Warner Bros. handed Mel Brooks a list of everything it wanted gone. The word.
The campfire. The horse punch. The end of Lili Von Shtupp's seduction. Brooks
wrote down every note, agreed to all of it, walked out of the office and threw
the list in a bin — because his contract gave him final cut.

Twelve executives had already watched the finished film in silence. The head of
distribution wanted to dump it and take the loss. It cost $2.6 million and took
$119.6 million, and every scene the studio ordered cut is still in the movie.

This is the story of the five men in one room on the sixth floor of 666 Fifth
Avenue, the sheriff the studio refused to pay for, the drunk who collapsed on
day one of shooting, and the two hundred secretaries who saved the picture.