JamesL-4

It only took one viewing of this dog, for me to say "Never again!" It's so profoundly unmemorable that I had to read other people's reactions to it before I could remember anything beyond (1) it was awful, (2) Connery should have quit while he was ahead, and (3) the film included a total gross-out bit involving faking a retinal scan through the most gruesome (not to mention horribly inefficient) means possible.

Actually, I've never understood why anybody would prefer even the best of Connery's Bond films over even the worst Moore or Dalton outings. Or Lazenby, Brosnan, or even David Niven, for that matter. I personally found Octopussy and Moonraker, among other "canonical" Bond films, to be far more entertaining than this, and probably for the very same reasons why others deprecate the Moore Bond films, namely their wry humor, and their willingness to surrender to the preposterousness of the whole basic Bond milieu.

Back when I was in high school, an off-air recording of the network television version of 1776 was part of my American History class. As well it should have been, since underlying the musical comedy is an awful lot of very careful research.

But the restored version, complete with the "Cool, Considerate Men" production number that Jack Warner had cut (at Nixon's request) from the original release, that was released on DVD for the 30th anniversary, is even better, and it ought to be required viewing not only for high school U.S. History students, but for voters, and for a joint session of the United States Congress. For this musical, in addition to being very entertaining, manages to lay bare the motivations of those who opposed Independence back in 1776, motivations that are not at all difficult to find today.

I also note that William Daniels' portrayal of John Adams on both stage and screen was so good that, without actually typecasting him in the role, it appears to have earned him the same role in a miniseries. (He also played John Quincy Adams in two other productions, and Samuel Adams in yet another). And Ken Howard also returned to the role of Thomas Jefferson in another production.

Incidentally, Daniels and Howard, along with Howard DaSilva, Roy Poole, David Ford, Emory Bass, Ralston Hill, William Duell, and Jonathan Moore, all came over from the original Broadway cast. (Notably, Star Trek's Brent Spiner played John Adams in a Broadway revival production that, to my knowledge, didn't include any of the original Broadway or film cast.)

In Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks managed to run the gamut from slapstick to refined wit (with sexual and scatological humor falling somewhere in the middle), all the while parodying everything from westerns to Looney Tunes, and ruthlessly satirizing greed, corruption, and racism. It's also quite possibly the only context in which "The N-Word" is used to strike a blow against racism.

Even the character names are gags: for example, "Lilli Von Shtupp" is named after a Yiddish sexual term, and "Governor LePetomaine" was named after a French performer whose act was based on flatulence. And of course, there's the whole town full of rather-inbred people named Johnson, and Harvey Korman's character, whose name is a reference to Hedy Lamarr.

Many have labeled the humor racist. Those who do, simply don't get it. The whole point was to show the inherent idiocy of racism: in short, to satirize it.