.
Since the 40th anniversary (!!!) Blu-Ray version of Blazing Saddles has just been released, Esquire has an interview with Mel Brooks:
ESQUIRE.COM: Looking back, what are the memories that stick out most from making the movie?
MEL BROOKS: I always thought Richard Pryor was going to be the black sheriff. I just assumed it. Richard was one of the writers [on the film] and then Warner Brothers said, “No, he’s got a drug problem, he’s not well-known as an actor.” And I was just like, “Trust me, this guy’s the funniest guy who’s ever lived. He’s going to be a big movie star.” And you know, two years later he did Silver Streak.
ESQ: And you were so disappointed they wouldn’t give him the part that you quit the film.
MB: I walked out and then after three days Richard grabbed me and said, “Look, if you leave I don’t get my last payment as a writer.” So I came back and he was like, “C’mon, we’ll find somebody.” So Richard and I looked diligently and when Cleavon read one line we looked at each other and that was it. He was the handsomest guy we’d ever seen in our lives. And Richard was like, “He’s really black, he’s going to scare the shit out of these people.”…
ESQ: Going back to Blazing Saddles, is it true when you first showed it to the Warner Brothers executives, none of them laughed?
MB: It was about a dozen executives at a screening room at Warner Brothers and, no, there were two guys that laughed. Now, not so loud, they didn’t want to hurt the other people’s feelings. But the ten other guys in the room didn’t laugh and at the end Leo Greenfield, who was in charge of domestic distribution — nice guy, I got along with him — but he said, “I have to voice my feelings, I think we should bury the picture and eat the money and not release it. It’s disgusting and I don’t want the Warner Brothers logo on it.” And [John] Calley [who ran the film division] said, “Well, let’s have a screening,” and that was a big, big hit. Right from the opening credits — the WB logo burning through and Frankie Laine singing and the whip cracks — that was it, we were home free. The hell with executives, the hell with politically correct. The manager said he’d never heard laughter like that in that movie house….
Much more at the link.
raven
We gotta protect out phony baloney jobs here. . .
David Koch
President mocks “Operation American Spring” – “Oh my gosh, it’s like the best day of my life”
Comrade Scrutinizer
Grabbed the Blu-Ray last week. Great quality, and as funny as it was way back when. Personally, I’m glad the deal with Pryor fell through. He was funny as hell, but Little made a far superior sheriff.
raven
It was great at the time but a lot of it is pretty stupid. Now, Young Frankenstein, that holds up.
Tokyokie
I attended a sneak preview of Blazing Saddles in Oklahoma City right before it came out. (OKC and Kansas City were major venues for that sort of thing back then; maybe they still are.) Because I was already a Mel Brooks fan, I’d been reading about the production in the trades at the library, and I was able to figure out what the movie was from the brief description. I was howling during the opening credits, and pretty much continued that way throughout. I can’t speak for the rest of the audience; I was laughing too loud to hear them. (Well, other than my Jewish roommate who was laughing as loudly as I was, especially when Brooks appears as a Yiddish-speaking Indian chief.)
I later read that Pryor wrote all the Jew jokes, and Brooks, Wilder and Marshall Brickman wrote all the black jokes, and they were competing to see who could be the most insulting. Don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s a funny story.
raven
Stepped on by another cat thread.
burnspbesq
I saw it in a theater in Lexington, Virginia. W&L guys were losing their shit immediately. The handful of VMI guys had to try and keep it together. Watching them was almost as much fun as the movie.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Cat thread. Now enhanced with dead burd.
Yeah, I love Young Frankenstein. Have never seen “Blazing Saddles” all the way through. The problem with not catching flicks when they’re in the theatre …
Gorgeous night in Virginia. Just back from walk, and gonna hang out in deck for a while …
Comrade Scrutinizer
@raven: They just couldn’t handle the enormous schwanzstucker.
raven
@Comrade Scrutinizer: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
SarahT
About a zillion years ago at a resort in the Virgin Islands where both my family & the Brooks-Bancroft family were regulars. I once babysat for Mel Brooks & Anne Bancroft’s son. They really were two of the loveliest people you’d ever want to meet (the kid was kind of a brat, though…maybe he’s grown out of it ?). Anyway, just thinking about Blazing Saddles makes me incredibly happy. “I didn’t get a ‘harumph’ from that guy !”
