Every 70s Movie: madeline kahn

Showing posts with label madeline kahn. Show all posts

Sunday, April 16, 2017

1980 Week: Simon

Following impressive runs as Johnny Carson’s head writer from 1969 to 1970 and as Woody Allen’s writing partner for Sleeper (1973), Annie Hall (1977), and Manhattan (1979), Marshall Brickman launched a brief and only moderately successful directorial career with the sci-fi satire Simon. Starring Alan Arkin in a role well-suited to the actor’s unique gifts, the movie bears obvious traces of Allen’s cinematic style, although Brickman is unable to match his former collaborator on the levels of hilarity, insight, and substance. Simon is mostly sorta-funny and sorta-smart, so the film is only sorta-memorable. Seen today, the movie loses even more potency because so many of the jokes are directed at the extremes of hippy-dippy ’70s scientists—for instance, the picture’s main villain evokes turtleneck-loving ’70s science star Carl Sagan, who deserves better than to be used as the visual reference for a nefarious character.

Borrowing a gimmick that Allen used many times, the movie opens like a documentary, introducing viewers to the great minds at the Institute for Advanced Concepts, a think tank funded with seemingly unlimited government money. Under the supervision of Dr. Carl Becker (Austin Pendleton), the eggheads at the institute contrive experiments for amusement rather than for higher purposes, for instance skewing Nielson ratings to help the variety show Donnie & Marie become a hit. One day, the scientists decide it would be fun to convince the American public than an alien lives among them. After running data, they identify college professor Simon Mendelssohn (Arkin) as the individual most susceptible to the suggestion that he’s from another planet. Mendelssohn is a low-rent theorist whose desire to make an important social contribution far exceeds his talents, so he’s flattered when he’s invited to join the think tank—and he’s thrilled when Becker and his cronies reveal their “discovery” of Mendelssohn’s true origins. Later, once the eggheads present Mendelssohn to the world, Simon goes rogue, using pirate-broadcasting technology to share his supposedly extraterrestrial wisdom with the people of the world.

Brickman, who cowrote the film’s original story with Thomas Baum, can’t figure out where to take the outlandish concept, and he can’t sustain a consistent tone. Although the movie never slides into full-on stupidity, various broad jokes diminish the clever gags by association. It’s also distracting that cinematographer Adam Holender so obviously mimics the shadow-drenched shooting style of master DP Gordon Willis, who shot Annie Hall and Manhattan. Arkin scores a few wonderfully silly moments, Pendleton’s performance is quite sly, and leading lady Judy Graubart, as Mendelssohn’s rightfully skeptical girlfriend, is charming in a neurotic sort of way. (The great Madeline Kahn is wasted in a too-small supporting role.) Yet the real problem with the picture is that it’s hard to care what happens to the main character, who toggles between obnoxious and pathetic.

Simon: FUNKY

Friday, April 8, 2016

1980 Week: First Family

Calling First Family a political satire is being too generous, but as one watches—more like endures—the unfunny sprawl of Buck Henry’s solo directorial debut, it’s possible to imagine how this might have worked on paper, specifically as a short story or a comic novella. The arch characterizations, the lewd running joke about a nymphomaniac, the ridiculous payoff involving gigantic fruits and vegetables grown with the aid of a sexually satisfied pagan god—given Henry’s dry wit, all of this stuff must have seemed quite droll at the conceptual stage. On film, none of it works. It’s not simply a matter of Henry lacking directorial experience, though the inert quality of First Family lends credence to the lore that Warren Beatty rightfully usurped Henry during the making of Heaven Can Wait (1978), hence their shared directing credit on that wonderful film.

The problem stems from the nature of the jokes in First Family. To a one, each verbal and visual gag is an intellectual flight of fancy that’s amusing only in broad strokes. The African ambassador who learned random English phrases without understanding what the words mean. The high-level political meeting held in the Oval Office during a costume party, with the nincompoop VP wearing a pink bunny suit. The African leader who wishes to purchase several hundred white, middle-class American families so his country an experience the presence of a “repressed minority.” These are cocktail-party one-liners, not the foundations for screen comedy.

