Classic Comedy Films

09/26/2025

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09/26/2025

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09/09/2025

Almost 50 years ago — on October 11, 1975 — Saturday Night Live premiered, changing comedy forever. It was the hottest show on tevision Gilda Radner was the very first cast member chosen, setting the tone for the show’s funniest and most unforgettable characters.
As SNL approaches its 50th anniversary, we remember how Gilda paved the way for every performer who followed.

08/30/2025

08/11/2025

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08/07/2025

Blazing Saddles
Mel Brooks has a bone to pick with the American Film Institute, which bestowed a lifetime-achievement award on the comedic icon in 2013.
It was a great honor. But somehow, Brooks' 1974 classic Blazing Saddles ended up No. 6 on the AFI's list of all-time greatest comedies, behind films such as 1959's Some Like It Hot (No. 1) and 1933's Duck Soup (No. 5). Filmmakers would kill for the coveted spot. Not Brooks, 87, who still comically fumes over his placement.
"I am so angry at the AFI. Blazing Saddles should be No. 1. And then there should be 50 spaces before the next one gets into the running." Brooks co-wrote, directed and starred in the film. "I don't think there's a movie in history — even (Charlie) Chaplin, (Buster) Keaton and Harold Lloyd — that could beat it for laughs. It's the most real belly laughs of any movie ever made."
To be fair, Brooks even puts it above his own other classics, such as 1968's The Producers (No. 11 on the list) and 1974's Young Frankenstein (No. 13). But as Blazing Saddles celebrates its 40th anniversary with a Blu-ray release, the film continues to earn universal comedic respect and more belly laughs.
"I love Blazing Saddles," says Seth MacFarlane, star of his own Western comedy, A Million Ways to Die in the West, due May 30. "Actually, anyone in comedy who has good taste loves Blazing Saddles."
Despite its crude humor, which includes an infamous campfire scene featuring the digestive impact of beans and coffee on cowboys, even critics admit it's a classic. In 2006, Blazing Saddles was added to the National Film Registry for the Library of Congress. Brooks says he was proud of the honor for a movie that does deal with serious themes.
"I think maybe they didn't see the campfire parts," he jokes. "But the movie still resonates and will never die. The engine that runs the movie is hatred and race prejudice."
Blazing Saddles might be set in 1874, but its story of a black sheriff trying to win over racist small-town America resonated in 1974 and still does 40 years later. Its frequent use of the n-word was shocking, but the term was placed into the screenplay by African-American comedian Richard Pryor, who "worked by my side," Brooks says.
"I would say, 'Richard, do you think we have to use that word here?' and he'd say, 'You must, you must,' " Brooks says. "If the bad guys couldn't say that word, we couldn't have our victory or comeuppance. We couldn't have our hero ride out in a blaze of glory."
Brooks almost stepped out of the project when studio bosses refused to allow Pryor — who was suffering from personal issues that made his work sporadic — to portray the heroic black sheriff. But Pryor insisted that the show go on, and stage actor Cleavon Little was a memorable replacement, along with Gene Wilder as his sidekick and Madeline Kahn as a dance-hall performer.
"I know we would have gotten more laughs (with Pryor). But we didn't need that," Brooks says. "And with Richard writing it, he came up with great, great scenes."
The ride continues, with talk of a Broadway musical version — "I have a few tunes in mind. We'll see," Brooks says. And there are future milestones, such as a 50th anniversary in 2024, which Brooks promises to blow out in true Old West style.
"Well, a lot depends on me being alive," he says. "But if I am alive, we should have a big campfire on the Warner Bros. soundstage and invite everyone still alive from the film and serve nothing but black coffee and beans. And then we'll see what happens."