SiubhanDuinne
Not as funny as Blazing Saddles, but pretty damn funny.
Okay, maybe it’s wrong of me to laugh, especially if the guy has a real addiction/abuse problem, but my Schadenfreude is ready to bust out and boogie.
Amir Khalid
@SarahT:
Are you referring to Max Brooks, who grew up to write World War Z?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@SiubhanDuinne: Just read that on CNN. Loved the mugshot. Also loved the FOX PR flack talking about his “serious personal issues.” Sounds like a dog whistle for IOKIYAR.
SarahT
@Amir Khalid: If it’s the same Max Brooks, yes.
SarahT
@Amir Khalid: Sorry, that made no sense. Meant that their son is Max Brooks, but is he the Max Brooks you mean ? Go figure !
burnspbesq
Tonight, it’s Landon Donovan who is only pawn in game of life.
John (MCCARTHY) Cole
This was the first blu-ray I bought. We just watched it a couple days ago.
Amir Khalid
@SarahT:
Yes, he is.
SarahT
@burnspbesq: Yeah, that is really bonkers. What gives ?
dp
One of my favorite movies of all time. Best line, by Slim Pickens: “Somebody’s gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes!”
Runnerup: “Piss on you, I’m working for Mel Brooks!”
SarahT
@dp: “Authentic frontier gibberish !”
JustRuss
I never caught the irony of Blazing Saddles being produced by Warner Brothers. Heh. I’m glad they went with Little, Pryor is funny, but Cleavon is soooo smooth, he just owned that role.
SarahT
@dp: And how awesomne was Madeleine Khan ? “Well hewwo, Shewwiff” !
John Revolta
Rich, in his book Pryor Convictions, remembers it a little differently:
..people at the studio more powerful than Mel didn’t want me. They were scared of my reputation…………..I think Mel liked me, and I think he could’ve fought to keep me as his star. I think Cleavon Little did a good job. However, I know what kind of job I could’ve done. But Mel, bless his heart, had a decision to make, and he chose to get his movie made………….
Some ten years later I saw Mel in a bathroom at a nightclub in London and he tried to make amends. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” he said.
“Don’t tell me that here,” I said. “Tell them that on television.”
And then we both laughed.
Carefully.
Suffern ACE
Grrrrrrr. My team seems only to be good on April, year after year after year.
Suffern ACE
I’m not ready for driverless cars.
Gus
How is it even possible to watch Blazing Saddles without laughing?
gogol's wife
@dp:
Yes, that Slim Pickens line is definitely the best. He has the best lines in Dr. Strangelove too. Or maybe it’s just his delivery that makes them the best.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
Apparently Pryor loved the character of Mongo and wrote all of Alex Karras’s lines, including the one used at this post’s title.
Also, too, Gene Wilder really had to fight to get the part of the Waco Kid — Brooks wanted an older, washed-up guy (think Gabby Hayes) and thought Wilder was too young. He called Wilder in after shooting started because Gig Young couldn’t physically do the part. But IMO it worked better to have Bart and Jim be contemporaries.
Plus Wilder was hawt at that age, so having him and Cleavon Little on screen together was awesome for a teenage girl like moi.
Randy P
@Amir Khalid: My wife met Max Brooks in film school. He told a slightly different version of that two-screening story. As Max told it, after the big flop with the executives, Mel organized a second screening with the studio secretaries and low-level employees. And that was the audience that was rolling in the aisles and which convinced the studio to go ahead and release it.
And yes, as you’ve discovered, Max-son-of-Mel is the zombie guy.
gogol's wife
@SarahT:
She’s fantastic, and if you see Marlene Dietrich in Stage Fright, you see that her song isn’t too far off the original.
burnspbesq
@SarahT:
Klinsmann has a contract through 2018, and we’re in a ridiculously difficult group this year. Given that he took Yedlin, Brooks, and Green, none of whom has a prayer of helping us this time around, it’s tempting to speculate that he has decided to flush 2014 and build toward 2018.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Did you see The House on 56th Street on TCM just now? Fab pre-Code with Kay Francis in an array of Orry-Kelly gowns. Ridiculous plot. In other words, heaven.
