I don't know why I didn't know about this sooner, but better late than never!
I saw a Facebook ad (I know!) that said "Blazing Saddles" and "Drinking Game" and I was sold! I mean I figured even if only one of the two turned out to be any good, it would still be fun.
The premise is this: a group of actors (and a narrator) do a staged reading of a film (we went for Blazing Saddles); any time one of the actors says any of a number of specified words, a bell rings and everyone (including the actors) drinks. The actors also have to drink whenever another actor says their character's name (or one of their names - plural - since a number of the actors were covering multiple roles). This is one time I will not judge someone for drinking Bud Light - I can't imagine they'd be able to keep their wits about them otherwise.
Oh, I should add that it's BYOB, which is smart considering this is a situation where you wouldn't want someone else telling you what to drink.
For a couple of dollars extra we got 'goodie bags' which had quotes from the movie on the outside and contained: a sheriff's badge, a paddle ball, a mini whoopie cushion, candy ("for Mongo") and lyrics for people to sing along to the musical numbers (though everyone in our crowd seemed to already know them by heart); oh and we got cute foam guns too.
While a staged reading of Blazing Saddles sounds like a disaster in the making, the actors were quite talented and I can say without hesitation that they did justice to a beloved classic film. Standouts for me were the guys playing Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman in the film) and Taggart (Slim Pickens' role). And the lone female cast member who played every woman in the film. The theater was small, and packed, and thanks to the weather, pretty clammy, but we can't wait to see what they're going to do next!
We were kicking ourselves for not having known about this sooner (especially because the last one they did was Ferris Bueller's Day Off), but if the organizers of these shows are reading this, they need to know that at least two other audience members I spoke to learned about it the same way I did.
All in all a fantastic and well-executed concept. read more