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.

"What a show!"

"You better change your point of views todaaaay!"

The Twelve Chairs is not as funny as I remember. DeLuise and Brooks, in small parts, get nearly all the big yuks, not Ron Moody and Frank Langella.

"I hate people I don't like."

receiving Kennedy Center Honors this year, along with Springsteen and de Niro. I guess the president will be hearing a Blazing Saddles joke from Mel.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/kennedy-center-will-honor-springsteen-deniro-brubeck-mel-brooks-and-grace-bumbry/?hp

“The Boss” and an actor who found early acclaim playing a mob boss are two of the five 2009 Kennedy Center honorees.

weird way to describe deniro.

is it? Vito Corleone was his breakthrough; Mean Streets was a small release.

anyway, I hope Carl Reiner appears at this, now that they are both 2000-year-old men.

tom carson on the pernicious influence of robert deniro:

http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_6737

by the way i saw the Producers in london, with nathan lane and lee evans, and witnessed one of the most amazing moments i've ever seen at the theatre - completely unplanned - although i don't quite have the time at this exact moment to properly recount it

you have before! the hat toss thing, yeah?

also, on the OTHER Mel Brooks thread, you mistakenly credited Mel w/ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

I saw part of The Muppet Movie in a bar the other night, and forgot about Mel's funny mad-scientist extended cameo. "In two minutes, he won't know you from kosher bacon!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otPkk1sUFkI

ha, I can quote that w/out watching... "Dat looks like sumtin, dere."

That Tom Carson link is a goldmine: Is this the best link to keep up with his work?
http://men.style.com/search/results?cx=010858178366868418930%3A1uyj_dfm52w&cof=FORID%3A9&q=%22Tom+Carson%22#931

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aDGQgSGHGZ0&hl=en&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aDGQgSGHGZ0&hl=en&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

I am still waiting for Jews in Space

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/0/06/MelBrooksJewsInSpace.JPG

dude is woody allen w/t the film crit wankery and bergman/fellini/artfilm mugging. and his funniest stuff is funnier than woody allen's funniest stuff.

and his worst is way less funny

saw part of The Muppet Movie in a bar the other night, and forgot about Mel's funny mad-scientist extended cameo. "In two minutes, he won't know you from kosher bacon!"

― A Patch on Blazing Saddles (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 11, 2009 10:54 AM (1 year ago)

the last few Woody Allen movies were pretty damn dreadful (esp. the one with Larry David), at least the equal in awfulness to an awful Mel Brooks joint.

well, I haven't seen anything of Brooks' since Spaceballs (ugh), and have skipped plenty of Woody's lately. Mel peaked, filmwise, in 1974. Allen had a little more staying power.

Not sure this has ever been posted, from 1970... other panelists include George Segal and comedian/future TV director David Steinberg. This used to be rerun annually into the '80s on Susskind's show.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/video/article/video_the_david_susskind_show_1970_how_to_be_a_jewish_son_20081202/

Interview promoting new 4-DVD set of TV appearances, effluvia, The Mel Few People Have Seen:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/mel_brooks_the_only_weapon_ive_got_is_comedy/

what a bro

http://www.avclub.com/articles/mel-brooks-on-how-to-play-hitler-and-how-he-almost,89843/

AVC: A lot of comedians nowadays are very open about their past, and discuss some darkness that drew them to comedy. For some, comedy comes from a place of insecurity and anxiety, very heavy stuff. What’s your take on that? What was there at the very beginning that drove you to comedy? Was it dark?