Still, Henry’s track record (cocreating Get Smart, cowriting The Graduate, etc.) attracted a terrific cast to this doomed enterprise. Bob Newhart plays an unpopular president desperately looking for a big win. Madeline Kahn plays his boozy First Lady. Gilda Radner, in the picture’s most absurd role, plays the 28-year-old First Daughter, a virgin whose chastity is protected by the Secret Service. (Because most 28-year-old American women have neither had sex nor left their parents’ homes.) And so on. Richard Benjamin. Bob Dishy. John Hancock. Julius Harris. Harvey Korman. Rip Torn. Fred Willard. Even Buck Henry himself, in two roles. All wasted on material that never elicits so much as a chuckle. Unsurprisingly, First Family was also Henry’s last hurrah as a director, notwithstanding one episode of a PBS sitcom (!) in 1989.

First Family: LAME

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Paper Moon (1973)

When movie stars invite their children to act with them, the results usually range from embarrassing to forgettable—but every so often, something like Paper Moon happens. Featuring a spectacular debut performance by preteen Tatum O’Neal and a charmingly gruff star turn by her famous father, Ryan O’Neal, the movie both satisfies and undercuts audience expectations of what might occur when real-life relatives perform together onscreen. The movie has heart, but more importantly, it has edge—since many of the best scenes in Paper Moon feature the O’Neals sparring with each other, it’s impossible to mistake the picture for a softhearted love letter from a father to a daughter. Somehow, producer-director Peter Bogdanovich sensed a vein of natural conflict in the dynamic between the O’Neals, and then the filmmaker channeled that conflict into the fictional relationship of a 1930s con man and a girl who may or may not be his daughter.

Better still, Bogdanovich ensured that the sparks flying between the O’Neals were only part of the movie’s appeal. In addition to the memorable father-daughter acting, Paper Moon features crisp storytelling, sparkling dialogue, stunning black-and-white cinematography, and vivacious supporting performances. It’s a near-masterpiece that only happens to contain effective stunt casting.

Masterfully adapted by Alvin Sargent from a novel by Joe David Brown, Paper Moon takes place during the Depression, hence Bogdanovich’s choice to present the story with monochromatic visuals that evoke the photography of the Depression era. Flimflam artist Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal) attends the funeral of a former lover, where he meets scrappy nine-year-old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal), whom he realizes might be his daughter. Through delightfully contrived circumstances—the plot comes together with Swiss-watch precision that echoes Moses’ elaborate scams—Addie pressures Moses into taking her along for a lengthy auto journey. A quick study, Addie finds a role for herself in Moses’ principal scheme of selling personalized Bibles to the widows of recently deceased men, so the main characters’ natural instinct for bonding gets sublimated into the formation of a criminal enterprise.

Bogdanovich milks this perverse premise for all it’s worth, opting for the rich drama of betrayals, disappointments, and double-crosses instead of trying for easy sentimentality. Yet woven into nearly every scene of the movie is deftly crafted humor, an element maximized by the impeccable comic timing of Bogdanovich’s actors. In fact, one of the juiciest subplots involves Moses’ relationship with a woman of ill repute named Trixie Delight, played by the magnificent comedienne Madeline Kahn, who made her big-screen debut in Bogdanovich’s hit farce What’s Up Doc? (1972). Demonstrating the skill of the film’s narrative construction, the speed with which Moses throws over Addie in order to court Trixie reveals the limitations of Moses’ integrity and the sad fate awaiting Addie unless Moses grows a conscience.

While sensitive character work is ultimately what makes Paper Moon meaningful, the style is what makes the movie sing. Working with cinematographer Lászlo Kovács, Bogdanovich creates intimate textures throughout Paper Moon, especially during long takes that the director fills with rat-a-tat dialogue. Like the best of Bogdanovich’s early movies, Paper Moon feels handcrafted, with equal care given to characterization, emotion, mood, pace, and tone.

