Bill Condon’s Richard Pryor biopic starring Marlon Wayans will begin shooting this fall, according an L.A. Times’ profile on the upcoming challenge in Wayans’ career.
Titled “Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?” the project still sounded like a pipe-dream just two weeks ago when Condon admitted that attention was only now being drawn because Adam Sandler was making noise about it. Well, whatever Sandler did looks to have pushed the project into production though Wayans’ casting still causes debate with many questioning the actor’s ability to step up to the plate — Eddie Murphy had long been linked to the role before Wayans.
“There were discussions with Eddie Murphy,” producer Mark Gordon admitted. “Eddie Murphy is a great star, and I have no doubt he would be a great Richard Pryor. But Eddie Murphy is Eddie Murphy in the eyes of the audience. Marlon Wayans is a great actor and will be a great Richard Pryor, but he brings less baggage.”
The L.A. Times themselves seem skeptical of Wayans referencing a funny review of “Little Man” by British critic Mark Kermode who writes that “there is no pit deep enough in the world to dispose of every single copy of this film. . . . ‘Little Man’ is bad for the world.”
“Look, I want to be able to make the stupidest movies ever, because they make people laugh and they make money,” Wayans reveals. “But that’s not all I want to do. And I think I’ve proven to some people — the ones paying attention — that I can do more. Everybody else, well, they can wait and see and make up their mind.”
“This is like an invitation to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro for me, and I’ve never been more excited in my life than when I got the role. I want to be in dramas, I want to produce, I want to write and I want to prove I can handle a role such as this one.”
Wayans understands the magnitude of the role though admitting “he’s huge, there is so much feeling for Richard Pryor. It’s hard to be bigger than Richard Pryor. He changed comedy, and he did it in his own unique way.” The actor further revealed Pryor’s own influence on him, recalling that his appreciation of Pryor began through his brothers’ enjoyment of the comedian’s LPs.
“My brothers would react and laugh and imitate Richard and debate it and play it over and over, and that’s how he came to me. Richard Pryor meant so much to black people. Bill Cosby was like Martin Luther King but Pryor, he was like Malcolm X.”
“I think he would smile,” Wayans concluded, discussing what Pryor would think of his casting. “And most of all, I hope, wherever he is up there, he laughs when he sees the movie.”
The actor is definitely not known for his dramatic work, but he was quite good in Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem For A Dream” but hasn’t exactly shown off those skills since, mainly due to a lack of opportunity. It’s a risky move but, it’ll be fascinating to see how Condon can pull out a larger-than-life performance out of Wayans.
As for Condon, before he gets to work on this film, he will shoot “Salmon Fishing In Yemen” in May. The project, about a British civil servant who tries to introduce the sport of salmon fishing to the Yemeni public in the midst of his failing marriage, is based on a book by Paul Torday that was adapted by “Slumdog Millionaire” scribe Simon Beaufoy. Condon also recently signed on to write and direct the iPod fueled “The Song Is You” but it now looks like that will shoot after the Pryor biopic. And as if his plate wasn’t already full, he’s also developing the HBO blogger comedy, “Tilda.”
