{"id":1154992,"date":"2026-08-18T05:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T05:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154992\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T05:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T05:06:23","slug":"the-x-rated-1974-movie-scene-mel-brooks-called-too-much-for-its-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1154992\/","title":{"rendered":"The X-rated 1974 movie scene Mel Brooks called “too much for its time”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mel<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ HBO Max<\/p>\n

Tue 18 August 2026 1:30, UK <\/p>\n

Having never met a joke he wasn\u2019t willing to tell onscreen, it must have taken something shocking for Mel Brooks<\/a> to decide that one moment was too risqu\u00e9 and near-the-knuckle to make it onto the big screen.<\/p>\n

This is the guy who built his career on going where no other mainstream filmmaker had dared to go before, turning the Nazis into mercilessly mocked punchlines in The Producers, a picture that was as controversial before and during its release as it was after.<\/p>\n

Having conquered that frontier in his feature-length debut, there was barely a stone he\u2019d leave unturned. The EGOT-winning centenarian has noted that the one and only thing he\u2019ll never joke about under any circumstances is concentration camps, which is why he hates Roberto Benigni\u2019s Life is Beautiful<\/a>, but anything else? As far as he\u2019s concerned, it\u2019s fair game.<\/p>\n

Brooks didn\u2019t go out of his way to court controversy and backlash, but he did have a funny way of finding it. It had a lot to do with casual audiences and studio bosses being completely unprepared for the scattershot gags, skits, and taboo-tackling scenes that he wrote for his films, but one time, even the anarchic icon himself had to pull back and leave a sequence on the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, a lot of the humour in the 1974 masterpiece, Blazing Saddles, has to do with race relations, whether they\u2019re tied to the Old West setting, the America into which the movie was released, or a combination of both. For its creator\u2019s money, it\u2019s the funniest flick that\u2019s ever been made<\/a>, but not everything he scripted made the final cut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe executives didn\u2019t want the farting scene kept in the movie,\u201d Brooks recounted. \u201cThey wanted that out. I told them I would get rid of it, but I never touched it. Obviously, that scene, as well as others the executives didn\u2019t like, were kept.\u201d He lied to them about the farts, but he still found himself backing down.<\/p>\n

While Blazing Saddles does contain a love scene between Cleavon Little\u2019s Bart and Madeline Kahn\u2019s Lili Von Shtupp, it\u2019s fairly tame, all things considered. The lights go out, you hear her say, \u201cOh, it\u2019s true, it\u2019s true,\u201d which shouldn\u2019t need to be explained, but originally, the filmmaker went one step further.<\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe joke we had written was for Cleavon to then say, \u2018Excuse me, ma\u2019am; I hate to disillusion you, but you\u2019re sucking on my arm,’\u201d Brooks revealed. \u201cWe had to tone down the racial aspect of that scene. It was too much for its time.\u201d For someone who\u2019s never been shy in going for the comedic jugular of bad taste, it says a lot that the Young Frankenstein mastermind thought he\u2019d gone too far.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d have to say he\u2019s right, too: it didn\u2019t add anything to the scene that wasn\u2019t already there, and it feels a little too cheap and tasteless for Blazing Saddles, which was more all-encompassing in its mockery of anyone and everything. Still, it\u2019s not often that the 100-year-old admits he\u2019s crossed a line<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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