My
first solid memory of
Blazing Saddles--a movie that absolutely shaped
my view of movies--came upon its 1974 release, when my young eyes paid
note to its dazzling one-sheet. The film‘s rustic logo was set upon a
background that reflected the film‘s unique structure. There was its
hero, Sheriff Bart (played by a dauntless Cleavon Little), riding a
rearing steed, wearing incongruous mirrored sunglasses while a silvery
boom mike hovers overhead. This image was backed by an Indian nickel
featuring Mel Brooks, the film’s co-writer, co-star, and director, as a
war-painted Native American (a role many Jewish actors filled in the
Western genre’s heyday). Around the edges of the coin ran the words “Hi,
I’m Mel. Trust Me.” Even though I didn’t grasp all of its implications,
the colorful chaos of this ad sent my movie-loving mind into a
tailspin, and I had to know more.
But, generous as my parents were
about taking me to any movies I wanted to see at the drive-in, they
never gave in to my request to see this one--perhaps because of its
R-rating but most probably because of my mother’s abject dislike of
almost all comedies. It would be years until I finally saw
Blazing Saddles properly projected in widescreen 35mm, probably on a double bill
with Brooks’ twin 1974 hit
Young Frankenstein or maybe with his 1976
film
Silent Movie (both of which I also love). This first REAL viewing
insisted on my adoration of the film’s underappreciated photography,
sound, art direction and location work (aspects that are usually lost on
pan-and-scan TV prints).
Blazing Saddles literally burns up the screen upon its arrival, as the Warner
Brothers logo is cremated and replaced by the film’s moniker. On the
soundtrack appears the first of the film’s many musical injections, a
perfectly suited--and resolutely arch--ballad sung by western icon
Frankie Laine (“Band of Gold”) and written by the film’s mastermind Mel
Brooks, in collusion with his most valuable scoring partner John Morris
(who also provided music for Brooks’
Young Frankenstein, and perhaps
most importantly, David Lynch’s
The Elephant Man, which Brooks
produced). Despite this pretty standard opening, Brooks’ film instantly
guns down the western genre by pointing out the inherent racism that
infects it (this is a thing that keeps so many in the 21st century from
enjoying westerns, often wrongly, and I implicate Tarantino in this lineup). It opens upon a railway being built by
train of Chinese and black workers; one Chinese worker collapses with
exhaustion, resulting in the film’s first laugh line: “Dock that chink a
day’s pay for nappin’ on the job.” Nearly all the racist jokes in
Blazing Saddles highlight the revolting disregard the buffoonish whites
have for not only non-whites, but for non-Americans, too (even the
film’s black lead, Cleavon Little, utters racist Hispanic and Germanic
jokes).
It’s here we should note the film was co-written by Brooks
along with Norman Steinberg, Alan Uger, story writer Andrew Bergman
(who went on to pen such great farces as
Fletch, The In-Laws and
The Freshman) and, perhaps, most importantly, Richard Pryor, whom I suspect
delivered the movie’s most incendiary jokes. Still, you can see the team
collaborating on the film’s first display of insanity: the smooth
singing of Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You.” The song is invoked
when a red-necked cowpoke (vigorously played by 70s-movie-mainstay
Burton Gilliam) requests a “nigger work song” from the largely black
workforce. This culminates most ridiculously not in the Porter song,
which is beautifully arranged
a capella, but by a suggested
alternative--a version of “Camptown Ladies” sung and ridiculously
performed by a bunch of arm-waving, hip-thrusting cowboys whose
embarrassing display of unmanliness results in the arrival of the film’s
first outlandishly committed and unlikely supporting player.
“What
in the Wide Wide World of Sports is-a goin’ on here? I hired you people
to get a little track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas
City faggots.” With this, Slim Pickens, a real-life rodeo star who
graduated into westerns, and then into comedies as diverse as Kubrick’s
Dr. Strangelove and Spielberg’s
1941, punches his way into the movie and
then has a follow-up line that climaxes with him being smashed on the
noggin with a shovel: “Send a wire to the main office and tell them I
said OW!” and dutifully, his goofy second Gilliam scribbles the message
down—“Main office, tell them I said ‘ow’…gotcha.”