MB: That’s a good question, about what was the determining factor. What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that philosophical treatise about having black beginnings and wanting love to compensate for that, wanting audiences and wanting attention—I say, “Au contraire.” Completely opposite. I want the continuation of my mother’s incredible love and attention to me. I was the baby boy. There were four boys. I was 2 years old when my father died, and my mother had to raise four boys. She must be in heaven, because in those days you washed clothes, you washed diapers. There was no income, and she had to take in home work. My Aunt Sadie brought her work that made these bathing suits and stuff, and ladies’ dresses. And my mother would sometimes do bathing-suit sashes all night. She got $5 or $6, and it was a lot. She could feed us, you know? But certainly she’d feed four boys for that day. It was amazing. But she loved me a lot. I don’t think I learned to walk until I was 5, because she always held me. [Laughs.] She’d say, “You can do anything, good or bad. You’re the best kid.” So I say, “Au contraire.” I think my surge forward into show business and getting audiences to love me was to continue gathering that affection and that love. It’s the opposite of a dark place. I came from a lovely, sunny place. Even though we were poor, you don’t know it. When you’re a kid, you don’t know it. I love franks and beans. I wouldn’t have eaten anything else! I didn’t know that was poor people’s food. [Laughs.] I didn’t know there was such a thing as steak. I knew there were French fries. There was chicken. Things were good.

My mother used to make [lunch for me] when I played with the kids in the street. She’d slice a Kaiser roll and fill it with tomatoes and butter on both sides, salt and pepper. And she’d put it in a brown paper bag and throw it down, and I’d catch it. I’d sit on the curb with Benny and Lenny and whoever, I had my lunch, and I loved it. It couldn’t have been anything better. Except one day I missed. And the brown paper bag, which held the Kaiser roll with all the tomatoes, the sliced tomatoes, and butter, and salt and pepper, smashed on the sidewalk. [Laughs.] So I just carefully peeled it away, peeled the brown paper bag away from it, and held it, and ate it. I began crying, because it was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life. The butter and the tomato had penetrated every crevice of that Kaiser roll. To this day, there will be nothing better.

I never realized we were poor, even though we really were. It was like the last apartment on the fifth floor. We had a family meeting once. I think I was, let’s see I’m trying to figure out. I was about 5, so it was 1931. We were sitting in the kitchen. The kitchen was everything. My mother had her bedroom, and there were four boys sleeping in one big bed. My brother had his own cot, so there were three and one. And my mother said, “I want to see the world.” I was 5. I thought, maybe she wanted to travel? I didn’t understand. None of us understood what she meant. She said, “All I see are cats. I see wet wash hanging on lines, and I see cats. I don’t want to see trees. I don’t want to live in the yards. I want to see the world. The apartment opposite us is open. We pay $16 a month. It’s $18 a month, and it’s on the street, where I can see the world. I can see into the courses and carts of people, whatever.” Whatever was on the street she could see, which was real action. And my brother Irving said—it was like a Clifford Odets play—“By God, we can do it.” So I ran for telephone calls, being only 5. I would call Mrs. Bloom to the phone. And Lenny would go to Sadie’s plant and work extra hours. Irving quit school and went to night school, and in the day he worked at one of mother’s garment-center places. And we all managed to bring in something so that my mother could move—all of us could move—to the front. And there was actually another little alcove, so we had more sleeping room. It was a wonderful story.

When I was very young and working for Sid Caesar; I was only 22 or 23. I called my other my brothers. I said, “I don’t want to tell mom what I’m making. She might have a heart attack and die. But I’m making over $150 a week.” Normal salary then was $57, $58 a week. I said, “So you guys, you’re off the hook.” They were still contributing to my mother’s household. I said, “Forget it. I got it. I’ll take care of it. Things are good.” That was a great day. I was making $50 a week with Sid for the first two years I worked for him. Then when the show went into a second season, I was given billing—“additional dialogue by Melvin Brooks,” or something—and $150 a week. So it’s a great story.

And later, my mother said, “Sadie and I want to live in Florida.” I said, “Okay.” [Laughs.] So they moved; this is true. They moved down to Florida. I was well-known then, you know? I became Mel Brooks. So they moved to Florida. I said, “Tell me about the apartment.” She said, “We’re living in a building, in a beautiful building, and I’ve got all of your awards on the television set. And once a week, I have the neighbors and friends come through and see them.” [Laughs.] Like a showing of my Oscar or whatever I had. An Emmy or this or that. And all my awards.

