Fin: Happy 50th birthday, 'Blazing Saddles'!

Also, the disgrace of Enty Lawyer, Nikki Haley on SNL, a fake Disney rumor, and more in this week’s notes column

Image: Fathom Events

Mel Brooks’ 1974 comedy classic Blazing Saddles marked its 50th anniversary this week. I wrote about it for JTA. In the piece, I made an effort to not just re-write all the other things I’ve said about Blazing Saddles over the years. And I appreciate all the kind feedback about the piece.

“That movie could never be made today,” of course, is one of my most longstanding pet peeves, especially when it comes to this movie in particular (the acronym- TMCNBMT.) It’s so ingrained into the discussion of Blazing Saddles that while I was working on the piece at my local Starbucks last week, I ran into my rabbi, and when I told him what I was writing, “that could never be made today” was the first thing out of his mouth. It’s a rabbi joke that Mel Brooks himself would probably appreciate. 

Blazing Saddles has not been canceled, in any possible sense of what “canceled” means. No one wants to cancel it. The idea of the movie being canceled censored or suppressed is completely theoretical and hypothetical, and that idea has been out there for almost a decade. Breitbart ran a piece called “10 Reasons to Believe the Left Will Eventually Ban ‘Blazing Saddles,’ and that was in 2014; almost ten years later, Blazing Saddles remains blessedly un-banned. 

The film remains unusually easy to access for something released in 1974, as it’s available on three different subscription streaming services in the U.S. (Netflix, Max, and Paramount+), plus every VOD channel and far-from-rare repertory showings. A two-night theatrical rerelease is set for later this year, as is a documentary about Gene Wilder in which Mel Brooks himself is interviewed and tells lots of priceless (if oft-told-before) stories about the making of Blazing Saddles. 

The absolute closest thing in recent years to a Blazing Saddles rebuke — and to be clear, it wasn’t even that — was the intro, by TCM’s Jacqueline Stewart, that the streaming service Max added to the film during the post-George Floyd moment in 2020, before presenting the film itself entirely as is. 

That intro (it’s not a “disclaimer” or, God forbid, a “trigger warning”) is still on Max, but guess what: It’s three minutes long, and most of that time is taken up by praise of the film and a summarizing of the plot. And also, here’s a little secret: If you don’t want to watch the intro, you can fast-forward through it. Or go get a snack. Or watch the movie on Netflix or Paramount+ instead of Max. When I went to re-watch Blazing Saddles last week, before I wrote the piece, I searched through the Roku menu, clicked on Max, and it went straight to the start of the movie. 

So I was a bit amused this week when Christian Toto, one of the leading conservative film critics, ran a piece on his site called “Max Adds Trigger Warning to ‘Blazing Saddles’: Cancel Culture finally comes for Mel Brooks' blistering satire on racism.” This was about… the intro that Max already added, in 2020! 

Did Toto not watch the intro, either now or when it was first added three and a half years ago? How can he not realize that this is the same thing everyone freaked out about in 2020? Because when you’re a right-wing film critic, “they’re about to cancel Blazing Saddles” is like 50 percent of the beat! 

And finally, speaking of the Max intro, actor James Woods posted the following on the anniversary day: 

Literally every word of that is wrong. Jacqueline Stewart is not a “nitwit”; she is a respected academic and film theorist. There’s no “ranting,” and in fact the intro praises the film more than not. Racism is, in fact, a major subject of the film, and “the libs,” almost unanimously, love the film. And I’m yet to hear anyone articulate why such an intro would “ruin” the film in any way.

You know… morons.