As such, if there’s a minor complaint that one could make about Paper Moon, it’s that Bogdanovich seems just as concerned with announcing his incandescent talent as he is in telling the story. But then again, since Paper Moon was made when the very gifted director was at the height of his powers, it’s hard to blame him for showboating. And since the film earned an Academy Award for Tatum O’Neal (making her the youngest-ever winner of a competitive acting Oscar), as well as a nomination for screenwriter Sargent, the director’s grandstanding clearly did not obscure the remarkable contributions of his collaborators.

Paper Moon: RIGHT ON

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

Although many ’70s filmmakers brilliantly modernized the film-noir genre of the 1940s and 1950s, most ’70s attempts to revive the “screwball comedy” style of the 1930s fell flat. Part of the problem, of course, is that screwball comedies are inherently fluffy, a tonality that creates an inherent dissonance when juxtaposed with the realism to which viewers gravitated in the ’70s. Plus, for better or worse, film comedy had grown up since the ’30s, so the idea of a gentle farce predicated on silly misunderstandings seemed archaic. Yet somehow, wunderkind director Peter Bogdanovich managed to turn an unapologetic throwback into a major success—in every possible way, What’s Up Doc? is an homage to yesteryear. After all, the deliberately confusing storyline swirls several frothy subplots around the even frothier main plot of a fast-talking misfit trying to win the heart of a bumbling scientist.

There’s no denying Bogdanovich’s craftsmanship, because he clearly studied the work of everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Howard Hawks in order to analyze the construction of repartee and sight gags. As a clinical experiment, What’s Up Doc? is impressive. Furthermore, Bogdanovich benefited from the contributions of smart co-writers, namely Buck Henry and the Bonnie and Clyde duo of Robert Benton and David Newman, and the talent represented onscreen is just as first-rate, with one notable exception. Leading lady Barbra Streisand is terrific as she blasts through thick dialogue, somehow making her overbearing character likeable. She also looks amazing, oozing her unique strain of self-confident sexiness. Comedy pros lending their gifts to smaller roles include Madeleine Kahn (appearing in her first movie), Kenneth Mars, Michael Murphy, and Austin Pendleton.

The aforementioned exception, however, is leading man Ryan O’Neal, who comes across like a beautiful puppet—in addition to being far too fit, handsome, and tan to believably play a cloistered researcher, O’Neal evinces no personality whatsoever. One gets the impression that his every gesture and intonation was massaged by Bogdanovich, so O’Neal’s performance has a robotic feel. Similarly, the movie’s elaborate physical-comedy set pieces are so mechanically constructed that they seem more focused on showcasing production values than on generating laughs. For instance, the finale, during which the heroes soar down San Francisco streets inside a Chinese dragon parade float—and during which characters keep just missing a sheet of plate glass that’s being delivered across a roadway—is exhausting to watch instead of exhilarating. (Even the movie’s rat-a-tat dialogue has an overly rote quality. At one point, O’Neal says, “What are you doing? It’s a one-way street!” Streisand shoots back, “We’re only going one way!”)

Ultimately, however, the real problem with What’s Up, Doc? (at least for this viewer) is twofold. Firstly, it’s impossible to care about characters who exist only to trigger jokes, and secondly, it’s difficult to overlook the anachronism of ’70s actors playing situations borrowed from the 1930s. But then again, millions of people flocked to What’s Up, Doc? during its original release, putting the movie among the highest grossers of 1972. So, as the saying goes, your experience may differ.

