dir Mel Brooks, scrpl Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor & Alan Uger, cin Joseph Biroc, ed Danford Greene & John C. Howard
Bart: You are my guest, and I am your host. What is your pleasure? What do you like to do?
Jim: I don't know… play chess… screw…
Bart: [quickly] Let's play chess.
With a large movie collection, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out what you want to watch. Often, I will pick a handful of films and have my wife choose from my finalists, or vice-versa.
Last night, as I was choosing a handful of candidates, I impulsively grabbed Blazing Saddles, as Mel Brooks’s influence over, and cameo in, the previous night’s film were still fresh in my mind. More of a Mel Brooks fan than I am, this was my wife’s immediate pick.
I’ve already mentioned that my parents were very stringent with television privileges, and movies were no exception. I did not see an R-rated film until I was eighteen—for the record, it was The Godfather, which has definitely colored my tastes in film ever since.
As a kid though, particularly in high school, I feel like there was a period when everyone else discovered raunchy comedies, and then proceeded to walk around quoting them. A lot of the time, when I finally discover a comedy that, criminally, I’ve still never seen I find myself saying, “So that’s where that line comes from!”
Watching Blazing Saddles, with it’s reputation as a comedy classic, I’m always surprised there are not more of those memorable quips. The only familiar parts of the film, really, are Sheriff Bart’s, “Excuse my while I whip this out,” and “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin' badges,” which, yes, I do realize was ripped off from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Somehow, too, the famous campfire scene had long ago seeped into my consciousness, and I’m not quite sure how. It’s obviously harder to quote the bean eating cowboys than describe them—or just reenact their outlandish flatulence I guess. Then again, that is something I could see a room full of fourteen year old boys mimicking…
I don’t really have a problem with bathroom humor, and can laugh at a good fart joke as well as any guy. But really, there’s not as much of this as I expect in Blazing Saddles. I suppose Brooks was making a commentary on race relations in the 1970s, but what is most striking is how far political correctness has taken us. You simply could not make a film like this today.
The “N word” is used brazenly, and isn’t funny, as much as it is shocking. There are also a number of rape jokes that I can’t help but feel are in really poor taste. Apart from that, I smiled a lot more than I laughed.
I guess what it boils down to is that I tend to appreciate Mel Brooks films more than I actually like them. Though I might feel differently if I’d first seen them as a kid and they held an additional nostalgia factor.
The lame puns and sight gags are ok I guess, but before I discovered his zany brand of toilet humor, I discovered Monty Python. And while their blend of British comedy can also be ridiculously silly, there’s also an added layer of sophistication that I dearly love.
I give the film a pass, though, since Gene Wilder is always a delight to watch, as is Slim Pickens. And Cleavon Little’s performance as Sheriff Bart is terrific. Frankly, his reaction to the continually spewing racism is the only thing that keeps it from becoming too uncomfortable to watch.
And there is one pure comedic gem in Blazing Saddles that had me laughing out loud. Near the beginning, the cowboys demand that Bart and the other black men sing a traditional “work song.” Bart’s crooning rendition of I Get a Kick Out of You, with the other workers joining in on harmonies, had me in stitches and was the funniest gag in the entire movie.