The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - Blazing Saddles

In every sense, 'Blazing Saddles' feels like the movie Mel Brooks should have made after 'The Producers.'  With newfound confidence in his script, a strong cast, and a bigger budget, Brooks swings for the fences with this satirical western that shocks as often as it enthralls.

The story is about Bart, a black railroad worker who is appointed Sheriff of the small hick town of Rock Ridge by a conniving State Attorney General with hopes that he will insight unrest and run out the townspeople so he can buy the land cheap and build a railroad.  Its honestly not as complicated as it reads.

Cleavon Little plays Bart and he is as charming, charismatic, and likable as can be.  He takes the town's racism with good cheer and a smile that says "I get it. You're all bigots. And that's just the way things are."  The role requires someone eternally hopeful in a hopeless situation and Little absolutely nails it.

While the movie starts off a little rocky, one-note, and goofy for goofy's sake, the story picks up quite a bit when Gene Wilder appears as Jim, the fastest, drunkest hands in the West.  Wilder is effortlessly funny and his unassuming mug makes his speed all the more surprising.  The camaraderie between Jim and Bart is one of the highlights of the movie.

Madeline Kahn is decent as Lili Von Shtupp.  I honestly can't tell if she's trying or not.  She does get some classic one-liners in though.  "They're always coming and going and going and coming and always too soon."  I must confess that my disappointment in her role is entirely on me.  Lili is constantly referred to as one of the great comedy characters and I'm not sure why.  She's not as big a part as history would like to remember.  She's just another adversary for Bart to convert, nothing special.  I just hope you think that lisp humor is hiwawious.

But the real star of the movie is Harvey Korman as Hedey, sorry, Hedley Lamarr.  He plays the conniving State Attorney General who is continually frustrated by Bart's success in Rock Ridge.  His seething anger and dastardly villainy is a thing of wonder.

Mel Brooks is the weakest part of the movie as a cross-eyed moron, Governor William J Lepetomane, a role that exists solely so Brooks can have a part in his own movie.  I wonder if his check from the paddleball people cleared.

I can't stress how shocking this movie is.  The original title of the film was 'TEX X', "dock that chink a day's pay for nappin' on the job!" is one of the opening lines of the film, and the use of the N-word alone would make Quentin Tarantino blush.  There is a boldness present we haven't seen from Brooks before.  And yet, the film is more than just a shock fest/satire of Western tropes.  Its also a pointed criticism about the way minorities of all sorts were exploited, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and large-breasted secretaries.

The Looney Tunes humor feels a little tacked on, as though they didn't know what joke to put there but they knew they had to have one.  But this movie is shooting from the hip with a new joke or gag every 10 seconds.  If one of them doesn't work, and many of them don't, there will be a new one shortly.

The last act of the movie pushes meta humor, an element that will define Mel Brooks' career, to its limits with a twist so extreme even M Night Shyamalan wouldn't dare try it.  I won't spoil it here.  I'm sure at the time this was an unparalleled example of self-referential comedy but it goes on far too long as though Brooks made a list of every gag he could think of and then filmed them regardless of how long funny it was.

A recurring element in Mel Brooks' filmography is that even if you haven't seen his stuff, you've seen it referenced.  This holds true for Blazing Saddles more than any other film in his career thus far, and for good reason.  It's just that funny.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - The Twelve Chairs

While everybody emphasizes the importance of a director's first film, I believe that the second film is more important.  With your first film, you cut your teeth.  With your second film, and a larger budget, you prove your worth.  Quentin Tarantino followed 'Reservoir Dogs' with Pulp Fiction' and Steven Spielberg followed 'The Sugarland Express' with 'Jaws' while Marc Webb followed '(500) Days of Summer' with 'The Amazing Spider-man' (sigh).

This brings us to 'The Twelve Chairs', Mel Brooks' sophomore effort, in which he trades strong characters and clever dialogue for scale, and loses at every turn.

Based on a famous Russian novel of the same name, the movie follows three greedy men as they search high and low, racing back and forth across Russia to get their hands on twelve gold-encrusted chairs, one of which contains a fortune of jewels.

Ron Moody plays Vorobyaninov, an aristocrat wiped out by the communist revolution.  When the movie begins, his dying mother-in-law tells him that she has hidden her valuables from the Bolsheviks by sewing them inside one of her ornate chairs.  Desperate to return to his old way of life, Vorobyaninov sets out to retrieve the chair.

A clever, handsome, and homeless conman named Ostap Bender, played by a young Frank Langella deduces Vorobyaninov's true intentions and the pair are off to find the treasure.  Dom DeLuise plays a local priest who abandons his post to join the hunt but he's mostly there to pad out the runtime.

Mel Brooks is featured front and center in the poster and yet he is barely in the film.  Ironically, though I've never been a great fan of Brooks as an actor, he's the best part of this movie by far.  It's a shame that he couldn't be the main character, or even a bumbling sidekick for more than five minutes.

The Twelve Chairs is an uneasy film.  It's not what you would call messy, just uninspired and unmotivated.  It is based on an old Russian novel of the same name.  Apparently this is one of 18 different adaptations.  I can only assume that Brooks decided to do the comedic version of the story but he only half commits.  Often the style feels amateur and unsure.  Not since Benny Hill have I seen so much sped up footage in one comedy.  I can only assume its because the footage was too slow, so they ratched up the tempo and added a lot of "whoop whoop" noises to make it funny.  The cinematography is decent and the locations are certainly beautiful but Brooks never gives us a moment to appreciate it.  He's in such a hurry to make this feel like some sort of 'Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' type caper that he fails to involve us in the characters, the mystery, or the world around them.

