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Say
what you will about his slapstick and perfectly timed scatological jokes,
but Mel Brooks has easily cemented his fate as the "Sultan of
Spoofs." With a trophy case worthy of envy (he’s won Emmys, Tonys,
Grammys and Oscars), Brooks has secured himself a place at an elite table
alongside such greats as Marvin Hamlisch, Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn,
Whoopi Goldberg and Liza Minnelli as the select handful of artists to win
an award for each of the media they’ve tried their hand at.
Sure, Brooks spoofed every imaginable cinematic genre, and even gave life to a cross-dressing, singing Adolf Hitler for The Producers. But what few realize about Brooks is that his comedy is merely a front for a very private artist intent on making critical, thought-provoking and envelope-pushing art. "The image of a wacko is important to me, even though it's not really me," Brooks has said. "If people think I'm a wacko, I don't have to reveal anything. I can keep whatever is truly me private. Every celebrity fights for anonymity. My anonymity is the serious Mel Brooks." |
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History Of Brooks’ World,
Part I
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky to poor, Russian-Jewish parents in Brooklyn on June 28, 1926, a date he has often pointed out as the 12th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which sparked World War I. Though his father died when he was 2, and the small and sickly kid was often picked on by his cronies, Brooks turned to laughter as a coping mechanism. "Humor is just another defense against the universe," Brooks has said. "I believe you are either blessed with humor, or it escapes you. I don't think you can ever really acquire the gift of creating comedy unless you have been born with it." Brooks spent most of his childhood daydreaming at the local movie cinema, watching silent flicks and pining to work alongside such stars as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. By the time he was 14, Brooks landed his first paying gig, working as a "toomler" in upper-class resort pools in The Catskills, where he performed monologues, played instruments, sang and told jokes to an upper-class, pool-side clientele. His love of entertaining continued when he joined the Army at 17, and while stationed in North Africa during World War II, Brooks often staged impromptu skits for his fellow comrades. |
| From The
Small Screen…
After the war, Brooks turned to stand-up comedy and took his mother’s maiden name – Brooks -- to avoid confusion with composer Max Kaminsky. He ended up writing jokes for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows alongside Woody Allen, Neil Simon and Carl Reiner. It was with Reiner that Brooks created the "2,000-Year-Old Man" character that would pave the way for a series of best-selling comedy albums and give Brooks his first taste of stardom. After winning a writer’s Emmy, Brooks left Caesar’s show to create Get Smart, a goofy blend of spy shtick that mocked US intelligence and thumbed its nose at Cold War paranoia. Brooks followed-up Get Smart by re-teaming with Reiner to do a series of improvisational routines featuring the 2,000-Year-Old-Man character, winning three more Emmys in the process and establishing himself as one of the most spontaneous funnymen in America. |
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…To The Silver Screen
After winning an Oscar for his first animated short, The Critic in 1963, Brooks married actress Anne Bancroft in 1964 and turned his focus to film. Two years later, he would win another Oscar, this time for Best Screenplay for writing The Producers (1970), an unlikely send-up about a pair of bumbling producers who decide to make a Broadway musical flop about Nazi Germany. Though critics initially scratched their head at the movie, it became a smash hit, establishing Brooks as one of the best spoofs in the business. Brooks followed up The Producers by turning his attention to the American Western with Blazing Saddles (1974). Realizing he was on to something, Brooks quickly got started writing Young Frankenstein (1974), a spoof on old horror flicks, with Gene Wilder. Over the next 20 years, Brooks would write a steady stream of parodies to establish an often imitated, but rarely equaled, formula. He even dared to spoof Star Wars, Star Trek and Planet of the Apes – all in one movie – with his hilarious send-up, Spaceballs in 1987, starring himself, Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga and the voice of Joan Rivers. The movie is full of side-splitting one-liners and sight gags, from Moranis as a half-pint "Dark Helmet" to Candy as "Barf the Mawg," a half-man, half-dog creature ("I'm my own best friend!"). Brooks also wrote and directed History of the World – Part I (1981), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). |
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I Wanna Be A Producer
While he was writing and directing his parodies, Brooks also had his eye cast on the producer’s chair. He quietly founded Brooksfilms in Brooklyn and began producing such films as the seriously sad The Elephant Man (1980), The Fly (1986), The Doctor and the Devils (1985), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and Solarbabies (1986). Fearful that filmgoers would think his new movies were veiled attempts at gross-out humor, Brooks had his own name removed from all publicity relating to the films. Then, in 2001, Brooks re-imagined The Producers as a Broadway musical, with irreverent lyrics and a unique Brooks stamp of absurdity. No other writer could cleverly lampoon a cross-dressing Hitler obsessed with his own rise to power: "I was just a paperhanger, no one more obscurer. Got a phone call from the Reichstag, told me I was Führer." The show starred Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and would go on to win a Grammy and 12 Tony Awards – the most Tonys ever won by a single show. When asked on opening night if he was nervous about how the $40 million musical would be received, Brooks quipped, "If it flops, I'll take the other sixty million and fly to Rio." He didn’t need to worry, as with that single musical, he surpassed the likes of Rogers and Hammerstein, Steven Sondheim and other theater greats before him by making both a commercial – and artistic – success on stage. Moreover, he became, in his own words, " the only Jew who ever made a buck offa Hitler!" Though now in his late ‘70s, Brooks has no intentions of slowing down. He’s remaking the Broadway musical version of The Producers back into a movie, and it is rumored that he is currently developing a Spaceballs sequel. He’s also turning Young Frankenstein into his next Broadway musical, with a possible opening in 2005. Yet despite his great successes, a long-time marriage to Bancroft that defied Hollywood stereotypes and a career worthy of his multiple statuettes, Brooks has maintained a kind of self-effacing attitude about his life, scoffing at the notion that he’s a genius: "Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius." |
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