#131. 'Blazing Paws of Saddles'
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This bonus grab-bag episode centers on Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, the computer-animated kids' film JVL discovered is essentially a beat-for-beat remake of Blazing Saddles, swapping in cats-versus-dogs speciesism for the original's racial satire and relocating the action from the Old West to samurai-inflected Japan. JVL walks Sonny and Vic through just how shameless the lift is — right down to a "pawn in the game of life" gag standing in for Mongo and a "good to be the shogun" line echoing Mel Brooks's "good to be the king" — and reports that the marketing conspicuously avoided ever mentioning Blazing Saddles for fear of sending audiences to the far superior original. That segues into an admiring recap of the real Blazing Saddles itself — its fifty-jokes-per-page density, its enormous commercial success (the tenth movie ever to gross $100 million), and its place in Mel Brooks's run of hits alongside Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part I — punctuated by JVL's confession that he has never, not once, found Gene Wilder funny, a sentiment Sonny seconds. The episode opens with Vic recapping a Connecticut beach-traffic weekend before JVL recounts taking G-Money to an empty AMC screening and then touring local comic shops, riffing with Sonny and Vic on how Magic, Pokémon, Warhammer, and Funko Pop merchandise — not comics — now keep those stores solvent. It closes on G-Money's own verdict, delivered the morning after: unprompted, he told JVL that on reflection Paws of Fury "wasn't that good" — the first time in his life he's walked back a movie he sat through.
From the show notes
Kind of a grab bag bonus, but we had fun.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends. Gentlemen, how are we happy? Happy Monday. I have to tell you, Connecticut was wonderful. And how's the traffic? Oh, my gosh, that was a bear. Everybody, you know, everybody goes to the beaches in the summer. I don't know if you know about that. So this week, we're talking about I was gonna say blazing saddles that really it's we're talking about blazing saddles. The Mel Brooks is classic, but also this movie that JVL saw recently. I was going to say it was Paw Patrol, but it's not. What is it called, JVL?
JVL00:01:01Paws of Fury, The Legend of Hank. And I believe it is an epic bomb. P-A-W-S, by the way.
Sonny00:01:09Yeah, it's bad. It's not doing well.
JVL00:01:11It's $4 million or something.
Sonny00:01:14Yeah, it is. Nobody's going to see it.
JVL00:01:16Is this a cartoon or computer animated?
Sonny00:01:19Computer animated.
JVL00:01:20Computer animated starring Michael Cera and Mel Brooks and a million other. Really? Not important. What's important is that somebody at Nickelodeon decided, boy, you know what? Blazing Saddles. That was a hell of a movie. I really love that thing. What if we did it again, but animated, and it's a kid's film? Okay.
Vic00:01:48Someone said, yeah, sure, let's do this. Tell us about this movie, JVL. Are the characters dogs?
JVL00:01:55The characters are all cats with one dog, one dog. And so in Blazing Saddles, for people who may not remember Blazing Saddles, Blazing Saddles is a movie which absolutely could not possibly be made today. No, no. Because the central, so the setup for Blazing Saddles were in the old west. There is no real setup because it's just an excuse to do 50 jokes per page. And it is a Mel Brooks production. There are like five writers. The writers were all clearly in a room together shouting, just trying to get as many jokes out as possible. Including Richard Pryor. Including Richard Pryor, although he doesn't star in it, but he's one of the writers. Anyway, the idea is we're in the old west and a town is going to have a railroad come through. It's the property is going to become very valuable, but nobody knows that. The local baddie decides he wants to drive everybody out of the town so that he can go. Hedley Lamont Lamar and the people in the town asked the governor to send them a sheriff to stop them. And anyway, the point is that the bad guy has to send the sheriff, but he doesn't want to send the sheriff. So he tries to figure out what is the worst possible sheriff I can send them. And so he decides an African-American gentleman. And so a huge part. I mean, the main funny thing about it is the idea that. Uh, this African-American gentleman has been sent to protect these horribly racist people. Hijinks ensue. And they really do. And, uh, you know, you have Robert Ridgely as, as an executioner. He's an executioner. He's an executioner. Cleveland Little. Cleveland Little, of course. And he's shirtless and kind of maybe into S&M. And you have the jokes about Mongo. Mongo is pulling in Game of Life.
Vic00:03:53The great Alex Karras, the football, the ex football. And then later on, uh, from Webster and all of the, the, you know, the, those Madeline
JVL00:04:02Kahn, it's just all the Mel Brooks regulars. Yeah. They're all in it. And Gene Wilder's in it, who I'm sorry. I've never found funny. Never once. What? I've never once in my life found a Gene Wilder funny. You're not alone in that opinion. A lot of people say that, um, genuine flight before him. And I'm sure, I'm sure he is really funny, but for me, none of it ever worked. Not once.
