BLAZING SADDLES
Sundance, 10:00 p.m. ET
Richard Pryor was one of the writers on this Mel Brooks 1967 comedy, and Brooks had intended for Pryor to star as his Western spoof’s racism-confronting, African-American new sheriff in town, Black Bart. But the movie studio wouldn’t insure Pryor for the film (even that early, his bouts with substance abuse were well known), so Brooks cast Cleavon Little instead. Similarly, Brooks had hired Gig Young to play Black Bart’s eventual sidekick, the alcoholic Waco Kid, but on the first day of shooting, Young went into convulsions, and then to the hospital, as part of an actual alcoholic episode – and Brooks called on Gene Wilder, who had begged for the role but been bypassed as too young, to step in and start filming the very next day. He did. And those two “replacement actors,” Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, are a large part of why Blazing Saddles is so brilliant. An even larger part: Brooks’ story and direction. In these days of Black Lives Matter, by the way, the prejudice it exposes and lampoons is not only topical – it’s so sharply pointed and wickedly handled, I’m not sure any studio would release this movie at all in 2020. Well done, Mel.