Line #46 Headscratchers/BlazingSaddles


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2	What was the meaning behind the Creator/CecilBDeMille joke?
3	-> Waco Kid: "I must have killed more men than Creator/CecilBDeMille."
4	* Since Creator/CecilBDeMille 'killed' so many people in his movies, his 'kill-count' must be very high. These days, someone might say, "I've killed more people than Creator/QuentinTarantino [has killed in his movies]!"
5	* There's an old joke: [=DeMille=] is planning an epic battle scene with tens of thousands of extras. The producer demands, "How are we going to pay all those people?" CB replies, "We won't have to. We'll use real bullets."
6	* Creator/CecilBDeMille made a lot of huge-scale epic movies, often with battle scenes involving hundreds of participants at a time. Ergo, lots of people 'died' in them.
7	* [=DeMille=] made epic movies long before Hollywood had proper health & safety standards, and he was famous for insisting that actors and extras do dangerous stunts. To be fair, he'd often try the stunt himself to prove it could be done, but it was still unreasonable of him to demand that Creator/VictorMature should wrestle a lion or Paulette Goddard should risk getting seriously burned. He was also a vengeful {{Jerkass}}, so this is Mel Brooks getting a bit of revenge on behalf of anyone who was ever injured on a [=DeMille=] set.
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9	What's the significance of the Yes and No on the cow's ass? Is there a "Complete Annotated Brooks" you can pick up somewhere?
10	* It's a joke on old school buses, which had "Yes" on the side which you could pass on. At least that's what my dad told me.
11	** Not just old school buses. Half the trucks I see on the road these days have Yes/No or some variation ("Pass/Fail", "Live/Die", and so on) on them -- and if you're wondering why, it's because trucks make wide right turns, and if you try to slide up past them on the right at a corner, you may find yourself plowing right into the side of the cab.
12	*** Trucks make wide turns in either direction. The problem with trying to pass a truck on the right is that trucks have a much larger blind spot (or no-zone) on the right because the driver's seat is on the left side of the cab.
13	** And here, I'd been assuming, for my entire life, that it was some kind of sex joke that contemporary audiences would have gotten. Huh.
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15	When Sheriff Bart clapped his hands together to trap the chess piece, he opened them and looked surprised that it wasn't between them. Shouldn't he have been able to ''feel'' that it wasn't between them as soon as he clapped them together? I know, RuleOfFunny.
16	* ...Nope. Have you ever been so sure that there was a bug on you that you could feel it moving around? You might know there's no bug, but you think there is so strongly that you can feel it. Since it would be so improbable for the Waco Kid to succeed in having taken it (and him not having seen it) it would be no surprise that his brain would simulate the chess piece being in his hand because it couldn't comprehend any other situation. The Waco Kid's reflexes simply exist outside the bounds of what we perceive to be reality.
17	* Maybe the Waco Kid missed the first time and actually snatched it after he opened his hands.
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19	* I have this nagging feeling everyone gets this but me, but what ''is'' the "Baby, I'm not from Havana?" line about?
20	** You're not the first to ask. According to an answers column on Yahoo!, it's from an old stereotype that Cubans can... go a lot of times without needing a break.
21	** This Troper always assumed it was a reference to something long and brown: a cigar
22	** First answer is the correct one. See the "Cuban Superman" scene in ''Film/TheGodfatherPartII''.
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24	* Sitting Bull is an AlterKocker because...?
25	** Because Mel Brooks [[RuleOfFunny thought it would be funny]].
26	*** And as it says on the main page, in old days, "dirty white" (Jews and other Eastern Europeans) actors were frequently cast as Native Americans who would speak in their native tongue.
27	*** There's also a history of Jewish-American comedians using Yiddish when depicting other ethnic peoples speaking foreign languages, as in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTOEEuiE-y4 here]].
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29	* Which hand does the Waco Kid shoot with? In his conversation with Bart after their chess game, he said he shot with his shaky left hand. But later we see him shooting with his right hand.
30	** His right hand. He used to shoot with his left until he got the DTs.
31	** Two possibilities. One is that he actually used to be better, and we're ''still'' not seeing him at his best, but like some gunfighters he practiced enough with his off hand (in case something happened to his good hand) to be able to use it pretty well too. (Think of Inigo wanting to use his off-hand to fight the Man In Black.) The other possibility is that he used to shoot with his left ''because'' it was his off hand, and if you wanted to shoot on the move you learned to guide the horse with your good hand and shoot with your off hand. Now that his off-hand is bad he's gone to shooting with his good one.