I can't say I ever felt anything for the characters.  I never wanted them to succeed, I just hoped that maybe this chair would be the fabled chair and the story would be over with.  Eventually, I grew frustrated with Vorobyaninov and Ostap as human beings and with Mel Brooks as a storyteller.  At no point do Moody and Langella ever compliment one another as a team.  Bender has a plan.  Vorobyaninov can't contain himself and does something stupid.  Bender restrains him or saves him and thinks of a new plan.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Without strong characters or compelling relationships, comedies rely on exceptional set pieces.  The Twelve Chairs certainly has set pieces, it rushes from one scenario to the next, but every single scene is unfulfilled and they all feel abandoned, as though Brooks lost confidence half way through and jumped ship.  There is a fun scene at a circus involving a high wire act but like every other scene, it lacks the proper build up and pay off.  Everything about this movie is a creative anomaly and the word "funny" is merely conceptual.  Mel Brooks was a comedian and a drummer before he was a filmmaker.  He knows the importance of rhythm.  And yet this movie exists in a race to finish itself.  It's in a hurry to cease being.

The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - The Producers (1967)

A few friends and I started a club as a means of keeping in touch. One of us will choose a director and together we'll go through that director's films one at a time and talk about them. Currently, we're going through the career of comedy legend, Mel Brooks, and what better place to start than with his first film, 'The Producers.'

The Producers serves as Mel Brooks' debut and what a debut it is. While most people think of Brooks as a parodist, there was a period, however briefly when he made comedies that worked as their own movies.

The story is absolute genius. A once-great producer MAX BIALYSTOCK teams up with a nebbish accountant LEO BLOOM with a cockamamie scheme, namely that if they raise a ludicrous amount of money and they put on a guaranteed flop, they could abscond with the leftover money and retire as millionaires. From a comedic standpoint, this plot is filled to bursting with hilarious opportunities and for the most part, The Producers makes the most out of them.

Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystock and while many know him as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, this was the role he was born to play. He's delightfully repugnant as one of the failed giants of his craft. How low does he go? The film begins with him selling his body to little, horny old ladies for "checkies," his sweaty combover barely keeping up with him as he runs from one geriatric tryst to the next.

Gene Wilder has his breakout performance as Leo Bloom, a spineless accountant with a propensity for panic attacks and a slavish devotion to his security blanket. Its his clever hypothetical accounting theory that lays out the plot but its Max Bialystock's desperation, at one point reaching his hands to the heavens and shouting "LORD, I WANT THAT MONEY!" that sets the story into motion. Wilder and Mostel make one hell of a team in this movie and their chemistry is off the charts.

The two set out to find the worst play ever written and they strike gold in "SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER", a concept so audacious, you already know about it by reputation. The author of this masterpiece is Franz Liebkind played by Kenneth Mars, as a Nazi and Hitler devotee who escaped the war and immigrated to the US of A. Play in hand, Bialystock and Bloom assemble the crew for their theatrical catastrophe, including a flamboyantly gay director, Joel Schumacher before Joel Schumacher, Roger De Bris. His utter creative bankruptcy is one of the consistent laughs throughout the film.

The only sour note is Dick Shawn as Lorenzo St. DuBois or LSD for short (get it?). He's a beatnik so terrible he just has to be right. However, he is representative of all the problems I have with the second act.

WARNING! HERE BE SPOILERS!

After LSD joins the cast, the pacing goes down the tubes, the slowest moment being LSD's musical number "Love Power" which is so boring and drawn out that it is completely absent from the Broadway Musical. Indeed, Lorenzo's character has been excised entirely.

The play opens to everyone's predictable outrage with Wilder and Mostel exiting before any of the angry patrons. They leave a hair too early though because as soon as LSD sets foot on stage, his hippy portrayal of the mustachioed dictator has the audience in (unbelievable) stitches. This is where I am going to disagree with people but I firmly believe that the scenes in the theater threaten to destroy the movie entirely. Why? Because the manner in which the play is presented makes no sense. "Oh shush, Lukas. It's a comedy." you say. But the core concept is flawed. Roger DeBris intends to make a sincere, dramatic work. His problem is that he's such a poor director that even when he intends to be serious, he falls back on his tired, old, and lets not be coy about it, gay clichés. But what I don't understand is how LSD made it all the way to opening night with that performance accepted by DeBris and with the Kraut being none-the-wiser. LSD is terrible, undoubtedly, but he's too terrible.

Some will say that I'm overanalyzing a simple joke, but allow me to point you to the remake, which is almost word for word the original film, but with musical numbers and a dramatically restructured second act. As mentioned before, in the musical there is no LSD. Leibkind is cast as his beloved Führer and intends to play the role with all the sincerity he can muster. However, on opening night, he breaks his leg and can't go on. He is replaced last minute... by Roger DeBris! This is an ingenious change. 'Springtime For Hitler' now takes on a different satirical edge. DeBris doesn't know he's awful. His homosexuality shines through. He is utterly incapable of playing the part straight.

The rest of the musical is very similar to the movie, except for a few character changes. Leo having a secret desire to be a Broadway Producer adds some complexity and depth to an otherwise shallow role but apart from that it's basically verbatim. And why should it change? The screenplay for Mel Brooks' comedy is downright untouchable. It has a reputation for being one of those great comedies and its entirely deserved. You've heard lines from this movie without even knowing it. "Actors aren't animals? Have you ever eaten with one?!"

It is clear that Mel Brooks poured his heart and soul into this project and it really is required viewing for anyone who says they like comedy. With movies like "Young Frankenstein" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights", Mel Brooks will become one of Hollywood's premier satirists. Its clear, even from his first film, that he has a firm grasp on the concept.