What’s Up, Doc?: FUNKY

Monday, April 30, 2012

The Cheap Detective (1978)

Yet another of the myriad film-noir spoofs that proliferated during the ’70s, The Cheap Detective is surprisingly underwhelming given its all-star cast and brand-name writer. Neil Simon, opting for broad farce instead of his usual domestic dramedy, weaves together storylines and stylistic tropes from assorted ’40s detective movies, mostly those starring Humphrey Bogart. Peter Falk stars as Lou Peckinpaugh, a San Francisco private eye who gets embroiled in a plot that’s a little bit Casablanca, a little bit Maltese Falcon, and a little bit of everything else. His partner gets killed, villains search for a cache of super-sized diamonds, and Lou juggles romantic intrigue with several dizzy dames. The movie’s gags are so silly that characters have names like Betty DeBoop, Jasper Blubber, and Jezebel Dezire.

Based on this movie and Neil Simon’s other noir spoof from the same era starring Peter Falk, 1976’s Murder by Death, one gets the impression that Simon was trying to outdo Mel Brooks at the anything-goes approach to lampooning movie genres, but Simon simply couldn’t match the inspired lunacy that made Brooks’ spoofs so delirious. By trying to keep dialogue crisp and plotting rational, Simon’s attempt at this style falls somewhere between the extremes of proper storytelling and wild abandon. Thus, The Cheap Detective is fluffy without being truly irreverent and goofy without being truly insane—it’s like a second-rate Carol Burnett Show sketch, needlessly extended to feature length. What’s more, the movie is hurt by flat direction, as TV-trained helmer Robert Moore lacks the ability to generate exciting visuals.

Yet another problem is the all-over-the-map acting. The most enjoyable performances, by Falk and supporting players Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, Madeline Kahn, and Fernando Lamas, wink at the audience without tipping into Borscht Belt excess. The most tiresome turns, by players including Ann-Margret, James Coco, Dom DeLuise, and Marsha Mason, fall into exactly that trap. (Though it must be said that Sid Caesar kills during one of the movie’s dumbest scenes, thanks to his legendary comic timing.) Some actors, however, seem completely adrift: Louise Fletcher, John Houseman, and Nicol Williamson strive to find consistent tonalities for their work, apparently receiving little guidance from Moore or the slapdash script. With this much talent involved, The Cheap Detective has a few bright spots, but the total package is quite blah.

The Cheap Detective: FUNKY

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)

The real-life inspiration for this tiresome comedy is an interesting footnote in Hollywood history: Early in his career, legendary studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck guided the career of silent-movie star Rin Tin Tin, who happened to be a particularly noble-looking German Shepherd. While the absurdity of transforming a canine into a matinee idol would seem to present possibilities for sly spoofery, Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood instead opts for broad buffoonery. Set in the anything-goes world of 1920s Hollywood, the flick smothers its slight storyline with clunky plotting, inane slapstick, overwrought production values, and pointless cameos by faded stars of stage and screen. A badly miscast Bruce Dern stars as the Zanuck-inspired lead character, a Hollywood tour guide who dreams of moguldum and seizes his opportunity when a desperate studio owner (Art Carney) mistakes Dern’s character for the trainer of a photogenic dog. The animal actually belongs to a would-be starlet (Madeline Kahn), so Dern’s character and the starlet decide to hitch a ride to stardom on Won Ton Ton’s tail. Predictably, things go awry, so much of the movie concerns Won Ton Ton’s wilderness years after he’s separated from his owners, plus their attempts to replace him and, eventually, get him back; this plot twist changes the movie from silly to sappy, and Won Ton Ton is no better at eliciting tears than it is at eliciting laughter. Although Carney and Kahn are comedy pros accustomed to playing broad material, Dern is an edgy, naturalistic actor completely out of his element. Even more out of his element is the film’s director, Michael Winner, best known for brutal action pictures like Death Wish (1974); to say that the film’s painful aspirations to effervescence feel forced is an understatement. Some viewers may enjoy Won Ton Ton’s parade of Old Hollywood cameo players (everyone from Ethel Merman to the Ritz Brothers to Stepin Fetchit to Henny Youngman), but for anyone but obsessive devotees of movies about movies, Won Ton Ton is, well, a dog.

Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood: LAME

Monday, May 23, 2011

At Long Last Love (1975)

Director Peter Bogdanovich’s twin preoccupations with classic cinema and Cybill Shepherd, the model/actress for whom he left his wife in the early ’70s, collided in one of the most infamous flops of the decade, At Long Last Love. A sincere but wholly unnecessary homage to the champagne-and-caviar musicals of the Depression era, the film presents the uninteresting story of two swell couples trading partners back and forth as they serenade each other with dizzy ditties by the great Cole Porter. Displaying his usual meticulousness, Bogdanovich gets most of the details right (frothy patter, glossy interior sets, perfect evening dresses), but the film is far less than the sum of its parts.

The characters are abstractions because all they do is cavort about and wait for money to appear from nowhere (some are penniless strivers faking affluence, others are spoiled wastrels with trust funds), which means it’s impossible to care about their romantic entanglements. The story takes forever to unfold, since each plot development, no matter how trivial, is explained in a full-length song. Ironically, Shepherd is the best thing about the movie, because while she’s a natural singer with a brassy voice, her costars Eileen Brennan, John Hillerman, Madeline Kahn, and Burt Reynolds display far less impressive vocal talents. (The other major player, Italian actor Duilio Del Prete, is a fine actor and singer, but he’s adrift as an unfamiliar foreigner in a sea of recognizable Hollywood faces.) Worst of all, Bogdanovich completely botches a key element of any successful musical: dancing. None of his performers has any real hoofing skill, so most of the numbers are delivered while characters sit in chairs or walk around lush estates. Dullsville, baby.

Had the picture been faster, shorter, and infused with fleet footwork, it might have been a pleasant trifle. But as is, it’s nearly interminable. At Long Last Love bombed so badly that it nearly killed its directors once-blazing career. After making the much better Nickelodeon (1976), which was already in motion by the time At Long Last Love tanked, Bogdanovich spent three years in the wilderness before returning with Saint Jack (1979), the low budget of which reflected his diminished stature.

At Long Last Love: LAME

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) & The World’s Greatest Lover (1977)

The comedy world suffered a blow when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder stopped collaborating in the mid-’70s, because Brooks never found a better leading man, and Wilder never found a better director. A good example of how badly these men needed each other is The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. A farcical mystery written and directed by Wilder, the movie features several members of Brooks’ stock company (Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Wilder), and it looks great (thanks to cinematographer Gerry Fisher). Better still, the basic idea of famed sleuth Holmes using an idiot sibling as a decoy is clever and fun. (The movie’s title is meant ironically.) Unfortunately, the gags run the gamut from insultingly stupid to numbingly stupid: Feldman and Wilder dancing at a formal ball with their rear ends exposed; Feldman, Kahn, and Wilder doing a cringe-inducing dance number called “The Kangaroo Hop” (twice); Wilder and British comedy stalwart Roy Kinnear fighting with an oversized glove and an oversized shoe for weapons. It’s all so painful that when cameo player Albert Finney shows up to ask a rhetorical question—“Is this rotten, or wonderfully brave?”—the answer is clear. Only the consummate skill of the players makes Smarter Brother borderline tolerable.
Wilder went the auteur route again for The World’s Greatest Lover, which is shockingly awful. A period piece about a talent search for a silent-movie heartthrob in the mode of Rudolph Valentino, Lover is filled with moronic slapstick (like an endless gag involving an overflowing bathtub), and Wilder’s performance is atrocious. He spends nearly every scene screaming and bulging his eyes, so he looks like he’s receiving electroshock therapy instead of acting. Playing his wife, Carol Kane tries to ground a few scenes with her offbeat sweetness, but she was obviously instructed to match Wilder’s manic energy to the best of her ability, so she ends up mugging and screaming as well. Supporting Wilder once again, DeLuise goes way over the top in his costarring turn as a psychotic studio executive, and his preposterous hairstyle is just about the only amusing thing in this unbearable movie. Great poster, though!

