LOBO TO ME

On the weekend of Our Nation's 250th anniversary, Your Humble Narrator once again had the honor to introduce this week's edition of Reel West Sundays at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and lead the post-movie discussion. The selection was...

Rio Lobo (1970)--In the last film that Howard Hawks directed, John Wayne plays a Union army colonel in charge of moving a shipment of gold at the end of the Civil War. Confederate raiders rob the train, and after the war ends, The Duke goes west to get even with the traitors among his men who betrayed the mission.

This was the third Hawks western starring Wayne in just over a decade, after Rio Bravo in 1959 and El Dorado in 1966, all written or co-written by Leigh Brackett. But the similarities run deeper than that; the three films seem almost like loose remakes of each other. All three feature The Duke and his allies guarding a prisoner in a besieged jailhouse from corrupt forces who would like to free him. There are other devices that pop up almost obsessively--prisoner exchanges, dynamite used as a weapon--and all three feature a crotchety old sidekick and a plucky young sidekick; in Rio Lobo the youngster is the lively Christopher Mitchum as "Tuscarora" and the oldster is Jack Elam, having a high time as Tuscarora's maniacally giggling father.

The glamour comes from Wayne's hunky second lead, the Mexican star Jorge Rivera as the leader of the raiders, and from Jennifer O'Neill, one year away from fame in Summer of '42, who looks every inch the Cover Girl model she was. She rocks her leather pants and feels very 20th Century, as do her female co-stars Susan Dosamantes and Sherry Lansing; they come across more like the women in a Beach Party movie. But however anachronistic, they do follow in the Hawks tradition of self-directing, non-subservient women.

Rio Lobo is the least of this odd trio of films, maybe because the seige part doesn't start until the homestretch of the film. Until then it feels a bit aimlessly structured and rambling. But it's still pretty entertaining; Wayne is at his most likable and the movie is full of terrific, reliable supporting players including, among others, David Huddleston, Mike Henry, Victor French, Robert Donner and even a glimpse of George Plimpton, of all people, among the heavies.

ONE SADDLE AFTER ANOTHER

Last week Your Humble Narrator had the huge honor to introduce a showing of one of my very favorite movies, the Mel Brooks classic Blazing Saddles...

...at Western Spirit: Scottsdale's Museum of the West, and to lead the post-movie discussion. I'm delighted to say it seemed to go over great; the surprisingly large audience that turned out on a Thursday afternoon to watch a movie from 1974 laughed hard and left happy. Admittedly, a large majority of the crowd, based on a show of hands, had already seen it.

Here are the notes I prepared for my intro:

The danger in discussing Blazing Saddles with people who have never seen it is that of overselling it. It doesn't need to be taken as anything but a very silly, strange and surreal low-comedy send-up of Western movies, especially of the "socially conscious" 50s-era sort like Broken Arrow and Johnny Guitar, with dashes of other classics like Destry Rides Again. The jokes are TV sketch comedy in style, heavy-handed and brash, at times almost childlike. Even the potty-mouth profanities and obscenities, scandalous at the time, and the racial epithets--far more scandalous nowadays--have the quality of adolescent showing off.

But I love the film, because of its heart. It's not as confident and well-made a piece cinema as the next Brooks film, Young Frankenstein, which came out later that same year. But great as Young Frankenstein is, i think the more ragged Blazing Saddles is funnier, and more moving, because it engages with racial conflicts that are painfully perennial in American society. These jokes were as relevant in 1974 as they would have been in 1874, and they're still infuriatingly relevant to our time. The freewheeling use of epithets can be hard on the contemporary ear, and today's audiences may also squirm at the gay stereotypes near the end. But while I'm not remotely comparing the stature of Blazing Saddles to that of Huckleberry Finn, the two works have this much in common: they never use those words for any reason other than to make racists look idiotic.

Finally I would like to mention that the film is full of wonderful acting. Brooks has said that Cleavon Little wasn't his first choice the hero Bart; he wanted Richard Pryor, who worked on the screenplay. But great as Pryor would likely have been, Little's warmth and openhearted cheeriness is irresistible. The supporting players, from Harvey Korman's sneering villain Hedley Lamarr to Brooks himself as the befuddled Governor to Alex Karras as the eloquent Mongo to Slim Pickens with his hilariously aggrieved line readings to the great David Huddleston, who memorably enacts the exact moment when a lifelong bigot finally gets tired and gives up on racism.

But two members of the cast are transcendent: Gene Wilder gives one of the most relaxed and lovable expressions of his persona, that peerless combination of gentleness and strangled volatility. And Madeleine Khan is angelic as the Dietrich-esque chanteuse Lilli von Schtupp; her marvelous number "I'm Tired" may be the high-water mark of her career. And now that I've thoroughly oversold it, here, from Warner Brothers in 1974, is Blazing Saddles.

I would also note that a middle-aged guy in the audience, alluding to my mention of the uncomfortable--though obviously affectionate--gay stereotypes in the film, dismissed the concern with "Nah, I'm gay and I love them."

KING DAVID

RIP to the wonderful David Huddleston, passed on at 85…

One of my all-time favorite character actors, the portly, imposing Huddleston had a tinge of shadiness when he played good guys, and was oddly lovable when he played bad guys. His acerbic line readings as cranky town father Olsen Johnson in Blazing Saddles are standards in the Moorhead family, especially his conciliatory “Aw, prairie shit” at the moment he at last overcomes his racism.

He’ll be remembered, rightly, for that role, and as the title character in The Big Lebowski, and as Kevin’s grandfather on The Wonder Years, and as a gruffly honorable Republican senator on The West Wing, and also, alas, for seeming somehow miscast in the title role of 1985’s Santa Claus—The Movie. He ought to be more remembered for his supporting turn in Ted Kotcheff’s fascinating, neglected 1974 western Billy Two Hats, as the marksman whose gabbiness wears on the patience of sheriff Jack Warden as the two of them stalk outlaws Gregory Peck and Desi Arnaz, Jr.