Posted on 12/12/2020 7:13:20 PM PST by nickcarraway
Stir Crazy, which was released on Dec. 12, 1980, is a mess of a film, but well worth remembering for two reasons.
The first is the comedic synchronicity of stars Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and the second is that it was the highest-grossing film domestically (adjusted for inflation) ever made by a black director until Ryan Coogler's Black Panther in 2018.
That director was Sidney Poitier, the so-called Jackie Robinson of the film industry. Raised in poverty in the Bahamas, he served a stint working with psychiatric patients during a teenage Army enrollment in World War Ii. Poitier eventually ended up on stage on Broadway, although not before shedding himself of his Bahamian accent. From there he moved into Hollywood, where his turn as an escaped con in The Defiant Ones in 1958 earned him his first Oscar nomination. Five years later, he became the first African American to win an Oscar for a leading roll, in The Lilies of the Field, and by the late '60s he was a major movie star.
What's often forgotten about Poitier is that he spent a good deal of the '70s directing films, many of them comedies aimed at black audiences, starring in three of them alongside Bill Cosby, then one of the most popular comedians in America. This led to him agreeing to direct Stir Crazy in 1980, substituting Pryor and Wilder for himself and Cosby.
Richard Pryor had already by that time established himself as one of the greatest comedians in American history – Jerry Seinfeld would famously call him "the Picasso of our profession" – and Gene Wilder had made his name through a running collaboration with Mel Brooks (The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein) as well as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. In 1976 the two had teamed up for Silver Streak, a murder mystery comedy set on a train running from L.A. to Chicago, and its popularity resulted in them being teamed again in Stir Crazy.
The film opens in New York City with a wonderful pair of scenes. Pryor plays Harry Monroe, an actor working as a waiter to pay the bills. He gets fired when his stash of weed accidentally ends up in the soup at a highbrow dinner party. Meanwhile, Wilder, a struggling playwright named Skip Donahue moonlighting as a department store detective, gets fired when he recognizes an actress from a Shakespeare audition and accuses her of shoplifting.
Tired of the urban assault of New York, the two decide to head west to Hollywood, where there's plenty of sun and lots of reputedly open-minded women. This trip comes crashing to a halt in the city of Glenboro, somewhere in the Southwest, when the two take a job as dancing woodpeckers in a promotion for a bank, only to have their costumes stolen by a pair of bank-robbers. Harry and Skip take the fall for the robbery, and are sentenced to 125 years in the Glenboro penitentiary by a no-nonsense judge.
There, they meet Jesus Ramirez (Miguel Ángel Suárez) and Rory Schultebrand (Georg Stanford Brown) – whose flamboyant gayness is played for laughs in one of the film's discordant notes – along with the titanic and unspeaking serial killer Grossberger (played by the Olympic wrestler and semi-professional opera singer Erland Van Lidth). The five men form an uneasy alliance that's cemented when they form a plan for escape.
This plan revolves around the prison's annual rodeo – it turns out that mild-mannered Skip is a fantastically talented bull rider – during which all the men but Grossberger escape by pretending to be spectators. Jesus and Rory head to Mexico, and once Harry and Skip hear that the real participants in the woodpecker robbery have been arrested they continue on to Hollywood, joined by their lawyer's sister Meredith, with whom Skip has fallen in love.
The action is as goofy as it sounds, and the film would be a disaster except for Pryor and Wilder. In virtually every scene, they goad the other's absurdity to new heights while also managing to keep it anchored in character and scene. A number of the sequences – like the "We bad!" bit that they do when they first arrive in jail – were quotable pop culture mainstays in the wake of the film's release, and still maintain their comedic punch all these decades later.
Poitier's direction is standard for comedies at the time, and probably deserves accolades mostly for staying out of his stars' way. What's perhaps most notable about his involvement is that, at the time, black directors were almost only chosen to helm pictures marketed at black audiences, which Stir Crazy was not. It was given a large marketing campaign and ended up as the third most popular film of 1980, behind only The Empire Strikes Back and 9 to 5.
Stir Crazy earned over $100 million at the box office – roughly $330 million in today's dollars. By comparison, Jordan Peele's Get Out has made some $225 million globally, and F. Gary Gray's The Fate of the Furious earned about the same domestically (its international numbers push it much higher, but Stir Crazy had no international market to speak of). Black Panther has earned some $700 million domestically and more than $1.3 billion worldwide
Is the amount of money a film makes necessarily representative of a its quality? No, but it certainly speaks to its impact. And in a profession where black Americans were long prevented from taking the director's chair, Stir Crazy serves as an almost forgotten milestone.
Movie always reminds me of this really nice guy I used to work with that looked just like Grossberger. My friend would always quote the part about how Grossberger killed his family and then killed people that reminded him of his family.
After all these years...I still laugh thinking about it.
I prefer Silver Streak overall, but still say “We bad!” sometimes.
When Gene Wilder was entering prison and said to Richard Pryor, we are actually going to prison even though we are both totally innocent men-—and Pryor said “Welcome to the real world. And not a moment too soon.”——that comes into my mind at times such as our national election deliberately stolen by fraudsters and laughed out of court by the judges and the bragging media.
And so many times when leftists say defund the police and handle violent domestic fights involving a knife or a gun, with a social worker, reminds me of Gene Wilder saying about the serial killer “Yes, but did anyone think of just sitting down and talking with him?”
Prior and Wilder were a great comedy pair in that movie and complimented one another, great movie, lots of laugh!
Wow, I had no idea Sidney Poitier directed this. I haven’t seen it for decades.
Freegards
MY LEGS!!! I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!!!
I don’t remember there being a homosexual couple in that movie. They must have been so homophobic back then. There was no boobies, or full frontal nudity either. And I don’t recall a single sarcastic remark about Christians or conservatives. My how times have changed, for the worse.
A very funny movie especially the scene of Wilder in blackface, and Pryor as the straight man. “I just hope we don’t see no muslims!”
There was one homo prisoner, back when being homo was still chuckled about. He was one of the good guys and played a good role, none of this fag crap we see nowadays.
The Richy Pryor bit from one of his live stand-up movies about being at AZ State Penitentiary for the filming of the Stir Crazy movie is a must see bit. 3m26s, very much worth it.
Thank GOD we’ve got penitentiaries!
Anyone else realize that there hasn’t been a gut-busting, politically-incorrect comedy made in decades? Comedies like The Jerk, Caddyshack, etc. simply wouldn’t be made today. The closest we have had was the Hangover trilogy.
That was “Silver Streak.”
Thanks for this social justice aware article about classic rock.
I don’t think it’s social justice.
“I don’t think it’s social justice.”
The author does.
It’s only about black film directors in the context of social justice.
It’d be an interesting article otherwise.
“This plan revolves around the prison’s annual rodeo – it turns out that mild-mannered Skip is a fantastically talented bull rider – during which all the men but Grossberger escape by pretending to be spectators. Jesus and Rory head to Mexico, and once Harry and Skip hear that the real participants in the woodpecker robbery have been arrested they continue on to Hollywood, joined by their lawyer’s sister Meredith, with whom Skip has fallen in love.”
Even though they were really innocent of the bank robbery charges, skip and harry put themselves in more legal hot water because its illegal to try to escape from prison even if youre innocent of the crime for which you were originally imprisoned. Plus skip and harry aided and abetted the escape of other convicts who were truly guilty of their crimes.
What a great routine that was.
Thanks. been a while since I have seen both movies.
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