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Director: Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in the same year, 1974, which is a claim few comedy directors can make. Both work because the parody is technically accurate: Young Frankenstein was shot in black and white using the original 1931 laboratory equipment.

The Producers won him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and later became a stage musical that won a record number of Tonys. He is one of the few people to have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony.

His method is to know the genre thoroughly and then break it, which is why the jokes hold up long after the films being parodied have faded.

Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart in a Western saloon scene, wearing a black hat and sheriff's badge.Mel Brooks

Blazing Saddles (1974) Review

Blazing Saddles (1974) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mel Brooks made an anti-racist film by putting the ugliest language available in the mouths of idiots and letting the sheriff outthink them. Made for two point six…

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