She’d slice a Kaiser roll and fill it with tomatoes and butter on both sides, salt and pepper. And she’d put it in a brown paper bag and throw it down, and I’d catch it. I’d sit on the curb with Benny and Lenny and whoever, I had my lunch, and I loved it. It couldn’t have been anything better. Except one day I missed. And the brown paper bag, which held the Kaiser roll with all the tomatoes, the sliced tomatoes, and butter, and salt and pepper, smashed on the sidewalk. [Laughs.] So I just carefully peeled it away, peeled the brown paper bag away from it, and held it, and ate it. I began crying, because it was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life. The butter and the tomato had penetrated every crevice of that Kaiser roll. To this day, there will be nothing better.

damn now i wanna try this

Mel Brooks Blu-ray collection only $23.99 at Amazon.com today. Except for that last one that's a pretty unbroken string of greatness:

Disc 1: The Twelve Chairs
Disc 2: Blazing Saddles
Disc 3: Young Frankenstein
Disc 4: Silent Movie
Disc 5: High Anxiety
Disc 6: History of the World - Part 1
Disc 7: To Be or Not to Be
Disc 8: Spaceballs
Disc 9: Robin Hood: Men in Tights

-7 Featurettes Plus 6 Blu-ray Exclusive Featurettes
-4 Trivia Tracks
-5 Isolated Score Tracks
-Commentaries, Interviews, Documentaries, Still Gallaries and more on selected films

Except for those last six

(and the first one)

Have never seen the last three.

You don't like The Twelve Chairs, Morbz? I haven't seen it in many years, is it not as good as I recall? ISTR Langella and Moody being great in it.

Not liking High Anxiety, though, that's just . . . idgi.

The Twelve Chairs has maybe Brooks' funniest line, or at least it seems that way in the delivery: "I hate people I don't like."

I saw High Anxiety when I was 8 or so and before I had ever seen a Hitchcock movie. That same year I saw the Gibbs/Frampton Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band before hearing much of The Beatles. So Hitchcock and The Beatles seemed like cover versions.

Not liking High Anxiety, though, that's just . . . idgi.

igi, igi, idgi

I rewatched 12 Chairs a couple years ago; the first 20 minutes and Dom DeLuise hold up nicely, then it runs out of gas.

The problem w/ High Anxiety is that a good Hitchcock film is funnier; the deftest parody is Mel's of Frank Sinatra (God, I bet I've posted this at least 5x before)...

Except for those last six

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:34 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You didn't like History? That's nuts! N-V-T-S nuts!

A bit too Carry On/ Up Pompeii for my liking

Saved by the Spanish Inquisition musical number and getting "It's good to be the king!" into the language, though.

hugest hahahahahhahahaas at the post-plane photo montage in High Anxiety

Anyone seen the recent American Masters doc? He's a great interview subject, though the film does end up feel somewhat lacking through no fault of its own for how (relatively) few of his collaborators are left alive to contribute (Gene Wilder doesn't either, but he speaks in quite a bit of archival footage). Still, the fact that I haven't seen most of his films in years caused me to laugh out loud a lot during the bulk of the clips (totally forgot about Bea Arthur's "you're a bullshit artist!" in History of the World, Part 1) and its loaded with great anecdotes. How did I never know about Brooks helping get The Elephant Man made?!

great stuff here (Pt 3 seems unavailable)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRbatJ3U2Yo

Mel's production company made The Elephant Man

why didn't he do more of that instead of all the post-High Anxiety shit comedies?

80 minutes

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/see-mel-brooks-tell-conan-how-hed-like-to-die.html

his Comedians In Cars.. was one of the best ones. well it was Reiner's but he was in it. i was astonished he and Seinfeld had never met for some reason.

It was so sweet, wasn't it?

Slowly making my way through the box set. The recent chat with Cavett is probably the highlight, so so very hilarious.

Watched "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" for the first time the other day since I saw it in a theater when it came out. It was pretty bad. Sometimes it felt like there were 10 minute stretches between jokes. At one point they have a blind man falling and injuring himself AND THAT IS THE JOKE! He's blind! Pretty cruel.

