J Paul Johnson
The Criterion Collection continues to make strides towards a more diverse representation of films and filmmakers with releases like Richard Pryor’s Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, arriving this month on 4K UHD and Blu-ray discs. Long the province, predominantly, of European arthouse, Hollywood studio and independent auteur filmmaking, in recent years, and especially in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd and worldwide protests that followed, The Criterion Collection has redoubled its efforts to represent more black filmmakers, especially from the 1970s and 1980s.
The Collection has, to its credit, touted Spike Lee since the 1990s and their first laserdisc (remember them?) version of Do the Right Thing. But even that was the Collection’s 97th release, and for long it was the only such title. In recent years its added more of Lee’s canon (the riotously funny and criminally underseen Bamboozled and the long-overdue epic Malcolm X) as well as other works that better represent the diversity of black cinema: Mario Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasssss Song! and Watermelon Man, Gordon Parks’ Shaft, Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher, Michael Schultz’s Cooley High, Carl Franklin’s One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress, Gordon Parks’ The Learning Tree, Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle, and Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, to name a few.
Among them, Richard Pryor is probably not regarded as at the same level of auteur as a filmmaker as the others. But few individuals so captured the public’s imagination as broadly as did the revelatory, revolutionary comedian in the 1970s and 1980s, with his breakout success on the standup circuit leading to leading-man roles in hit studio comedies like Silver Streak and, after a horrifying accident nearly cost him his life, with 1986’s Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, this single opportunity to write, produce, direct, and star in a fiction film based on his own life.
The film begins with Pryor’s Jo Jo Dancer fighting for his life and reminiscing about his childhood and later rise to fame. Jo Jo’s spirit removes itself from his body and revisits scenes from his past, the film often featuring the two versions of the character together in the same scene. By the time Pryor came to make Jo Jo Dancer he had already lived—survived, perhaps—a remarkable life. Born and raised in a brothel (his superhero-origin story borrowed by Van Peebles for the opening of Sweet Sweetback), fending for himself in stand-up dives, and eventually finding success when embracing the more radical, revolutionary side of himself in his art, Pryor nearly killed himself, unintentionally, in 1980, when freebasing cocaine, engulfing his body in flames. Third-degree burns covered more than half of his body. Recovery was slow and painful, but he returned to acting, scored himself a $4 million payday for Superman III, and in 1985 earned the chance to write, star, and direct as the not-even-thinly-disguised version of himself in Jo Jo Dancer.
At its best, Jo Jo Dancer tells Pryor’s story without blanching. Pryor seems—perhaps it’s a consequence of the toll drugs and injury took on his body, or perhaps it’s related to the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis he would suffer the following year—awkward and uncomfortable throughout, though his discomfort as a black man in a white man’s world was an ongoing part of his routine. As a director, his instincts are nothing if not pedestrian: it’s as if the palpable energy of his crackling comedy is neutered by the restraints of the film’s conventional biographical tropes. The film’s signature visual effect—its doubling of Jo Jo as wandering spirit and corporeal human—is at best only passable, and in all honesty done few favors by the detail of this 4K remaster. In only a few fictional feature films did Pryor’s manic, confrontational humor shine through; in Jo Jo Dancer, Pryor is at his funniest reenacting his stand-up.
Doing stand-up, Pryor is wildly, riotously funny. A ribald gag where he pretends, in a dive bar, to be a baby peering out on the cusp of delivery is a masterpiece in near-mime, his comic actions complemented by just a few choice and deliciously profane expressions. When the film is more serious, it’s less effective. It’s hard to knock Pryor for his performance as himself, but the effect of Pryor playing himself is far less than watching him perform his act.
Otherwise, where Jo Jo Dancer works best, aside from its occasional comic brilliance, is in the directness of its self-reflection. Gimmick it may be, but the conceit of the self as an apparition urging his double to reconsider his life choices and redirect himself is one that works perfectly well for telling Pryor’s tale. It allows the audience to see both the young man who dared to leave home, take risks, and make an artist of himself but also the older, wiser man who could reflect on those events with some self-awareness. In the 1970s and ’80s, society generally lacked for means of discussing and addressing mental wellness. Pryor was a man who would have benefited, certainly, from better and more proactive care. The events of his life, difficult as they are to digest, make for a gripping tale in Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.
