(Credits: Far Out / HBO Max)
Mon 2 March 2026 18:45, UK
You might have thought that hate-watching is a relatively new phenomenon, but similar to how his near-the-knuckle heyday saw him pushing Hollywood comedy in bold and brave new directions, Mel Brooks was ahead of the curve.
The actor, writer, director, producer, and EGOT-winning legend of the entertainment industry was eminently curious to see what would befall his consensus pick for the single funniest movie in cinema history when it was forced to make its way past the small-screen censors before its television debut.
He had a sneaking suspicion that it would be butchered, and while he wasn’t involved in the process, he nonetheless plucked up the courage to give it a watch when it made its TV premiere. Understandably, since he created the thing, he was left borderline apoplectic by how his creative vision had been tarnished.
As biased as it may be, and it’s incredibly biased for the reason mentioned above, Brooks will die on the hill that no motion picture ever made has been funnier than Blazing Saddles. Yes, there are plenty of people spanning multiple generations who’d wholeheartedly agree with him, but none of them have as much skin in the game as the guy who penned the script and directed the 1974 classic.
For half a century, it’s been seared into his brain as one of his career’s most unwanted memories, with the man who introduced on-camera farting to the cinemagoing public left devastated when the sonorous sounds of the slapstick western’s most famous scene were diluted to a distinct absence of flatulence.
“I nearly fainted when I first saw Blazing Saddles on television,” he ranted to the Los Angeles Times. “I said, ‘Oh my god, they’ve ravaged it with political correctness! They’ve destroyed it!’ In the television version, there’s no farting! It’s so foolish. They’re sitting around the campfire, they’re tilting over, and it’s so obvious, and then you hear a horse neighing.”
Brooks had an inkling that after the battles he’d faced in bringing the film to the big screen with its farts present and accounted for, those meddling television executives would feel the same. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have the leeway to state his case that Blazing Saddles was nothing without its signature air biscuits, but he did try to challenge the network’s hack job.
“I went to the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild,” he illustrated. “I said, ‘As writers and directors, don’t we have rights? But money won. I couldn’t stop it, no matter what I did. Thank god for cable. Cable plays it like it is.” It’s odd for a decorated industry veteran to be so upset about some farts, but then again, this is Mel Brooks, who ushered them into the cinematic mainstream.
Realising that there was no use crying over spilled farts, the filmmaker made his peace with the ruinous cut of the picture that played on TV. Perhaps he shouldn’t have watched it when he knew what was coming, but he couldn’t resist; Brooks had to see it for himself, and he was aghast at the results.