I'm not really the type to get starstruck by many people; spending time in journalism, with its "professionalism" and "ethics" and garbage like that, has allowed me to see people as people and not SUPER DUPER OH MY GOD AWESOME CELEBRITIES.
That being said, there are still a couple of people that I think I would swoon for, or at least have trouble coming up with a complete sentence. Stephen King is one (shocker, I know). Maybe Emma Thompson. And, perhaps most of all, Mel Brooks.
I love Mel Brooks and always have. When I was a kid - before Netflix, before there was even a Blockbuster within 50 miles of my podunk town - we used to rent VHS tapes from the local convenience store. They had one rack of titles to choose from, kind of like Red Box if the titles are all at least 10 years old and required interacting with the cashier. Anyway, with its limited and ever-static supply, whenever it was my turn to choose a movie, I always took Spaceballs. Did it matter that I had never seen Star Wars? Did it matter that I was WAY too young to get half of the jokes? ("I bet she gives great helmet." HAHAHAHA I don't get it.) No way. The princess had a hair dryer that took up an entire trunk! It's CRAZINESS!
Anyway, my tastes got more refined as I got older and my favorite Brooks movie became Young Frankenstein. It helped that by the time I saw it, I actually did get the jokes, so that was a bonus.
In the last couple of weeks, there have been quite a few Mel Brooks tributes - American Masters did a 90-minute documentary about him, the American Film Institute gave him a lifetime achievement award. It's both exciting, because I love him, and a little scary, because are they doing this because they know something about his health that we don't? Still, I'm enjoying it.
A couple of weeks ago, Blazing Saddles was on TV and it was on one of those channels that doesn't cut out the swears or anything (kind of like HBO but for cheap people). My husband had never seen it and recorded it out of curiosity, and it had been a few years for me, too. Plus, after hearing about some of the fun background information about filming, I wanted to see it in action.
Blazing Saddles is Brooks' take on Westerns. He co-wrote it with Richard Pryor, who was slated to star in it until the production company balked at the idea of casting a known drug user. Pryor hand-picked Cleavon Little to star instead, and the first day of filming, the production company-approved actor slated to play the Waco Kid got sick from...drugs. Oops! Brooks called up Gene Wilder instead and the movie was much better off (plus, Wilder took the role only when Brooks offered to help him make his own idea for a movie - Young Frankenstein).
Anyway, in order to make money off a railroad in the west, corrupt politician/businessman Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) sends a black man (Little) to serve as a town's sheriff, in hopes that the residents will be so turned off that they'll abandon the town and Lamarr can profit. But with the help of a washed up Western shooter named the Waco Kid (Wilder), Sheriff Bart wins over the town and outsmarts Lamarr's plans every step of the way.
The movie is full of famous scenes - Alex Karras as Mongo punching out a horse; the first instance of flatulence on film; Madelaine Kahn's hilarious turn as the German seductress with a speech impediment - and it's definitely one of Brooks' classics. You don't need me to tell you it's awesome, but if you haven't seen it, you definitely should.
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