Mel Brooks: Search and Destroy

Anyway, to a certain extent I grew up with Mel Brooks movies -- Silent Movie was the first one I saw, but thanks to parents who were fans, I ended up seeing just about everything, and I appreciate that!

The Producers, the very underrated The Twelve Chairs, the godlike Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, even the end of the seventies trickledown of High Anxiety and Silent Movie and History of the World Part I...all great in their own ways, with one of the best comedy stock companies ever assembled (Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars) as well as some inspired one or two time turns (Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Cleavon Little, Marty Feldman). An amazing stretch.

Then he remakes To Be Or Not To Be and it's *pleasant* and all, I guess...then Spaceballs really starts to show the cracks. After that, everything should be taken out and shot. Robin Hood: Men in Tights = PAIN.

Destroy: Everything else

yeah "Blazing Saddles" isn't bad at all, i mean hell what about the farting scene or the bit where Mongo punches out the horse? yeah ok it's no "The Producers" or "Young Frank' tho, sure.

+ i luv "Hitler Rapp"!!!!

Spaceballs improves with age like a fine fine vinegar. Illustrates the problem of parodying a movie you don't actually like (or in some instances you haven't even seen).

But, also classic for 'The Thousand Year Old Man' recordings w/Carl Reiner, Kenneth Tynan's 'New Yorker' profile of Brooks, and a fondly remembered, long late night tv interview w/ Rowland Rivron, of all ppl, where MB was on blazing improv form... so fast, clever, surprising - qualities sadly missing from most of his flicks after BZ.

Blazing Saddles is good but not as great as some make out, not seen The Producers yet, High Anxiety spasmodically funny...

Brooks jumps the shark with History Of The World - Part I.

To Be Or Not To Be is pleasant enough and Anne Bancroft is terrific.

Search: Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Rick Moranis in Spaceballs, Dom "WATCH! ME! FAGGOTS!" DeLuise and Madeline "I'm sorry, please forgive me. I'm just SO close to my menstrual cycle I could SCREAM" Kahn in any - especially History Of The World Part I. Mel's "High Anxiety" song, Dick Van Patten's death and Harvey Korman saying "I never liked her, she never bathed" in High Anxiety.

Destroy: That Fucker Who Played Brophy in High Anxiety, Life Stinks, The Silent Movie, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, and probably everything else.

Wise words. Frank Langella kills.

"Let's just say that I am very much in lust with you."

He’s working on a stage version of Young Frankenstein, writing the words and music as he did for The Producers.
There’s one exception: Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ on the Ritz, memorably performed in the 1974 film by Peter Boyle as a monster in formal wear, will be part of the Broadway play, Brooks said.

Neat about "Puttin' on the Ritz," but a full musical? Hmmm.

Yeah Mel, that's why my 6th-grade class ate it up. Big Woolstonecraft fans. (also, Broadway musical of YF = impending disaster)

Have you ever seen his v.o./improv animation The Critic? And as cited above, The 2000 Year Old Man album box set, some of the funniest stuff of which is 2000yo-unrelated... Tax expert: "I write off the entire country of Romania -- I send them socks, I send them oldtime magazines." Also his impression of Cary Grant's voice as heard by a fetus in the womb...

Brooks was on the Critic? which episode?

i liked him a lot in Curb.

FIlm Forum showed it before the Producers. There was someone in the audience who laughed at EVERYTHING Brooks said.

Casting announced for the Young Frankenstein Broadway musical, with Megan Mullally the required TV star in the Kahn role. I never thought The Producers would be a smash, but this seems a much less natural fit.

Hell yeah, Andrea Martin from SCTV as Frau Blucher

heh, I totally missed that! I saw her in Oklahoma! fairly recently.

Still, this is not gonna be in black-and-white. (I assume the set design might go that way tho.)

Ben Brantley gave the Young Frankenstein musical its banner quote: "I laughed three times."

i have had the inquisition song from history of the world part 1 in my head all morning for some reason. CLASSIC

well, mostly for the Jackie Mason lines.

