Death is Easy, Truth is Hard

Patrice O’Neal and the New Documentary

Given his fanatic fan base, no other documentary subject has a tougher audience to please than one on the life and philosophy of Patrice O’Neal. It didn’t take long for negative reaction videos to come up after the release of Killing Is Easy from Comedy Central. Between fan expectations and the near-decade long wait, the documentary was never going to be anyone’s perfect ending, but it can be a beginning.

Patrice Lumumba Malcolm O’Neal was a black comic from Boston who suffered from diabetes and succumbed to a stroke in 2011, leaving behind a girlfriend whose daughter looked up to him as a father figure. He was a self-admitted racist and sexist human being who could make you laugh about his ugly parts. He was almost afraid of being known for anything else other than a “unedited…piece of garbage” in the name of his pursuit for truth. He defended people’s right to be sexist and racist on outlets like Fox News if only to protect his own right to be flawed. His attitude and actions made him a comic’s comic, but it also drove away many opportunities throughout his career.

I first learned about O’Neal from the fan-made documentary Brutally Honest made one year after his death (collected in one video here). It’s clips like this and his appearances on the shock jock radio program “The…