Word: mel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...MEL BROOKS is a screenwriter/director/actor whose latest comedy, Blazing Saddles, indicates that he should stick to screenwriting...
...that and other insolence, the group's leader, Black Bart (Cleavon Little) is about to be hung. With the noose around his neck, Bart wins a reprieve--from Hedley Lamaar (Harvey Korman), the governor's scheming aide-de-camp. Lamaar convinces Governor Lepetomane (Mel Brooks) to make Bart the sheriff of the peaceful Western town of Rock Ridge. Lamaar figures that the spectre of a black sheriff will drive the citizens away, enabling him to buy their land and sell it at a huge profit to the railroad...
...storms into Rock Ridge and knocks out a horse with a punch in the mouth. Madeline Kahn, the nebbish circus dancer in Paper Moon, is a saloon singer who wails about her sexual fatigue in a clever ditty called "I'm Tired" (words and music, of course, by Mel Brooks...
...probably as unfair to expect Blazing Saddles to be a straight Western as it is to expect that it be a normal, professional comedy. Mel Brooks is incapable of making either kind of movie. His comedies will probably always be ragged at the edges and amateurish at the core...
...Mel Brooks film is probably best seen as an investment in future reminiscences. The clumsy, unprofessional touches are the first to fade from memory, and one is left to savor the concepts and situations in their pure form--the way Brooks envisioned them. In five years, Blazing Saddles will be one helluva film...