32	** He shoots with both, as shown in the scene where he shoots the guns out of Lyle and his gang's hands.
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34	* Looking for confirmation on Hedley's "Methodists" moment when listing his army. Why did he throw in Methodists?
35	** A bit of GeniusBonus as back in the bad old days Methodists were some of the few people who would minister to those in prison and people of color without reservation, and were also anti-slavery, both in the US and UK. This didn't do their faith's reputation much good among the white majority in many states, hence Hedley tacked them onto his list of scumbags.
36	** RuleOfFunny. This troper had seen ''Film/BlazingSaddles'' over a hundred times over forty years and not picked up that line--it always sounded like he was just roaring something incomprehensible. When I watched it with a group with the subtitles and finally realized how Hedley Lamar ended his rant, I laughed so hard I nearly broke my chair. [[DontExplainTheJoke Some things are just damned funny.]]
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38	* Why does the line for Hedley's 'recruitment scene' include Mexican ''banditos'', hillbillies, UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons, Arabs, bikers, and Klansmen?
39	** Simple! This is a movie shoot; all of those extras just went to the wrong set. After all, Warner Bros. was filming a movie with Hitler at the same time, so there would have to be some German soldiers around.
40	** Also ... well, honestly, imagine you're a Nazi in the 1870s American Wild West. Adolf Hitler hasn't been born yet. You've gotta make a living somehow.
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42	* When Mongo is tormenting the bar patrons by squishing them behind a piano, there's still one who's sitting out still having a drink and seemingly oblivious to Mongo's rampage. What's his deal, and why did Mongo leave him alone?
43	** Perhaps Mongo operates similarly to a T-Rex and is drawn to movement? So the other patrons panicked, tried to run, and were attacked while that one guy was smart enough to sit still.
44	** Mongo smell fear! Mongo not smell fear on drunk. Drunk only smell of sadness and regret. Mongo sad for drunk.
45	** It was crowded behind the piano, and Mongo couldn't fit the drunk in.
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47	* Why didn't Hedley just pay the people of Rock Ridge to let them build the railroad through their town? It would have been less of a hassle than throwing bandits at it and having them burn it down.
48	** Because that would mean spending a lot more money, and he's very greedy.
49	** He doesn't want the land so he can build the railroad. Railroad's coming either way. He wants the land because ''after'' it's built, the land will be worth a fortune, and he wants to own it.
50	*** As for ''why'' the land would be worth a fortune, well, the town was already in place even before the railroad came--so there has to have been a reason the town was already there. In the old West, generally that meant a nearby mine or other valuable resource. (A major water source such as a river would also qualify, but we never see anything like that in the town proper.)
51	** If he manages to take the land for himself before the railroad is built, then he can sell the parts where the railroad is to be built to the Territorial Government for whatever price he picks (which he can do easily, given how much of a dumbass the Governor is) and the rest can be used for a stop where he can then have a larger town build for his own benefit.
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53	* Why did Taggart make the posse go through the toll-booth instead of just riding around it?
54	** He knows that Lamarr "works" for the governor, and probably thought that it wasn't an option.
55	** RuleOfFunny. Taggart is too dumb to think about just going around it.
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57	* Why is Lili suddenly among The residents of Rock Ridge when they witness Taggart and the villain army burst into the fake Rock Ridge? there was no previous scene of her joining up with them.
58	** A reverse FemmeFatale, Lili was so taken in by Bart she did a HighHeelFaceTurn.
59	** She was last seen tied up by Taggart and Lamarr in her dwessing woom, and since they're incompetent morons she was able to slip the ropes and escape.
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61	* Why would the fake Rock Ridge trick even work? Even if they redirected the bad guys with the toll booth, wouldn't they realize that Rock Ridge wasn't in the same place as before?
62	** Because they are the common clay of the new West. You know...morons.
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64	* How would Lili seducing and abandoning Bart culminate in Hedley owning Rock Ridge? Seems like a MissingStepsPlan to me.
65	** Hedley's reasoning is that by having Bart fall madly in love with Lili only for her to abandon him will leave him too depressed to thwart his efforts to appropriate the town.
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67	* Where is Mongo the first time they pull the Number Six on Rock Ridge? AFAICT the first time he appears is when Lyle suggests giving the "kill the Sheriff" job to him.
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69	* How did Jim end up in jail? Which is to say, who put him there? Was he arrested by the previous sheriff and has been sleeping it off all that time or something?

Context Headscratchers / BlazingSaddles