*Norman Lear

ICYMI, RIP composer John Morris

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/obituaries/john-morris-composer-for-mel-brookss-films-dies-at-91.html

also a good story about The Elephant Man, Lynch, and "Adagio for Strings" in there

“I know how to write tunes,” he said in an interview he recorded in 2009 with one of his granddaughters, Hayley Morris. “All I have to do is think Johannes Brahms. And I know what Brahms does. I know how he wrote, and you just do what he does and you’re in business.”

Watched Silent Movie possibly for the first time since summer of '76 yesterday. I think it's clearly the point where Mel, coming off his best-directed film (YF), began to go downhill. He plays the lead for the first time, and while he's generally OK, everything else suffers a bit. While his percentage is always uneven, about 30% of the gags here are funny, another 30% "cute," and 40% just kinda lie there (ie the James Caan melon balls episode, which i'm sure read funnier). Bernadette Peters is criminally wasted.

On the bright side, Anne Bancroft's tango sequence is funnier than anything she got to do in To Be or Not to Be, Burt Reynolds' ego sendup is a hoot, and Fritz ("POP") Feld is onscreen way more than I remembered as the maitre d'. And Sid Caesar can do no wrong. Harold Gould and Ron Carey are also a pretty decent slapstick duo.

It's hard to believe Brooks didn't initially want music; John Morris elevates the picture greatly.

about 30% of the gags here are funny, another 30% "cute," and 40% just kinda lie there.

oh yeah, History is much worse.

basically, after his Caesar writing career, Mel's peak is 1960-74 (2000 Year Old Man thru Young Frankenstein)

Yeah, I’d go along with that. I have fond memories of High Anxiety and To Be Or Not To Be, but I haven’t seen either of those in years. And I was never able to make it through more than 30 minutes — tops — of Spaceballs and everything that followed.

As Gene said to Mel, "The trouble is, you destroy the 4th wall, even when you are trying not to"

Basically I think it’d be foolish at this point in my life to go back and watch any of his movies. They had their moment in my life and would only diminish upon fresh view. (It happened with even YF last time I watched it.)

The Twelve Chairs is the only one that I can rewatch these days.

I'm finding them (pre-History) reasonably fun to rewatch, partly because at least half the gags are about old movies/music that almost no one under 45 would get now. And on PC grounds (the 2000 YO Man records included), forget it.

Eric otm this is not the kinda thing that holds my attention if I go back to it

Spaceballs is pretty funny but it's also pretty stupid and pretty cheap-looking. The highlights are the Dark Helmet/Colonel Sandurz. The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles still hold up for me. HOTW1 was never much of a movie, maybe there were some solid gags but damned if i can remember a single one.

The Twelve Chairs is the only one that I can rewatch these days.

It's clearly a film made before "A Mel Brooks Film" was a distinct thing, and that's definitely part of its success.

This is covertly my way of saying that I will hold fast to my beliefs that History of the World, Part One and Silent Movie are both very funny movies by never watching them again.

And, unlike Morbs, I have no interest in making "before PC culture took over" an evaluative benefit.

I didn't, necessarily. (There are at least 5 gay panic jokes in Silent Movie.)

Mel does, however.

thread revive had me worried

HOTW1 was never much of a movie, maybe there were some solid gags but damned if i can remember a single one.

oh come on, i can think of at least fifteen ten examples

HOTW1 was never much of a movie, maybe there were some solid gags but damned if i can remember a single one.

That's nuts! N-V-T-S nuts!

screw the poor

or is it fuck the poor? i forget

i felt sorry for Sid Caesar during the caveman segment

Even though Gregory Hines addressing Oedipus with, "Hey, motherfucker!" was absurdly spelled out, I still chuckled.

Everything Madeline Kahn does in HOTWP1 is solid gold.

i've always sorta understood why ppl hate spaceballs but 1) i grew up with it and am incapable of disliking it 2) it's an oddly prescient film

moichandising!

i've always sorta understood why ppl hate spaceballs but 1) i grew up with it and am incapable of disliking it 2) it's an oddly prescient film

i kind of feel unless you love star wars you can't love spaceballs. it's no great feat of filmmaking, but not bad as a 90 minute Mad parody on the big screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvMG5U3TJnk

^That's a funny scene. Weird that Mel didn't put Howard Morris, a colleague from the Caesar shows, in his films until High Anxiety.

The only scene that stood out for me in Spaceballs was Mel/Yoda hawking toys.

