Mel Brooks Will Host 'Blazing Saddles' Screening At The Chicago Theatre

By Kirsten Onsgard in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 19, 2016 8:27PM

Still courtesy of Warner Bros. Home Video

Actor and comedian Mel Brooks will host a show at the Chicago Theatre in June celebrating his career and his famed spoof of cowboy westerns Blazing Saddles.

Dubbed “Back in the Saddle Again!” the event on June 12 will include a screening of the 1974 film followed by a Q&A and conversation, in which Brooks will discuss his work and how the film came together. The production is part of a short nationwide tour.

Brooks once described the making of the film this way: "Blazing Saddles was more or less written in the middle of a drunken fistfight. There were five of us all yelling loudly for our ideas to be put into the movie. Not only was I the loudest, but luckily I also had the right as director to decide what was in or out."

It seems that Blazing Saddles is having something of a renaissance in Chicago: tonight at 7 p.m., the Music Box is also screening the film as part of the theatre's four-week "Is It Still Funny?" series. Brooks won't at today's screening though (or maybe he will be, in disguise).

"Back in the Saddle Again!" is coming to the Chicago Theatre on June 12 at 4 p.m. Tickets, which cost between $78.50 and $93.50, go on sale at noon on Monday, April 25.