Warner Bros. wanted to cancel a classic scene from Blazing Saddles

Shut up, all you idiots “You couldn’t make ‘Blazing Saddles’ today”: It just so happens that Mel Brooks wasn’t able to make ‘Blazing Saddles’ in 1974. And to be fair, Brooks knew he was looking to push buttons going into making the film and boundaries, extrapolating from the anything-goes spirit of his previous comedy projects. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly As far back as 2014, Brooks admitted that his primary interest in creating his brand of cinematic mayhem was that he “just wanted to exorcise my angels and my demons.” Brooks encouraged his writers (who consisted of Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Alan Ogre, and Richard Pryor) to “go nuts” assuming that Warner Bros. would see the finished film and refuse to release it.

Although “Blazing Saddles” was eventually released to critical acclaim, becoming one of the most beloved comedies of all time, Brooks’ assumption proved justified at some point. It’s surprising that WB didn’t address multiple aspects of the movie – and in a movie that contains so many racial slurs, explicit sexual innuendos, and general irreverence, that’s impressive in itself. Instead, there was one scene in particular that irritated the studio, according to Brooks, the big break of the fourth wall during the film’s climax, which shows Western characters stumbling into a soundstage at WB, where a group of effeminate men (re: obviously They’re weirdos) rehearsing and performing a musical number. It’s one of the most clever and memorable scenes in the entire movie, and if Brooks hadn’t stuck to his guns, it might have been cut.

It’s not entirely clear from Brooks’ interview with EW whether he meant that the entire climax of “Blazing Saddles” was a point of contention for WB, or whether Warner Bros.’s send-up of classic movie musicals was a point of contention for WB. It is a problem for executives. It might make sense for executives to be concerned about the movie literally and figuratively going off the rails in the final few minutes. However, Brooks’ comments seemed to confirm that executives were more concerned about gay men performing an original song Brooks wrote called “The French Mistake.” Perhaps they felt that the director of the musical in the film, Buddy Bizarre (the character played by Dom DeLuise), was too obvious in his criticism of Busby Berkley, the director behind such classic WB musicals as “42nd Street” and “Gold Diggers of 1933.” However, when asked about the controversy, Brooks explained in his usual matter-of-fact way why the scene survived:

“It was dangerous because Warners asked me – they said I could do everything I said, but they kept saying: ‘Don’t do the gay scene. Don’t storm the walls and act out the gay scene. “You’re crossing the line there. And I said, ‘Don’t be silly. There’s always these musicals that get shot at Warner Bros. with the top hats and tails and stupid, you know, ‘It’s a good mix of cowboys and gay chorus boys.'” So I kept it all In me I’ve got the final cut.”

In fact, unlike many young directors who are at the mercy of studio executives, Brooks made sure to make the final cut on all of his images Right at the beginning of his filmmaking career. It was a smart move, and it turned out to be necessary, too. Brooks also knew even as a rookie how much studios loved to meddle. As he explained:

“I got the final cut of The Producers, and I wouldn’t be in any movie unless I got the final cut. Because I knew — even on The Producers, even with the final cut, I was having big fights with the studio. He wanted to change 100 things. “

Who knows what it was about the “French Mistake” spectacle that worried World Bank executives of the period? That they’re wary of making fun of gay men might seem odd, given all the other minorities in the movie that get made fun of, and it’s not as if Berkeley or the movie musical was any particularly popular at the time. It’s more likely that the “line” that Brooks said they crossed was the misrepresentation of the film’s characters themselves. After all, one of the genius aspects of the “Blazing Saddles” ending is how so much effort is made to remind the audience that everything they’ve just witnessed is a façade, the plight of Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little), Waco’s baby Jim (Gene Wilder) and the townspeople of Rock Ridge. They suffer from much ado about nothing. Of course, what Brooks understood about breaking the fourth wall comes from the tradition of theater pioneers like Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, as well as similar tricksters from the world of cinema like Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, and others.

The scene also puts a cap on one of the main themes of “Blazing Saddles” as well, which is that deep down, men are extremely neurotic, fallible, funny, and silly creatures. It’s a subject that is deliberately at odds with the mythology of Western cinema (particularly the American variety), and Brooks indulges in it in part because it’s contradictory, and contrast makes for good comedy. However, he’s also smart enough to know that he’s ignoring the entire Western genre and its penchant for unbridled masculinity, and the “French Mistake” number pushes that cynicism to the extreme. So maybe while CEOs can take men’s names after sexually attractive women like Hedley Lamarr, Puffy cowboyovertly racist and bigoted authority figures, and the implication in the plot that the West had not “won” but been taken over through sheer force and foolishness, perhaps a combination of breaking the film’s sense of reality with an entirely different cinematic send-up that the genre was too much for.

In the end, of course, the whole messy press of Brooks and company won out (not to mention the director’s final stipulation), and “Blazing Saddles” was able to reach theaters everywhere. To paraphrase a lyric from “French Mistake”: 50 million fans can’t be wrong.