Blazing Saddles: 12 Insider Tales from the Making of Mel Brooks' Iconic Absurdist Western

      Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, which debuted fifty years ago, remains one of the most comical films ever made.

      However, the film's production was far from simple.

      A Brief Overview

      Cleavon Little (left) and Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles. Warner Bros.

      Blazing Saddles, released in 1974, is a satirical Western centered on a Black sheriff named Black Bart (Cleavon Little) who is appointed to rescue a town with the aid of the drunken gunslinger, the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder). The movie parodies Western clichés and racial prejudice while delivering both silly and clever jokes, testing the boundaries of acceptable language in the 1970s.

      Mel Brooks directed, co-wrote, and played four roles in the film, which unexpectedly garnered three Academy Awards, became one of the top box-office successes of the 1970s, and was ranked highly on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movie comedies.

      Here are eleven anecdotes from behind the scenes of Blazing Saddles.

      Inspired by Malcolm X

      Malcolm X. Library of Congress.

      The concept for Blazing Saddles was conceived by Andrew Bergman when he was in his twenties. He named his character after Malcolm X, who later took on the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

      “I initially drafted a screenplay called Tex-X,” he shared with Creative Screenwriting in 2016. “Alan Arkin was brought on as director, and James Earl Jones was set to portray the sheriff. That plan fell apart, as often happens.

      “Eventually, I received a call asking, ‘What would you think about Mel Brooks?’ At 26, I replied, ‘I’m a huge fan of Mel Brooks.’ … We talked, and Mel expressed his enthusiasm for the idea and wanted to use it as a foundation for a Western. I thought, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s make it happen.’”

      Brooks stated in a 1975 Playboy interview: “What intrigued me were the possibilities of a contemporary Black man stepping into the traditional West. … We brought in Norman Steinberg and Alan Uger, a Jewish comedic duo, along with Richard Pryor, a uniquely imaginative Black writer. Then we turned on the tape recorder and started brainstorming. Pryor contributed Jewish jokes, while the Jews came up with Black jokes. Nine months later, we had a completed script.”

      The Blazing Saddles Writers Were Either Newcomers or in Decline

      Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles – Credit: Richard Pryor Live in Concert. Special Event Entertainment

      Upon its release in 1974, Blazing Saddles became a massive success, paving the way for other fast-paced, irreverent comedies like Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, and eventually Airplane, Top Secret, and The Naked Gun.

      However, when Brooks and his co-writers first gathered, none were highly sought after.

      In Scott Saul’s 2014 biography Becoming Richard Pryor, it was noted: “Steinberg was an inexperienced writer with no film credits; Bergman had a PhD in history and had recently failed to secure an academic position. Brooks felt washed up after the failures of The Producers and The Twelve Chairs.”

      Brooks reflected in his 2020 memoir All About Me!: “The Producers and The Twelve Chairs collectively didn’t earn me enough to buy a new car.”

      Richard Pryor Was Reinventing His Career During the Writing Phase

      Richard Pryor Live in Concert. Special Event Entertainment – Credit: Richard Pryor Live in Concert. Special Event Entertainment

      Meanwhile, Pryor was undergoing a professional renaissance.

      He was using significant amounts of cocaine after moving away from a mainstream act frequently likened to Bill Cosby’s in favor of new, direct, sometimes surreal performances that embraced his background and drew inspiration from the Black Panthers and radical figures in Berkeley, where he had recently resided.

      Blazing Saddles Was Initially Intended as 'An Esoteric Little Picture'

      Gene Wilder (left) and Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. Warner Bros. – Credit: C/O

      The writers aimed to focus on what they genuinely wished to create, without concern for mainstream appeal, according to Brooks in Playboy:

      “It was meant to be an esoteric little film. We envisioned it for two oddballs in the balcony. For radicals, movie lovers, guys who doodle on bathroom walls—my kind of audience.”

      Richard Pryor Had Some Requests

      Credit: Harper Collins

      In Scott Saul’s 2014 biography Becoming Richard Pryor, it details Pryor’s requests when he traveled from Los Angeles to New York to collaborate with Mel Brooks and his team on Blazing Saddles: train fare “and a bottle of brandy waiting for him in the writers’ room.”

      Upon his arrival at the Warner Bros. building at 666 Fifth Avenue, Saul writes, “he settled into his chair in