This is one of the memorable and most absurd comedy scenes in movie making history. In Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little , the newly appointed sheriff, takes himself hostage by pointing his own gun at his own head. The old woman cries,
“Somebody save the poor boy!”
To this day woke Google would probably still block and/or suppress this entire post if we printed the rest of the famous scene’s dialog here. Odds are pretty good that a reader who has seen the film will still smile.
Back in the real world, the Camptown ladies sing…
Blazing Saddles was good news and bad news for the actor. Many can’t recall Cleavon Little in any other role. Name another famous movie in which he had a role. There is one.
Yeah. It’s tough.
Most folks didn’t know that in the previous year the actor had won a Tony for the Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical.
On the other foot…
Hostage Drama
50 years ago this summer the hottest movie at the box office was Al Pacino’s Dog Day Afternoon. This was another mad, tragic, and truly absurd hostage flick – this one is based on a true story of a married man who tried to rob a bank to pay for his gay lover’s trans surgery. Hollywood loved this one.
The movie swept all the major Academy Awards that year.
My guess is that Blazing Saddles has by far more total views. Pacino was great in Dog Day Afternoon, and yet most of us would rather laugh most of the time.
We might ask,
“Which is the more important movie?”
Is this the right question? Just askin’
Political Theatre and Hostages
Throughout summer and the month of October, we’ve seen hostage dramas play themselves out in the real world.
The Hamas terrorists in Gaza aptly demonstrated that massacring innocents and taking hostages from a neighbor country with a superior military is a good way to get you and everyone around you killed.
The testimony that Hamas did manage to produce is a series of instructive, You Tube videos about how to reduce a county to a starving pile of rubble in 24 months or less.
Put another way - Hamas and its supporters displayed to us all…
How best to convince your friends to wish that you were dead.
In the real world, involuntary hostage taking almost always tends to work out this way.
On the Other Hand
Historically, voluntary hostage surrenders to provide security for future good behavior does appear to work. Hopefully, we don’t need to list the many historical examples that are pretty easy to find. Mary Queen of Scots and even Cleopatra come to mind.
Perhaps behind the scenes a bit of that is going on in the current Middle East.
Will it be difficult for the remaining Hamas leaders in Qatar to ever leave there?
Usually, this form of political agreement is more pleasant for the individual hostages. Which may be the most important point after all. There’s a famous play about that somewhere.
Sadly, when we become a form of human surety, we can be involuntarily surrendered by those who are supposed to care about us. That tends to end badly.
That may also be going on here in the US as we speak.
Political Theatre and Federal Spending
The case in point.
Most of the Democrats in the US Senate strongly believe it is a great idea to hold hostage the salaries of the far too numerous Federal union workers they usually claim to support.
The current political stance appears to be…
“You meanies. Go right ahead and fire them. We don’t care.
We will not approve the spending we already agreed too.”
Huh?
What Are They Thinking?
This WATT sounds a lot like a bad Blazing Saddles remake.
Good Luck with that.
These folks should remember the comedy’s DWTS ending never impressed the Academy.
It lacked the dramatic ending of Dog Day Afternoon.
“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
Yep. There’s yet another AI sombrero meme in here somewhere…
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