphones, only to be inadvertently "purchased" by Eric "Master" Bates, Gleason's bratty son. What follows is a series of loosely connected vignettes tied together by Pryor alternately humiliating himself and getting upset at being humiliated by others like some sort of live-action Daffy Duck.
Some Notes:
- This is one of several not-so-great Pryor films to come in the immediate wake of Pryor suffering third-degree burns in 1980.
- The film is based on a French farce, which probably still makes about 100% more sense.
- The Toy is set and filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and highlights the implicit (and sometimes explicit) racial issues in the area. Glad that was all taken care of!
- A Confederacy of Dunces is a great novel and Chris and Nick make references to it this episode.
thanks for post
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