Mel Brooks: Search and Destroy

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Ned doesnt like Spaceballs?!

― chaki, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

im just going to be bold right away and say
Search: High Anxiety
Destroy: Blazing Saddles

― Karl J Kretzschmar, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

search: the producers, the elephant man [almost], spaceballs [sort of] destroy: life stinks, blazing saddles, spaceballs [sort of more], the dracula one, the robin hood one, his face

― RJG, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I say one thing...

Anyway, to a certain extent I grew up with Mel Brooks movies -- Silent Movie was the first one I saw, but thanks to parents who were fans, I ended up seeing just about everything, and I appreciate that!

The Producers, the very underrated The Twelve Chairs, the godlike Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, even the end of the seventies trickledown of High Anxiety and Silent Movie and History of the World Part I...all great in their own ways, with one of the best comedy stock companies ever assembled (Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars) as well as some inspired one or two time turns (Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Cleavon Little, Marty Feldman). An amazing stretch.

Then he remakes To Be Or Not To Be and it's *pleasant* and all, I guess...then Spaceballs really starts to show the cracks. After that, everything should be taken out and shot. Robin Hood: Men in Tights = PAIN.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Wait a minute, what's with the hate already for Blazing Saddles? I do agree that if things had worked out as planned and Richard Pryor had been in the lead role then things would be spectacularly fucking stellar and a half instead of really pretty damn great.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Search: The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Get Smart

Destroy: Everything else

― Chris Barrus, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Everything - Tv, Lp, and Movies - up to High Anxiety or Silent Movie (I forget which came first). From there it's very spotty up to To Be or Not to Be, worthless thereafter. "Rappin' Hitler" outdoes Eminem though. maybe.

― J Blount, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

THE NEW SHERRIFF!! he's a N(drowned out by pealing bells)!!!!

yeah "Blazing Saddles" isn't bad at all, i mean hell what about the farting scene or the bit where Mongo punches out the horse? yeah ok it's no "The Producers" or "Young Frank' tho, sure.

+ i luv "Hitler Rapp"!!!!

― unknown or illegal user, Wednesday, 24 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Ugh. Overeducated fools.

― dr daif, Wednesday, 24 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

who?

― unknown or illegal user, Wednesday, 24 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Blazing Saddles is tremendous. Young FRankenstein is better though and the Producers improves with age like a fine fine wine.

Spaceballs improves with age like a fine fine vinegar. Illustrates the problem of parodying a movie you don't actually like (or in some instances you haven't even seen).

― Pete, Wednesday, 24 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Young Frankenstein is complete classic from beginning to end and can't be beat although Blazing Saddles, Producers are both excellent. Always thought Saddles was rather overrated though.

― mms, Wednesday, 24 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Young Frankenstein - a young Teri Garr = r0x0r

― Leee, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

NZers - Blazing Saddles is on tonight, I think it's channel 2 at 11.30 pm.

― maryann, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

cool thanx, i'm there

― unknown or illegal user, Saturday, 27 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

'Blazing Saddles' was the first film I went to see at the cinema where I was underage (it was a UK 'AA' - you had to be at least 14, and I was 13, not much diff, I know, but still quite exciting.) This was in 1979 (oh god) - a revival double bill w/ 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' at our local fleapit - just before the home video market killed off such things. I'd never seen anything as outrageous as the classic campfire/farting scene before...

But, also classic for 'The Thousand Year Old Man' recordings w/Carl Reiner, Kenneth Tynan's 'New Yorker' profile of Brooks, and a fondly remembered, long late night tv interview w/ Rowland Rivron, of all ppl, where MB was on blazing improv form... so fast, clever, surprising - qualities sadly missing from most of his flicks after BZ.

― Andrew L, Sunday, 28 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

Young Frankenstein is tops with me.

Blazing Saddles is good but not as great as some make out, not seen The Producers yet, High Anxiety spasmodically funny...

Brooks jumps the shark with History Of The World - Part I.

To Be Or Not To Be is pleasant enough and Anne Bancroft is terrific.

― Ben Mott (Ben Mott), Saturday, 5 October 2002 19:29 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry fans but for me its destroy the lot

― donna (donna), Saturday, 5 October 2002 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Even 'Your Show of Shows'?

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, 5 October 2002 22:51 (twenty-two years ago)

four months pass...

The Producers is the funniest movie ever made, fact. "Mr. Bialystock, I didn't say -" "SHUT UP! I'm having a rhetorical conversation!" Genius.

