RICHARD PRYOR--YOUR LIFE IS CALLING . . .

Richard Pryor has come apart. Out of cocaine and out of solutions, he reaches for the bottle of Bacardi 151 Rum on the bedroom dresser and douses himself with liquor. Then he flicks his lighter and ignites himself into a human fireball.

This harrowing scene occurs near the end of Pryor’s new semi-autobiographical film, “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling,” and Pryor now admits that on June 9, 1980, he was ready to take his own life. “It was a horror, an absolute horror. I think I got enough of it on the screen, but it was worse than that.”

Richard Pryor, your life is calling, and it’s not a pretty picture. In “Jo Jo” (opening Friday), which marks his directing debut, the 45-year-old comedian-actor offers the audience a Pryor’s-eye view of his circuitous route to the top. It is equal parts confession and explanation, a soul-purging expedition that may strike some viewers as a $20-million therapy session. “This is a movie I had to do,” Pryor said earnestly. “I felt that once I got it past me, it would free me to do other work.”

The story of the rise and fall and rise again of a stand-up comic, “Jo Jo Dancer” is hardly a comedy. Early on, we see Pryor on his knees frantically combing the carpet for one more pebble of cocaine to smoke. We see him as a child peering through a keyhole in the Peoria brothel in which he grew up, sneaking a look at his mother at work. And we see him charred and delirious, lying on a hospital gurney floating in and out of consciousness.

It would be pointless to suggest that Jo Jo Dancer isn’t Richard Pryor, and even Pryor himself admitted that the movie ended up being a closer parallel to the events of his own life than he had planned. “It’s close, real close,” he said.

For two hours on a Sunday, while on location here making “Critical Condition,” Pryor talked. Surrounded by his only current vices--cartons of Marlboro cigarettes and 12-pack boxes of Trident spearmint gum--Pryor discussed with apparent candor the bouts with the drugs that nearly took his life, the demons that crushed his self-confidence and the new personality he claims has emerged after three years of sobriety.

This was a vastly different Pryor from the angry, acid-tongued, jive-talking man that we have all come to know. He was reserved, and so quiet that at times he’d answer questions in a barely audible whisper. He was open, to the point where he acknowledged that he had continued to free-base cocaine even after the free-basing accident that nearly killed him.

As an interview subject, Pryor has always been unpredictable. At times, he has been moody and unresponsive--or sensitive and forthcoming. On this occasion, Pryor was a mixture of both. He was willing to talk in great detail about the painful hurdles in battling back to sobriety. But on some subjects, such as the failed potential of his own company or the status of blacks in Hollywood, he was eager to get off the subject quickly.

He looks different too. His mustache is full, his hair more stylishly cut in looser curls. He wore a beige silk shirt over a plain white T-shirt and casual slacks. He appeared healthy, with no visible scars from the accident.

If there is a consistent theme running through “Jo Jo,” if indeed it is his life, it’s a sad one. We learn that for most of his life, despite the enormous success he has achieved in his art, Pryor has been riddled with doubt, frustration and pain. “I always believed in something, that’s what kept me going all through life,” he said. “There have to be better ways and better days and I think if I work on these things in myself, it will make things better.”

It was an intensely introspective Richard Pryor that decided to make “Jo Jo,” which is the most personal--and perhaps commercially riskiest--kind of film making one can imagine for a person with his star power. Several years ago, Pryor suggested the idea to then-Columbia Pictures Chairman Guy McElwaine, who quickly responded with a resounding yes. But it was first planned as a “bust-out comedy,” Pryor said. “I tried to do that but then you start writing and it starts going in another direction. It started getting a lot more serious.”

“Jo Jo,” which was originally scheduled for release last Christmas, cost about $20 million to make, according to one Columbia insider. Toward the end of filming, Pryor started to have problems with structuring the movie and called upon old friend Thom Mount (former president of production at Universal Pictures) to help him finish it up. Mount refused to elaborate on his role in the cutting room. “I’m very proud of Richard’s work on this film,” he said. “I don’t know of a major star in this business who would take the chances Richard has. It was a brave movie to make.”

