![\"Mel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Mel-Brooks-The-99-Year-Old-Man-Judd-Apatow-Michael-Bonfiglio-2026-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ HBO Max)<\/p>\n
Mon 2 March 2026 18:45, UK <\/p>\n
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<\/a> was ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> when it was forced to make its way past the small-screen censors before its television debut.<\/p>\n He had a sneaking suspicion that it would be butchered, and while he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n As biased as it may be, and it\u2019s 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n For half a century, it\u2019s been seared into his brain as one of his career\u2019s most unwanted memories, with the man who introduced on-camera farting<\/a> to the cinemagoing public left devastated when the sonorous sounds of the slapstick western\u2019s most famous scene were diluted to a distinct absence of flatulence.<\/p>\n \u201cI nearly fainted when I first saw Blazing Saddles on television,\u201d he ranted to the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cI said, \u2018Oh my god, they\u2019ve ravaged it with political correctness! They\u2019ve destroyed it!\u2019 In the television version, there\u2019s no farting! It\u2019s so foolish. They\u2019re sitting around the campfire, they\u2019re tilting over, and it\u2019s so obvious, and then you hear a horse neighing.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks had an inkling that after the battles he\u2019d 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\u2019t 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\u2019s hack job.<\/p>\n \u201cI went to the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild,\u201d he illustrated. \u201cI said, \u2018As writers and directors, don\u2019t we have rights? But money won. I couldn\u2019t stop it, no matter what I did. Thank god for cable. Cable plays it like it is.\u201d It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t have watched it when he knew what was coming, but he couldn\u2019t resist; Brooks had to see it for himself<\/a>, and he was aghast at the results.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ HBO Max) Mon 2 March 2026 18:45, UK You might have thought that hate-watching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,25723,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-454507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-mel-brooks","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}