― Ally (mlescaut), Sunday, 16 February 2003 04:42 (twenty-two years ago)

"Your honor, we find these men incredibly guilty."

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 16 February 2003 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Jesus...

― jm (jtm), Sunday, 16 February 2003 07:21 (twenty-two years ago)

whats the problem?

― chaki (chaki), Sunday, 16 February 2003 08:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Hahaha, I love it all! High Anxiety still cracks me up!

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Sunday, 16 February 2003 08:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Has anyoen here actually seen the stage production of The Producers? I'm curious about it.

― Ally (mlescaut), Sunday, 16 February 2003 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein," though as a child it was "Blazing Saddles" all the way (much to my mohter's horror).

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 17 February 2003 02:55 (twenty-two years ago)

There've ALWAYS been cracks in his work. He's never had any sense of structure (i.e., the Producers is pretty worthless after the play is over but keeps going). The only thing that's changed is the actors don't get as much of a chance to be funny, Gene Wilder left, and he stopped having DISDAIN for his targets. His funniest stuff comes from near-hate, and starting with "High Anxiety" and "Silent Movie" he tried to be cute rather than pissy.

Search: Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Rick Moranis in Spaceballs, Dom "WATCH! ME! FAGGOTS!" DeLuise and Madeline "I'm sorry, please forgive me. I'm just SO close to my menstrual cycle I could SCREAM" Kahn in any - especially History Of The World Part I. Mel's "High Anxiety" song, Dick Van Patten's death and Harvey Korman saying "I never liked her, she never bathed" in High Anxiety.

Destroy: That Fucker Who Played Brophy in High Anxiety, Life Stinks, The Silent Movie, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, and probably everything else.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Monday, 17 February 2003 03:11 (twenty-two years ago)

anthony has just reminded me how funny dom deluise is
in BS. those 3 words alone have had me in stitches many times.
haven't seen 'high anxiety' for donkey's years.
that whole scene in BS with the paddleballs
("give the governor harumph!") might well
be the funniest thing i've ever seen.

― piscesboy, Monday, 17 February 2003 17:54 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

Mel Brooks wants people to see his films — because he says they’re worth it
By Lynn Elber
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mel Brooks would love to see a run on the new DVD collection of eight of his gleefully manic movie comedies, including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety.
“I think people should buy 20 of them. Buy 20 and save a lot of them for Christmas presents. Who knows how many of these they make? They might be gone,” Brooks said, and not entirely in jest.
It’s not that Brooks, 79, who turned his 1968 film The Producers into a Broadway money machine, could be financially strapped. Profit isn’t the issue, he said.
“I want these movies to be seen. Nobody has seen The Twelve Chairs or Silent Movie,” he said, naming two of the hard-to-find titles in the boxed set out this week.
Brooks is especially fond of 1970’s The Twelve Chairs, based on an early 1900s novel by two writers in the new Soviet Union who “were like me — they were crazy. They were tongue-in-cheek comedy writers,” he said.
He recognized back then that the film, made in Yugoslavia for less than $1 million, was “a great indulgence, because I didn’t think anybody would go for it.” Time has proved him wrong.
“Through the years, I keep getting letters: ‘My favourite movie of all the movies you’ve done is The Twelve Chairs. Not only is it funny but it’s moving, it has heart,”’ Brooks said, reciting a typical mash note.
“You never know. You never know,” he mused.
He is certain about what helped shape his approach to comedy. As a newcomer he shared writing duties on Sid Caesar’s classic ’50s sketch series, Your Show of Shows, with other humorists destined for fame, among them Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner.
They were heavily influenced by the show’s producer, Max Liebman, Brooks recalled.
“It was like Liebman University. He taught us the best humour comes out of the human condition, out of the weakness of people, their greed, their broken promises,” he said.
“We didn’t write jokes. We wrote little stories with characters, which prepares you to write screenplays. Our sketches were mini-movies. They weren’t situation comedy, where they ride on a very thin premise, like an angry neighbour, for 30 minutes.”
If there’s a theme that connects his movies, he said, “it’s greed or love, love or greed. ... Do you want to be good or want to be rich? You can’t be both.”
The jacket of the DVD set is decorated not with critical praise but with snippets of his movie dialogue.
There’s “What a dramatic airport” from High Anxiety; “I hate people I don’t like” from The Twelve Chairs and “How womantic” from Blazing Saddles, which Brooks aficionados will know to pronounce with an overheated Marlene Dietrich accent.
Other films in the collection are Robin Hood: Men in Tights, To Be or Not to Be and History of the World Part I.
Reviewers rarely had kind words for his parodies of film genres including Hitchcock thrillers, Westerns and disaster dramas. The Producers, for instance, about two sad sacks trying to swindle investors by staging a musical with Hitler as the hero, was panned by one critic as “an almost flawless triumph of bad taste, unredeemed by wit or style.”
(The Zero Mostel-Gene Wilder film is excluded from the DVD set because it’s to be released along with last year’s musical version, based on the stage play and starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, Brooks said.)
If critics didn’t appreciate Brooks and his singular, sometimes sophomoric work, his target audience did.
“When we did Young Frankenstein, we knew we could get the college crowd. They loved the Mary Shelley novel,” Brooks said. “If you didn’t get the references, you couldn’t enjoy my movies.”
The dramas produced by his company, including The Elephant Man and 84 Charing Cross Road, were better received.
There’s an inevitable sadness when Brooks talks about two of the DVDs, To Be or Not to Be and Silent Movie, that starred his wife, Anne Bancroft. The Oscar-winning actress (The Miracle Worker) died last year at age 73.
“Anne was never in better form than when she played the Polish actress” in To Be or Not to Be, Brooks said. “She was great.”
Her death “is not only my heartbreaking, truly heartbreaking personal loss,” Brooks said of his wife of four decades, “but also to the world of theatre and film, it’s a great loss. We’re talking about a very talented, creative, gifted person.”
Noting that their son has made him a grandfather, Brooks added: “So we’re OK. We’re going on.”
Brooks isn’t slacking off professionally. He’s working on a stage version of Young Frankenstein, writing the words and music as he did for The Producers.
There’s one exception: Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ on the Ritz, memorably performed in the 1974 film by Peter Boyle as a monster in formal wear, will be part of the Broadway play, Brooks said.
He finally brought critics around with the stage version of The Producers, which was named best musical in 2001 by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle and won a record 12 Tonys.
Can lightning strike again with the new play?
“There’s no lightning,” Brooks replied. “There’s blood, sweat and tears. There’s a good idea and there’s 18 months of due diligence, hard work, day and night.”

