*sigh* I had this long post about Blazing Saddles all ready to go, and somehow I hit the wrong button, and it DISAPPEARED. Never to be seen again.
So reconstructing it quickly, as it's very late and actually past midnight, so I technically have missed a day...
We're doing a whole movie today (yesterday) -- Mel Brooks' divinely demented Blazing Saddles, which takes every western cliche and deconstructs/destructs it, and ultimately breaks the fourth wall to show them (and all movies) off as the complete fakery they are, while also using a whole raft of politically incorrect jokes to expose racism for what it is... the ultimate joke being the salt of the earth types who really are viciously small-minded and bigoted. Well, that sounds serious, but this movie is so funny that it hurts to watch because you can't stop laughing. They couldn't make this movie today, someone would be offended. Thank goodness for the 1970s (except for the alleged "fashions" of that decade).
I'm sure you all have your favorite scenes and dialogue, and I find it impossible to pick just one but for the sake of this post I have to say it's Mel Brooks as the Yiddish-speaking Indian. When he rides up, then sits there on his horse and looks at the black pioneer family for a very longggg minute, and then declaims, "Schvartzes!" I'm on the floor, maybe because that's a word I heard more than once dropping from the lips of my grandparents. ;) But also... what little Jewish kid (or any kid in the city, at least back in the first half of the 20th century) hasn't dreamed about being a cowboy or an Indian?
Besides Mel (in a double role), there's Cleavon Little as the stalwart sheriff the townspeople are waiting for, but wait... he's BLACK! and Madeleine Kahn doing the best Marlene Dietrich send up ever (complete with choir boys in Prussian army outfits), and Harvey Korman doing one of his patented accents, something faux-quasi-British, I think, and Gene Wilder (last minute casting when Gig Young had to drop out after the first day) as the Waco Kid, a kind of Jewish gloss/combo on Dean Martin in Rio Bravo plus every movie gunslinger you can think of, and Slim Pickens for some real Western approbation of the goings on. And Alex Karras as Mongo, David Huddleston... and of course Dom DeLuise! Mel also makes sure we get a Hitler joke and some gay jokes, and a pretty girl showing off almost all her assets... it is a Mel Brooks movie, where'd we be without them?
The ending is beyond brilliant, with not only the fourth wall but time itself being split, with the action taking place both simultaneously outside on the real street as well as Graumann's Chinese movie screen. Brooks doesn't lose control of his material for a second. It ends with our heroes riding off into the sunset of course... but they've ditched the horses for a limo. ;)
OK, time for a midnight snack. I think I'll have some beans. :)
![Image](http://i742.photobucket.com/albums/xx61/pvitari/Blazing368.jpg)