Mel Brooks is to comedy what air is to mammals: Essential.

From stage to radio to television to film, Brooks’s zany brand of bonkers is responsible for more snickers, snorts, and guffaws than perhaps anyone in entertainment.

With EGOT-winning credits dating back eight decades, there are gems a-plenty, but according to Brooks, none rank higher than his masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

"It’s the funniest movie, I think, by far. No matter what the AFI list says,” explains Brooks. “Five should be the next number. One to four should be Blazing Saddles.”

'Blazing Saddles.' (Warner Bros.) More



(Warner Bros.)

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, shame on you. Stop reading and go indulge. It’s so much more than a hilarious joke-a-second spoof of Westerns, it’s also a scathing indictment on the idiocy of racial prejudice. It’s the rare film that manages to be both highbrow and lowbrow at the same time. And on its own terms.

"They can’t make that movie today because everybody’s so politically correct. You know, the NAACP would stop a great movie that would do such a great service to black people because of the N-word," says Brooks. "You’ve got to really examine these things and see what’s right and what’s wrong. Politically correct is absolutely wrong. Because it inhibits the freedom of thought. I’m so lucky that they weren’t so strong then and that the people that let things happen on the screen weren’t so powerful then. I was very lucky."

With a new 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition dropping this week, we got Brooks on the horn to talk all things Blazing Saddles. In his inimitably frenetic style, Brooks recounted how Richard Pryor gave the filmmaker license to use the N-word, even though he couldn’t get Pryor cast; how Gene Wilder stepped in to save the film; and why Blazing Saddles should be considered the single greatest comedy of all-time.

[Related: How Sid Caesar Changed Comedy: 7 Geniuses He Unleashed]

Brooks can’t actually explain how Blazing Saddles, a film unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, first arrived in his mind.

A lot of things arrive in my head that I don’t want them to arrive in my head. I have portals and doors, and I have security guards. The front of my brain’s saying, “Wait a minute. Let me see your pass.” But you know, you’re alive, you can’t stop them. They come floating in and you know, it was usually full-blown.

But it all began with Andrew Bergman’s rough outline.

Andrew Bergman wrote this thing, had this very simple idea. It was like hip talk — 1974 talk and expressions — happening in 1874 in the Old West. And it immediately just jumped into my heart and I went crazy.

Though Brooks hadn’t worked with a writing staff since Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows ended in 1954, Brooks felt the rewrite needed that kind of energy.

I knew I should look at this kind of like a gang comedy. I got the right gang together, and I told them at the beginning of writing it, I said, “Look, this is never going to get made. This is so crazy. This is a hundred years before it’s time, it’ll never get made.” So I said, “Let’s just say and do everything. Any crazy thoughts we have.” I had a big sign on the wall: “Please do not write a polite script.” That was the banner on the wall.



After breaking normal protocol and hiring the original writer Bergman, Brooks looked to an old friend from the comedy club circuit.

The next guy I grabbed was Richard Pryor so I could use the N-word, you know, and have it blessed by a truly bright black guy.