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 14:16 (nineteen years ago)

I'm with him on The Twelve Chairs, certainly up there with the other early films. We'd probably disagree that everything he did after High Anxiety was a waste. OK, I quit after Spaceballs, but surely I didn't miss anything.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 14:34 (nineteen years ago)

To Be or Not to Be is fantastic.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

Oh maaan, TH, not after "Sweet Georgia Brown"! See the '42 original.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 14:50 (nineteen years ago)

Brooks is especially fond of 1970’s The Twelve Chairs, based on an early 1900s novel by two writers in the new Soviet Union who “were like me — they were crazy. They were tongue-in-cheek comedy writers,” he said.
He recognized back then that the film, made in Yugoslavia for less than $1 million, was “a great indulgence, because I didn’t think anybody would go for it.” Time has proved him wrong.
“Through the years, I keep getting letters: ‘My favourite movie of all the movies you’ve done is The Twelve Chairs. Not only is it funny but it’s moving, it has heart,”’ Brooks said, reciting a typical mash note.
“You never know. You never know,” he mused.

Wise words. Frank Langella kills.

"Let's just say that I am very much in lust with you."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:02 (nineteen years ago)

Hold on, I just noticed this:

He’s working on a stage version of Young Frankenstein, writing the words and music as he did for The Producers.
There’s one exception: Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ on the Ritz, memorably performed in the 1974 film by Peter Boyle as a monster in formal wear, will be part of the Broadway play, Brooks said.

Neat about "Puttin' on the Ritz," but a full musical? Hmmm.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:08 (nineteen years ago)

“When we did Young Frankenstein, we knew we could get the college crowd. They loved the Mary Shelley novel,” Brooks said. “If you didn’t get the references, you couldn’t enjoy my movies.”

Yeah Mel, that's why my 6th-grade class ate it up. Big Woolstonecraft fans. (also, Broadway musical of YF = impending disaster)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:09 (nineteen years ago)

TBONTB is still a lot of fun, though. What was Life Stinks like?

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:09 (nineteen years ago)

I'm curious about that too. I remember wanting to see it and my dad talked me out of it. Fucking killjoy.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:11 (nineteen years ago)

Oh man, thank your dad. That movie was horrible.