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
I hate to say it, but … the studio was right. Pryor wasn’t right for the part. He was hilarious — one of the funniest comedians who ever lived — but he wasn’t smooth like Little was. In many ways, Bart had to be the calm center of the insanity, and I don’t know if Pryor could have been that.
Suffern ACE
@Gus: meh. It tries too hard. As a sociopath, I prefer the more subtle humor of Sophie’s Choice.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
D’oh! No, I missed it. I think I Tivoed it, though.
I love Kay Francis — she’s one of those actresses who never quite fit in with the Production Code. She’s great playing off Miriam Hopkins in Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, of course).
PhoenixRising
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. Little and Wilder had a dynamic that made the movie.
Pryor was something else–I think of him every time I’m running down the street on fire, observing that people are getting out of my way yet again–and the part called for an actor, not a truly great comedian.
Mike E
I lurve Blazing Saddles, I watch it regularly, it’s just so irreverent and totally fearless. And Young Frankenstein was made the same year! My gawd, it’s like Einstein’s Miracle Year of 1905.
My sis took me to see YF when I was 11 years old and it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. The next year I saw Jaws which scared the shit out of me.
SarahT
@gogol’s wife: I know, right ? But I can never look at Marlene Dietrich without thinking of Lily Von Schtup: “Woses. How owdinawy…”.
SarahT
@Mnemosyne:”Aw…Mongo straight !”
Mnemosyne
In other comedy news, apparently our (Democratic) congressman was appointed to the Benghazi committee. This is a good thing — Schiff is a pretty steady, sensible guy who has some seniority and a few foreign policy chops (except for that whole almost starting an international incident with Turkey thing, but that’s what happens when you represent a heavily Armenian district).
John Revolta
I dunno…….Wilder and Pryor worked pretty damn good together as well.
Pryor had a range that most people don’t realize. I’ve seen him do stuff that would tug at the old heartstrings.
Sadly, it’s gonna have to remain something we can only ever imagine…..like Belushi as Ignatius J. Reilly and Ruth Gordon as Miss Trixie.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I saw “Blazing Saddles” when it opened in Chicago at the huge Esquire Theater. The entire audience – including my friend and I – were in complete hysterics the whole movie. I then told my boyfriend that he HAD to see the movie, he’d die laughing, etc, etc. So, off we went back to the Esquire and again, the entire audience was in hysterics – EXCEPT for my boyfriend, who just sat there and didn’t laugh. Not once.
We got married a year later and divorced 20 years after that. I should have known, I should have known…
However, as funny as “Blazing Saddles” is, I feel that Brooks just didn’t know how to end it. The first 4/5 of the movie is great, not so much the last fifth.
Mnemosyne
@John Revolta:
I confess … I never really liked them as a team. I love each of them separately, or with other actors, but I didn’t like them together. I realize I’m probably in the minority on that, though.
Mnemosyne
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
There’s some funny stuff in the ending, though:
Hedley: “Student?”
Cashier: “Are you kidding me?”
The gay jokes are very dated now, but at least the dance troupe holds their own against the cowboys in the brawl (with more than one budding romance).
Mnemosyne
More Mel Brooks: for all the faults of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” (aka Jerry Gets Paid to Meet His Friends and Idols), his piece with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner is really great, especially when Reiner mocks Brooks for complaining about comedy that’s too vulgar. You of all people, Mel, don’t get to complain that comedy is too vulgar!
mainmata
@Elizabelle: Yes, DC area (Silver Spring, MD) tonight is beautiful; one of the rareities. Love Blazing Saddles but Young Frankenstein is definitely the superior in writing and acting.
trollhattan
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
Hate arguing with Brooks about Brooks, but I think “Young Frankenstein” is his best. (Although maybe not the funniest.) As to funniest movie evah, well, there’s a lot of competition and will leave it at that.
