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Though it rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as The Wild Bunch, McCabe and Mrs Miller and the wave of revisionist westerns that came out of Hollywood in the late 60s and early 70s, Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles doesn’t need any artfully hazy Vilmos Zsigmond cinematography to upend Old West mythology. True, it is a comedy where a horse gets cold-cocked, a Native American chief (one of three characters played by Brooks) speaks Yiddish and Count Basie’s orchestra makes an appearance on the plains. Yet from the opening sequence, where Chinese immigrants and recently freed Black slaves work under...

Released on this date in 1974.

What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-going on here? I hired you people to get a bit of track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!That was railroad boss Taggart (Slim Pickens) in Blazing Saddles, which opened on February 7, 1974, a full 50 years ago next month. The Mel Brooks film would not be made today, more reason to revisit the original.The villainous Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) wants to build a railroad through the frontier town of Rock Ridge but he has a problem. “Unfortunately there is one thing standing between...

Norman Steinberg, the co-writer of the Mel Brooks-fronted comedy “Blazing Saddles” and an Emmy winner for Flip Wilson’s 1970s variety show, has died. He was 83. Deadline reported Wednesday that Steinberg’s family said he died March 15, but did not provide further details. The Post has contacted a rep for Steinberg for comment. “It’s a sad day when Norman Steinberg leaves us. From BLAZING SADDLES to MY FAVORITE YEAR, he was one of the best writers I ever worked with,” Brooks, 96, tweeted Wednesday.

Whoopi Goldberg is defending Blazing Saddles from criticism that it’s a racist movie. The backlash over the film was brought to the “Hot Topics” table following Mindy Kaling saying that The Office couldn’t be made today because the characters are too “inappropriate.”

People aren’t dumb. They’ve looked around, and they see that telling the wrong joke -- or even simply laughing at one -- is a quick way to destroy your life.Conan O’Brien did his final late night show last week, after 28 years on air. He’s stepping away at the right time. Whether you liked his comedic style or not, he really was trying to make people laugh. When was the last time you watched “The Late Show” in order to laugh? That’s a trick question — nobody who watches Stephen Colbert is laughing. Laughter is entirely beside the point; Colbert’s...

Just a few scenes that never made the movie.

It would be easy to put “Airplane!” on a no-fly list of offensive films. That would be a mistake because it demonstrates how to push boundaries in the right way.When it first crash-landed in cinemas 40 years ago, the irreverent “Airplane!” wowed critics and audiences with its fast-and-loose brand of humor. It remains one of the most consistently uproarious laughfests ever filmed, and became an instant comedy classic when it hit screens in 1980. The 40th anniversary Blu-ray reissue arrives Tuesday. In writing and directing “Airplane!,” the creative triumvirate of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker (later known as...

U.S.—Riotous crowds rushed brick and mortar stores today to pick up copies of Mel Brooks' groundbreaking comedy Blazing Saddles before it permanently goes down the memory hole due to jokes that are off-limits in today's enlightened society of love and tolerance. Hundreds of thousands of frenzied Americans charged into stores, fighting over the few copies of the movie still left on shelves. "It was mine -- I saw it first!" shouted one man as he elbow-dropped another rioter in a Best Buy. "Hand it over, ya little weasel!" The pair fought over the Blu-ray for a few minutes before the...

During a hearing in the Ohio statehouse on Tuesday, Republican state Senator Steve Huffman asked if "the colored population" is hit harder by the coronavirus because "they do not wash their hands as well as other groups." Huffman, who is a physician, raised the question during a health committee hearing on whether to declare racism a public health crisis. "My point is, I understand African Americans have a higher incidence of chronic conditions and it makes them more susceptible to death from COVID," Huffman said. "But why it doesn't make them more susceptible to just get COVID? Could it just...

LEXINGTON, Va. -- Mark Rush could not name the last movie in the past 10 years that gave him a belly laugh -- or made him snort or chuckle or laugh out loud, at least for any extended period of time. "The last side-splitting movies I saw were 'Caddyshack' or 'Blazing Saddles,'" the politics and law professor at Washington and Lee College said. "That was way too long ago." Rush and I were talking over dinner at the Red Hen, a farm-to-table restaurant that made headlines earlier this year for its unfortunate decision to refuse service to White House spokeswoman...