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother: LAME

The World’s Greatest Lover: SQUARE

Friday, October 29, 2010

High Anxiety (1977)

After striking out with Silent Movie (1976), which was a moderate success but still a huge comedown commercially and critically from the twin 1974 hits Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, comedy auteur Brooks drifted back to the sweet spot, more or less, for High Anxiety, a send-up of Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense classics. Though High Anxiety has some terrific moments, and despite Brooks’ obvious affection and respect for Hitchcock’s movies, High Anxiety lacks both the manic energy of Saddles and the sweetness of Frankenstein. Plus, by this point in Brooks’ career, the feces jokes were starting to get out of hand, which is indicative that the creative well was starting to run dry.

The picture’s biggest minus is the presence of Brooks in the leading role as a shrink who must overcome his personal phobias in order to expose corruption at a psychiatric hospital. For although High Anxiety actually has a strong narrative, comparatively speaking, Brooks’ tendency toward overacting makes it hard to develop the emotional investment a subtler actor could engender. It’s true that Brooks gives a much better performance in High Anxiety than he did in Silent Movie, but he’s still the weakest link in terms of onscreen talent.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, High Anxiety has many bright spots, including the delightful scene of corrupt psychiatrist Harvey Korman torturing a patient by pretending to be a werewolf, Cloris Leachman’s go-for-broke performance as a nutjob nurse with a bullet bra and a mustache, and Brooks’ lounge-lizard rendition of the movie’s ridiculous theme song (classic line: “Oh—‘xiety!”). For movie buffs, it’s also a hoot to see future director Barry Levinson (who co-wrote this movie) acting in the film’s requisite homage to Psycho’s shower scene. Brooks regular Madeline Kahn is mostly wasted, although she gets to look gorgeous in the thankless role of a seductive/troubled blonde in the Hitchock mode.

Had this movie been made by anyone else, and had it featured a proper actor in the leading role, High Anxiety might have been embraced by audiences for its easygoing silliness. But since it represents such a big comedown from its predecessors, and since Brooks’ front-and-center role screams of megalomania, it’s merely an enjoyable but minor entry in an important filmography.

High Anxiety: FUNKY

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Astonishingly, comedy giant Mel Brooks managed to crank out his masterpiece, Young Frankenstein, less than a year after completing another outrageously funny spoof, Blazing Saddles. Yet while Blazing Saddles is an anything-goes romp that throws out narrative continuity whenever the opportunity for a gag arises, Young Frankenstein trumps its predecessor because in addition to featuring some of the funniest moments in cinema history, the picture also works as the bittersweet tale of a man, a monster, and the women who love them.

Conceived by leading man Gene Wilder, who eventually had a falling-out with Brooks after he perceived Brooks as taking too much credit for this project, Young Frankenstein is a pseudo-continuation of the classic Universal Studios Frankenstein series that begin in the early ’30s. The picture is shot in glorious black-and-white to evoke a studio-era vibe, and the filmmakers even tracked down the original Kenneth Strickfaden-created props that appeared in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory during the earlier films.

The screenplay, by Wilder and Brooks, picks up a generation after the events of the older pictures, when Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) inherits the castle where his crazed grandfather, Victor, once conducted unholy experiments. Discovering his ancestor’s records, Frederick casts aside his nature as a rational modern scientist in order to stitch together body parts and make a monster all his own. Aided by a trusty hunchbacked accomplice, Igor (Marty Feldman), and a fetching local girl, Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick creates a lumbering Monster (Peter Boyle).

Wilder and Brooks borrow and spoof famous bits from the Universal Pictures, leading to uproarious scenes like the Monster’s encounter with a blind man (Gene Hackman) whose desire to share a cigar turns disastrous, and Frederick’s hilarious run-ins with an officious policeman (Kenneth Mars), who lost a limb to the monster that Victor Frankenstein created long ago. There’s also room for Frederick’s uptight fiancée, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), and the mysterious Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachman), who knew Victor better than anyone suspects.

