A Mel Brooks Centennial

Could his films be made today?

Steve believes the movies of Mel Brooks, who just turned 100, could not be made today. As professor Turguson (Sam Kinison) said in Back to School, “is he right?” Start with the prime exhibit, Blazing Saddles, from 1974.

“I hired you people to get a little track laid,” says railroad boss Taggart (Slim Pickens), “not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots.”

In the age of Brokeback Mountain, as Mark Steyn said, a film about guys who get into each other’s chaps, nobody will greenlight a film featuring that F-word and a song like this:

Throw out your hands
Stick out your tush
Hands on your hips
Give ‘em a push
You’ll be surprised
You’re doing the French Mistake
Voila!

“Watch me faggots,” yells the director, played by Dom Deluise. The scheming Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) wants an army of vicious criminals including “buggerers” and “bull dykes.” Asked for his qualifications, one of the criminals says “rape” twice because “I like rape.” Not exactly contemporary fare, and how about the infamous N-word?

That term was common in Paul Robeson films such as The Emperor Jones (1933) and 1974 saw the release of Boss Nigger, with Fred Williamson. In Blazing Saddles, Lyle (Burton Gilliam) urges the former slave railroad workers to sing a “nigger work song.” Later on Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) says “I’ll blow this nigger’s head ALL OVER THIS TOWN!” It’s hard to imagine such a scene today, even with, say, Denzel Washington in the role. The same goes for Olson Johnson (Dave Huddleston, perhaps better known for playing the Big Lebowski)) who says, “we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we DON’T WANT THE IRISH!”

Olson changes his mind and the good citizens of Rock Ridge welcome everybody and together take down Taggart’s criminal army. Even so, to quote another line, I am right that Steve is right that Blazing Saddles would not be made today. The other films aren’t quite so clear-cut.

In History of the World, Part I, a centurion asks if anybody knows the penalty for a slave striking a Roman citizen. “They shove a living snake up your ass.” says one Roman, not the right answer but “very creative.” In an age when “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” is considered risqué that sort of thing is out of bounds, even as fare for comedy. Aside from Dave Chappelle, who played Achoo in Brooks’ Men in Tights, few are willing to laugh at the woke legions.

Hitler was an easy target and the “Springtime for Hitler” scenes in The Producers get the most bang for the buck. Director Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewitt) proclaims “I never realized the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it’s drenched with historical goodies like that.” That was in 1968, and the musical hit the stage in 2001. (Not to be outdone was De Bris’ one complaint about the script: “That whole third act has to go! Germany’s losing the war!”)

The time has come for something on, say, Karl Marx, no stranger to the N-word.

“The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation,” Marx wrote to Engels in 1862. “It is now quite plain to me — as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify — that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.”

Or how about a springtime for Stalin, the USSR’s white Communist dictator so admired by black Americans such as Paul Robeson and Obama’s beloved Frank Marshall Davis, at the very time Stalin was murdering millions and setting up a vast network of forced labor camps. Paul and Frank could harmonize on something like this:

Massa knows best! massa knows best!

When uncle Joe Stalin comes a-callin’

He stands high above the rest . . .

And so on, with limitless possibilities. So far no takers and as Steve likes to say, there’s a chaser here. In Blazing Saddles Hedley Lamarr needs land for his railroad but “unfortunately there is one thing standing between me and that property – the rightful owners.” When Gov. William LePetomane (Brooks) gets word of the attack on Rock Ridge, he says, “we’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs. We must do something immediately!”

The movie that couldn’t be made today recognizes property rights and exposes phony government jobs. Happy 100th birthday to Mel Brooks, whose films deliver more than they promise.