Still, anytime I run across “Blazing Saddles” I’ll stop and watch. It’s never lost the sheer pleasure it delivers, and that’s something rare.
Mnemosyne
@mainmata:
Plus, if you’ve seen the Universal originals, it really is a dead-on parody of the first three Frankenstein movies, particularly of Son of Frankenstein. You don’t realize that Gene Wilder is doing Basil Rathbone unless you’ve seen it.
Apparently Gene Wilder is the one who was the big Frankenstein fan, so it’s his commentary track you should listen to on the DVD because he tells you about all of the connections.
cckids
@SarahT: I always loved the ending, with the chase/fight crashing through all the other movies & sets on the Warner lot.
Dom DeLuise as Buddy Bizarre was just hysterical. “Now watch me fa88ots!” I had probably seen the movie 3-4 times before I realized what he said.
opiejeanne
There is a gag that I never got until recently, when we were going through some LPs that were left in our cabin. One of them was by Mongo Santamaria, which explains this: youtu.be/V4634QwiPBs
Yang Guang
Blazing Saddles is a great freaking flick, I think a lot of it holds up today. I think Pryor could have pulled off the role, but Little knocked it so out of the park it’s hard to see anyone else performing the part.
Speaking of casting, the movie Where The Buffalo Roam, the flick about Hunter, was originally supposed to have different stars. It ended up with Hunter being played by Bill Murray and the “Samoan” being played by Peter Boyle. I think Murray did a great fucking job, but Boyle was a ‘meh’ at best. But the parts were offered to Dan Ackroyd and Jim Belushi first, but they turned it down for another movie that perhaps you’ve heard of called The Blues Brothers. I think they would have made a better team than Murray/Boyle, and I would have been interested to see what they would have done with the parts. But they made the right choice obviously, as Buffalo was a pretty disjointed mess. Hunter was done much better justice with “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” with Depp/Del Toro.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I have never seen a Mel Brooks movie that was even remotely funny. Blazing Saddles. No. Young Frankenstein. No. History of the World. No. I’ve never seen The Producers, so maybe that;s the one, but not only are the rest of them not funny, they’re not funny in a way that makes me suspect that everyone who thinks they’re funny is a complete moron. This is humor that a college sophomore should be embarrassed to find amusing. There is absolutely nothing funny about a bunch of people sitting around a campfire farting.
YellowJournalism
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): If you don’t like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, you won’t like The Producers.
That said, I can honestly say if loving those movies makes me a moron, so be it.
John Revolta
@YellowJournalism: Well, It’s still pretty broad humor, but The Producers is at least based in modern times and in an actual place, and has a (somewhat) plausible plot. It’s actually my favorite.
Although The Twelve Chairs is pretty great too. If you haven’t seen those two films you might want to wait before writing Brooks off altogether.
NotMax
@
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
As you’re not partial to broad burlesque, perhaps you’d find The Elephant Man, produced by Brooks, a laff-a-minute.
:)
More seriously, maybe To Be Or Not To Be, a mostly faithful recreation of the Lubitsch version with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard would be more to your liking. Or Silent Movie.
umyeah
@SarahT:
Max Brooks is a b list celebrity now
kd bart
Happiness was having a father who loved Mel Brooks.
kd bart
Jim: [consoling Bart] What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny”? “Make yourself at home”? “Marry my daughter”? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
sweetgreensnowpea
the most amazing thing to me about mel brooks is that he was married to Anne Bancroft for 41 years.
Matt McIrvin
@YellowJournalism: I’ve never liked his movies from about History of the World, Part I on. Geeks are now contractually required to find Spaceballs hilarious but I don’t see it. The jokes just seem painfully strained compared to The Producers, Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles.
Maybe it was that the coming of Airplane! pulled the style of all these sorts of movies a bit in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker direction, and Mel Brooks couldn’t quite pull that off. His stuff works better if there’s a more or less coherent story with some heart to it underneath the rapid-fire jokes, which is also how BS falls apart at the end: he just says “screw it, we’ll destroy the fourth wall like Monty Python, it’ll be funny” and there’s no story there any more.
Matt McIrvin
…except for the Alien/”One Froggy Evening” joke in Spaceballs. I admit, that made me laugh really hard.