The
superb screenplay then jets to another setting: the frilly office of
Hedy (that’s Hedley) Lamarr. Harvey Korman, who was in 1974, one of TV’s
biggest stars as part of
The Carol Burnett Show, absolutely nails it as
the effete, ruffle-shirted villain who sets this movie’s never
bothersome plot into motion. In so many comedies, especially these days,
plot gets too much screen time and overcomes the laughs.
Blazing Saddles should be screenwriting-class material in ensuring that this
never again happens. Yes, the film trades on familiar old western
tropes, but even when it’s overexplaining its plot turns, as it does
joyfully in its third act, it always remembers to keep these moments fun
(this is thanks to the film’s energetic supporting cast of character
actors, whom we’ll examine shortly).
The introduction of Hedley
Lamarr reveals one of the most vivid aspects of
Blazing Saddles: its
utter disregard of time and place. This is maybe a joke that’s lost on
present-day audiences, but Hedy Lamarr was best known as the sexy
Austrian actress who appeared in
Algiers, Boom Town and
Samson and Delilah. Headley’s insistent anger at being called “Hedy” is still
riotously funny to me, just as it was when I was a young film buff who
vaguely knew who Hedy Lamarr was.
Blazing Saddles stands not only as an
American film that bravely pioneered smashing the fourth wall, but also
as a movie with scads of references in its arsenal. Jesse Owens,
Easy Rider, Cabaret, Busby Berkely, Bugs Bunny, Randolph Scott, Cecil B.
DeMille, Howard Johnson’s, “Have a Nice Day’’--all make appearances
here. It is, in that way and in many others, the forefather of
Airplane!, Top Secret, Hot Shots, Scream, Scary Movie, and scads of other
movie-spoofing comedies that have come in their wake…not to mention
many of Mel Brooks’ subsequent directorial works (only Brooks’
The Twelve Chairs and his most unfortunately neglected
Life Stinks reject
the spoof mode, with his Oscar-winning
The Producers choosing to spoof
the stage rather than the screen).
Korman’s first scene in the
movie introduces his snarling, expertly coiffed villain, but it also
reinforces Slim Pickens’ silliness as his ass-whomping cohort, who
shrinks at Hedley’s admonishments but is nevertheless later seen
attentively scrubbing Hedley’s back as Korman sits soaking in a bubble
bath, pining for the comfort of his treasured squeaky frog. Their
relationship is decidedly home-erotic, a theme to which
Blazing Saddles
returns to occasionally, and a theme which even something as beautifully
serious as Ang Lee’s
Brokeback Mountain approached nearly thirty years
later: that is, what did female-deprived, and only presumably straight,
cowboys do for emotional and physical relief out on the trail? Is this a
question that also killed the western genre, simply because it was a
query too uncomfortable to answer for the genre’s largely straight fans?
The
unhinging of genre is furthered, briefly yet strongly, by the
introduction of a very minor character: a hunchbacked, chain-mailed town
hangman straight out of a British-tinged Basil Rathbone movie. This
character’s appearance was the moment where I, even as a know-it-all
12-year-old, knew I was in uncharted yet fascinating territory. But here
in this scene is where dangerous exposition comes into play, but the
film still skirts being boring. Hedley looks into a law book, seeking
how to steal the valuable town of Rock Ridge--which stands in opposition
to the railroad’s progress--from its homestead owners (a Western cliché
right out of something even as recent as Leone‘s
Once Upon a Time in the West). Looking in a thick law book for a solution, Hedley’s fingers
lead him to “Land snatching…land, land…see snatch.” And here another
introduction is made: sexual and linguistic vulgarity. This was a first
in ‘70s mainstream comedy filmmaking, and we’ve been feeling the
reverberations, for better or (much more often) for worse, in the comedy
genre ever since. Even Brooks himself, in films like
Spaceballs and
History of the World, Part One relied on smutty jokes too much for his
audience reactions. But audiences reacted nonetheless, and there we have
it. Still, Brooks himself was never more bawdily clever than in
Blazing Saddles and in his most regal comedy
Young Frankenstein.
