If you are a dour, humorless type, you will want to skip All About Me! (2021), but it helped me get through year two of the great plague of the early 2020s. In it, Mel Brooks writes about his journey from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to much-loved EGOT (a winner of an Emmy Award, a Grammy, Oscar, and a Tony Award). He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and an Honorary Academy Award in 2023.
His iconic career began with Sid Caesar’s Your Show Of Shows (1950-56) where he was part of the greatest writers’ room in history, a group that included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. As a kid, I used to listen in when my parental units listened to his 2000 Year Old Man and I loved his television series Get Smart.
All About Me! offers details about the many close friendships and collaborators, including Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft.
He wrote, directed, and/or starred in The Producers (1967), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), and Spaceballs (1987), among others, and he produce groundbreaking films, including The Elephant Man (1980), The Fly (1986), and My Favorite Year (1982). Brooks conquered Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers (2001), and its film version in 2005.
Nathan Lane:
“If audiences are offended by The Producers, then they should go and see Rent. There are people who can’t wait to be offended. Then they wonder why they are not invited to more parties. Who has time for that? If you don’t get Mel Brooks, you won’t get the film. Mel’s take on homosexuals is that we’re these flamboyant extraterrestrials.”
Young Frankenstein (1974) is my favorite, but Blazing Saddles (1974) is Brook’s masterpiece, a deft parody of Western films and a sharp racial satire. It is also filled with elements that can make it hard for today’s audiences to fully love it like I did in the mid-1970s, because of all of the ”N” words and jokes that not only mock, but also invoke, stereotypes. According to Brooks, it’s a film that would be impossible to make today, thanks to what he called our current ”stupidly politically correct” age.
Brooks:
”It’s okay not to hurt feelings of various tribes and groups, but it’s not good for comedy. Comedy is the lecherous little elf whispering in the king’s ear, always telling the truth about human behavior.”
Brooks said that it would be impossible to take the risks he took with Blazing Saddles today:
”Without the willingness to examine and play with prejudice that informs the movie’s sensibilities, would not have had nearly the significance, the force, the dynamism, and the stakes that were contained in it.”
Brooks has acknowledged that he has some subjects where he is incapable of joking:
”I personally would never touch gas chambers or the death of children or Jews at the hands of the Nazis. In no way is that at all usable or correct for comedy. It’s just in truly bad taste. Everything else is okay.”
Brooks celebrates his 97th birthday today, June 28.
