re: Would Blazing Saddles have been better or worse with Richard Pryor as the Sherriff?

IMO there's no way it would've been better. As others have said, it would've been different for sure. But it can't be better because it's so fricking perfect with Little.

I do think it would have suffered a bit because with Pryor in the role people would've expected it to be funny, rather than it being more naturally funny. If that makes sense.

But that was also fairly early on in Pryor's career though. So maybe I'm off on that. At that point, he had basically done some small parts in films and I think only one short comedy special. So it was before he blew up into sort of a superstar. So by that token maybe his performance would've been toned down a bit from some of the other roles he later became famous for. And for the sheriff in BS, a "toned down" performance is what it needed.

But it's still hard to imagine anybody other than Little knocking it out of the park as well as he did.