Sonny00:04:23He's never gotten a single laugh from me.
JVL00:04:25And not the man with the invisible shoe or whatever the hell that moving and not, not Willy Wonka with the red young Frankenstein Frankenstein. No. Anyway, the point is this movie is a beat for beat remake of it, except they don't want to do the racism. No. So the P the, the townspeople, everybody is a cat and the, the African-American gentleman is a dog. Ah, so it's, and so that is how they get. Through all of the insane racism is it's just speciesism with the cats who all hate dogs.
Vic00:05:01Ha ha.
Sonny00:05:02It's like Zootopia.
Vic00:05:03Is there a, so is there a scene where, uh, the, like, uh, the, the cat, uh, the cat who speaks gibberish, uh, spots, uh, the sheriff coming from a distance and wants to say that the sheriff is a dog, but every time he says dog, the clock tower gongs. Yes.
JVL00:05:21Oh, come on. No, I'm not kidding you. Yeah. There is, there is the Mongo character whose name is Mongo. Uh, I think, no, his name, his name is like a hunt or something. And he's, he's, he says, well, maybe it is Mongo. I don't know. I'll die.
Vic00:05:39But they sent him as a sort of the, the tough, but he said, yeah, he's the, he says, you
JVL00:05:43know, it was a pawn in the game of life. There was a, there was a scene in which he's talking about, you know, breaking the fourth wall even more, which is actually something blazing saddles does. It was a great ending where the Mel Brooks, his character says, it's good to be the, cause he's, we're vaguely in samurai Japan type stuff instead of the old West. And so he says, it's good to be the show gun, right? Get it. Oh, Mel Brooks says that it's good to be the king, right? Yeah. Which is not from that. That's not right. That's what I'm saying. That's from the history of the world. Right. Yeah. Uh, it, I just, I look at this and I can't understand. For the life of me, how it got made and, you know, like the original blazing saddles, this is 50 jokes per page of script.
Vic00:06:34And it seems it must've been a very easy, um, screenwriting, uh, a script writing process since you're just copying. It's just copying. It's just barely translated. Even since Mel Brooks is a voice, do you think they just said, yeah, sure. And then that's how it happened. I don't know. Otherwise it's. I mean, it's, it, this is where they say, no, it's not derivative. It's an homage.
JVL00:06:57No, it's, it's literally derivative. Like it was conceived as a remake and then they only realized after they started, they were like, oh, we can't say this in the advertiser. This is, there's been pieces written about this, that, you know, they decided they can't say anywhere that it's based on it because then you have to like pay people and no, no, not because you have to pay people because they didn't want anybody going, hold on. I haven't seen blazing saddles in a while. Let me queue that up. I was like, oh God, no, you know, which by the way, blazing saddles was such a hit. An enormous hit. Yeah. It became only the 10th movie in the history of Hollywood to make a hundred million dollars. Wow. That came, uh, I think it's 78. Did that come before young Frankenstein?
Vic00:07:43I'm not sure. I don't know. Because that's where his, all the hits came out in a row for him after the producers. And then, uh, well, I'm sure Jon Podhoretz is yelling at us now for this. Uh, and then I think it was blazing saddles and then probably, um, young Frankenstein or vice versa. And then after that was high anxiety, which was his homage to Hitchcock. Uh, and then of course, history of the world, which was a huge production as well. Uh, so, uh, I hope it was a short movie JVL.
JVL00:08:10It was boy. In fact, they, they, they, this is, they joke multiple times that the movie is only 85 minutes. You mean in the movie, in the movie, they joke about how the movie is only 85 minutes. It is so short that they had to run an interminable short before it to pad out because otherwise parents would have rioted because we paid $14 to have our kids not talk for 90 minutes. Yeah, right. And instead, uh, we're out of here really fast. What do you, I have to deal with my child again. Uh, why, why you, why did you not entertain them for our agreed upon time?
Sonny00:08:51Did you, did you go to an AMC to watch this?
JVL00:08:54We did, we did go to an AMC. Were there lots of other parents with children? That's all it was because there's nothing out. So until we get league of super pets next weekend, not only are we going to, we bought a league of super pets comic book today at the new, the new comic shop that we, uh, we went and hunted down today.
Sonny00:09:17Do you have a, do you have a regular comic shop now?
JVL00:09:20We're auditioning. We have now been to four local, there's so many comic workshops up here. That's great. Uh, we've, we have been to the fourth of the comic shops that are all within a 12 minute drive of where we are. Uh, we like this one the best so far. I am going to take G money to, uh, Jay and silent Bob's stash house or whatever the Kevin Smith is, cuz that's not, it's like 30 minutes away. Um, I think that'll be sort of fun.
