Black Bart

I laughed at this show, mainly because I have seen many people with the same attitudes that this show harpooned. it was not as good as the movie, and would have been much better if they had stayed more with the characters of the movie, but in its own right it was not that bad. most pilots are made more to showcase the idea of the show than the show itself.

An example is Charmed. it had two pilots, the one that was made to show the studio execs and the one that aired. they were basically the same, but one was well done, and had the actors that became the well loved sisters and their companions, while the other was shot, not with the best cameras and sets, but what they could use within their budgets. the same could be said of this pilot. it would have had to be redone if it had ever gotten on air. It might have made it if Mel Brooks had had a hand in it.

Director: Robert Butler, Script: Andrew Bergman(Story), Michael Elias, Frank Shaw. Cast: Lou Gossett Jr., Steve Landesberg, Millie Slavin

Black Bart was a proposed television series spin-off from the 1974 movie blazing saddles that didn't quite get off the ground. It probably isn't as bad a many people make it out to be. The problem is that people that have seen this are constantly comparing it to blazing saddles. If one takes this show in its own context, it really is not all that bad. It will not generate the laughs of its pilot move but it does have some funny moments.

Mel Brooks had no involvement and the whole cast is different from Blazing Saddles with different character names as well(except Bart). This is to be expected since this was a proposed television show and Blazing Saddles was a feature film. I thought that Lou Gossett would be miss-cast for the part of Bart but after seeing the show I thought he was actually pretty funny. Many people will recognize Steve Landesberg from Barny Miller. He played Gossett's sidekick(similar to Jim or waco the kid-played by Gene Wilder). Millie Slavin played the part of Belle which is similar to the Lili Von Shtupp character played by Madeline Kahn.

Although not a great show by any means, it is still a good addition to the Blazing Saddled DVD and certainly worth a watch. It would have been interesting to see how this show would have evolved had it made it to prime time television.

A failed pilot from 1975 based on "Blazing Saddles" featuring Lou Gossett in the role of Black Bart, originally and much more memorably played by Cleavon Little in the movie. Vastly inferior to the film with the writers trying to replicate and failing dismally at echoing the Mel Brooks type of humor. Was recently shown as part of Trio's "Brilliant But Canceled" specials. A misnomer if there ever was one considering it was neither brilliant nor ever had the chance of getting canceled because it never made it on in the first place.

The Blazing Saddles phenomenon spun off this spin-off pilot episode which probably never made it to television in the first place. Lou Gosset revives the character of Black Bart from the Blazing Saddles film. The cast of characters has changed into a small town but none of the original players are there. Steve Landesburg played the Gene Wilder role under another name. The pilot is rarely uneventful and not very funny even though there was a laugh track there. It was film on the back lot for westerns. True, the show could have been better if there was more than Black Bart in the picture. The other cast members aren't known to me. Gosset would win an Oscar and Landesburg went on to Barney Miller. Still, I can see where they tried to capture Blazing Saddles success for television but the original cast of characters and the film itself was the allure not just the story.

With BLAZING SADDLES, Mel Brooks did to the western what Sergio Leone couldn't do... make us laugh at all the clichés and stereotypes we've been reluctantly accepting throughout the late-19th and much of the 20th Century. Not surprisingly, Black Bart was meant to capitalize on the popularity of the movie it was based upon. After all, if THE ODD COUPLE and M*A*S*H can go from being successful movies to successful TV sitcoms, so can BLAZING SADDLES, right? WRONG! I don't really mind when other actors & actresses take on famous roles, so it didn't bother me that Lou Gossett Jr. adapted the character that made Cleavon Little so famous. Gossett was actually the best part of this pilot. But when you make a series based on a movie, you should at least stick to the same characters. Steve Landesberg doesn't play as the Waco Kid, he just looked like him, drank like him, and shot like him. Lilli Von Schtupp not only got a different actress to play her, she got a different name(BELLE?!). Noble Willingham only looked like Howard Johnson(John Hillerman). It's even got a half-assed clone of Mongo.

I was going to comment on the original movie rather than this turkey of a pilot, but very few people haven't seen the movie, so there's really not much detail I can or should go into. As far as the use of racial slurs directed at Bart goes, as offensive as they are, they're appropriate from a bigoted white society, who Bart apparently always makes fools of. Too bad this potential series wasn't as good as the movie.