WonkTV: (Early) Cocktail Hour With Writer David Avallone!
Mimosas are also fine.
Writer/director David Avallone is a very smart, talented guy who’s currently writing some funny comic books featuring Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. He joined me recently to discuss the wonderful Cassandra Peterson, classic comedy, and scoff at the losers who claim “wokeness” would’ve cancelled Blazing Saddles .
We had so much fun, in fact, that this is just Part One of our two-part discussion. (Part Two drops next week.)
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OMG, my childhood dream was to be a spy whose cover was that she was an actress.
"scoff at the losers who claim “wokeness” would’ve cancelled Blazing Saddles."
This claim is ridiculous because everyone knows what it is the person making it is trying to say. The argument itself is a euphemism. They want to say "using the N word now wouldn't be allowed", which implies they missed the entire point of its use in the film to begin with. It implies they missed the satire. It implies they find the film funny simply for using that word.
The reason you couldn't make Blazing Saddles now is because, barring the odd anomaly, Westerns have been a dead form for decades. The parody of the form would no longer resonate. The references, from the whole character based on Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again, to the joke about Jewish actors only having been allowed to play Native Americans, to the very plot itself, would no longer mean anything to the majority of an audience. How many casual cinema goers nowadays know who Randolph Scott was? How many have seen Destry Rides Again or know the song from it? How many will get why Lili Von Shtupp is German? It's satire. Satire dates very quickly. It's why Gulliver's Travels is considered a kids' book and the full edition comes with hundreds of footnotes explaining all the jokes.