“A hundred and twenty-five years… Oh God, Oh God… I’ll be a hundred and sixty-one when I get out.”
Harry Monroe
Introduction
Directed by Sidney Poitier and part of a quartet of films starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, Stir Crazy is the second of their movies. The others are Silver Streak (1976), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). Released in 1980, the plot centres around unemployed Skip and Harry, who are wrongly accused of a bank robbery, incarcerated and given 125-year prison sentences. However, the pair hatch a plan to escape from their situation. A film that cost $10 million but was a box-office success, grossing $101 million. It’s a film that received mixed reviews on release but has become a comedy classic.
A Laugh a Minute
Harold ‘Harry’ Monroe is a waiter working for a rich woman who lives in a penthouse. However, he is sacked after the cook uses his supply of marijuana, mistaking it for oregano and using it to flavour the food for a dinner party. Skip ‘Skipper’ Donahue works as a store detective and thinks he sees a well-known actress shoplifting. Yet this accusation gets him fired. Teaming up together, the duo travel to California in a battered Dodge campervan, doing several odd jobs. Reaching Arizona, they get a job advertising a bank where they dress up as woodpeckers. On a break, two men steal their costumes and rob a bank.
In an act of mistaken identity, the two are arrested for a crime they didn’t commit. Sent to prison with hefty sentences, the duo decide to take their lawyer’s advice and wait for an appeal. Thrown into a maximum security prison, the pair try to fake insanity but fail. They then decide to befriend Jesus Ramirez, an over-the-top gay inmate—a bank robber who killed his father. After three months in the prison, they arrange a visit to the head warden, Walter Beatty, to try a ride on a mechanical bull. Skip is a natural and is selected to participate in the prison’s annual rodeo competition.
However, the competition is just a ruse for the wardens to make money, planning to pocket the profits. Jesus and another inmate, Rory, cotton onto the plan and decide to involve Skip in an escape plan. There is a spanner in the works, though, as Skip refuses to play ball until concessions are made. Threatened with torture and the hot box, the duo are forced to share a cell with the mute serial killer Grossberger. Thanks to their legal team, the pair hatch a deal with Beatty, and Skip forms a crew who share a cell. These include Harry, Jesus, Rory and Grossberger. They share a cell, and Skip agrees to participate in the rodeo. However, the wardens plan to kill Skip, not allowing him to leave the rodeo alive.
The crew acquire tools for their escape, and as Skip practices, the rest of the team escapes through the stadium air vents and re-enters in disguise as audience members. Skip has to face the champion, Caesar Geronimo. A competition that involves a large Braham bull. To win, the winner has to swipe a bag of money off the bull. Skip convinces Caesar to win the contest and give the money to the prisoners. The contest ends with Skip throwing the bag to his inmates and escaping.
Jesus and Rory bid farewell to the duo at a secret location as they prepare to travel to Mexico. As they get into the car, Meridith, a lawyer Skip has a crush on, arrives. She was telling them that the real robbers had been caught. The pair decide to revert to their original plan of going to Hollywood and ask Meridith to join them, and she agrees.
A Laugh a Minute
Stir Crazy has plenty of funny lines and scenes. This is thanks to a great cast, the brilliant script penned by Bruce Jay Friedman and the production skills of Hannah Weinstein. The prison scenes are hilarious and it is a genre of film that is hard not to love. The prison scenes were filmed in a real prison and the production was only secured when the film company agreed to donate a third of the profits to the prison in order to renovate it at the request of the prison governor.
