Black Bart – The Buried TV Sequel to Blazing Saddles | Hacker News Reader

Black Bart – The Buried TV Sequel to Blazing Saddles

reprobatepress.com

141 pointsrbanffy25 comments

Here's the pilot, for as long as it lasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ywpyIRVH8

What a strange story. I feel as though Mel Brooks' life must have seemed as bizarre to him as some of his movies at times.

Fitting that I see this article when I'm almost done with the book Bullshit Jobs. Working on a TV series that was only made to fulfill a contractual obligation; talk about a bullshit job.

I’m still waiting for History of the World part II.

What about Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money?

I thought the sequel was supposed to be Spaceballs 3: The Search For 2?

So does this mean that somewhere in the Warner Brothers archives there are dozens of episodes of this show that nobody has ever seen?

Likely, unless they degraded and were dismissed - there is also a mountain of pilots of shows that have never seen the day.

Maybe.

As other people have mentioned, film can degrade over time, and can be destroyed via negligence or accident. Archives occasionally catch on fire, destroying old masters.

It also depends how it was produced. In the 1970s some shows were recorded directly onto tape for the sake of cost and convenience. It wasn’t uncommon for tapes to be wiped and reused to save more money, which is why a bunch of original Dr Who episodes are missing. If the show was shot on film, then it’s more likely that masters or high quality prints survived, since it’s not possible to reuse the film.

As others pointed out, film degrades over time if not carefully preserved (and there is little reason to believe they cared past giving up on Blazing Saddles 2) and videotape is sometimes reused. They may also not be completely finished past a least-plausible-effort.

"Except for the fact there was a Black Bart pilot, nothing else here is true. This was written as a joke."

https://www.facebook.com/OrmsbyCinemaInsane/posts/1015802750...

Blazing Saddles is my cancel culture canary. When they pull it off of the streaming platforms I’ll consider it a bellwether moment. I’m not defending the film, it is what it is. I find it funny that the cancel mobs haven’t discovered it. Hell, Swiss Family Robinson has a disclaimer you can’t skip on Disney+.

You do have to endure a social justice lecture before watching it, though.

I've been introducing my daughter to some vintage TV series and I often have to explain how racist, LGBTphobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic the 60's world was.

Just the 60s?

We are starting with Batman and Get Smart.

That's fine if you want to do that, but it irritates me that the network is taking it upon itself to lecture me about how the show I chose to watch is bad.

Why would anybody cancel it? For the N word? It's a period piece about racists, satire but nevertheless.

That word is increasingly believed to be inappropriate even in depictions of the slavery and Jim Crow eras that aim at historical accuracy. There was controversy over the film 12 Years a Slave using the word, for example.

>That word is increasingly believed to be inappropriate even in depictions of the slavery and Jim Crow eras

Well, those who "increasingly believe" that are wrong.

"Historical accuracy" is not an end unto itself without further consideration to any other context. One can be inappropriate while being "historically accurate". As a crass, extreme example, I would say a hypothetical movie about Sandy Hook can be "historically accurate", but be wildly inappropriate with how it portrays violence.

>I’m not defending the film, it is what it is.

What exactly needs defending?

In this day and age everything must come with a disclaimer so the polemic opportunist fire starters of the mob can't get an initial foothold.

Why Blazing Saddles, and not something like, say, Song of the South? A lot of old movies are ...problematic - I'm just curious why you selected Blazing Saddles as your standard and not anything else that might be on either side of it on a spectrum.

I would guess because Blazing Saddles is so clearly anti-racist in its actual messaging. If it gets pulled for racism it's an unambiguous case of either cognitive dissonance or uninformed judgement.

To add insult to hypothetical injury, racism is weaponized in the film by an upper-class railroad baron to divide the working poor amongst themselves so they don't unite against him. Having the film spark yet another battle along ideological lines among the less well-off of society would be weirdly poetic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com