Mel Brooks

Haven't seen many films from him but Young Frankenstein (1974) is my all-time no.1 comic movie. I also liked The Producers and Blazing Saddles. Pretty unique movies at one time. I am still not sure if there is another movie like Young Frankenstein. Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mel Brooks!!!     

Thanks for all the laughs!

Winning his screenplay Oscar for The Producers:



2016, getting his National Medal of Arts:

That Gene Hackman cameo was just priceless!

I had a purebred horse from Germany named Abendrote, and called her Abby for short.  After a few sessions with a very good trainer, we could see she had "issues", and started calling her Abby-normal.

There is one semi-serious quote from the movie that I have always liked, as Frederick is preparing to hoist his creation up to the lightning in the sky...

"Since that fateful day when stinking bits of slime crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars, ''I am man", our greatest dread has always been the knowledge of our own mortality."

I still consider what's likely his least-seen-and-known film, 1970's The Twelve Chairs, to be his best. Leaping adroitly from gently sly humor to farce to outright slapstick, it maintains the integrity of the material by avoiding slipping into spoof or stepping out of character as his more well-known satires do, and finds opportunities for some truly touching drama as well. While it very much features the Brooks sense of comedy, it's not quite like any other film he's directed. 

  
Ron Moody, Frank Langella


Diana Coupland, Dom DeLuise, David Lander


Mel Brooks, Frank Langella


Ron Moody

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In the late '70s, I was working at a Century City insurance agency, and picked up an incoming call one day while the receptionist had stepped away. A somewhat raspy voice with a New York inflection asked for one of the partners: "Is Les in? This is Shorty." 

"I beg your pardon," I said, "'Shorty,' did you say?"

"Yeah, he'll know," the caller replied. I buzzed Les and he took the call, and later that day I asked him who Shorty was.

"Oh, anytime he calls," Les explained, "put him straight through to me. That's Mel Brooks."

As have you; that's food for some intriguing thought, and something I'd never considered. With all due respect to Sarris, if I had to sum up "the Lubitsch touch" in one word, it might be "delicate:" something carefully crafted at just the proper, very controlled pitch (which wouldn't necessarily dispute the Sarris characterization). In that sense, The Twelve Chairs doesn't feel particularly Lubitschean, although that counterpoint to which you refer is present. If anything, it hews closer to Preston Sturges in tone...or should I say "tones," as Sturges also routinely negotiated a high-wire act between subtle comedy of manners and unrestrained farce. And with the element of poignancy in play as well, TTC could perhaps be considered Brooks's Sullivan's Travels (his later Life Stinks notwithstanding). The more I think about it, I realize the two share thematic ground in their examinations of the downtrodden involving partners harboring divergent perspectives. 

What I find in TTC that I miss in most other Brooks films is sincerity: the difference between slyness (in the impish, playful sense) and wryness (in the mocking one); there's nothing taking viewers out of the experience with figurative winks directed at them. Even when resorting to a visual gimmick like undercranking to speed up the action, it comes across as organic in nature rather than as anything-for-a-laugh abandon. 

I'm not sure how well I put any of that, but when you do catch up to TCC, it'll be fun and edifying to compare notes. 

Oh, I'm glad you did. It's always fascinating to consider films and artists from fresh angles. I don't really remember Brook's TBONTB well enough, except to say I recall it as one of his more conventional exercises. And next time I watch the Lubitsch one, I'll have your thoughts in mind.
   

That's a date (so to speak)! 

  

A very funny, gifted man, here with his beautiful wife, Anne Bancroft:



Happy Birthday, Mel. Thanks for the memories!