The Complicated Friendship of Comedy
Funnymen Richard Prior and Jean Wilder first met in Canada on the eve of the shooting of the 1976 comedy Silver Streak. According to the accounts, it was a minor encounter: the two exchanged expressions of greeting and admiration favorable to the other’s work and went their separate ways.
The next day, they got to work on camera together for the first time.
Recalling Wilder in a 2007 interview, he said, “He said his first line, I said that’s my first line and then this second line comes out of him … I had no idea where it came from, but I didn’t question it, I just answered naturally – I didn’t try to think of a clever line … I said what happened naturally in the situation … then Went back to the script, then she went, and we did whatever it was all the same. ”
This back further formed the basis of four feature films and gave birth to some of the most well-known one-liners of the last 40-plus years, though their off-screen relationship did not have the same smooth flow that made them so easy to see on screen Enjoyed.
Due to his substance abuse, Prior was unexpected to work with
Prior and Wilder were paired together in Mel Brooks’ satirical Western Blazing Saddles (1974). However, when Prior won the credit for scriptwriting, he reportedly gave the script sessions a chance to act as Sheriff Bart, with Wilder’s Waco Kid performing high, and instead offered Clewon Little the role Has gone.
It was an ominous sign of trouble to come, but things went well on the set of Silver Streak, a commercial and critical success, and both were tapped to feature a follow-up directed by Sydney Poitier.
Stir Crazy (1980) marked the pinnacle of their professional collaboration, with the duo showcasing their high-fee carraderie on their limited joint screen time at Silver Streak, as friends implicated for bank robberies and were imprisoned.
Yet a blurry video of an on-set interview is preferred to working with the unpredictable Pryor at the time who gets encapsulate. Allegedly under the influence, Prior flew over extended unholy tangents keeping all the people in stitches, but removed the interview from the air. He also uttered some interesting words about his costar, at one point, ”
It’s unclear if Wilder ever saw this footage, but what he saw showed Pryor being late for the day-to-day shooting, forcing everyone to grind their teeth and swallow it just to keep the production roll .
Prior and Wilder were originally heads of ‘Trading Places’.
A few months before the film hit, after an extended binge of free-cosings, Prior submerged himself with 151-proof rum and set himself on fire.
With his life in jeopardy, his actions derailed his Hollywood career and influenced Wilder’s influence: major parts in Trading Place, for Prior and Wilder, instead went to Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd , And became one of the Odd-Even comedy’s biggest hits of 1983.
At the end of the decade, Prior and Wilder revisit See No Evil, Here No Evil (1989) as related blind and deaf people who engage in criminal activities. While not remembered as one of his best joint efforts, Prior had a pleasant experience behaving on set and the film topped the box office for two weeks.
They came together in a final nod to the forgettable Ek Aur Aap (1991), but by then Pryor was already demonstrating the effects of MS and the crack of humor between the two was down to some flicker. Fitting, this was the last major film role for both men.
Wilder compared his working relationship to ‘sexual attraction’
In his memoir Kiss Revealed the Same Year as The Death of a Stranger Prior to Me (2005), working with Wilder Prior, the magic of liking it to “sexual attraction” due to his undeniable chemistry. Remembered that.
But he also confirmed the reality of his silent personal relationship, noting that, “As we were on film, it didn’t just take us to our personal lives. Richard traveled in his own circle. You once trusted. We can. We saw each other even when we weren’t working, and even then there was always a work-related reason we met. ”
Nevertheless, it seems that the two actively whispered disliking each other. In a 2013 interview at 92nd Street Y, Wilder sounded like a man who wished he could have done more to help his talented and troubled costar.
“When he was good he was amazing, when he was bad, he was terrible … in his throwing things, throwing time away, hours away,” he lamented. “What can you do? Give him a hit, and then give him a kiss.”
Three years later, after Wilder went through Alzheimer’s-related complications, Pryor’s daughter, Rain, most accurately proposed the complex relationship between the two men.
The next day, they got to work on camera together for the first time.
Recalling Wilder in a 2007 interview, he said, “He said his first line, I said that’s my first line and then this second line comes out of him … I had no idea where it came from, but I didn’t question it, I just answered naturally – I didn’t try to think of a clever line … I said what happened naturally in the situation … then Went back to the script, then she went, and we did whatever it was all the same. ”
This back further formed the basis of four feature films and gave birth to some of the most well-known one-liners of the last 40-plus years, though their off-screen relationship did not have the same smooth flow that made them so easy to see on screen Enjoyed.
Due to his substance abuse, Prior was unexpected to work with
Prior and Wilder were paired together in Mel Brooks’ satirical Western Blazing Saddles (1974). However, when Prior won the credit for scriptwriting, he reportedly gave the script sessions a chance to act as Sheriff Bart, with Wilder’s Waco Kid performing high, and instead offered Clewon Little the role Has gone.
It was an ominous sign of trouble to come, but things went well on the set of Silver Streak, a commercial and critical success, and both were tapped to feature a follow-up directed by Sydney Poitier.
Stir Crazy (1980) marked the pinnacle of their professional collaboration, with the duo showcasing their high-fee carraderie on their limited joint screen time at Silver Streak, as friends implicated for bank robberies and were imprisoned.
Yet a blurry video of an on-set interview is preferred to working with the unpredictable Pryor at the time who gets encapsulate. Allegedly under the influence, Prior flew over extended unholy tangents keeping all the people in stitches, but removed the interview from the air. He also uttered some interesting words about his costar, at one point, ”
It’s unclear if Wilder ever saw this footage, but what he saw showed Pryor being late for the day-to-day shooting, forcing everyone to grind their teeth and swallow it just to keep the production roll .
Prior and Wilder were originally heads of ‘Trading Places’.
A few months before the film hit, after an extended binge of free-cosings, Prior submerged himself with 151-proof rum and set himself on fire.
With his life in jeopardy, his actions derailed his Hollywood career and influenced Wilder’s influence: major parts in Trading Place, for Prior and Wilder, instead went to Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd , And became one of the Odd-Even comedy’s biggest hits of 1983.
At the end of the decade, Prior and Wilder revisit See No Evil, Here No Evil (1989) as related blind and deaf people who engage in criminal activities. While not remembered as one of his best joint efforts, Prior had a pleasant experience behaving on set and the film topped the box office for two weeks.
They came together in a final nod to the forgettable Ek Aur Aap (1991), but by then Pryor was already demonstrating the effects of MS and the crack of humor between the two was down to some flicker. Fitting, this was the last major film role for both men.
Wilder compared his working relationship to ‘sexual attraction’
In his memoir Kiss Revealed the Same Year as The Death of a Stranger Prior to Me (2005), working with Wilder Prior, the magic of liking it to “sexual attraction” due to his undeniable chemistry. Remembered that.
But he also confirmed the reality of his silent personal relationship, noting that, “As we were on film, it didn’t just take us to our personal lives. Richard traveled in his own circle. You once trusted. We can. We saw each other even when we weren’t working, and even then there was always a work-related reason we met. ”
Nevertheless, it seems that the two actively whispered disliking each other. In a 2013 interview at 92nd Street Y, Wilder sounded like a man who wished he could have done more to help his talented and troubled costar.
“When he was good he was amazing, when he was bad, he was terrible … in his throwing things, throwing time away, hours away,” he lamented. “What can you do? Give him a hit, and then give him a kiss.”
Three years later, after Wilder went through Alzheimer’s-related complications, Pryor’s daughter, Rain, most accurately proposed the complex relationship between the two men.
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