Subsequently,
we get another song: “Rock Ridge,” written wholly by Mel Brooks, as a
narrative that introduces the troubled town, complete with punctuational
comic stuntwork and the film’s first breaking of the fourth wall (“Have
you ever seen such cruelty?”). The scene culminates with the song being
vulgarly wrapped up as a hymn in the local church, where the
whitebread, inbred population attempt to rally their forces against the
bushwhackers trying to drive them away. This scene reveals more of the
film’s astounding supporting cast, which includes John Hillerman as
Howard Johnson (
Paper Moon, Chinatown), Liam Dunn as Reverend Johnson
(
Papillon, What's Up Doc?), and David Huddleston (
Bad Company and, most
famously, Jeffrey Lebowski in
The Big Lebowski) as Olson Johnson. In
addition, you have Jack Starrett as gibberish-spewing Gabby Johnson
(“Hey, the sheriff is a ni—BONG!”), newcomer and Detroit Lions tackle
Alex Karras as the dreaded Mongo and, as Harriett Van Johnson, Carol
Arthur gets one of my favorite laughs as a meek schoolmarm addressing
the congregation with a surprising brazenness that waylays the
congregation most brilliantly. Plus we get the director himself in three
curt roles: as the leader of the Sioux nation, as a very briefly seen
airplane pilot, and as the cross-eyed Gov. William J. Le Petomaine. This
distinctly vaudevillian character, with the bold white letters GOV.on
the back of his long-tailed jacket, is a blustery fool with wild
interest in bloviating (“I didn’t get a ‘harumph’ outta that guy”) and
tit-worship (“You mad bitch, you”). It’s the governor’s desire for
political ladder-climbing that allows for the appointment of Bart as the
new sheriff of Rock Ridge, and therefore nearly puts the town into
Hedley Lamarr’s greedy hands.
And
here--HERE--comes perhaps
Blazing Saddles' most historically significant
contribution to film. Here is a movie that’s made by a white filmmaker,
but also is instantly invaluable to the black identity in movies.
Cleavon Little’s sexy, appealing, funny, smart, forgiving Bart is always
one step ahead of the white audience, and his white co-stars, and
thereby ends up hopping from a hangman’s noose to riding a steed through
the countryside, astride a Gucci saddle and decked out in slick brown
suede bedecked by a silver star, backed by the brassy sounds of the
Count Basie Orchestra. Bart encounters Basie himself soon after his
close-up, and gives a knowing soul handslap to the Count, as if to say,
“Hey, ain’t it great? We’re both pioneers!” It’s a beautiful moment,
their meeting; it has wings. Mel Brooks’ film, which at the time of its
release, became the #1 top grossing western of all time, is the first
(and nearly only) western to feature a black man as its lead. And though
Little’s performance is comically rubbery and physical, he also makes
for a helluva majestic Western hero (and does so by firing only one shot
from his gun).
The film follows with my favorite scene: Rock
Ridge residents have gathered to await their new sheriff, with
Hillerman’s Howard Johnson practicing his welcome speech. “As honorary
chairman of the welcoming committee, I offer you this laurel…and hardy
handshake.” This might be my favorite joke in the movie, but once again,
it’s one I surmise might be also lost on future generations. Certainly,
if we take a peek at the film’s movie poster, with the brilliant W.C.
Fields-inspired tagline “Never Give a Saga an Even Break,” we must
realize that so much of Brooks’ winking humor comes from his
forebears—those comedy stars of the '30s that surely lead him to TV
comedy, writing for Sid Caesar's
Your Show of Shows, alongside such bright lights as Carl
Reiner and Woody Allen. I have to say now that I think it’s a universal
alignment that, at the time I’m writing this piece, Mel Brooks has recently been awarded the American Film Institute's
Lifetime Achievement. I should say here that, past 1978’s Hitchcock spoof
High Anxiety, I’ve been disappointed with Brooks’ cinematic output. But with
everything from TV's
Get Smart to
The Producers to, with a long hiccup,
Life Stinks, I am resolutely a fan. I adore his most of his work, but
moreover I adore his persona: his devotion to his late wife Anne
Bancroft, his unfailing humor everywhere he appeared, and ultimately his
ability to bound from TV (he won Emmys for his TV work with Sid Caesar)
to records (he was famous for his Grammy-winning ‘60s work with Carl Reiner on
The 2000 Year Old Man) to shorts (his mid-'60s work with Ernest Pintoff on
The Critic resulted in an animated short film Oscar) to stage (his 2002
stage adaptation of
The Producers resulted in a record number of Tonys).
