Movies - TV
The Real Reason Blazing Saddles Has 12 Farts
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
“Blazing Saddles” has one of the greatest fart scenes in cinema history and it’s all thanks to its creator, Mel Brooks who is a careful student of comedy.
The bean dinner scene in the movie starts with just one moment of flatulence, but carries on to a full minute, totaling 12 overlapping orchestral farts.
Brooks knew exactly how long that scene needed to go on, which fart audiences would begin laughing, and when audiences would back off from the joke.
In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Brooks laid out the numbers very cleanly. He said, “I had a rough cut, and maybe I had 16 farts.”
He added, “‘Things didn't get exciting until the fourth or fifth one, and the laughter began to diminish around the 12th fart, so I said, 'Okay, cut it off at 12.'”
It's also possible that several of the 12 farts were broken into two shorter audible explosions, making it sound more like 20.