Burton Gilliam opens up on the fart scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’

"Blazing Saddles" is arguably the funniest movie ever made, with more arguably the funniest scene.

Burton Gilliam, who played Lyle and is one of three survivors from the movie (Mel Brooks and Carol Arthur being the others), came on my show and talked about the famous fart scene, where the cowboys were letting loose while eating beans around the camp fire.

"I am the first person in motion history to fart. ... Mel says I'm going to make you famous today. I knew what we were doing but I didn't know I was going to be the first," Gilliam said.

He is going to be at the Chiller Theatre Convention at the Hilton Parsippany from April 27 to 29.

"If Mel was sitting here right now he'd say, 'Warner Brothers gave me 3 million dollars and told me to have fun and that's what we did, we had no idea of what it was going to become,'" Gilliam said.

Gilliam was a fireman in Dallas, Texas when he got the call from Brooks to do the movie. He also played an Elvis impersonator "Utah chapter" in "Honeymoon in Vegas." Back to the fart scene ...

"We did that scene probably at 35 times from different directions. We probably did it a hundred times. The first couple of  times we did it, naturally we were doing our very very best, but after a few times unless you're absolutely super human, we had to bring in the extras and let them do some scenes from off camera or something," Gilliam told me.

Gilliam talked to Brooks about three weeks ago but hasn't seen him in 18 years.

What's working with Mel Brooks like? Is he the same personality we know and love?

Gilliam says when they're not working, "he's Mel Brooks to the core." But when he's on the job? He'll run over people and apologize later.

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