Back on the Horse: Mel Brooks Penning Songs for Blazing Saddles Musical
By Kenneth Jones
16 Mar 2010
At the end of Mel Brooks' Broadway musical Young Frankenstein, the cast asked, in song, if a stage version of Brooks' hit film "Blazing Saddles" might be also be in the wings. After all, Brooks had already also made a hit stage musical out of his film, "The Producers."
Three's a charm? Brooks is already two songs into Blazing Saddles, the musical, he told the Canadian Press. He's writing a third new number.
The 1974 film comedy spoofs the Hollywood Western genre as it tells of a black sheriff (played by Cleavon Little) in an Old West town. The epithet-packed picture has intolerance and racism on its mind, but is mostly interested in taking absurd comic potshots at the form — and Hollywood icons. Madeline Kahn, for example, played a Marlene Dietrich-style saloon performer (a la "Destry Rides Again") named Lili Von Shtup, who sang a laconic song about sex, "I'm Tired."
The picture also includes a title song (complete with cracking whip) and a (literally) fourth-wall-breaking number, "The French Mistake."
The Tony Award-winning 83-year-old composer-lyricist-librettist told The Canadian Press that if the show materializes, "I wouldn't rush to New York with it because the [New York] Times would say: 'Oh dear, oh dear, another movie converted and transmogrified into a musical.' The Times was only lukewarm to Young Frankenstein, but you know, everybody else was hot — some of the greatest reviews I ever got."
Brooks said it could be completely written within the next year. No production plan or creative team has been announced for the still-gestating Blazing Saddles musical. Thomas Meehan co-wrote the book to The Producers and Young Frankenstein, which were both directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman.
The national tour of Young Frankenstein begins a run at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre on March 17.
You mean he hadn't received a star before now????? Unbelievable.
Brooks goes for the cheap crass gag a bit too often for my taste, but his wit is razor sharp. And the guy can tell a joke you've heard a dozen times before and still make you laugh.
HBJ
"The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars."
- Carl Sagan
I'm still very proud of The Quarry but … let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.
- Iain Banks
"Aww, that uppity nigger done hit me on the head with a shovel ..." - Slim Pickens
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people. ~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008
has to .... that's the whole point of the fucking movie ... what's The Producers without "Springtime for Hitler" ?
Blazing Saddles as a movie is one of those that has to be watched with a eye to context,
the time period it was released ....
"Fuck you, I work for Mel Brooks !" - Slim Pickens
................ I exist only to amuse myself ................
I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people. ~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008