― The Yellow Kid, Wednesday, 5 April 2006 17:38 (nineteen years ago)

Dr. M I have seen the 1942 original of To Be or Not to Be, and it's good too! Yay!

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 17:48 (nineteen years ago)

I'm going to look for a proper Father's Day card to express that...

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

That Mel, he's no Jack Benny. I think his filmography began its rendezvous with doom when he started casting himself in the leads.

Have you ever seen his v.o./improv animation The Critic? And as cited above, The 2000 Year Old Man album box set, some of the funniest stuff of which is 2000yo-unrelated... Tax expert: "I write off the entire country of Romania -- I send them socks, I send them oldtime magazines." Also his impression of Cary Grant's voice as heard by a fetus in the womb...

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:03 (nineteen years ago)

Have you ever seen his v.o./improv animation The Critic?

Brooks was on the Critic? which episode?

i liked him a lot in Curb.

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Thursday, 6 April 2006 09:29 (nineteen years ago)

It's a different The Critic.

FIlm Forum showed it before the Producers. There was someone in the audience who laughed at EVERYTHING Brooks said.

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Thursday, 6 April 2006 11:21 (nineteen years ago)

That could've been me! "Ohhhh, dat looks like sumtin..."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 6 April 2006 13:38 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Casting announced for the Young Frankenstein Broadway musical, with Megan Mullally the required TV star in the Kahn role. I never thought The Producers would be a smash, but this seems a much less natural fit.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

Hell yeah, Andrea Martin from SCTV as Frau Blucher

― kingfish, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

heh, I totally missed that! I saw her in Oklahoma! fairly recently.

Still, this is not gonna be in black-and-white. (I assume the set design might go that way tho.)

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

four months pass...

Ben Brantley gave the Young Frankenstein musical its banner quote: "I laughed three times."

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 9 November 2007 15:29 (seventeen years ago)

six months pass...

i have had the inquisition song from history of the world part 1 in my head all morning for some reason. CLASSIC

― bell_labs, Wednesday, 28 May 2008 14:06 (seventeen years ago)

well, mostly for the Jackie Mason lines.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 May 2008 14:07 (seventeen years ago)

Skipping 123 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

yeah the plots of his movies are mostly just getting from this joke to that joke, I remember thinking a lot as a kid about how I loved his movies mostly because unlike other comedies they were more than just two dudes talking to each other for 90 minutes

― frogbs, Friday, 13 June 2025 03:53 (two weeks ago)

But some kids enjoy that kind of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUaXI4jU88

― birdistheword, Friday, 13 June 2025 04:10 (two weeks ago)

We watched Spaceballs in a group setting a couple weeks back and I still loved some of the gags. Seeing it on a 4k UHD disc lets one see a lot more jokes that the art department put in, also the realization that Stephen Tobolowsky has a brief role as the Spaceball officer who lambasts his crew for catching their stunt doubles.

I never noticed how the entire Nostromo crew in the diner is wearing almost one-to-one recreations of the costumes from Alien, including the hats, Harry Dean Stanton’s Hawaiian shirt under a flight jacket, and Yaphet Kotto’s handkerchief as headband.

Also, in the mid-section of the Eagle 5, you can see a Space Invaders pinball game that had a legally distinct Xenomorph knock-off on the back glass art.

Rick Moranis totally carries the film on his back, with George Wyner helping, and John Candy isn’t given enough to do.

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Friday, 13 June 2025 05:40 (two weeks ago)

movie totally holds up imo. it actually works as a movie. not every joke lands of course but so what. so many do.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 13 June 2025 10:05 (two weeks ago)

I watched this movie as a kid before I'd even watched a Star War, loved it. OTOH, I gave up on Spaceballs the animated series after 5 minutes, just an obvious suckfest

― Vinnie, Friday, 13 June 2025 10:19 (two weeks ago)

Sorry for the blunt judgements here, but these are my takes on his films:

The Producers (1967) - Perfect
The Twelve Chairs (1970) - Haven't seen
Blazing Saddles (1974) - Perfect
Young Frankenstein (1974) - Perfect
Silent Movie (1976) Haven't seen
High Anxiety (1977) Haven't seen
History of the World, Part I (1981) Meh
Spaceballs (1987) Bad
Life Stinks (1991) Haven't seen
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) Bad
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) Bad

― can't complain, mustn't grumble, melancholy apple c (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 13 June 2025 10:48 (two weeks ago)

Silent Movie is a good idea that doesn't really come off. High Anxiety is funny.

