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George W. Bush: No Longer the Decider

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TedStriker8/17/2010 10:12:39 pm PDT

re: #699 palomino

Little was funny in an understated way, Pryor would have been over the top manic and hilarious, totally conistent with Brooks’ best movies.

Your timeline of Pyror’s demise is off by a few years. Sure, he was using druges, but his best roles, from Lady Sings the Blues to Silver Streak to Blue Collar to Greased Lightning were all in the mid 70’s, contemporaneous with Blazing Saddles. His downfall, both creatively and physically, began in the early 80s.

I’m aware that Pryor did a lot of acting (among other things) after writing on Blazing Saddles…I love a lot of his movies, especially his collaborations with Gene Wilder (Stir Crazy and Silver Streak are among my favorites). But, he’d been doing standup and albums for years before that…he was just approaching the prime of his career in the mid-70s. As far as his standup, Live on the Sunset Strip was among his best, IMO.

As far as Blazing Saddles is concerned, I think Pryor did much more as a writer than he would have in the lead.