Blazing Saddles/Trivia

"Taggart: Piss on you, I'm workin' for Mel Brooks!"
 * Acting for Two: Mel Brooks plays the Governor and a Yiddish-speaking Indian Chief that appears in Bart's flashback sequence.
 * Actor Allusion: Well, director allusion anyway.


 * Enforced Method Acting:
 * Clevon Little was not warned about the "you know... morons" line. The reaction was real.
 * Frankie Laine's earnest rendition of the opening theme sang came about in part because Mel Brooks never told him the movie was a comedy. Brooks decided to keep Laine in the dark about the true nature of the film, thinking his performance would be better if Laine thought it was an authentic Western.
 * After he heard it, Brooks didn't have the heart to tell Laine the truth. Laine only found out at the premiere.
 * Executive Meddling: They tried, but since Mel's contract said that he had the final cut on the film, he sat through the meeting, taking careful notes of all the changes that they wanted to make, and then when the meeting was over he tossed his notes in the garbage.
 * Fake Nationality:
 * Mel Brooks as a Native American chief. This is a reference to the early Hollywood practice of casting "dirty whites" such as Jews and Italians as Native Americans. The role's overt Jewishness also goes along with the theme of kinship between marginalized groups in American history.
 * Jewish-American Madelein Kahn as the very Germanic Lili von Shtupp.
 * Fan Nickname: The clergyman of Rock Ridge doesn't have an official name, but since he's a clergyman, and since everybody in Rock Ridge is named Johnson, fans often call him Reverend Johnson.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Higgins appears as Howard Johnson.
 * Apparently, that nuke blasted Major Kong 90 years into the past.
 * And The Big Lebowski himself appears as Olson Johnson.
 * Life Imitates Art: It's unlikely if Mel Brooks knew the story, but in Real Life, a black man was named as the postmaster of Punta Gorda, Florida by a man who held a grudge against the town's founders, as a deliberate affront to its Southern sensibilities.
 * Mean Character, Nice Actor: Burton Gilliam (Lyle) was quite reluctant to drop all the N-bombs in the script, until Cleavon Little (Bart) assured Gilliam that he would not be offended.
 * The Other Darrin: Bart is played by Cleavon Little in the film and by Louis Gossett, Jr. in the failed TV Pilot.
 * Recycled: the Series: The failed TV Pilot Black Bart.
 * What Could Have Been: Brooks wanted John Wayne for the role of Jim. Wayne rejected his offer because the script clashed with his family friendly screen persona, but he also found it to be hilarious and told Brooks he'd be "first in line" to see the movie.
 * Had Richard Pryor (who contributed to the script) not been coked out of his mind, he would have played Bart, as well as being a more reliable actor (Mel Brooks was told that Richard Pryor is unreliable and he found this out when he called one day that writing was supposed to get done saying that he was with a couple of girls in New Jersey) launching his frequent film partnership with Gene Wilder a couple years before Silver Streak.
 * While Wilder himself was a last-minute replacement for Gig Young, who turned up on the set too inebriated to act. Several other actors were considered before Young.