One of the great odd couple/buddy movie pairings in the 70’s and 80’s was Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. The two were supposed to play the two leading characters in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles in 1974, with Pryor already co-writing much of the script with Brooks. But just before filming began, Pryor backed out, and Cleavon Little was chosen to star as Bart, Rock Ridge’s first Black sheriff opposite Wilder’s Waco Kid.
Two years later, Silver Streak premiered, a murder mystery set aboard an Amtrak trip from Los Angeles to Chicago. The movie is 50 years old this year, and even though many parts have not aged well, it always struck me at the time, and even watching it a hundred times later over the years, that everyone on the train had a gun. There were handguns, pistols, shotguns, and rifles everywhere on board. There was even a conveniently placed, loaded harpoon resting against the wall at the rear of the train in a cargo car. For a journey that was supposed to be a lovely alternative to air travel and allow riders to see half the country, the train was essentially an armory on rails. That part of rail travel seems to have not changed much today as the would-be assassin Saturday night at the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the White House Correspondents Dinner, took that same route before boarding a second train on his quest to decapitate the Trump administration in the nation’s capital.
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