What If Richard Pryor got the lead role?
I think the movie would have been so funny it would have broke all box office records. Richard coked up and ad libbing his lines people would have been falling in the aisles laughing
shareOnly if Mel would have been able to keep him in line. If he went vulgar, then the movie wouldn't have worked.
Plus, Cleavon was pretty unknown and "innocent." Meaning, we had no idea of what to expect.
I think the bigger thing would have been if The Waco Kid was played by John Wayne like Brooks wanted. Wayne said he loved it, but just couldn't do it because it would have been against "John Wayne's" legacy.
I think it would have been hilarious to see John Wayne say, "The little bastard shot me in the ass."
I thought they actually had another old cowboy actor lined up to play the Waco Kid, but they found out he really WAS a hopeless drunk.
- You may have come on no bicycle, but that does not say that you know everything.
I forget who he was, and he was an alcoholic.
Brooks said he wrote the part with Wayne in mind. I really wish he would have had the foresight to spoof himself they way so many actors do now. He did some comedy stuff on shows, so he had the chops. He just couldn't get past being John Wayne.
According to the trivia page for the film, the second choice to play The Waco Kid was Gig Young. Gene Wilder replaced him after young showed up on the set drunk.
- You may have come on no bicycle, but that does not say that you know everything.
Richard would have been smart enough not to go overboard. he was a comedy genius. at that point in 1973 he was only snorting coke not freebasing yet.
shareI don't mean that he would have OD'd. I mean that what made this movie work was the innocence of Bart. Other than the shovel incident, he did nothing wrong. And, in the context of the time in which the movie took place, something like that would have been how most people handled that situation.
I don't think Pryor was innocent enough to have played the role. He always had a look about him as if he was up to no good, or at least had a chip on his shoulder.
Don't get me wrong, I've liked a lot of stuff that he's done. I just don't think he could have pulled this role off.