Sonny00:09:49What is that in red bank, red hook? Where, where's that?
JVL00:09:51Yeah. Red bank, red bank, I think. Uh, and, uh, we, uh, we, we visited a place that has a lot of mature comics. Uh, yeah. Careful, which and, uh, when we walked in clear, they have not had a younger reader there in a while. And the, the clerk saw me with G money. He was like, oh, you may, why don't you come over to this part of the store? Over here. We got a, we got a very nice children's rack, right? Here. And it's like two shelves of kids.
Vic00:10:24Don't venture, don't venture to the left or to the right.
JVL00:10:26And he's like, I want to look over there and see what the new releases are. And I was like, I don't know, buddy, that's like just a spinner rack with
Sonny00:10:33like 20 year old Archie digest, you know, we picked up, God help me.
JVL00:10:38We picked up Scooby-Doo meets Batman.
Sonny00:10:42There you go. Wow.
JVL00:10:43Which is the Batman family and the Scooby-Doo family solving mysteries together where there is that might in it. Yeah. Uh, well it's, it's one of these, it's a trade paperback. So he might be by page 90. I don't know, but, uh, we've reached the point where G money, like reads the comic books by himself now. I don't have to like read to him anymore. Great. That's just lovely. When we're watching, uh, watching Godzilla versus King Kong, I was, you know, reading out the subtitles for me, dad, stop, I can read, read subtitles. Oh, no.
Vic00:11:15Um, in the comic book shop, are they, uh, are there also role-playing games happening? Like, you know, what's the one in false church, Sonny, the one, the victory is at victory com is called victory comics. The one that's off of, uh, of, uh, it's either Lee or broad street. I'm not sure. And you go in and there's the comic book section and then you go around the back. Gaming is gaming. And it was settlers. No, not probably not settlers of war hammer, but also, uh, magic. The magic, magic, your old game, magic, the gathering. Yeah.
JVL00:11:50The, uh. So one of the places we've been to is much heavier on gaming than it was on comics. Uh, all of them, every comic book shop I've been to is very heavy on magic and Pokemon cards and the fun co pop, which are these little tiny vinyl figurines, which are all collectible crazes and my sense in talking with the owners is that. Those three product lines have kept the comic book shops alive over the course of the last decade and that without them, none of these shops would still be in business.
Sonny00:12:31Yeah. I mean, even by, by the time I had stopped going to my local comic book store in like 2003, 2004, uh, in Stafford, Virginia, even at that point, it was like. Pokemon tournaments, magic tournaments, and Warhammer. That was like another people, people love the Warhammer shit. Um, and it was, but yeah, comic books is like comic books are like the seventh or eighth, most important economic, uh, outlet of any comic book shop at this point, I think.
JVL00:13:03Yeah.
Sonny00:13:03Well, they're fun. Go is interesting. Funko Funko just bought Mondo the company now.
JVL00:13:11So what else do they do other than the pop figurines?
Sonny00:13:15I mean, I think that's, that's, that's like, I mean, I think they also do some apparel and stuff, but like Funko. Dolls are like an enormous, enormous, huge business because it just looks like,
Vic00:13:26uh, okay, it's there, you know, they're like, uh, yeah, but they're like beanie
JVL00:13:31babies in the, the very controlled scarcity of them, I think, where they, they will make one for a short run. And then I think that once they're done, they won't do it again or they'll do it in a repaint and so there is a high collectible component to it. Uh, but you know, what's funny is just as a matter of like running one of these stores and stocking these things, the pops in the, uh, card games are much, much easier because they require so much less spout, uh, shelf space, whereas comic books, because you have to display them, uh, basically, I mean, they're not eight by 15, but you know, they're, they're eight, nine by 11, but they're, you've got to have the covers facing out. Two people and that just, you know, just the new releases alone every week, just eats up so many linear feet of shelf space where you can stock, you know, what? 15 pops in the same shelf space as a single comic book or something. Uh, and the cards are, yeah. And the cards are, you know, and, and plus they just more and newer and all that anyway.
?00:14:45Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:14:46It's been great. So the, the kids love the movie. Uh, no, uh, the kids, the kids, the theater, this theater was dead with the kids. There's very little, and even G who was super excited to see this after we left, he was laughing at the jokes that we had already seen in the trailer. Uh, and the next day he said to me, he said, you know, I'm really looking forward to league of super pets because now that I think about it, Paul's fury, wasn't that good. This is the first time in his life he has ever said to me that a movie that we sat through in the theater, yeah, actually on retrospect, wasn't very good. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. It's fine.
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