Stepping behind the camera for the first time proved rewarding, if challenging. “I loved directing,” Pryor said, his voice rising for the first time and his eyes widening. “I mean, I understand how these directors get off on this. That’ll get you off, helping actors work at their craft and making small suggestions. When you see them get it and go with it and trust you, that’s exciting.”

Is he nervous about the reaction he’ll get? “I feel like I’ve told my story well,” he said. “I feel like Sally Field though, you know? I’m just hoping they like me. . . . I wasn’t trying to hit the big home run, I just really want people to like it. Hell, I’d settle for a double. You know, ‘Pryor steps up to the plate and cracks one up the line.’ Just a double would be fine.”

For Pryor, “Jo Jo Dancer” represents a breakout role of sorts. Though he has made 25 films to date, the vast majority have been broad comedies, ranging from early predictably stereotypical black roles in “Uptown Saturday Night” and “Car Wash” to more recent “buddy” comedies like “The Toy” and “Brewster’s Millions.” Along the way there has been the occasional drama: “Blue Collar” and “Lady Sings the Blues” (he got a best-supporting-actor Oscar nomination as “Piano Man”) are two of his best--and favorite--performances, but, as Pryor acknowledged: “Hollywood tends to put people in little boxes and they won’t let you out. When I started, I didn’t know about the box.” The book on Pryor has always been that he has somehow managed to rise above marginal material, winning good notices in otherwise disappointing films (“Superman III,” “The Wiz”). In movies like “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy,” Pryor’s appeal mushroomed and he convinced Hollywood that he wasn’t just funny, he was bankable too.

Pryor’s achievement is nothing short of astonishing. How many stand-up comedians, let alone black stand-up comedians, have made the transition to the movies with such resounding success? His influence on a new generation of comedians, including Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg, is clear. One wonders if they could have come so far so fast without the benefit of his trailblazing impact.

Beyond that, Pryor’s unique brand of comedy is unmatched. While Bill Cosby clearly strikes a popular chord with middle-class blacks (and whites for that matter, considering his enormous TV ratings), no other comedian has been so successful as Pryor in communicating and humorizing black life in America. Pryor was one of the first comedians to deliver his material in the harsh street jargon of the ghetto. It comes across as The Truth: to everyone from the black underclass who so strongly identify with and idolize Pryor, to middle-class whites who get an education with every one of his routines.

“Jo Jo Dancer,” Pryor said, whet his appetite for meatier roles. “Now I want to do caliber stuff. It doesn’t have to be drama; it can have comedy in it but the story has to be good. Sometimes the funniest things come out of serious situations.” (A tongue-in-cheek rumor has it that in exchange for “Jo Jo,” he has to make seven comedies for Columbia in the next two months. He exploded in laughter over the report.)

In the past, Pryor said, deciding which films to star in has been left to his lawyer; now, he says, he is reading more scripts himself and wants to get even more involved in the selection process. “I’m not getting a lot of scripts, though. Maybe they think I’m just an old man now. But I wish they’d send me more scripts.”

“Critical Condition,” being directed by Michael Apted, is based on the true story of a hospital blackout. In the midst of the crisis, a man in a white coat appears and takes over with grace under pressure. Everyone assumes the man is a doctor, but they soon discover he’s actually a patient from the mental ward. Pryor plays the unlikely hero.

It was clear in his last stand-up movie, “Richard Pryor Here and Now,” that his onstage persona had mellowed. He told the audience that he had given up using the word nigger , for example, and the show, once heavily laced with obscenities, was far less mean-spirited. It is quickly apparent that he is a much-changed man off camera as well. Gone are the snappy one-line responses that used to characterize his interviews. He speaks slowly and quietly, carefully choosing his words or abruptly stopping if he has nothing to say on a particular subject.

When asked if actress and comedienne Whoopi Goldberg has staying power, he thought for a moment, then bowed his head and said: “That’s not for me to say.” When asked if there are perhaps more and better opportunities for blacks today in the wake of movies like “The Color Purple,” he started to answer--and suddenly cut it off. “What about I just don’t know?”

