Richard Pryor's success had been a slow, steady rise, one that made its way from stand-up comedy to co-writing such big screen hits as Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles [1974]. In between he wrote for such classic television shows as Sanford and Son and The Flip Wilson Show and even made his way into movies as an actor, including such notable productions as the Oscar®-nominated Lady Sings the Blues in 1972. By 1975, he was popular enough among the counter-culture and youth market to host Saturday Night Live and did well enough to start thinking about getting his own show. Then, in 1976, something happened. He was cast in a supporting role in a wide-release comedy-thriller, Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder and Jill Clayburgh. The film was a huge hit and his exchanges with Gene Wilder during the last third of the movie were a big reason why. Richard Pryor, it seemed, had finally scored big with Middle-America. The rise was now complete: Richard Pryor was a star. Period.
Stir Crazy was to be Pryor's big reteaming with Gene Wilder and the studios were hoping for lightning to strike twice. If the two actors had performed so well together on Silver Streak for only a third of the movie, surely an entire movie of the two of them would be a blockbuster. Directing the film was Academy Award winning actor Sidney Poitier who had worked with Pryor before, in 1974, when he directed and starred in Uptown Saturday Night, in which Pryor had a supporting role. It seemed as if everything was set for an eventless shoot and a successful run at the box office. Richard Pryor, unfortunately, had other thoughts.
The plot of Stir Crazy concerns an actor, Harry Monroe (Richard Pryor) and his writer friend, Skip Donahue (Gene Wilder) who, after losing their jobs in New York, head to California to make their fortunes on the silver screen. They don't quite make it and end up in Arizona, dressed as woodpeckers doing a song and dance routine for a local bank. When two bank robbers steal their costumes and rob the bank, Harry and Skip are arrested and sentenced to 125 years in a maximum security prison. Inside prison, Harry and Skip must try to survive until they can escape. Joining Pryor and Wilder were Barry Corbin, Georg Stanford Brown as well as Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, two years before their teaming in Poltergeist [1982].
What everyone hoped would be a simple shoot turned out to be anything but. Pryor was constantly late to the set, sometimes showing up at noon, as much as four hours late. His bodyguard later admitted to Pryor's agent, David Franklin, that Pryor was freebasing cocaine every night during the shoot. This made the star's behavior erratic and paranoid. One infamous incident almost shut down the whole film although the views of what actually happened are different for each witness. According to the biography, If I Stop, I'll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor, by Dennis A. Williams and John A. Williams, Pryor "claimed that members of the crew were driving out to the house where he was staying, two hours away from the film's Arizona prison location, and shooting at him. One day, he said, a crew member dropped a watermelon from a ladder near him, and that was the last straw." He walked off the set and vowed not to go back.
Gene Wilder, on the other hand, tells a completely different version in his autobiography Kiss Me Like a Stranger. According to Wilder, after slices of watermelon had been handed out for a snack, "[s]ome members of the crew used a piece of watermelon as a Frisbee, and tossed it back and forth to each other. One piece of watermelon landed at Richard's feet. He got up and went home. Filming stopped." Wilder mentions that the cameraman did not return and, according to Pryor's manager Franklin, he and Pryor used the incident to get another half million out of the studio for Pryor to complete the film. Franklin knew if Pryor left the shoot and didn't return it could destroy his career so he negotiated the deal for Pryor but remarked later that the relationship was strained from that point on.
Eventually, Pryor returned, filming was completed and the studio anxiously released the finished product, hoping against hope that all the anxiety on the set wouldn't translate into an uneven film. They needn't have worried. Stir Crazy was a smash hit, thanks in no small part to the immeasurable comedic and acting talents of Richard Pryor. He and Gene Wilder would go on to make two more movies together but neither would be as big, or as good, as Stir Crazy. They would both see their careers take downturns in the decade to follow but it didn't matter. By 1980 both actors had reached the zenith of film stardom and Richard Pryor had gone from unknown stand-up to massive box-office draw in less than twenty years. The word "legend" was already being used to describe him and by the time of his untimely death in 2005 from a heart attack, after years of confinement to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, Richard Pryor was considered one of the most important figures in the history of comedy.
Producer: Hannah Weinstein, Melville Tucker, Francois De Menil
Director: Sidney Poitier
Screenplay: Bruce Jay Friedman
Cinematography: Fred Schuler
Music: Tom Scott
Film Editor: Harry Keller
Production Design: Alfred Sweeney
Cast: Gene Wilder (Skip Donahue), Richard Pryor (Harry Monroe), Georg Stanford Brown (Rory Schultebrand), JoBeth Williams (Meredith), Miguel Ángel Suárez (Jesus Ramirez), Craig T. Nelson (Deputy Ward Wilson), Barry Corbin (Warden Walter Beatty).
C-112m. Letterboxed.
by Greg Ferrara
SOURCES:
If I Stop I'll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor, John A. Williams and Dennis A. Williams.
Kiss Me Like a Stranger, Gene Wilder
Wikipedia
IMDB