Criterion’s remaster is excellent, with crisp detail, although the film itself offers little of interest in terms of visual aesthetic. Viewers opting for the Blu-ray version will miss out on only a little crispness to the image and nothing else I can discern. In its original aspect ration of 2.39:1, the film was restored from the original 35mm Camera negative, the 2.0 surround soundtrack from the original 35mm magnetic tracks. The film had, to my knowledge, been made available on home media before only as a 2015 DVD and before that as a 1986 VHS tape.
Watching Jo Jo Dancer again in 2025 is a reminder not only of Pryor’s singular genius but also of the rarity of a black man directing his own life story onscreen. It may not be the best expression of his unique talents (little surpasses the brilliance of his stand-up), but it’s one that encompasses close to the totality of his lived experience, in the way Prior himself sought to do.
Special Features
Criterion packages the 4K version of the film in a double-disc jewel case, one disc featuring the 4K version of the film, the second a Blu-ray version alongside the following special features.
- Robert Townsend on Richard Pryor. In a newly-produced 18-minute interview supplemented by clips and images from Pryor’s film appearances and stand-up routines, filmmaker Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle) reminisces about his own origins alongside Pryor on the comedy circuit, summarizes Pryor’s career conversion towards radicalism, and assesses Pryor’s talents as they did—or, sometimes, did not—translate to film. It’s an excellent segment and Townsend is an engaging conversationalist, low-key and unassuming yet unimpeachably knowledgeable on the subject.
- The Dick Cavett Show. The only other special feature of note is archival in nature, an episode of The Dick Cavett Show filmed live at Hollywood’s Mayfield Theater on October 14, 1985, after production on Jo Jo Dancer had wrapped but the film had yet to release. Cavett was, among talk show hosts, renowned for his ability to draw compelling and unique revelations from his guests. He’s not exactly at his best here, trying to charm the crowd by being glib, and the resultant conversation is nothing if not awkward. Pryor, still, gets off some good lines.
No subtitles are provided for the either of the two special features, an oversight I simply can’t understand, though they are for the feature film itself. (If a viewer needs them for the feature, why wouldn’t they for the featurettes? Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old. Or hearing-impaired.) Included in the double-disc jewel-case packaging are a twelve-page color booklet with a detailed introductory essay from New Yorker staff writer Hilton Als, production stills, and notes on the remaster, with an impressive kaleidoscopic cover portrait by Matt Small.
On the whole, Criterion is to be commended for adding this film, especially on an excellent 4K UHD remaster and with at least some special-feature content, to the Collection. Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling is, for its faults, an important work of black cinema and Pryor’s one and only self-directed non-performance film. It’s well worth knowing for any fan of Pryor’s, any fan of stand-up, any fan of biopics, or anyone interested in black filmmakers and films more generally.
That said, it’s hard not to wish that this edition, as good as its remaster and two featurettes are, were a little more generous. It would not have been all that hard to collect Townsend and a contemporary or two—or, say, one of Pryor’s biographers or a scholar (Ashley Clark is the Collection’s curatorial director) for a commentary track. And given that so many of Pryor’s stand-up routines were filmed for broadcast and theatrical exhibition, the package certainly could have included a bit of what made the man so, so very funny. There’s a lot to Pryor one can’t quite glean from Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, and there’s a lot to this film’s unique place in the historical context of black cinema that’s not quite made evident.
Especially when paying a premium for 4K UHD discs in an era when all physical media are in jeopardy, consumers are right to expect premium content. On the whole, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling is one of those Criterion discs with singular content and limited extras. It’s a film worth seeing and a welcome addition to the Collection as Spine #1247, available January 14, 2025.
