A remarkable life
ALL ABOUT ME! Mel Brooks Loot.co.za (R280) CENTURY
PRESIDENT Barack Obama said about him: “Suffice it to say, in his satires and parodies, no cow is sacred, no genre is safe. He mocked the musical – and Hitler in The Producers, the Western in Blazing Saddles, and the horror film in Young Frankenstein.”
“But behind all the insanity and absurdity, there’s been a method to Mel’s madness. He’s described his work as ‘unearthing the truth that is all around us’, And by illuminating uncomfortable truths – about racism, sexism and anti-Semitism – he’s been called ‘our jester, asking us to see ourselves as we really are, determined that we laugh ourselves sane’.”
The occasion was the awarding of a Kennedy Center Honor to Mel Brooks, writer, director, actor, producer. One of an elite group to have earned an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy.
Brooks took advantage of the Covid lockdown stay-at-home to write his autobiography, All About Me!
I first heard of Mel Brooks way back in 1961 when I listened to his iconic comedy LP, The 2000 Year Old Man, and “we’ve been together ever since!” At the tender age I was then, I remember laughing out aloud uncontrollably.
Brooks, as Obama said, has devoted his working life to making people laugh. All About Me! is subtitled My Remarkable Life in Show Business and this book is full of laughter and the remarkable oeuvre of one of its greatest funny men, Brooks.
Those of you who have seen Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, The Producers and the History of the World Part 1, will have a good idea of the treat that awaits you when reading the book.
His stage version of The Producers
has earned 12 Tony Awards, more than any other musical in American history (one more than Hamilton).
Brooks certainly deserves all the honours that have come his way: Kennedy Center Award, American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Medal of Arts.
Brooks is 95 years old and at the end of All About Me! says: ”It has been a lot of fun writing this memoir, and I’m sorry I have to bring it to a close.
But who knows, we’ll meet again in another chapter called: The History of Mel Brooks, Part ll.
If you have enjoyed reading Part 1 as much as I have done, why not let him know that his eager readers (fans!) are waiting.
The memoir is largely about Brooks’s career, it is narrated in a very personal and intimate style and one does learn a fair amount about Brooks himself along the way.
I found that particularly interesting were those parts that talked about how each production was “put together”.
The memoir is hugely entertaining and is full of hilarious anecdotes, celebrities and Brooksian asides and, at the end, of it one is left hungry for more from Mel Brooks.
All hail (heil?) the Emperor of Comedy!