Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder had a truly incredible 1974. It is rare enough that someone makes a comedy that stands the test of time as one of the greatest films in history, regardless of genre classification. They made two. Amazingly, "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" were both released in the same year, and I would consider "Young Frankenstein" to be the funniest film ever made, with "Blazing Saddles" not too far behind it. These two films, along with Brooks and Wilder's 1968 Oscar-winning breakout "The Producers," show two comedy kindred spirits operating at a high level. Each one brings out the best in each other, and I wish it didn't stop with just those three movies.
Well, it was almost just two movies. For as simpatico as those two comic geniuses were at the time, Gene Wilder was not originally going to play The Waco Kid (known to his friends as Jim). In fact,...
Well, it was almost just two movies. For as simpatico as those two comic geniuses were at the time, Gene Wilder was not originally going to play The Waco Kid (known to his friends as Jim). In fact,...
- 9/12/2022
- by Mike Shutt
- Slash Film
"It's a good thing you're in New York and I'm in Los Angeles then," Mel Brooks says, before howling with laughter. He's just been informed that, as preparation for getting the 90-year-old filmmaker on the phone, the interviewer he's speaking to has consumed a large amount of black coffee and baked beans — the same combination that fuels the notorious, and extremely noisy campfire sequence in Blazing Saddles. "Actually, three thousand miles between us might not be enough — it depends on the coffee. There are easier ways to get in the mood to talk to me,...
- 8/31/2016
- Rollingstone.com
Thanksgiving. The real inauguration of the holiday season in the United States, and in homes, countries, points and vast places all around the globe, seems to begin here. If all goes according to plan, each year we enter into it primed to consider and acknowledge the aspects of our lives that make it worth living, our blessings, if you will. And so it is this year, even when things are not necessarily following the path to peace and happiness, in cities like Paris or Beirut or Chicago, or in many homes where sickness or poverty or other circumstances beyond individual control color our day-to-day experience outside the lines of a Rockwell-esque representation of holiday bliss.
And so it also has been for my family, a stressful month-long prelude to Thanksgiving Day precipitated by the simple act of changing bedsheets. One wrong move ended up meaning excruciating back pain, eventual back...
And so it also has been for my family, a stressful month-long prelude to Thanksgiving Day precipitated by the simple act of changing bedsheets. One wrong move ended up meaning excruciating back pain, eventual back...
- 11/26/2015
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
By Lee Pfeiffer
Mel Brooks' 1968 comedy classic The Producers was originally deemed unreleasable because of its tasteless content. It sat on a shelf for two years before finally seeing the light of day. When the movie hit theaters, critics praised it, Brooks won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and helped launch a major career for him in feature films. By 1974, tastelessness was not a barrier for Brooks' cinematic projects. Blazing Saddles, his insane send-up of the Western movie genre, came along at exactly the right time. Ten years earlier, the film would have been impossible to make. However, pop culture had matured light years between the mid-1960s and 1970s and so did audience's tolerance of envelope-pushing humor. Indeed, by the time Brooks brought this movie to the screen Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice had already shown the humorous side of swinging and Robert Altman's M*A*S...
Mel Brooks' 1968 comedy classic The Producers was originally deemed unreleasable because of its tasteless content. It sat on a shelf for two years before finally seeing the light of day. When the movie hit theaters, critics praised it, Brooks won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and helped launch a major career for him in feature films. By 1974, tastelessness was not a barrier for Brooks' cinematic projects. Blazing Saddles, his insane send-up of the Western movie genre, came along at exactly the right time. Ten years earlier, the film would have been impossible to make. However, pop culture had matured light years between the mid-1960s and 1970s and so did audience's tolerance of envelope-pushing humor. Indeed, by the time Brooks brought this movie to the screen Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice had already shown the humorous side of swinging and Robert Altman's M*A*S...