To me, Mel Brooks is a steely hero.
Little’s first statement as
sheriff--“Excuse me while I whip this out”--may be
Blazing Saddles' most
quotable quote, and the scene gets more riotous as it goes along. But in
the interest of keeping things fresh for those who haven’t seen the
film, I will henceforth try to keep the film’s best lines to myself…and
so I‘ll attempt to only mention what I further love about the film. I
love Gene Wilder as the laconic, hopeless Waco Kid, whose appearance
ensures hope for the future of black/white relations (his interplay with
Little is wonderfully cozy). I love Madeline Kahn, who was nominated for
an Oscar for her portrayal of the gravelly-voiced, Marlene
Dietrich-flavored Lily Von Schtupp, “The Teutonic Titwillow” (God, how I
giggle it when she entreats visitors with “Wilkommen, bienveneu,
velcome, come on in.“). Von Schtupp is employed by Hedley Lamarr to
seduce Bart but instead falls madly in love with the shewiff (“It’stwue,
it’s twue…”). Her stage song warbled to the randy cowboy audience, also
written by Brooks, is called “I’m Tired,” and should have been
nominated for an Oscar along with his title theme to the movie. Consider
these lyrics:
I'm tired
Sick and tired of love
I've had my fill of love
From below and above
Tired, tired of being admired
Tired of love uninspired
Let's face it, I'm tired
I've been with thousands of men
Again and again
They promise me the moon
They're always coming and going
And going and coming
And always too soon
Couple
this with Kahn’s floppy, yawning, leggy performance, ultimately
alongside a chorus line of Kaiser-helmeted WWI Germans who cart her
exhausted body offstage, and you have an unforgettable screen portrayal
that rivals her role as Peter Boyle’s Elsa Lanchester counterpart in
another Mel Brooks movie,
Young Frankenstein which, truly amazingly,
arrived the same year as
Blazing Saddles. (Outside of Coppola, also on
fire in ‘74 with
The Conversation and
The Godfather Part II, has any
other American filmmaker--save maybe Steven Soderburgh with Oscar-nominated turns in
Erin Brockovich and
Traffic in 2000, achieved such an astonishing one-two hat trick
in the space of a year?)
And
then there’s that farting scene. I despise flatulence humor, but the
superb comedy sound work in
Blazing Saddles makes this famous moment
work, as does Pickens disgusted reaction. Finally, in its third act, the
movie begins to gleefully implode. This first happens with an
unexpected collaboration between the racist township and Bart’s mostly
black but still diverse former rail mates (Huddleston has the great and
truthful bargain: “We’ll give land to the niggers and the chinks, but we
won’t take the Irish”), and then with the bold underlining
that all we’ve seen before is pure artifice. This begins with
townspeople, in order to fool Hedley Lamarr’s wranglers (“Go do that
voodoo that you do so WELLLLLLL!”), agreeing to Bart’s outrageous plan
to build a fakey façade of Rock Ridge, its main street littered with
brush and bobble-headed townspeople cutouts.
Then, finally, we get
into that thing that truly blew my eight-year-old mind: Cowboys, in
midfight, with the camera panning over to Burbank, California studios,
and zooming in on a set where Dom Deluise is snippily directing a chorus
line of gay, tuxedoed male dancers performing yet another Mel Brooks
song called “The French Mistake”:
Throw out your hands!!
Stick out your tush!!
Hands on your hips
Give ‘em a push!!
You'll be surprised
You're doing the French Mistake!!
VOILA!!
When
the brawling western cast literally busts down that fourth wall and
invades the musical set, it’s just comedy at its most surreal and
delightful (I smile at how the cowpokes can’t bring themselves to really
hurt the nancy boys). And, finally, when the film reaches its climax,
outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, with Hedley—a villain to the
end—trying to use a fake student I.D. to get a discount ticket to see
the end of the movie
THAT WE ARE WATCHING…well, can I just say
that for me, this sealed the deal. Seeing
Blazing Saddles at twelve
years old was love at first sight. I still look at its comic
machinations today with astonishment. I don’t think anything like
Blazing Saddles or, surely,
Young Frankenstein
will ever be made again, mainly because there will never be anyone as
tasteful and tasteless, and trustworthy, as Mel Brooks.