Still, the song is funny (not the embarrassing rap that opens the movie, the title song) and the casting was totally brilliant (Cary Elwes! David Chapelle! Isaac Hayes! Richard Lewis!) but where are the jokes?

I had a similar experience with Silent Movie last night. I remembered liking it when it came out, I even swiped a lobby card (I had a crush on Bernadette Peters.) But I tried watching last night and I couldn't even make it to her appearance. So slow, and the sight gags (such as they are) are so bad: a pregnant woman gets in the back of his car and the front wheels tip up. A Schezhuan restaurant with patrons breathing smoke. Seemingly endless, noisy slapstick with the three leads in clanking suits of armor...

i saw a few minutes again on TCM in December, and i laffed at the Szechuan gag.

as Mel has said, thgese films were meant to be watched in a theater, like all broad comedies. (silent esp)

(i will not argue that MB's filmic peak was long tho. The Producers thru Young Frkstein.)

Can we all agree that The Producers is pure genius? Because carping and caviling at it would only reveal an unbecoming pettiness in the carper.

history of the world part 1 is probably my favorite movie of all time

GIVE TO OEDIPUS
HEY JOSEPHUS!
HEY MOTHERFUCKER!

90 today. He and Reiner are gonna keep going til these bits are chronologically accurate.

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

welp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwuEAE83DjY

lol dang No Fear Mel Brooks

fwiw the Marine Band played "Springtime for Hitler" at this.

(yr Trump joke here)

I didn't know til I watched The Producers' DVD supplements this weekend that right after WWII Mel worked as a gofer for a Broadway producer who inspired Max Bialystock. The guy would shtup his little old lady backers in his office, and they would leave checks made out to "Cash." God bless America.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?thread=931638#2936102

@MelBrooks
To the @latimes - shame on you for eliminating daily coverage of horse racing (the sport of kings!) from your newspaper.

Mel Brooks appears in "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast" which is hosted by Carl Reiner and is an optimistic documentary about aging. With Betty White, Patricia Morrison, Normal Lear, Dick Van Dyke and others. It's good stuff

*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.

https://variety.com/2023/film/awards/angela-bassett-mel-brooks-governors-awards-honorary-oscars-1235654578/

Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks and Carol Littleton will receive honorary Oscars at this year’s Governors Awards, announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition, the Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satter will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Awards. The four statuettes will be presented at the 14th annual ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023, in Los Angeles.

Age 97 today.

As chance would have it, I watched High Anxiety last night. (Possibly a censored for broadcast edit.) Scattershot, but when it hit the target....

I told you we’d be back pic.twitter.com/RnoklPqBX6

— Mel Brooks (@MelBrooks) June 12, 2025

they're doing it. spaceballs 2: the search for more money

oh nooo josh gad is involved

Scary bump these days

moichendizing!

https://deadline.com/2025/06/spaceballs-2-casts-rick-moranis-bill-pullman-keke-palmer-1236431204/

moranis coming out of retirement!

hell yeah

Keke palmer has a old man's sense of humor i can dig it

so uhhh he's gonna be 101 when this movie comes out

We watched this with the kid recently. It doesn't hold up at all.

Blazing Saddles, however, is still great.

when I was 11 I thought it was the funniest movie it was possible to make

Fuck yeah. Pizza the Hut was my fave back in the day.