- 9/2/2014
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Coming off a successful career in television and two smaller pictures (The Producers in 1968 and The Twelve Chairs in 1970), Mel Brooks took a chance on a western comedy. This was before the days of Airplane! and The Naked Gun, decades before Scary Movie, and a generation of time (and quality) from Meet the Spartans and A Haunted House. Brooks broke all sorts of social and decency taboos with Blazing Saddles, from the subversive racial commentary to the orchestra of cowboy farts around a campfire. Blazing Saddles turns 40 this year, which makes it as good of a time as any to look back on the production with Mel Brooks himself. The commentary on the original Blu-ray release comes from the initial DVD release back in the late 1990s, but it still has a lot to say about this comedy classic. Blazing Saddles (1974) Commentator: Mel Brooks (co-writer/director) 1. The title of the film went through various names. The...
- 5/7/2014
- by Kevin Carr
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Blu-ray Review
Blazing Saddles
Directed by: Mel Brooks
Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens
Running Time: 1 hr 33 mins
Rating: R
Own “Blazing Saddles” 40th Anniversary on Blu-ray 5/6!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0
Plot (courtesy of Warner Bros. Home Video): Blazing Saddles stars Cleavon Little as an unlikely sheriff in the town of Rock Ridge, Harvey Korman as the villain, Madeline Kahn as a Marlene Dietrich-style chanteuse, Gene Wilder as the wacko Waco Kid and Brooks himself as a dimwitted politico. Once the lunatic film gets started, logic is lost in a blizzard of gags, jokes, quips, puns and outrageous assaults upon good taste or any taste at all. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards– Supporting Actress for Kahn, Best Editing and Best Song.
Movie: Right now there is only one Western comedy worth talking about, and it is Blazing Saddles. Yes, this...
Blazing Saddles
Directed by: Mel Brooks
Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens
Running Time: 1 hr 33 mins
Rating: R
Own “Blazing Saddles” 40th Anniversary on Blu-ray 5/6!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0
Plot (courtesy of Warner Bros. Home Video): Blazing Saddles stars Cleavon Little as an unlikely sheriff in the town of Rock Ridge, Harvey Korman as the villain, Madeline Kahn as a Marlene Dietrich-style chanteuse, Gene Wilder as the wacko Waco Kid and Brooks himself as a dimwitted politico. Once the lunatic film gets started, logic is lost in a blizzard of gags, jokes, quips, puns and outrageous assaults upon good taste or any taste at all. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards– Supporting Actress for Kahn, Best Editing and Best Song.
Movie: Right now there is only one Western comedy worth talking about, and it is Blazing Saddles. Yes, this...
- 5/6/2014
- by Jeff Bayer
- The Scorecard Review
I don’t own Blazing Saddles. I know. That’s insane. Don’t worry, that will change May 6.
Here is the news release from Warner Bros.:
On May 6, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) will commemorate the four-decade birthday of the great comedy classic Blazing Saddles, by releasing a new 40th Anniversary Blu-ray highlighted by a new featurette Blaze of Glory: Mel Brooks’ Wild, Wild West in which Mel Brooks reflects on his own movie-making chutzpah, Blazing Saddles‘ lasting cultural impact on audiences of all generations, and alongside co-stars Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn, proves why his film is, without a doubt, the funniest and most outrageous film ever made. Blazing Saddles 40th Anniversary Bu-ray will also include 10 quotable art cards with funny quotes and images from the film, plus vintage extra content including Brooks’ commentary, cast reunion documentary, and “Black Bart,” the 1975 television pilot inspired by the movie.
Here is the news release from Warner Bros.:
On May 6, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) will commemorate the four-decade birthday of the great comedy classic Blazing Saddles, by releasing a new 40th Anniversary Blu-ray highlighted by a new featurette Blaze of Glory: Mel Brooks’ Wild, Wild West in which Mel Brooks reflects on his own movie-making chutzpah, Blazing Saddles‘ lasting cultural impact on audiences of all generations, and alongside co-stars Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn, proves why his film is, without a doubt, the funniest and most outrageous film ever made. Blazing Saddles 40th Anniversary Bu-ray will also include 10 quotable art cards with funny quotes and images from the film, plus vintage extra content including Brooks’ commentary, cast reunion documentary, and “Black Bart,” the 1975 television pilot inspired by the movie.
- 2/11/2014
- by Jeff Bayer
- The Scorecard Review
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