Not that anyone was disagreeing, but in his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel last night, Mel Brooks explained that the movie that gave us “where da white women at?”, “Kansas City fagg*ts“, and “you said rape twice,” probably couldn’t have been made today. Yeah, no kidding. But what do we care? We’ve got Seltzer/Friedberg now.

When we had a preview [of Blazing Saddles], there were two guys, there was John Calley, and there was a guy running the studio. Ted Ashley – who was in charge of Warner Bros. We had a preview, and the crowd went crazy, everyone loved it. And afterwards, he grabs me by the collar and shoves me into an office. And he says, “Okay, here’s a legal pad, here’s a pencil, take these notes.” He says, “N-word, OUT! We don’t say it. No punching a horse. Around the campfire, cut out the farting… You can’t punch an old lady. Lily von Schtupp and the black sheriff… you can’t – OUT. ”

So, I said “Yes, sir, it’s gone. You come here tomorrow, and it’s all out of the movie.” He leaves, and I crunch it up, and I go all the way across the room and I put it in the waste basket. John Calley says “Nice filing!”

I had final cut, so what did I care?

And that, kiddies, is why Mel Brooks is one of comedy’s greatest heros. You can take our n-words, farts, and horse punching when you pry them from our cold, wanking hands.

Meanwhile, said YouTube:

We’ll take that, I suppose.

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The Jurassic Park franchise had pretty much run its course by 2001′s Jurassic Park III, and since Hollywood is incapable of letting a franchise die, it was in serious need of a reinvention if there was going to be a fourth movie, which of course there was. Check that, is. As of today, Rise of the Planet of the Apes writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are scripting a fourth Jurassic Park, with Steven Spielberg producing, aiming for a summer 2013 release. But back in 2004, there was a pitch and a script from William Monahan (The Departed) and John Sayles (The Spiderwick Chronciles) that involved dinosaur-human hybrids that shot weapons and were used to fight crime. Oh what could have been.

It might be hard to believe but the story saw a secret genetics lab get involved with cross-breeding humans with dinosaurs, giving them problem-solving intelligence and the ability to fire weapons and fight crime, but controlled by human authorities. [Reddit via FirstShowing]

DINOSAURS THAT SHOOT GUNS AND FIGHT CRIME! And to think, all this time I thought that idea only existed in old Photoshops of mine. Apparently it made it far enough into pre-production that ILM created concept art and 3D models (see above and below). Jesus, that is the best idea ever. Here’s a bit more, from an old, ridiculously verbose script review on AICN:

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No one else could look this tough while eating ice cream

Whether it’s Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly or Han Solo telling Princess Leia “I love you too,” it’s always weird to hear how iconic movies might have been different if things hadn’t turned out exactly the way they did. Add to the list Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic “I’ll be back” line in Terminator, which Arnold initially fought James Cameron over, according to his memoir.

In his memoirs published Monday, the former California governor says he thought the phrase sounded too “feminine,” insisting that “I will be back” was more rugged and suited to his robot killer character.
“Our biggest disagreement was about ‘I’ll be back’,” Schwarzenegger said. “I was arguing for ‘I will be back’. I felt that the line would sound more machine-like and menacing without the contraction.
“It’s feminine when you say the I’ll,” I complained, repeating it for Jim so he could hear the problem. ‘I’ll I’ll I’ll. It doesn’t feel rugged to me.’ He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“‘Let’s stick with I’ll,’ he said. But I wasn’t ready to let it go, and we went back and forth. Finally Jim yelled, ‘Look, just trust me okay?’ I don’t tell you how to act, and you don’t tell me how to write.’
“And we shot it as written in the script. The truth was that, even after all these years of speaking English, I still didn’t understand contractions,” said the Austrian-born actor. [Yahoo]

I actually think he had a point about “I will” sounding more machine-like, but part of the charm of the Terminator was a mechanical killing machine being programmed to converse in polite vernacular. And three syllables is just easier to remember than four.

Meanwhile, “I don’t tell you how to act…”? Isn’t that, like, ninety percent your job as a director, telling actors how to act? Seems like a flawed analogy. “Look, bro, I don’t tell you how to be a general, what makes you think you can start giving me orders?”

Someone sent me this clip the other day, and I thought it was worth a quick post. Did you remember that Prince Joffrey from Game of Thrones (Irish actor Jack Gleeson) had a super-brief cameo in Chris Nolan’s first batman movie, Batman Begins? He shows up cowering behind Katie Holmes like the little booger-faced milk baby he is, saying “Batman will save us,” and sure enough, Batman swoops down from the rafters to take down a bad guy before running off, missing a golden opportunity to slap the sh*t out of the little turd in the process. Dinklage 1; Batman 0.

By the way, I’ve always wanted to deliver some overwrought line to a broad, then swan dive off her balcony like a boss. That’s going on my bucket list. “Always remember… lefty loosey… righty tighty.” (*kite surfs back into the night*)

-Thanks to Christian for the tip.

"So what do you say, bro? Should I cut out carbs, or just try to get more cardio? Are you full-paleo?"

Don’t worry, folks, this is the rare story with a question mark in the headline that will actually answer the question. Our pals at

NUMBER ONE, ENGAGE.

In the scene David is learning the building blocks of language and we see him taking a lesson in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Linguistics, where a holographic professor, takes him through the ABC’s and recites Schleicher’s Fable. An artificial text composed in the reconstructed PIE, in 1868, to demonstrate the language’s use.

hjewɪs jasmə hwælnə nahəst akʷunsəz dadʳkta (Translated as: a sheep that had no wool saw horses) – Excerpt from Schleicher’s Fable – The Sheep and the Horses

The ‘Professor’ in the clip is in fact the real-life linguistics consultant used for the film and taught Michael Fassbender (David) the dialogue. I managed to track down the consultant, a Dr. Anil Biltoo of the SOAS Language Centre in London, to see if he could shed some light on the mysterious final scene. He was most helpful and provided the following:

BWAHAHAHA, “DR. ANIL!” HIS NAME IS DR. ANAL! Oh, man. I don’t know if “Dr. Anal” is the right person to teach me about PIE, ifyouknowwhatahmsayin.

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