Last year while many of us were down at the Comic-Con in San Diego, I missed an event at the Egyptian Theater up in Hollywood I would have liked to have attended. They ran Blazing Saddles and Silent Movie…and had Mel Brooks speak between the pics. Fortunately, someone recorded it and it's up on YouTube. Very few things I have missed in my life will never be on YouTube.
It runs 50 minutes and Mel tells a few stories in ways he's never told them before. The anecdote about hiring and firing Gig Young for Blazing Saddles is quite different from how I've heard it before, including one time when I was sitting on the floor of his office at 20th Century Fox as Mel was interviewed for some magazine. As told back then, Young was forced on him by the studio…and had a pretty ugly breakdown on the set during the first (and Young's only) day of shooting. Brooks also omits the part of the story where he previously offered the part of the Waco Kid to Johnny Carson, who thought the script was quite unfunny and a surefire flop.
But hey, it's Mel Brooks talking for 50 minutes. How can that not be fun?