― Blake the Messenger (Tom D.), Friday, 13 June 2025 11:35 (two weeks ago)

Twelve Chairs rules. “EPILEPSY!”

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 13 June 2025 12:45 (two weeks ago)

It's the writers from Pokémon Detective Pikachu, which iirc people liked? That's one of those movies that feels like it was released in a parallel dimension that I could only barely glimpse through a quantum haze. I assume it made a billion dollars.

Anyway, the scroll trailer is cute and made me chuckle a little. I kind of wish that was it. I mean, stick around Mel, you are a national treasure, but History of the World, Part II had a pretty stacked cast and ...

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 June 2025 12:58 (two weeks ago)

I thought Silent Movie was at least as funny as Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, but I haven't seen it since I was like 10.

Even as an 80s kid--albeit one of the very few who wasn't all that into Star Wars--I knew that Spaceballs was second rate Brooks at the very least.

― cryptosicko, Friday, 13 June 2025 13:15 (two weeks ago)

I watched Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and The Producers with at least one of my kids, but I never got around to Spaceballs with them. Even though I think it would have potentially resonated the most, I also feared being let down by a rewatch so many years later. Kind of like my generation and, I dunno, The Goonies, or the way slightly subsequent generations (apparently) revere Space Jam or Hook. Movies not really built to last but perhaps touchstones for the last of the catch-as-catch-can home video kids.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 June 2025 13:21 (two weeks ago)

idk I love The Goonies.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 June 2025 13:34 (two weeks ago)

Me too! But you and I are iirc the same age, so we are the bullseye for that one.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 June 2025 13:52 (two weeks ago)

Spaceballs holds up last time I checked.

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Friday, 13 June 2025 14:11 (two weeks ago)

Goonies still works.

― Cow_Art, Friday, 13 June 2025 14:18 (two weeks ago)

i didn't grow up with goonies and found it extremely annoying when i finally saw it a few years ago

i watched spaceballs on repeat from ages eight to eleven. incapable of viewing it objectively

― ivy., Friday, 13 June 2025 14:19 (two weeks ago)

The complaint I hear (and I understand) is about the kids yelling on top of each other. I found them an endearing bunch. Robert Davi and Anne Ramsey steal the film. I quote her all the time ("You like TONGUE?").

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 13 June 2025 14:28 (two weeks ago)

the kids yelling on top of each other. I found them an endearing bunch.

In other words, kids in a nutshell.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 June 2025 15:20 (two weeks ago)

Life Stinks isn't a great film, but it's not bad either. Given some of the nastier reviews it got (see Gene Siskel) I would say it's very underrated, and FWIW, it's a rare case of him making something that isn't a parody of a genre or another film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apasYYh6nEA

― birdistheword, Friday, 13 June 2025 16:35 (two weeks ago)

ha tu ha tu skimadeebingbong boom ha tu

― Neanderthal, Friday, 13 June 2025 16:52 (two weeks ago)

“I’m surrounded by assholes” is a good enough bit that the rest of the film could be a black screen for 90 minutes and it would still be fine. It’s “good enough”, as Donald Winnicott would say.. My kid loves the bit where Mel’s butt gets teleported backwards.

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 13 June 2025 19:40 (two weeks ago)

I have fond memories of Life stinks but I don’t think I’ve seen it it 30 years or more.

― Ed, Friday, 13 June 2025 20:52 (two weeks ago)

Please, please, don't make a fuss! I'm just plain Yogurt!

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 15 June 2025 16:42 (two weeks ago)

To those of you who say this movie is bad, watch it again with an open mind and love in your heart.. And keep firing, assholes!

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 15 June 2025 16:43 (two weeks ago)

"So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph - because good is dumb!"

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, 15 June 2025 16:44 (two weeks ago)

the Michael Winslow microphone gag is my favorite. but what lives in my head is "what's the matter, Colonel Sanders? Chicken?

― omar little, Sunday, 15 June 2025 17:52 (two weeks ago)

My friends and I quote Helmet's awesome pseudo-Jamaican patois often. "I can't BEA-LEEVE you fell for da oldest trick in da BOOK! What's WITH you, mahn, come ON!"

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 15 June 2025 18:18 (two weeks ago)

we ain’t found shit!

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Sunday, 15 June 2025 19:09 (two weeks ago)

you idiots! you’ve captured their stunt doubles!

― gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Sunday, 15 June 2025 19:10 (two weeks ago)

I like it when people swear with gusto in his movies.

“Your majesty, you look like the piss boy!”

“And you look like a bucket of SHIT!”

― birdistheword, Sunday, 15 June 2025 20:09 (two weeks ago)

When I repeatedly watched Spaceballs as a kid, it was the edited-for-TV version. Lots of lines changed, the most notable of which was every instance of "asshole" getting replaced with "moron" in that famous scene. I got so used to it that the real lines sounded weird when I saw the unedited version as an adult. Seems to support the argument that nostalgia drives a lot of people's likes

― Vinnie, Sunday, 15 June 2025 20:28 (two weeks ago)

That was actually the movie I learned about tv edits from as a kid.

I went to my mother to complain that something was wrong with the movie but couldn't say the word they were supposed to be saying instead of moron

― Neanderthal, Monday, 16 June 2025 04:44 (two weeks ago)

so this was back in the vhs days, but i found this out way after the fact that my mom would rent movies, watch them, and then recut them for the kids. whatever cut of robin hood, or spaceballs was probably my mom's edit! i only found this out after watching the original austin powers movie and realizing numerous scenes were waaaay bluer/hadn't seen.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Monday, 16 June 2025 07:09 (two weeks ago)

What?? Your mom had a video editing machine?

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 16 June 2025 09:50 (two weeks ago)

2 VHS recorders maybe? play on one and only record the clean parts on the second?

― StanM, Monday, 16 June 2025 09:53 (two weeks ago)

xxpost ha, your mom wasn't working at that rogue Utah library (or wherever) that once got in trouble for doing this, was she?

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 16 June 2025 13:14 (two weeks ago)

RELEASE THE MOM CUT

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 16 June 2025 14:41 (two weeks ago)

mom performed multiple assholectomies

― StanM, Monday, 16 June 2025 14:52 (two weeks ago)

I legit have a Spaceballs tattoo, bonkers to me that anyone could consider it anything except an absolute classic

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Monday, 23 June 2025 14:08 (one week ago)

(Tattoo in question is of the dancing alien in the diner scene at the end)

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Monday, 23 June 2025 14:08 (one week ago)

We watched this with the kid recently. It doesn't hold up at all.

Blazing Saddles, however, is still great.

― Cow_Art, Thursday, June 12, 2025 11:05 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I'm with you on this. I LOVED SB so much when I was a kid but I watched it a few years ago and I had to turn it off. Should have left it to my memories. Parts will always be classic but it was painful to sit through and I love Mel. He and Anne B were regular customers in my parents' restaurant in the 1970s. There's a facebook post in a group I'm in about the area and people sharing their stories about M. General consensus is that he was delightful and kind. It would have been so disappointing to hear otherwise.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Monday, 23 June 2025 14:56 (one week ago)

So crazy that the film that I consider beyond the pale (given the more offensive racial jokes) is the one that some people like better. I don’t think I could watch Blazing Saddles today— whereas Spaceballs remains hilarious

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Monday, 23 June 2025 15:26 (one week ago)

BS has held up much better than spaceballs

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 23 June 2025 15:31 (one week ago)

xpost - I'm not happy about feeling this way! I wanted to still love it but I just couldn't get past about 30 mins in.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Monday, 23 June 2025 15:37 (one week ago)

I do love that you have the dancing alien though. Top hat, cane, and all?

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Monday, 23 June 2025 15:39 (one week ago)

PIC PLEASE

― Cow_Art, Monday, 23 June 2025 16:00 (one week ago)

https://ia600904.us.archive.org/31/items/img-5436_202506/IMG_5436.jpeg

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Monday, 23 June 2025 16:23 (one week ago)

Love that

― Neanderthal, Monday, 23 June 2025 16:31 (one week ago)

If you were to string together all the funniest bits without caring about plot, I don't think the work would suffer at all.
― birdistheword, Friday, 13 June 2025 03:39 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's exactly what happened with "Young Frankenstein" - the "full" version didn't go over with test screenings, even though they really enjoyed making it. So, they did a version which was only the jokes, and found out that it totally worked!

Some of the "removed scenes" are on the DVD as "extras", I did watch one "reading the will" and it was long and was very dull. So, correct idea!

― Mark G, Tuesday, 24 June 2025 13:36 (six days ago)

happy 99th birthday!

― StanM, Saturday, 28 June 2025 21:34 (two days ago)

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