This week on CBC Radio stations across the country, I was asked to comment on “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!” The two-part documentary, directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, premieres this Thursday and Friday on HBOMax and Crave.
Each host started by asking me to explain who Brooks is for listeners who may not have heard of him. This seems impossible to me. As Apatow says (and he makes a compelling case with this film), Brooks is the funniest man who ever lived.
Fact is, Brooks is one of the architects of modern comedy, He directed “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” in the same year (1974); co-created, with Buck Henry, Get Smart!; wrote for one of the most brilliant sketch shows ever with You Show of Shows; and recorded one of the funniest comedy albums with Carl Reiner, “The Two Thousand Year Old Man.” All last century to be sure but still, funny is funny.
Consider all those Tony Awards Brooks won for turning his 1968 film “The Producers” into a Broadway smash. That happened 25 years ago in 2001. Then there were all of those late night talk show appearances. Brooks was wild and spontaneous on Johnny Carson’s first Tonight Show in 1962 right up to one of his last appearances 30 years later in 1992.
Just the same, maybe not everybody knows Mel Brooks. Apatow, however, who interviewed Brooks for 10 hours at his house for this documentary, does his best to place him on the Mount Rushmore of comedy. He has help, with commentary from many who were inspired by Brooks to get into the comedy business. Appearing are Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, Nick Kroll, Amy Schumer, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Dave Chappelle and Ben Stiller,
Apatow, who is becoming the Ken Burns of 20th century comedians (look up his previous documentaries about Garry Shandling and George Carlin), framed this story with an important question: even if you know Mel Brooks, do people realy know who he is?
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“No,” says Brooks, which sets off the journey that is this Two-Part biography.
We learn of his hardscrabble live growing up in Brooklyn. His father died when Brooks was very young of tuberculosis. Brooks mother, Katie, who gave birth to him on the family’s kitchen table, raised four boys on her own. All four, including young Mel, served in World War II. Brooks recalls jabbing a Bayonet into the ground while in France, looking for booby traps left behind by the retreating German army.
The experience helped develop within Brooks a lifelong determination to stand up to bullies, be they of the schoolyard variety or fascist dictators. He famously lampooned der fuhrer in “Springtime for Hitler,” the play that was built to bomb in “The Producers.”
Brooks’ own comic inspiration came to him at the movies. Silent clowns such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were favourites. Brooks “Silent Movie” (1976) paid tribute, albeit in colour instead of black and white and starring Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman. The one word spoken in the film was by famed mime Marcel Marceau.
The Marx Bros inspired Brooks, as did the all but forgotten Ritz Brothers. Still a teen, he snuck into the Borscht Belt — dens of comedy in the Catskills north of New York City. There, Burlesque comics, mainly Jewish, thrived. Brooks found his way out of a more likely fate — working in the garment district.
After the war, he used his “special services” army connections to find work in New York. He first saw Sid Caesar in 1947 and was knocked out by his characterizations. “If there was no Sid Caesar, there would never have been a Mel Brooks,” he declares.
Brooks eventually followed Caesar to the live, 90-minute sketch series Your Show of Shows (1950-54). Do the names Neil Simon, Mel Tolken, Larry Gelbart, Lucille Gallen and Carl Reiner mean anything? Just the greatest TV writing room ever. Brooks, who was paid directly by Caesar, was known as “the living interruption” by one of the other writers.
The documentary tells us that a comedian’s life isn’t always funny. Brooks had his own problems with high anxiety, which he worked out through psychoanalysis. There were lean years financially after the Sid Caesar shows ended. It wasn’t until the “Two Thousand Year Old Man” that he broke through to stardom as a comedian. The sketch began as a bit Brooks used to do at parties with Reiner. It became a hit album in 1960, and then a series of albums. Dave Chappelle calls it the funniest thing ever.
Meeting Anne Bancroft was his next lucky break. Brooks had been married before, to dancer Florence Baum. They had three children including frequent Bill Maher guest Max Brooks. Bancroft and Brooks, as Reiner said, seemed like an odd couple to many, but her arrival in his life seemed to open the door to greater things.
Brooks boasts a showbix EGOT, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and several Tonys. He earned them all with his great comedies “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” as well as his lesser ones such as “Silent Movie,” “High Anxiety,” “Men in Tights,” “History of the World Part I” and “Spaceballs.” They all had their moments. Brooks was at his best when he stuck to his guiding principle: make it funny, and don’t be afraid to be silly or sophisticated.
Example: “Blazing Saddles.” Any other comedy which repeated the “N” word that often would have been ridden out of town. With Richard Pryor egging him on as a writer, Brooks somehow hung his whole movie on the ridiculousness of racism.
“Spaceballs,” on the other hand, is nothing but groaners. Try not to laugh, however, at Rick Moranis’ Big Helmet. Or at Brooks himself, from his 1983 remake of “To Be or Not to Be.” Dressed as Hitler, he danced around singing, “I want Peace! A little piece of Poland, a little piece of France…” That the satire scores harder today is proof that we need Mel Brooks more now than ever.
If you still don’t know the man, consider this amazing thing he once said: “Comedy blows the dust off your soul.” Brooks understood and mastered the healing power of laughter. He blazed a comedy trail that has echos to this day on The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park or SNL.
Finally, if you really want to know Mel Brooks, watch this “99 Year Old Man.” Catch it Thursday and Friday on HBOMax and Crave or anytime on demand.