Before he could complete his degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, Brooks was drafted into the Army to fight during World War II. He served as a corporal in the 1104 Engineer Combat Battalion, 78th Infantry Division as a combat engineer. One of his tasks during the war was to defuse land mines, and he also fought in the Battle of the Bulge. It has been reported that when the Germans played propaganda recordings over loudspeakers, Brooks responded by setting up his own sound system and played music by Al Jolson, a Jewish musician

‘Bombshell’ tells the story of Lamarr’s double life as a Hollywood starlet and inventor Once billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” actress Hedy Lamarr is often remembered for Golden Age Hollywood hits like Samson and Delilah. But Lamarr was gifted with more than just a face for film; she had a mind for science. A new documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, spotlights Lamarr’s lesser-known legacy as an inventor. The film explores how the pretty veneer that Lamarr shrewdly used to advance her acting career ultimately trapped her in a life she found emotionally isolating and intellectually...

(CNN)Actor John Hillerman died of natural causes Thursday at his home in Houston, Texas, his publicist, Lori De Waal, said. He was 84 years old. Hillerman was best known for his Emmy Award-winning work in the long-running detective series "Magnum, P.I." The stage-trained actor first made an impression as arrogant radio show detective Simon Brimmer on the NBC revival of "Ellery Queen" in 1975. Hillerman then took on notable roles as the boss of Bonnie Franklin on the long-running CBS sitcom "One Day at a Time," and trading sarcastic quips with Betty White in the short-lived sitcom "The Betty White...

society's "stupidly politically correct" sensibilities will lead to the "death of comedy", the veteran Hollywood comedian Mel Brooks has warned. Brooks, known for his plethora of acclaimed comedy movies, said political correctness was becoming a stranglehold on comedians. "It's not good for comedy. Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks," he said. "Comedy is the lecherous little elf whispering in the king's ear, always telling the truth about human behaviour." The producer and director said that his iconic western parody Blazing Saddles could not be made in today's political climate.

FReeper fave Blazing Saddles is airing tonight on Turner Classic Movies at 10:30 p.m. EST. This FR thread from 2015 posited that Blazing Saddles could not be made today due to political correctness.Fortunately in 1974 Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Alex Karras, et al, were still free to make this comedy classic.The showing of Blazing Saddles is part of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar A to Z which started Wednesday.TCM airs films unedited, so all the jokes should be heard/seen.

Gene Wilder, star and writer of some of Hollywood’s greatest comedy classics, passed away this week at 83 years of age from complications of Alzheimer’s. He partnered with Mel Brooks for the best work both of them have done, including the original version of The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and one of my all-time favorite films, Blazing Saddles. Those films and others have long been in rotation on the movie channels and even on cable and broadcast outlets, albeit with heavy editing, but have been absent from the big screen for decades. Those who never caught Blazing Saddles on the big...

Could this movie be made today? Mel Brooks doesn't think so..... Could the kids at our universities watch it without turning into quivering masses of protoplasam?

If you’re on the fence about attending Tuesday’s Landmark Commission meeting during which they’ll discuss the fate of the maybe-maybe-not imperiled Lakewood Theater, perhaps this’ll get you there: Burton Gilliam will be sitting in the audience. So, if nothing else, you can say you attended the same Dallas City Hall meeting as the actor who appeared in Blazing Saddles, Fletch, Paper Moon, Honeymoon in Vegas, those Rodeo Ford ads and … well, the list goes on and on. This will be Gilliam’s first-ever city-government meeting in his hometown. “So this’ll be kinda fun,” says the 1956 Woodrow Wilson High School...

In an interview with Yahoo News surrounding the 40th anniversary of his comedic masterpiece "Blazing Saddles," co-writer/director Mel Brooks blasted present-day political correctness and says he was "lucky" to have made the film in the days when he still could: "They can't make that movie today because everybody's so politically correct. You know, the NAACP would stop a great movie that would do such a great service to black people because of the N-word," says Brooks. "You've got to really examine these things and see what's right and what's wrong. Politically correct is absolutely wrong. Because it inhibits the freedom...