Watching now, Moranis is definitely the MVP. That man gives his all to a performance.

the one I wanna rewatch is Robin Hood: Men in Tights. that movie was also the shit when I was a kid. I do remember eventually seeing The Princess Bride though and being disappointed that this movie took so much from it. that said Richard Lewis is really funny in the "famous comedian who doesn't want to be in the movie" role

For good reason, Greatest Hits isn't a concept that's typically (or really practically) applied to movies, but Mel Brooks is the one filmmaker I could think of that could benefit from that, thanks to the way his films are usually structured. They come off like a collection of jokes, and whatever story or concept he's got going often feels incidental, like it's just something to hang jokes on (or at least give him an idea of what kind of jokes to make). If you were to string together all the funniest bits without caring about plot, I don't think the work would suffer at all.

yeah the plots of his movies are mostly just getting from this joke to that joke, I remember thinking a lot as a kid about how I loved his movies mostly because unlike other comedies they were more than just two dudes talking to each other for 90 minutes

But some kids enjoy that kind of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AUaXI4jU88

We watched Spaceballs in a group setting a couple weeks back and I still loved some of the gags. Seeing it on a 4k UHD disc lets one see a lot more jokes that the art department put in, also the realization that Stephen Tobolowsky has a brief role as the Spaceball officer who lambasts his crew for catching their stunt doubles.

I never noticed how the entire Nostromo crew in the diner is wearing almost one-to-one recreations of the costumes from Alien, including the hats, Harry Dean Stanton’s Hawaiian shirt under a flight jacket, and Yaphet Kotto’s handkerchief as headband.

Also, in the mid-section of the Eagle 5, you can see a Space Invaders pinball game that had a legally distinct Xenomorph knock-off on the back glass art.

Rick Moranis totally carries the film on his back, with George Wyner helping, and John Candy isn’t given enough to do.

movie totally holds up imo. it actually works as a movie. not every joke lands of course but so what. so many do.

I watched this movie as a kid before I'd even watched a Star War, loved it. OTOH, I gave up on Spaceballs the animated series after 5 minutes, just an obvious suckfest

Sorry for the blunt judgements here, but these are my takes on his films:

The Producers (1967) - Perfect
The Twelve Chairs (1970) - Haven't seen
Blazing Saddles (1974) - Perfect
Young Frankenstein (1974) - Perfect
Silent Movie (1976) Haven't seen
High Anxiety (1977) Haven't seen
History of the World, Part I (1981) Meh
Spaceballs (1987) Bad
Life Stinks (1991) Haven't seen
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) Bad
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) Bad

Silent Movie is a good idea that doesn't really come off. High Anxiety is funny.

Twelve Chairs rules. “EPILEPSY!”

It's the writers from Pokémon Detective Pikachu, which iirc people liked? That's one of those movies that feels like it was released in a parallel dimension that I could only barely glimpse through a quantum haze. I assume it made a billion dollars.

Anyway, the scroll trailer is cute and made me chuckle a little. I kind of wish that was it. I mean, stick around Mel, you are a national treasure, but History of the World, Part II had a pretty stacked cast and ...

I thought Silent Movie was at least as funny as Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, but I haven't seen it since I was like 10.

Even as an 80s kid--albeit one of the very few who wasn't all that into Star Wars--I knew that Spaceballs was second rate Brooks at the very least.

I watched Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and The Producers with at least one of my kids, but I never got around to Spaceballs with them. Even though I think it would have potentially resonated the most, I also feared being let down by a rewatch so many years later. Kind of like my generation and, I dunno, The Goonies, or the way slightly subsequent generations (apparently) revere Space Jam or Hook. Movies not really built to last but perhaps touchstones for the last of the catch-as-catch-can home video kids.

idk I love The Goonies.

Me too! But you and I are iirc the same age, so we are the bullseye for that one.

Spaceballs holds up last time I checked.

Goonies still works.

i didn't grow up with goonies and found it extremely annoying when i finally saw it a few years ago

i watched spaceballs on repeat from ages eight to eleven. incapable of viewing it objectively

The complaint I hear (and I understand) is about the kids yelling on top of each other. I found them an endearing bunch. Robert Davi and Anne Ramsey steal the film. I quote her all the time ("You like TONGUE?").

the kids yelling on top of each other. I found them an endearing bunch.

In other words, kids in a nutshell.