08/07/2025

Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks Had Comedy’s Most Iconic Friendship
The late Reiner and Brooks were friends for seven decades who in recent years spent every night together, eating dinner and watching Jeopardy.
It was 1950. Carl Reiner was on the set of Sid Caesar’s variety series Your Show of Shows when he overheard another comic doing a bit about a Jewish pirate.
“He said, ‘I can’t afford to pillage and r**e anymore! $3.50 for a sailcloth, who can afford that?!’” Reiner recalled in a 2012 interview with Jerry Seinfeld. The comedian was, of course, Mel Brooks, with whom Reiner would end up working on an improvisational bit called The 2000 Year Old Man. Brooks played the titular ancient character; Reiner played the straight man, peppering his partner with funny questions. The bit, which they spun into a regular sketch and several successful albums, drew fans like Cary Grant and Queen Elizabeth II. “I said to Mel, ‘The biggest shiksa in the world loved our record. We’re in!’” Reiner told PBS in 2016.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a better friend than Carl,” Brooks told The Guardian in a joint February interview with Reiner.
“My God, the thought of being without him—the world would be too bleak!” Reiner exclaimed in response.
As true fans of the duo know, the comedy legends were inseparable even as they were shaping their influential and ever-evolving careers. Reiner would create The Dick Van D**e Show and direct films like The Jerk, while Brooks would helm classics like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. As they grew older, the duo perfected the same nightly routine: Brooks would get in his car and drive to Reiner’s Beverly Hills house, where they would eat dinner, watch Jeopardy, and then tuck into a movie—sometimes their own movies, or sometimes cheesy action movies filled with lines like “Lock all the doors!” or “Secure the perimeters!”
“[If] we hear those, we know we’re in for a good time,” Reiner once said. “If he doesn’t come over, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
Occasionally, other friends would join, like comedian Alan Alda or The Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry—whom Reiner would coax into watching their old works, like the series Get Smart, which Henry and Brooks cocreated. “We watched the pilot...[to] see what we could remember,” Brooks recalled.
Over the years, Brooks and Reiner also continued working together, showing off their chemistry on Late Night and revamping 2000 Year Old Man into a book—the recording of which later earned them a best-spoken-album Grammy. “He’s a great comedian to this day!” Brooks crowed in a 2013 interview about his friend.
They found ways to keep close even as the coronavirus pandemic struck, calling each other to watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune on their respective TVs at the same time. “We try to guess the answers and, you know, we have fun on the phone,” Reiner said in April.
They also managed to spend time together on Brooks’s recent 94th birthday on June 28, per Reiner’s manager George Shapiro, who posted photos of the celebration on Twitter. In one photo, Brooks and Reiner lay alongside Reiner’s daughter, Annie, and sport matching Black Lives Matter shirts.
A few days before his death, Reiner posted a short vlog on his YouTube account, recounting highlights from his life, including, of course, his friendship with Brooks—whom he still considers “the single most funny human being that ever existed.”
Brooks had the last word Tuesday, sharing a beautiful statement about his best friend online.
“Whether he wrote or performed or he was just your best friend—nobody could do it better,” Brooks wrote. “He’ll be greatly missed. A tired cliche in times like this, but in Carl Reiner’s case it’s absolutely true. He will be greatly missed.”
This article has been updated to include Brooks’ statement.

08/07/2025

Mel Brooks Says 'Blazing Saddles' Could Never Get Made Today
Mel Brooks has made a host of classic cinematic comedies, but if he were tasked with making arguably his most famous — and beloved — film today, the writer-producer-director-star believes he’d be destined for failure.
In a new interview with Craig Modderno at The Daily Beast, the 90-year-old Hollywood icon was asked if he thought he could get Blazing Saddles — his 1974 Western comedy starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder as a railroad worker-turned-sheriff and a drunken gunslinger, respectively — made in today’s movie-industry climate. The answer? An emphatic “no!”
Brooks, who will speak after a special screening of Blazing Saddles at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 1, discusses how, even back in the ’70s, Warner Bros. studio executives were far from eager to see his version of the film released.
“They wanted to bury me and the film. The head of distribution told the owners not to release the picture, but they only did because it was already booked in theaters, and they didn’t have a picture they could replace it with… If I had made their changes the film would have been just 14 minutes long! I stupidly threw all their notes in the trash. Imagine the book I could have written on them today.” Among the choice suggestions Brooks remembers: “‘Lose the fart scene, cut out any racial and ethnic jokes, edit scenes where a horse and an old lady get punched,’ and my favorite note: ‘Can you reshoot Black Bart with a white actor?'”
History has proven that Brooks was right about his film, as it remains one of American cinema’s most well-loved (and oft-quoted) comedies. To read Brooks’ thoughts on his struggle to get both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein produced — as well as the way Dustin Hoffman backed out of starring in 1968’s The Producers in order to work opposite Brooks’ wife Anne Bancroft in The Graduate — check out his entire interview with The Daily Beast here.

07/29/2025

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