Bruce K
I don’t know if it’s been confirmed or refuted, but I still can’t get over the story that Brooks actually wanted John Wayne to play the Waco Kid. (The way the story goes, Wayne turned down the role because it would clash too much with his public image, but he assured Brooks that he’d be first in line to buy a ticket to see the finished film.)
Pardon me, I’m trying to imagine John Wayne saying the “common clay of the New West” line…
low-tech cyclist
Can’t believe it’s been 40 years. I was in college when I saw it. Guess I’m a wee bit older now. It’s still easily one of the ten funniest movies I’ve ever seen.
@phoebes-in-santa fe: It’s a fundamental problem that bedevils movies that are all about the off-the-wall humor, because the plot really is just there to give the craziness a bit of direction.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, Monkey Business), Monty Python (Holy Grail, Meaning of Life), or Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles), when you’re having a great time going nowhere special (“Nowhere special? I always wanted to go there”) it’s hard to figure out what to do when you’ve arrived.
I think Blazing Saddles handles that problem pretty well, really. The last few minutes aren’t wildly funny, but they don’t need to be. The rest of the movie has been that. It’s still a strong, memorable ending.
I’m gonna have the theme music going through my head all morning:
He conquered fear, and he conquered hate,
He turned dark night into day…
Rob in CT
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
This is… I can’t even. You gotta be kiddin’ me.
Bobby Thomson
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree completely with this. Spaceballs is unwatchable.
Paul in KY
@gogol’s wife: I had an Uncle Foster who sounded just like Slim Pickens…or Slim Pickens sounded just like him.
J R in WV
Both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankerstein are great movies. I like Young Frankenstein a little more.
“What Knockers!”
“Why… Thank You!”
Ow, ow, ow my ribs, they hurt!!
Paul in KY
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Jeezus, take the stick out of your butt. It’s not Oscar Wilde, but a slapstick parody of formulaic Westerns (which were pretty popular back then).
I do thank you for your candor, though.
Applejinx
It’s timing. Thinking of funniness in The Producers, I went right away to:
*sploosh*
…
…I’m WET! AND HYSTERICAL!
*SLAP*
…
…
…I’m in PAIN! …and WET! …and I’m STILL HYSTERICAL!
Gus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Wow, you must be a superior being, because I think most people find at least Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein funny, so most people are morons.
Applejinx
Also (trigger warneeeeng!) Blazing Saddles is loaded with rape jokes and they are all funny because sympathies and the real butt of the joke are always correctly directed. Whether it’s cattle or the hiring of criminals, it’s always about how mentally and/or morally fucked-up the monsters doing or approving of it, really are. When it’s Hedley Lamarr and what he so obviously approves of, he’s an absolute butt-monkey throughout the movie, and he fails at everything, his evilness impotent. When it’s his simple-minded subordinate, it’s that they wait and throw a Number Six Dance for that purpose. (They don’t seem to quite understand the term, subverting the expectation in several ways) And with the poor cattle, the gag is that these horrible evil people can’t even do THAT right (or they’re that degraded, maybe, that they prefer cows?)
It’s not often that you get somebody like Brooks who wants to go THAT offensive and still manages to pull it off. It’s a masterclass in how to direct transgressive humor that literally has no off switch, and you have to be clued in to what’s wrong to get the joke. If you’re ambiguous or confused over what’s so wrong with these horribly offensive things, it won’t be funny. You are most definitely making a distinction between ‘laughing at’ and ‘laughing with’, and it’s always clear as day which it is… if you have, you know, a soul.
The rest of you, go forth and make infuriated Tumblr posts :)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Gus: The fans of Blazing Saddles seem to think calling the majority of people morons is not only acceptable, but also correct.
dp
@SarahT: Both excellent. I’m cracking up at my desk!
dp
@SarahT: “It’s twue! It’s twue!”
dp
@kd bart: YES!
evodevo
@JustRuss: Yes. Much as I loved Richard Pryor, he could never have pulled off the smooth lover or handsome hero on a palomino side of “Bart” as well as Cleavon did – it just wouldn’t have played as well.