It’s hard to forget the Blazing Saddles fart scene and the campfire symphony will live on forever as a groundbreaking moment in comedy movies. One of Mel Brooks’ most hilarious movies, Blazing Saddles is another in his long line of spoof films, this time taking aim at the Western movies that were incredibly popular at the time. Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder star as Bart, a black sheriff, and Jim the Waco Kid, an alcoholic gunslinger, respectively, who join forces to protect the small town of Rock Ridge from a greedy land developer named Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman).

A sharp satire, a hilarious comedy, a rousing buddy action film, and ridiculously self-aware to the point that characters end up watching a movie of their own exploits, Blazing Saddles is aptly named as it blazed a path forward for comedies and satires that only Mel Brooks himself has been able to consistently match. The film earned three Academy Award nominations and currently has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. Such an important movie in the comedy genre is bound to have some record-breaking moments, and one of Blazing Saddles‘ is appropriately crude.

Blazing Saddles’ Campfire Scene Featured The First Audible Farts In Hollywood History

Taggart’s Hired Hands Have A Few Too Many Beans At Dinner

When Taggart (Slim Pickens), the man hired by Lamarr to harᴀss Rock Ridge, learns Jim and Bart are up against him, he hires a crew of rude and crude cowboys to help him with the job. The hired hands sit around a campfire enjoying a meal of baked beans which quickly devolves into a chorus of belches, burps, and farts that goes on for nearly a minute. It doesn’t end until Taggart storms out of his tent, waving his hat in front of his nose and telling the crew that they’ve had more than enough beans for the night.

In the SNL sketch “Evil Boss” with Will Ferrell, Ferrell stabs an underling with a trident. With his back to the audience, he repeats the stabbing over and over. The audience laughs loudly and then quiets as Ferrell continues stabbing. As he keeps going, the audience’s laughter grows again until it’s louder than the first time. Ferrell did something funny until it stopped being funny, then continued until it was funny again. The same goes for this scene in Blazing Saddles. First, it’s funny, then it’s grotesque, then it’s even funnier.

Not only is this a ridiculously funny scene, but it is also considered the first time there was an audible fart in American cinema, or at least the first film to popularize the joke (via Newsweek). Burton Gilliam, who plays one of the cowboys in the scene, Lyle, said about the sequence (via NJ1015),

“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… 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 likely didn’t know the impact a bunch of fart jokes would have on the comedy scene, but now they’re in everything from Rick & Morty to Amadeus.

How Mel Brooks Settled On Exactly 12 Farts For The Blazing Saddles Scene

Brooks Carefully Tested How Many Were Too Many

There are actually 12 farts altogether in the Blazing Saddles fart scene if anyone is willing to sit down and double-check. That number was specifically chosen by Mel Brooks. When asked how he settled on the number of farts in the scene, Brooks said (via EW),

“That’s a very good question. I had a rough cut, and maybe I had 16 farts. 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.’ I did it kind of systematically. I do a lot of homework.”

Comedy is no joke to Mel Brooks. 13 farts was too many, but 11 would have left a few laughs on the table, and he wanted to squeeze the audience for everything they had. It’s not just Blazing Saddles and farts that receive Brooks’ fine tooth combing. From Dark Helmet explaining his intricate familial relationship with Lone Starr in Spaceballs to Gene Wilder hatching his scheme in The Producers, everything Brooks touches is thoughtfully crafted, even the flatulence.