8 February 15 - 21, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents O ne of the funniest movies ever made remains unmistakable, uncomfortable and proudly not woke 50 years after it was unwanted and almost unre- leased. It was turned down by the likes of Johnny Carson, John Wayne and James Earl Jones. Multiple times during filming, War- ner Bros. executives deemed the language and subject matter too cringy and pulled the plug. The name was frequently changed, from Tex-X to Black Bart to Purple Sage. So what is it about Blazing Saddles, with its decidedly Dallas spice, that makes it si- multaneously edgy and enduring? Consider the opening scene. Before the intro music fully fades, Old West cowboy “Lyle,” played by Dallas native Burton Gilliam, refers to a collapsed Asian railroad worker with a racist slur and de- mands that a group of Black coworkers sing. “C’mon boys, where’s your spirit?” Lyle says. “When you was slaves, you sang like birds.” He then drops the movie’s first N- word as he demands a “good ol’ … work song.” And so it begins. Both the squirming and the snickering. Directed by actor/filmmaker Brooks and co-written by seminal Black comedian Rich- ard Pryor, Blazing Saddles was nominated for three Academy Awards and earned a leg- acy as one of the most colorful movies ever produced because it never even attempted to tip-toe across the dangerous tightrope be- tween smiles and sensitivity. Instead, it merely shrugged and said, “Aww to hell with it, let’s laugh.” After the workers fulfill Lyle’s request by breaking into a soulful, jazzy version of Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You,” the horse- back posse returns the volley with a ridicu- lous, dancing, arm-flapping version of “Camptown Races.” The impromptu musi- cal battle is interrupted by “Taggart” (Slim Pickens), who urges his white crew to get back to work while dropping another slur about gay people, particularly those from Kansas City. (Apparently, in Brooks’ version of the Old West, Kansas City was the San Francisco of its day.) Offensive? Maybe if you focus on the word and not the point of the joke. “It’s one of the funniest movies of all- time,” says Dallas’ Resource Center Advo- cacy and Communications Manager Rafael McDonnell, who for years has (unsuccess- fully, so far) led the fight for the Texas Rangers to finally host a Pride Night at Globe Life Field. “I think folks understand how different things were back then and, of course, that changes how we view it today. What was acceptable then isn’t now. Blaz- ing Saddles is so over the top. ... God bless, Mel Brooks was always pushing the enve- lope.” As the movie begins, so it goes. No mar- ginalized group is spared as Blazing Saddles gallops ahead, firing arrows into every idi- otic “ism” in its path, dropping 17 N-bombs from the mouths of white characters along the way. Released Feb. 7, 1974, Blazing Sad- dles is problematic, full of racial stereo- types, sexist tropes and the most inappropriate of language. It’s also a buffet of belly laughs, with an 88% rating on Rot- ten Tomatoes and the No. 6 ranking on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years … 100 Laughs” list. It’s a gleefully vulgar spoof of Spaghetti Westerns, with a heaping dose of biting satire on racism. Laughter is the enemy of fools, and the white characters letting the slurs fly are vil- lains, fools or both. As co-star Gene Wilder’s character the Waco Kid puts it to Cleavon Little’s Black sheriff Bart after Bart gets smacked with a N-bomb from what appears to be a sweet old white woman: “You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farm- ers. These are people of the land. The com- mon clay of the new West. You know ... morons.” ▼ Culture Mike Brooks ETERNAL FLAME Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Blazing Saddles: Original, offensive with a Dallas flavor. BY RICHIE WHITT Dallasite Burton Gilliam played Lyle, the cowboy, in Blazing Saddles. >> p10
