So it makes sense that Bruce G. Hallenbeck would corral his look at Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein into a single a book. That they shared a very narrow yet pop-culturally volatile point in history would give such a book focus, although focus is not necessarily the strong point of Blazing Saddles Meets Young Frankenstein: The 50th Anniversary of the Year of Mel Brooks.
That is mainly an issue in the half of the book Hallenbeck devotes to Blazing Saddles. He keeps setting up his discussion as an exploration of how this film—with its unflinching yet politcally incorrect satire of racism, complete with liberal use of the dreaded "n word"—couldn't be made today. Then he keeps straying from that premise to reminisce about his favorite gags and performances in the film or give voice to relatively contemporary commentators who speak only of the movie as a comedy classic. In fact, the only support Hallenbeck really supplies for his "Blazing Saddles couldn't be made today" argument is its creator's own insistence that this is so.
Now, I'm not saying that Blazing Saddles could be made today. In an age when every joke must be followed by a humor-murdering "/s", lest its audience mistake it for dumb sincerity, and understanding context is too much for a society formed in an educational system that fears teaching critical thinking skills the way Dracula fears the cross, the film's brand of exposing racism in all its ugliness as a means of sending it up would be too tangy for many contemporary sensibilities. Hallenbeck just doesn't provide much evidence to support that idea. Couldn't he have found a few Internet reviews or comments from people in the current decade who've viewed the movie and simply don't get that its goal was to excoriate racism and not celebrate it? He certainly could have found some that took justified issue with the lazy, unironic sexism and homophobia Blazing Saddles indulges in for the sake of some not very funny jokes. If you keep teasing an argument that a movie cannot be made today because of changing mores, you need specific examples of current, disproving attitudes of people outside yourself to support that argument. The closest Hallenbeck comes is a 2015 article on the UPROXX site arguing that the film couldn't be made today not because of its lack of political correctness but because it isn't the usual franchisey special-effects bonanza most likely to turn a profit.
So Blazing Saddles Meets Young Frankenstein is a bit flimsy as a piece of rhetoric. It's a bit stronger as a making-of account, although it doesn't quite commit to that format either during its Blazing Saddles half. There are certainly some interesting bits of trivia about the film's writing, casting (thank your lucky stars Brooks did not have his way and manage to cast wood-headed John Wayne in the role of the Waco Kid!), and aftermath, though very little about the actual filming. There are also some odd tangents, such as when the writer cedes his book to Steve Hoberman for seven pages because Hoberman cowrote a couple of Brooks's worst movies. Hallenbeck explains that his intention is to clarify what it's like to work with Mel Brooks, but half of this seven-page ramble is about Haberman's career before he even met Brooks.
A comparison between how Blazing Saddles stands up comedically against the five films that fall before it on the AFI's much argued "100 Years... 100 Laughs" list is not quite as pointless but more self-indulgent, as Hallenbeck's conclusions are all solely based on his own personal preference (and as for his comment that he's never met a single person who laughed out loud at Dr. Strangelove, that's because he's never met me).
But now I want to shout HOWEVER in great big capital letters because I know that I've been very, very hard on Bruce G. Hallenbeck and his new book, and I want to clarify that despite my criticisms, I enjoyed it. Yes, it's meandering and doesn't quite achieve its grander goals but it is extremely readable, interesting, good humored, and lovingly written. Plus its political heart in the right place without ever hectoring. And since Young Frankenstein's only dodgy moment is when Peter Boyle's Monster and Madeline Kahn's Elizabeth have sex within unsettlingly blurry lines of consent, the whole "could this movie be made today?" question goes out the window, leaving Hallenbeck free to sharpen his focus for a straight-forward and rather delightful making-of account of Brooks's most thoroughly enjoyable film.
So just as certain elements in Blazing Saddles don't hold up today, yet the film remains lovable nonetheless, Blazing Saddles Meets Young Frankenstein falls down on some levels but is still a pretty hard book to dislike.
