Silence, all you Blazing Saddles today fools: It just so happens that Mel Brooks almost didn't get to make Blazing Saddles in 1974. To be fair, Brooks knew he wanted to push some buttons when making the film and the limits, extrapolating from the anything-goes ethos of his earlier comedies. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly as of 2014, Brooks admitted that his primary interest in making his brand of cinematic anarchy was that he "just wanted to exorcise both my angels and my demons." Brooks encouraged his writers (who consisted of Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Alan Uger, and Richard Pryor) to "go crazy," assuming that Warner Bros. Pictures would see the finished film and refuse to release it.

Although Blazing Saddles was eventually released to great acclaim, becoming one of the most beloved comedy films of all time, Brooks' hunch at one point proved to be well founded. Surprisingly, WB didn't object to multiple aspects of the film - and in a film that contains numerous racial slurs, explicit sexual innuendos, and overall irreverence, that's impressive in itself. Instead, there was one scene that, according to Brooks, drew the ire of the studio: the big fourth-wall breaking during the film's climax, which features Western characters stumbling into a soundstage at a WB bar, where a group of female (re: clearly queer) men rehearse and perform a musical number. It's one of the smartest and most memorable scenes in the entire movie, and if Brooks hadn't stuck to her guns, she might have been chopped down with an axe.

It's not entirely clear from Brooks' interview with EW whether he thinks the whole "Blazing Saddles" climax was a point of contention for WB, or whether sending the classic musicals to Warner Bros. was a problem for executives. It would make some sense that the execs would be worried about the movie literally and figuratively going off the rails in the last few minutes. However, Brooks' comments seem to confirm that executives were more concerned about gay men performing an original song written by Brooks titled "The French Mistake." Perhaps they felt that the film's musical director, Buddy Bizarre (the character played by Dom DeLouise), was too obvious a dig at Busby Berkeley, the director behind classic WB musicals such as "42nd Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933". . In any case, when asked about the controversy, Brooks explained in his usual matter-of-fact manner why the scene had to remain:

"It was dangerous because I was asked by Warners - they said I can do anything you say, but they kept saying, 'Don't do the gay scene. Don't break through the walls and do the gay scene. crossing a line there.' I said, "Don't be stupid." There's always these musicals that get shot at Warner Bros. with top hats and tails and the insult, you know, "It's a good mix of cowboys and gay boys." So I kept it all.

Indeed, unlike many young directors at the mercy of studio executives, Brooks made sure to have a final cut on all of his images right at the beginning of his film career. It was a sensible move, and it turned out to be a necessary one, as Brooks was aware even as a neophyte how much studies like to interfere. As he explained:

“I got final cut on 'The Producers' and I wouldn't do any film unless I got final cut. Because I knew - even on The Producers, even with the final cut, I had big fights with the studio. "I wanted to change 100 things."

Who knows what it was about the "French Error" scene that so worried WB executives of the period? That they would be wary of making fun of gay men would seem odd, given all the other minority groups the film targets, and it's not like Berkeley or the movie musical enjoyed any particular popularity at the time. It's more likely that the "line" that Brooks said they were referring to crossing over is the skewering of the film's characters themselves. After all, one of the genius aspects of Blazing Saddles' ending is how it goes to such lengths to remind the audience that everything they've just witnessed is a facade, and the plight of Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little), Jim Wacko Kid ( Gene Wilder) and the residents of Rock Ridge are much ado about nothing. Of course, what Brooks understood about breaking the fourth wall came from the traditions of stage pioneers like Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud, as well as similar rule-breaking mavericks of the film world like Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel and others.

The scene also puts a cap on one of the main themes of Blazing Saddles, which is that deep down, men are very neurotic, flawed, obnoxious and stupid creatures. It's a theme that deliberately contradicts the mythos of the cinematic Western (especially the US variety), and Brooks indulges in it in part because it's a contrast, and contrast makes for good comedy. Still, he's smart enough to know he's sending up the entire Western genre and its penchant for unbridled machismo, and the number "French Mistake" pushes that satire to its farthest extreme. So maybe while directors could take the men to be named after women known for their sexiness like "Hadley Lamarr". bloated cowboysopenly racist and bigoted by authority and the plot's insinuation that the West was not "won" but taken over through sheer force and laziness, perhaps the combination of breaking the film's sense of reality by sending a completely different cinematography to the genre was too much for them to take .

In the end, of course, Brooks and company's full-court anarchy press (not to mention the director's final clause) prevailed, and Blazing Saddles was able to ride unbridled into theaters everywhere. To paraphrase a text from "The French Mistake": 50 million fans can't be wrong.