For whatever reasons--reasons that Pryor himself seems unable to explain--drugs and alcohol have been constant temptations in his life. He admitted that even after the accident, he returned to the pipe and was free-basing cocaine once more. “Yeah, there was a time I went back to it, but I didn’t know there were support groups,” Pryor said. “It was about three weeks after I got home from the hospital. The drugs still had a hold on me.”

Pryor said he began his rehabilitation when he got a call one day from a friend who was in a hospital for cocaine addiction. One night, Pryor accompanied the friend to a group therapy session and it was there that he found himself announcing that he too was a drug addict and an alcoholic. Though he won’t say what organization he joined, Pryor has been attending anonymous therapy meetings ever since.

It has been three years, he said, since he has had a toot of cocaine or a drink of alcohol, but Pryor said it remains a day-by-day battle to stay sober. “It’s an ongoing fight. I thought I was fine and I was watching television one night and they had this big bust. They had all these giant rocks (chunks of cocaine) on the evidence table and I knew if someone had walked in the room that night with a rock, I would have smoked it. I kept thinking, ‘It’s been three years, man. How can it be that close?’ But that’s the way it is, it’s that close all the time.”

For Pryor, cocaine began as a confidence booster and a way to fill the empty spaces in his life. “It starts out as a way to entertain yourself. And then the drugs take you over, the drugs live your life. It’s a horror and there are so many people doing it and messing up their lives for the world to see. It doesn’t stop them, though, because they feel the drugs are improving their life, but they don’t, they really don’t.”

In Pryor’s case, they altered his own perception of himself. He recalled the time he spotted a woman at a local bar and wanted to buy her a drink--but without cocaine he couldn’t muster the confidence to speak to a stranger. After sniffing some coke, Pryor introduced himself and wound up taking the woman home. “I thought it was the cocaine that got her to go home with me. It never occurred to me until later in life that the lady really liked me.”

He said that the drug had such a hold on him that when he reached the hospital after the accident, he was “psychotic.” “I didn’t believe I was in the hospital,” he said, his voice dropping down to a whisper. “This doctor kept asking me, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And I kept wondering, ‘Why is he asking me this?’ I thought all these people were trying to kill me.”

He now seems to have also lost a lot of the anger that once characterized his personality on stage and off. His stand-up act had a threatening tone to it that audiences--especially white audiences--found both frightening and funny. The fear made you laugh. Pryor knew that. “I was serious, I really hated white people,” Pryor said. “I covered up the anger with comedy. But then I started feeling weak. I thought, ‘Fix yours and then you can deal with other people’. . . . I’m still funny but in a different way.”

These days, Pryor said he is making a distinct effort to communicate with people. That would seem an easy task for a performer who can easily win over an audience with a cocked eyebrow or a jagged smile. But Pryor admits he has always had trouble just dealing with humanity when he’s not working. Listen to him on the subject of fame: “There’s so much pain and no one to go to,” he said. “I had a friend who once asked me, ‘With all these people kissing your ---, how do you ever know if they like you or not?’ She said, ‘I’m here to tell you your ---- stinks.’ And I guess that’s why we’re still friends.”

Married and divorced four times, Pryor says he has a “good friend” but declines to elaborate. Will he ever settle down with one woman? “To be married, no; to be in love involves real work. It doesn’t mean hard work, but you have to be willing to give up some things and share. I wasn’t willing to do that, but I sure knew how to run. I constantly created situations that I could get out of. People write their own scripts.”

The current script, Pryor said, calls for a schedule of hard work, clean living and the difficult process of reintroducing himself to the new Richard Pryor. “That’s what’s happening,” he said with a grin. “I don’t know what that person will be but I just have to wait and see. I don’t know but I am happy. Sure, my moods go up and down, but at least I know where I’m at. That’s life. At least when I wake up, I know who I am and where I am and I don’t get those damn hangovers. I mean, I’m not waking up saying, ‘Oh no, did I kill someone last night?’ ”

In quiet High Point, that means getting to bed most nights by 9 p.m. And that part has been easy. “It’s real hard staying up late when you’re sober. We went to a place one night and didn’t get out until 11 and I was dead tired. I liked that. It’s no problem for me now, coming home early.”