Life Stinks isn't a great film, but it's not bad either. Given some of the nastier reviews it got (see Gene Siskel) I would say it's very underrated, and FWIW, it's a rare case of him making something that isn't a parody of a genre or another film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apasYYh6nEA

ha tu ha tu skimadeebingbong boom ha tu

“I’m surrounded by assholes” is a good enough bit that the rest of the film could be a black screen for 90 minutes and it would still be fine. It’s “good enough”, as Donald Winnicott would say.. My kid loves the bit where Mel’s butt gets teleported backwards.

I have fond memories of Life stinks but I don’t think I’ve seen it it 30 years or more.

Please, please, don't make a fuss! I'm just plain Yogurt!

To those of you who say this movie is bad, watch it again with an open mind and love in your heart.. And keep firing, assholes!

"So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph - because good is dumb!"

the Michael Winslow microphone gag is my favorite. but what lives in my head is "what's the matter, Colonel Sanders? Chicken?

My friends and I quote Helmet's awesome pseudo-Jamaican patois often. "I can't BEA-LEEVE you fell for da oldest trick in da BOOK! What's WITH you, mahn, come ON!"

we ain’t found shit!

you idiots! you’ve captured their stunt doubles!

I like it when people swear with gusto in his movies.

“Your majesty, you look like the piss boy!”

“And you look like a bucket of SHIT!”

When I repeatedly watched Spaceballs as a kid, it was the edited-for-TV version. Lots of lines changed, the most notable of which was every instance of "asshole" getting replaced with "moron" in that famous scene. I got so used to it that the real lines sounded weird when I saw the unedited version as an adult. Seems to support the argument that nostalgia drives a lot of people's likes

That was actually the movie I learned about tv edits from as a kid.

I went to my mother to complain that something was wrong with the movie but couldn't say the word they were supposed to be saying instead of moron

so this was back in the vhs days, but i found this out way after the fact that my mom would rent movies, watch them, and then recut them for the kids. whatever cut of robin hood, or spaceballs was probably my mom's edit! i only found this out after watching the original austin powers movie and realizing numerous scenes were waaaay bluer/hadn't seen.

What?? Your mom had a video editing machine?

2 VHS recorders maybe? play on one and only record the clean parts on the second?

xxpost ha, your mom wasn't working at that rogue Utah library (or wherever) that once got in trouble for doing this, was she?

RELEASE THE MOM CUT

mom performed multiple assholectomies

I legit have a Spaceballs tattoo, bonkers to me that anyone could consider it anything except an absolute classic

(Tattoo in question is of the dancing alien in the diner scene at the end)

We watched this with the kid recently. It doesn't hold up at all.

Blazing Saddles, however, is still great.

― Cow_Art, Thursday, June 12, 2025 11:05 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I'm with you on this. I LOVED SB so much when I was a kid but I watched it a few years ago and I had to turn it off. Should have left it to my memories. Parts will always be classic but it was painful to sit through and I love Mel. He and Anne B were regular customers in my parents' restaurant in the 1970s. There's a facebook post in a group I'm in about the area and people sharing their stories about M. General consensus is that he was delightful and kind. It would have been so disappointing to hear otherwise.

So crazy that the film that I consider beyond the pale (given the more offensive racial jokes) is the one that some people like better. I don’t think I could watch Blazing Saddles today— whereas Spaceballs remains hilarious

BS has held up much better than spaceballs

xpost - I'm not happy about feeling this way! I wanted to still love it but I just couldn't get past about 30 mins in.

I do love that you have the dancing alien though. Top hat, cane, and all?

PIC PLEASE

https://ia600904.us.archive.org/31/items/img-5436_202506/IMG_5436.jpeg

Love that

If you were to string together all the funniest bits without caring about plot, I don't think the work would suffer at all.

― birdistheword, Friday, 13 June 2025 03:39 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's exactly what happened with "Young Frankenstein" - the "full" version didn't go over with test screenings, even though they really enjoyed making it. So, they did a version which was only the jokes, and found out that it totally worked!

Some of the "removed scenes" are on the DVD as "extras", I did watch one "reading the will" and it was long and was very dull. So, correct idea!

happy 99th birthday!