Most of us would have seen Some Like it Hot, the classic 1959 comedic American movie. In 2000, it was voted by the American Film Institute as #1 on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies. The final scene is an iconic moment in cinema.
As the story goes, director Billy Wilder did not like that final line, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” They recorded it in the original take with plans to change it when they found a better line. No alternative was found so it remained. Billy Wilder was shocked when this moment got the loudest laughs of the whole movie from audiences.
In 1974, Mel Brooks broke many conventions with his ground breaking Blazing Saddles. This movie was a wild romp in the Wild West that parodied the genre and the socio-political atmosphere of the time. The latter almost caused the movie to be shelved. America was in turmoil with the civil rights movement. Malcolm X had been assassinated under a decade before and Martin Luthur King had also been only six years earlier to the release of the film. Marxist revolutionary group the Black Panther Party was at it’s peak in the late 1960’s with a membership of approximately 2000. The group’s original mission was to patrol African American neighbourhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. They evolved into wanting the arming of all African Americans, the release of all African Americans from jail, and the payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. The organisation also operated chapters in several major American cities. Racial tension was at a high in America and here came Mel Brooks with a movie that looked at racism straight in the eye and joked at it.
The executives at Warner Brothers told Mel Brooks that his movie cannot be released because it would offend African Americans and cause a national riot. Brooks believed in his creation and made a bargain with the bosses. He told them that as there are many African Americans on the maintenance staff, a private screening should be done with them and their families to see their reaction and that would determine the outcome of the picture. Well, there was riot…riots of laughter from the black audience. They were literally rolling in the aisles. Realising that despite the racial climate, the African Americans laughed heartily. The movie was then released, becoming a huge success and a classic of American cinema.
I look at these two stories and think of us in advertising where the creative has to be approved by a chain gang of individuals who assume to know what the response would be from our “audience.” We all know of one time or another where a concept was shelved for fear of offending a sector of our society or when an idea if fixed and fixed and fixed to get it just right. I can only wonder if some of those concepts thrown into the garbage by consensus of the chain gang, were actually unrealised gems.
