An engaging and often hilarious account of the history, impact, and legacy of Mel Brooks’s iconic Western send-up Blazing Saddles, based on original screenwriter interviews and featuring insightful modern commentary.

Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles shocked and delighted audiences upon its release in 1974. An homage to the West and the Western, this riotous parody also took to task the mythological idea of the West created by Hollywood over the course of the twentieth century, especially its portrayal of whiteness, racial stereotypes, and the whitewashing of Western life. Starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, and Madeline Kahn, the film was a turning point in Mel Brooks’s career and for the Western film writ large.

In this hilarious and insightful Reel West volume, C. Joseph Greaves offers interviews with screenwriters Andrew Bergman and Norman Steinberg, as well as original research that sheds new light on Blazing Saddles. He traces the film’s colorful backstory from the writing room where the screenplay first took shape to the film’s triumphant success and its eventual place in the comedic pantheon. Greaves will have you on the edge of your seat as he brings to life the serendipitous moment that inspired the concept for the film—and the moment when Brooks almost called the whole thing off. Greaves’s quick wit, meticulous research, and love of the Western result in a complex and engaging study of what is undeniably one of the iconic films of the twentieth century.