One of the most rewarding pleasures of movies is seeing one with friends and then chatting about it when the lights come up. That’s just what Piedmont’s Flix Fest, which meets on the second Thursday of each month, offers: a great movie in a comfortable setting, and then a lively discussion of it afterward.
January’s Flix Fest offering is Mel Brooks’s wild, goofy, go-for-broke comedy, Blazing Saddles, in which Brooks deconstructs (or should I say destructs?) the Western genre.
Written and directed by Brooks, from a script on which Richard Pryor collaborated, the movie gets its juice from some of the outrageous politics that powered “The Producers” to surprise success. In the 1974 film, sweet-faced but canny railroad worker Bart (Cleavon Little) becomes the first Black sheriff of Rock Ridge, a frontier town about to be deep-sixed in order to make way for a new railroad. Initially, the townspeople don’t take to their new lawman, but they warm to him when they realize that Bart and his perpetually tiddly gunfighter friend (Gene Wilder) are the only defense against a wave of thugs sent to rid the town of its population.
There is no ear of corn that writer/director Brooks won’t shuck in order to win laughs, and he’s especially lucky to have Madeline Kahn on hand. Her hilarious Marlene Dietrich imitation is worth the price of admission. Harvey Korman and Slim Pickens are in the cast, too. (Korman’s character is named Le Petomane, and if you want some laughs in advance, Google “Le Petomane”.)
“Blazing Saddles” will be screened on Jan. 8, at 1:00 p.m. Sponsored by the Rec Department, the event takes place at 801 Magnolia Avenue on the second Thursday of each month. Doors will open at 12:45. The event is free and open to anyone over 18 years of age.
Participants are invited on a drop-in basis, though registration with the PRD is encouraged. (Sign up HERE.) Everyone is welcome to bring snacks or lunch.
The next movie in the Piedmont series is the Italian classic “Cinema Paradiso”. It will be shown on Feb. 13.
Might be worth a content warning for the now-unacceptable racial language throughout. I love this movie, but people need to know that they’re facing deeply offensive language. The ‘over 18 only’ is insufficient. There are many adult friends that I would not invite to this event. Especially in Piedmont.