Movies - TV
Blazing Saddles’ Set Was Mel Brooks And Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein Laboratory
By JEREMY SMITH
Making one movie at a time seems like more than enough to do, but not for Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks. In the spring of 1973, while on the set of “Blazing Saddles,” the comedic duo began working on “Young Frankenstein,” and the world was unprepared for the actor-and-director duo to knock out two of the funniest movies of all time in the same year.
“Blazing Saddles” was such a famously chaotic affair that Brooks described the film as essentially being written “in the middle of a drunken fistfight.” Out of this chaos, “Young Frankenstein” was born when Brooks noticed Wilder scribbling notes; when Brooks asked, Wilder said, “’I have an idea for a movie… about the grandson of Victor Frankenstein…”
The idea quickly caught fire and when Brooks wrapped shooting for the day, the two stayed up until 2 a.m. banging out ideas for what would become “Young Frankenstein.” However, it wasn’t until “Blazing Saddles” was finished that the pair began writing their screenplay over tea and biscuits at the Bel Air Hotel, this time without the drunken fistfights.