We’re at the beginning of the summer of 2025 and I’m continuing the fractured phrase: Hooray for Hollyweird! Most of us love movies and I enjoy recommending what you should watch on any given day. So, Hooray for Hollyweird … and for today’s recommendation, June 28, 2025, is the day to give 99 cheers to Mel Brooks! The most cheers for “Blazing Saddles” among his comedies, which earlier this year had its 51st anniversary and you need to watch it today in honor of its creator.
As if Mel needs a “Hooray!” from me, I do want to take a moment and thank him for his genius; for his personality; and for all the entertainment he’s brought to so many people across the entire globe. Thanks, Mel! Happy birthday! Oh, and if you see him today, remember that his birth name is Melvin James Kaminsky and that he was born in Brooklyn!
As for “Blazing Saddles,” it is, in my opinion, the best of American comedy that has ever appeared on the big screen; it has a philosophical mission; and, most importantly, it pisses people off.
The politically correct folks (now it’s “woke”) go through several stages if they watch this film for the first time today: their underwear gets in a wad; they wet their pants, thereby soaking their wadded underwear; they need an ambulance because watching and listening to “Blazing Saddles” brings on all the symptoms of a stroke or heart attack and all that while they’re trying to find dry undies; and finally they fall into a depressed state in soggy underwear since they know they’ll never understand it or appreciate it as does all intelligent and cultured folk.
Of course, you need to enjoy: bad language (especially “that word”); farts around a campfire (the first audible rips ever on the big screen); a little smokin’ of the weed (remember, the sheriff is “cool”); an interracial union; a Native American speaking Yiddish (Brooks as another character); a horse gets punched (a studio executive called for cutting this out of the film as well as the farts); gay men filming the “French Mistake” get into a fistfight with cowboys; and, as is the whole point of the film, mocking the ignorance of society and its crooked politicians.
The basic plot of “Blazing Saddles” is that a small town sits to where the rich want to run a railroad (they’ve encountered quicksand nearby and need a new route). So, to scare off – or, better yet, piss off – the townsfolk, the stupid governor (played by Brooks) and his evil sidekick (played to perfection by Harvey Corman) sends a black man (Clevon Little) to be the sheriff (and he winds up with his own sidekick in the form of Gene Wilder) and “protect” the town.
It all goes wrong for the bad guys and the end plays out across a Hollywood movie lot!
My favorite piece of trivia about “Blazing Saddles” isn’t that the late Richard Pryor was a co-writer of all the “good stuff” (as he put it in one interview), but that Mr. Conservative Cowboy himself, John Wayne, saw Brooks in the studio commissary and said something like, “I hear you’re making a Western where they say, ‘Blow it out your ass.’” Brooks said, yes, and would you like to be in it. After reading the screenplay, The Duke told Mel, “Naw, I can’t do a movie like that, but I’ll be first in line to see it!”
So, think of Mr. Brooks today as he celebrates his 99th. You? Watch “Blazing Saddles” … we’re in a streaming day and you can easily find it … and then you’ll definitely say … “Hooray for Hollyweird!”
- CLICK here … to read my review of “Blazing Saddles”
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