Movies Guys Like: Blazing Saddles

By Bob Wire, 10-21-09

Can a movie be wildly funny and horribly offensive at the same time? Anyone who watched Steve-O’s sock-sheathed wiener get bitten by a snake in Jackass 2 will tell you that it’s not only possible, but the more shockingly gross or offensive, the better.

“Blazing Saddles” was pretty shocking when it was released 35 years ago, but in a much different way than Jackass’s gross-out humor. It has topped many a critic’s list as the best comedy of all time, even though it’s riddled with the n-word, and the movie is wall-to-wall racism, sexism, and offensive behavior by a wide spectrum of stereotyped characters. It’s the kind of humor that makes you feel a little guilty for laughing, but the humor nearly always comes at the expense of the most bigoted characters. I watched it recently for the first time in about 20 years, and in current era of back-burnered racism and spineless comedies, “Blazing Saddles” is as shockingly offensive as ever, standing out like a black man at a Klan rally (which is actually a scene in the movie). If it were made today, I doubt it could find a willing distributor.

But like Dr. Evil with Mini-Me, I can’t stay mad at this movie. It’s like watching a naked, one-legged tightrope walker defying death and entertaining the crowd all the while. I kept laughing the phrase, “Oh my god!” at the over-the-top racial and sexual humor, and the brilliant comic performances of several actors who were at the top of their game when this film was made in 1974.

It doesn’t take long for writer/director Mel Brooks to stand convention on its head. In the opening scene, railroad foreman Lyle (Gilliam Burton with his huge mouthful of big square white teeth) is prodding a crew of black railroad workers, and demands that they sing a song for him, maybe an old Negro spiritual. Cleavon Little and his boys break into a lounge-worthy rendition of “I Get No Kick From Champagne,” which makes the apoplectic Lyle hop down off his horse and wave them to a stop. “No, no, I mean somethin’ like ‘The Camptown Ladies.’” Little looks at him, feigning ignorance. “De Camp-Town Lay-Tees,” he repeats in an exaggerated “yassuh” style. Right back at ya, whitey. Before you know it, it’s the cowboy oppressors who are dancing and hopping around, singing the song while the black work crew looks on, amused. They don’t stop until Slim Pickens rides up and fires a couple shots in the air, pushes his hat back, and says, “What in the wide wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here?”

“Blazing Saddles” isn’t for everybody, with its Mad Magazine silliness and Jewish comic sensibilities driving the humor. Brooks was never known for his subtlety, and many of the gags are just self-indulgent goofiness. But the question remains: how in the hell does Brooks get away with this dirty bomb of n-words, f-words, multitudes of racial epithets, homophobia, animal abuse, and the savage beating of an old pioneer woman? I think it works because the whole movie is really a funhouse mirror, taking our society’s bigotry and prejudice and holding it up for us to see in a twisted, upside-down spoof of the classic Western. It worked. In fact, it was the top-grossing Western movie of all time, until “Dances With Wolves,” which was not nearly as funny.

Was Brooks really that clever, that insightful, or did this cavalcade of rude humor just come along at the right time? Who knows? The upshot is that all the bad guys, the ones who treat the “chinks,” “injuns” and “niggers” as less than human, get what’s coming to them. My favorite bad guy is Slim Pickens, who plays Taggart, his best role since he dropped the bomb on the “rooskies” as Major Kong in 1964’s “Dr. Strangelove.” He’s got some hysterical scenes here, and some of the best are with Harvey Korman, who plays Hedley Lamarr, a vaguely-connected fixer who is brought in to steal land out from under Rock Ridge, where the railroad needs to go through. Lamarr gets some of the raciest lines in the movie, including his first scene where he’s leafing through a law book, trying to find out a legal maneuver to claim the land: “There must be something in here about land snatching. Let’s see. Land. Land. Here it is. ‘See Snatch.’”

Later, Taggart is working a scrub brush on Lamarr, who’s in a bubble bath, trying to think up a way to outsmart the new sheriff: “My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.” Taggart: “God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a $20 whore.”