Virtually every scene in Young Frankenstein is a comedy classic, from the opening bit of Fredrick experimenting on an elderly patient during a medical class to the climactic musical number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which Wilder actually had to fight to keep in the movie because Brooks didn’t originally see the value of the scene. In addition to being riotously funny, Young Frankenstein is virtually note-perfect from beginning to end in terms of character and storyline. The acting is also consistently wonderful, with Boyle delivering a heartbreaker of a performance as the monster; his scene with Hackman is a perfect blend of pathos and whimsy.

A career high point for everyone involved, Young Frankenstein showcases everything Brooks does well and features none of his often tiresome excesses, and it’s a triumph for Wilder as an actor and as a writer.

Young Frankenstein: OUTTA SIGHT

Blazing Saddles (1974)

   After making a wholly original film, The Producers (1968), and a goofy literary adaptation, The Twelve Chairs (1970), comedy giant Mel Brooks found his true niche in 1974 with the spectacular one-two punch of Blazing Saddles, released in February of that year, and Young Frankenstein, released in December. Satirizing film genres freed Brooks to stack gags on top of gags without having to worry about inventing new stories, since he repurposed elements from old films to create solid narrative foundations. Yet rather than just firing off jokes in these first two spoof films, Brooks took care to imbue even the most preposterous characters with likeable humanity—so, for instance, Blazing Saddles focuses on a black sheriff who combats Old West prejudice by making a fool of every racist he encounters. More importantly, Blazing Saddles reaches such dizzying heights of comic insanity that it’s one of the funniest movies ever made.
   The picture began as an original script by Andrew Bergman, who later became a comedy director in his own right, and the story went through a spirited metamorphosis as Brooks and others added characters and jokes and themes. At one point, comedy legend Richard Pryor was hired to smooth out potentially offensive race jokes, but instead fixated on penning gags for the existentially confused man-child Mongo (Alex Karras), who at one point sadly opines, “Mongo just pawn in game of life.”
   The main story this brain trust generated involves the devious machinations of corrupt politician Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), who wants to demolish a small town and make room for a railroad in which he has a financial stake. By manipulating his state’s oblivious governor (Brooks), Hedley gets a black man, Bart (Cleavon Little), assigned as the town’s new sheriff. Upon seeing the color of the lawman’s skin, the town’s welcome wagon turns into a lynch mob, but soon Bart teams up with alcoholic gunfighter Jim (Gene Wilder) to save the day by confronting Hedley. The story, of course, is of minor importance, because Blazing Saddles is like a vaudeville revue filled with screamingly funny stand-alone gags, most of which are better discovered than described.
   Befitting its tagline, “Never give a saga an even break,” Blazing Saddles upends every imaginable convention of Hollywood Westerns. Conniving villains are made to look ridiculous (Hedley freaks out during bath time when he can’t find his rubber ducky); racial stereotypes are exploited for outrageous laughs (Little’s line, “Excuse me while I whip this out,” has become immortal); and, of course, the picture contains cinema’s most infamous demonstration of the effect baked beans have on the male digestive system, the symphony of campfire flatulence heard ’round the world.
   Everyone in the movie is terrific, with Little exhibiting charisma and great timing while Wilder gives an uncharacteristically soft-spoken performance as his sidekick. Korman is pure genius from start to finish, and Brooks regular Madeline Kahn slays as put-upon German seductress Lili Von Shtupp. The movie goes off the rails toward the end, albeit intentionally, so inspiration eventually gives way to desperation—but the chaos helps give Blazing Saddles such extraordinary shelf life that it’s one of the few modern movie comedies that can still leave fans gasping for air while laughing at the same jokes for the hundredth time.

Blazing Saddles: RIGHT ON