“A fart joke is easy.”
This may be, but executed by Mel Brooks, it can get a crowd going more than anything on view at this summer’s Paris Olympics. So was the case this past weekend at a 50th anniversary screening of his western comedy classic, “Blazing Saddles,” which played at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles and was followed by a Q&A with the 98 year-old filmmaker himself. Moderated by Brooksfilms producer Kevin Salter, Brooks dazzled and enraptured the audience with tidbits on the making of the film and stories from his colorful past. One such story involved his hard-to-believe Oscar win for his first film, “The Producers.”
“I didn’t have a speech because Stanley Kubrick was in the same category for ‘2001,’” Brooks said of being nominated for Best Original Screenplay. “There was a brilliant director called Pontecorvo who did ‘The Battle of Algiers,’ a great picture — I knew he would win — I said, ‘There’s no chance of my winning, so just go there and wear my tuxedo and enjoy the night.’ But when it came to Original Screenplay, Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles, they called, ‘Mel Brooks.’ I was petrified. I didn’t have a speech.”
Thankfully, Brooks shared, he was a good ad-libber and pulled some jokes out of his hat while accepting the award that included a touching tribute to friend and star of “The Producers,” Gene Wilder. This was at just the beginning of Wilder and Brooks’ relationship and collaboration, which would include work on “Blazing Saddles.” During the Q&A, Brooks admitted Wilder wasn’t the first choice and explained how a ploy to get John Wayne onboard didn’t work out.
“I wanted authenticity. I wanted the Waco Kid to actually have been a Western movie actor, so that he would lend a kind of authentic character to the movie. So I was at the Warner Bros. cafe and sitting four tables away was John Wayne,” Brooks said. “So I walked over and I said, ‘Mr. Wayne.’ I made a movie called ‘Blazing Saddles.’ It’s a comedy, but it has a lot of heart. There’s a great part in it that I wish you would play.’ He said, ‘OK. You know what? I know you. I saw ‘The Producers’ and I laughed my head off. You are a very funny guy. I’d love to read it.’ I said, ‘OK!’ I got very nervous. I called somebody, I said, ‘Get me a script! Get me a script! Get me a script!’ They got a script. I gave it to Wayne, he said, ‘I’ll meet you at the same place, 24 hours from now, at two o’clock, right here.’ I met him, he said, ‘I laughed my ass off, but I couldn’t make it. It’s too dirty.’”
Brooks next went to Academy-Award winning western actor Gig Young, who was cast as the Waco Kid, but whose issues with alcoholism forced him to depart the film early on. In dire straits, Brooks reached out to Wilder to fly in and save him. The actor happily obliged and the rest is history. Another actor who was happy to do anything Brooks asked of her was Madeline Kahn, who played the sultry German showgirl Lili Von Shtupp.
“When I auditioned her,” said Brooks, “I said, ‘Madeline, there’s one thing you gotta do for me: Show me your legs, hike up your skirt.’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be one of those auditions.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, I’m happily married, no. You’re imitating Marlene Dietrich with those nice stockings, you gotta straddle a chair, you gotta have legs.’ And she jumped into a chair, turned it around, hiked up her skirt, and her legs were just like Marlene Dietrich. And I said, ‘Oh god, bless you, okay.’”
Brooks went on to discuss other casting decisions, including how he almost cast Carl Reiner in the role of crooked attorney general Hedley Lamarr that would ultimately go to Harvey Korman.
“Carl was making something and he couldn’t do it and he suggested Harvey Korman. So I watched ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ and I said, ‘This guy seems great.’ So he came and he auditioned and Harvey was perfect. Harvey was just wonderful. I miss him. I had many scenes with Harvey where, not only did the crew break up, but I broke up and I had to shoot it again. It cost me a fortune cause I couldn’t get through a scene.”
Revealing details about one of the characters he played, Brooks shared how the name for his dim-witted Governor William J. Le Petomane came to be. He said to the audience at the Peacock Theater, “Le Petomane is a French word for farting. There was a guy called Le Petomane who used to sing ‘La Marseillaise’ [the French national anthem] anally.”
As if this wasn’t enough to clue you into how Brooks views politics, he also went on to describe an interaction with a Warner Bros. studio executive following what seemed like a successful screening of the film, with the audience hooting and hollering and getting up out of their seats even.
“I was on the way out of the theater and somebody grabbed the nape of my neck and took me to the manager’s office, threw me down, and he was the head of all of Warner Bros.,” said Brooks. “Ted Ashley. I was with John Calley, who was in charge of the studio, but not in charge of all of Warner Bros. This guy was the head guy. He threw me a legal pad and a Sharpie and said, ‘Write: No hitting an old lady — out. No hitting a horse — out. No farting — out.’ Why listen to anything? I would’ve had an 11-minute movie. So he left, I crumpled up his notes, threw it in the waste basket.”
In truth, Brooks admits to cutting only one portion of one scene from the film, not because anyone asked him to, but because he himself knew it was more than he needed to sell the joke. However, in reflecting on the cut, he did feel a twinge of regret.
“It’s the scene where Madeline Kahn asks the sheriff to come visit her in her dressing room and she says, ‘I’m going to change into something more comfortable, loosen your belt,’” Brooks said, reenacting the entire scene. “And she comes back and she says in the dark, [in a German accent] ‘Is it twue? Is it twue what they say about you people? How beautiful you’re built? Is it twue? [panting] Oh, it’s twue… It’s twue!’ And Clevon [who plays Sheriff Bart] says to her, ‘I don’t mean to disillusion you Miss Von Stupp, but you’re sucking on my arm.’ So I said, ‘Okay, this might be a bit too much’ and I took it out of the picture.”
It’s hard to believe the words “too much” being in Brooks’ vocabulary considering his characteristically filthy humor still being in tact to this day, but it doesn’t seem to stop him from continuing to provide huge laughs.