Homoerotic subtext and all, the humor hits home with smart people who can appreciate inspired silliness. Nowadays, a comedy is either sophisticated (Coen Brothers, Jud Apatow), or dumbed down to the level of a Jay Leno monologue (pretty much everybody else). But “Blazing Saddles” has it all, mixing Three Stooges slapstick with surreal and sometimes ambitious jokes. Even the sex gags are all up and down the scale. In one scene, Gov. LePetomane (a cross-eyed Brooks) has his snout buried in a harlot’s ample cleavage (“Hello, boys!”). In another scene, Hedley Lamarr is berating Lili Von Shtupp, whose seduction of Sheriff Bart has failed to advance Lamarr’s plan. “Shut up, you Teutonic twat,” he snaps.

Korman chews the scenery with relish. His most inspired speech comes when he tells Pickens to round up a posse of bad guys. “I want the worst dregs ever to deface the soil of the west. I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the West. I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, sniper, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers…buggerers, bushwackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists.” Taggart (who just then finds a pencil and paper): “Could you repeat that, sir?”

Cleavon Little’s Sheriff Bart gets most of the best action, though, in more ways than one. He teams up with the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) in a standard buddy-movie relationship that may have more attraction going on than meets the eye. Bart seems to like the way the Kid holsters his gun. We are left to wonder. Sheriff Bart (he has no last name) goes through the movie talking in a smooth, ultra-cool delivery straight out of a 70’s blaxploitation movie. The Kid keeps up admirably, and has some of the choicest lines in the movie. I love this one: Sheriff Bart wakes up the Kid in his jail cell with an offer of breakfast. The Kid declines, rolls out of his bunk and grabs a bottle of whiskey. He upends it and sucks down about half the bottle. Bart shakes his head, and says, “You know, a man drinks like that and he don’t eat, he is going to die.” The Waco Kid’s bloodshot eyes widen, and he says eagerly, “When?”

There are so many famous scenes in this movie that appeal to the average guy’s base sense of humor, it’s no wonder it’s such a beloved classic. There’s Mongo punching a horse. There’s Lamarr shooting Taggart in the foot for uttering the cliché “head ‘em off at the pass.” There’s Mel Brooks as the Indian chief, speaking Yiddish. There’s “’Scuse me while I whip this out!” There’s “I’m Tired,” sung by Lili Von Shtupp (a sexy Madeline Kahn), followed by her oft-repeated exclamation upon discovering Sheriff Bart’s, um, secret: “Oh, it’s twue! It’s twue!” And then there’s the most famous cowboy chuckwagon scene in history, with all the cowboys eating beans around the campfire. I haven’t heard this much farting in one place, except maybe the north end zone section at Grizzly Stadium in the fourth quarter, after the vendors have sold out of chili.

The music, from the opening theme to the “Oklahoma”-type number about Rock Ridge, is brilliantly satiric. The scale is huge, the action is frequent and hilarious, and everyone in the movie seems to know that they’re involved in something special. They all seem to know that “Blazing Saddles” is either going to send their careers into the stratosphere, or they will never work in movies again.

Like “Monte Python and the Holy Grail,” “Blazing Saddles” ends by pulling the rug out from under the movie. A huge brawl spills right off the soundstage, crashing through a wall into a Busby Berkeley-style dance routine that’s being directed by Dom deLuise. The tuxedo-clad dancers are cartoonishly gay, and deLuise berates them with epithets like “faggots,” “sissies” and “fairies.” Again, since it’s played for laughs, it’s supposed to be okay.

The movie doesn’t let up on the rule breaking, right up to the very end. After the entire premise has collapsed in anarchy, the Waco Kid asks Sheriff Bart, “Where you goin’, cowboy?” “Nowhere special,” says Bart. The Kid squints up at him. “Nowhere special. Always wanted to go there.” He and the sheriff ride off together into the sunset. But wait. They stop along the trail where a Cadillac sits waiting, and they give their horses to a handler and climb into the back seat, finally riding off into the sunset in style.

The 30th Anniversary Edition DVD is out there, and it’s full of outtakes, mini-featurettes and interviews with the cast. Definitely worth the extra coin for a deeper look at this deliciously infuriating masterpiece of American humor. You should settle in some evening with a steaming platter of schnizengrüben and give “Blazing Saddles” another ride.

[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire, or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed on the Community Blogs page. Thanks, hombre.]

Join the Bob Wire Appreciation Society

Stumble It!