Happy birthday Mel Brooks, 93 and still breaking the fourth wall pic.twitter.com/GSdJyJW5QW

— Darren Richman (@darrenrichman) June 28, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIfMfLbCbzY

The streamer announced that the following will appear on the show (deep breath!): Pamela Adlon, Tim Baltz, Zazie Beetz, Jillian Bell, Quinta Brunson, Dove Cameron, D'Arcy Carden, Ronny Chieng, Rob Corddry, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, Hannah Einbinder, Jay Ellis, Josh Gad, Kimiko Glenn, Brandon Kyle Goodman, Jake Johnson, Richard Kind, Johnny Knoxville, Lauren Lapkus, Jenifer Lewis, Poppy Liu, Joe Lo Truglio, Jason Mantzoukas, Ken Marino, Jack McBrayer, Zahn McClarnon, Charles Melton, Kumail Nanjiani, Brock O'Hurn, Andrew Rannells, Emily Ratajkowski, Sam Richardson, Nick Robinson, Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, Timothy Simons, J.B. Smoove, David Wain, Taika Waititi, Reggie Watts, and Tyler James Williams.

yeahhhh....

Mel Brooks produced Cronenberg's remake of The Fly in 1986. Bryan Ferry was hired to write a theme song, written and produced with Nile Rodgers. Brooks didn't like that the song was titled "Help Me", and Rodgers described having trouble explaining to him why it was inappropriate for Ferry to sing a song explicitly about a man morphing into an insect.

Deftones were 14 years too late

The Curb Your Enthusiasm version of Jesus' betrayal was pretty good, but how could Larry David not be involved?!

On episode five and I'm sorry to say this is pretty rough. There have been a few laughs here and there, but the Galileo on TikTok bit, in particular, is like really bad SNL.

The series is about 5% funny, 10% residual good will on my part, and then 85% dud. But that still makes it the best thing Brooks has been attached to in about 30 years.

The trailer posted above showed absolutely no promise so I'm not surprised. Too bad. Love me some funny Mel.

Bryan Ferry was hired to write a theme song, written and produced with Nile Rodgers. Brooks didn't like that the song was titled "Help Me", and Rodgers described having trouble explaining to him why it was inappropriate for Ferry to sing a song explicitly about a man morphing into an insect.

how did I miss this

Idk, it could be much worse. It's very schticky but I'm content rolling with it for a couple good moments per episode, I mean he's 96 let's come him a break.

Did he write and direct this?!

Didn't direct, and while there's a whole bunch of writers and obviously a bunch of stuff he didn't write, he does have a writing credit on everything and a lot of it has a clear Brooksian touch imo.

Yeah, the writers were definitely invited to lean into their conception of a Brooks gag, to varying degrees

Even if he didn't write any of it there's something sweet about all these comedians and actors doing a tribute act.

Listened to Nick Kroll and Ike Barinholtz on Comedy Bang Bang talking a bit about their involvement in this. It's not a real interview show so they didn't drop a ton of factual details about the creation process, but definitely got the impression that Mel was sort of signing off on the whole thing and wasn't too involved in the nuts and bolts. That said, all these comedians presumably grew up on his stuff and the tribute act is quite on point, for better and worse

The first episode had two literal LOLs for me which is a better rate than almost every other sitcom/comedy nowadays.

NYT quotes on the writing:

They reached out to comedian Nick Kroll in 2020. He recruited Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz and the showrunner David Stassen. “I’ve been laughing at comedy, some of which I didn’t create,” Mr. Brooks said, “which is very weird for me.” The writers did remind themselves, though, as Ms. Sykes said, to “Mel it up.”

... Mr. Barinholtz added “He inspected our teeth and could tell that we were strong.”

Mr. Brooks joined the Zoom writers’ room sometimes to weigh pitches or offer jokes from his vault of unused material.

“The first time we talked, he was like, ‘I have an idea for this joke where Robert E. Lee is at Appomattox and he turns to sign and his sword knocks his guys in the balls,’” Mr. Kroll said. “Then when we decided to do a whole section on Ulysses S. Grant and the signing at Appomattox, we were like, ‘Perfect. We can do that joke.’”

My god, it's full of dick jokes.