“I first heard of Nikolai Gogol’s novel ‘Dead Souls’ in a 1975 Playboy interview with Mel Brooks. My idol Mel said it was a masterpiece, so I read it and happily went on to Gogol’s absurdist short stories, including ‘The Nose’ and ‘The Overcoat’. The 19th-century Russian satirist is a favorite of Brooks’ (“Comedy and humanity, and he knew what he was talking about”), and an influence. Does this mean that ‘Blazing Saddles’ is a little bit of an antecedent for British director Alex Cox’s setting his loose adaptation of ‘Dead Souls’ in America’s Old West? As a comedy, Cox’s movie is more chuckle-funny than ‘Blazing Saddles’ lose-your-shit-funny. But like the Brooks movie, it lampoons greed on the old frontier and indicts the deadly callousness of white settler society toward people who don’t look or speak like them.” – Betsy Sherman, The Arts Fuse
Read MoreThe Arts Fuse: “Alex Cox’s ‘Dead Souls’ Recasts Gogol as a Spaghetti Western Fever Dream”
Posted on July 28, 2026
