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Mel Mania

The master of movie satire has a
new video box set and a new CD.

ROBERT J. HAWKINS
Special to The Jewish News

IV

hen Fox Home
Entertainment came to
Mel Brooks with a pro-
posal to package six of
his films into a video box set, Brooks
had a counterproposal: Add his 1970
classic The Twelve Chairs to the set
and he would do publicity.
That is how the Mel Brooks
Selections (Fox, $60) came to be seven
titles instead of six. And that is how
Brooks came to host a segment on the
Home Shopping Network.
"I was between a zircon and some
kind of a garnet broach," Brooks
recalled recently on the eve of his 71st
birthday. "Nice placement, right in
the cleavage there. Seven videos right
in the cleavage. "It went like hot
cakes. I would have preferred if it
went like videos. But it did well. They
were delighted. I'm delighted.

Above: This month,
Mel Brooks, left, is out
with a new CD with
pal Carl Reiner.

Right: Mel Brooks plays
a musical grand
inquisitor in History of
the World—Part I.

"I feel like Armani,
you know, Le

Collection."
And what a collec-
tion it is. Besides
releasing The Twelve
Chairs on video for the first time, the
set contains Silent Movie, High
Anxiety, History of the World — Part 1,
Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Young
Frankenstein and To Be or Not to Be.
"There are movies here people don't
often see," said Brooks. "Like Silent
Movie. It very rarely shows on televi-

sion because people use television for
baby-sitting. They've got to hear it, go
to sleep with it. But there is only
music, no dialogue. You really have to
sit and watch the movie, which is ask-
ing a lot of people."
Brooks describes Silent Movie as
one of his personal favorites. But the
more you talk to him, the more you
sense he'd be hard-pressed to name
one of his movies that wasn't a
favorite.
"The thing about The Twelve
Chairs," recalls Brooks, of the film —
one of his earliest, "is that no dreams
had crashed yet.
It was all about the infinity of
goodness and life. It is one of the few
stories I did that is not a spoof."
A devoted student of comedy-farce
director Ernst Lubitsch, Brooks is
loath to put his version of To Be or
Not to Be up against the master's. "It is
not as good as the Lubitsch Jack
Benny/Carole Lombard classic," he
offers. "Nothing could be as good as
that. But it is a classic."
It's no surprise that Brooks fondly
recalls the shower scene in the
Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety, in
which he replicated each of the 31
camera cuts in Janet Leigh's Psycho
demise. Except that the bellhop (Barry
Levinson) pummels Brooks' Professor
Thorndike with a newspaper until the
ink runs down the drain. "That kid
gets no tip," mutters Thorndike.
On the History of the World — Part
1, Brooks averages a "letter a week
asking for Part 2. And I send it back
and say, 'Me, too.'"
Brooks gets as much
g
E, of a kick out of playing
2 roles in his movies as
,-she does writing and
`a. directing them. He
8
recalls with Oscar-qual-
ity enthusiasm the time
a young Robin Hood
fan singled him out on
an airplane and said,
"Oh my God, it's
Rabbi Tuchman."
"You get to hear the
director talking during
the movie," he enthus-
es. "You get a free Mel
Brooks comedy record with the
movie!"
Brooks started off fast in the movie
side of Hollywood. His 1964 satirical
short film The Critic won an Oscar.
His 1967 theatrical debut The
Producers (not in this video set) earned
him an Oscar for original screenwrit-
ing. But it was the 1973 Blazing

Saddles that began the string of wildly
funny satires and spoofs that have
become, the Mel Brooks trademark.
"After that, I could make any movie
I wanted and the studios would say,
`Can I help you?'" Brooks recalls with
an easy laugh. Brooks' fans will be
interested in hearing that he has two
films in the pipeline.
"I'm working on a crazy old
English restoration comedy and a
modern story of amnesia," he says.
"The restoration comedy is going to
go out better because I always forget
what I'm writing on the amnesia
thing." (Drum kick, please.)

"For every 10
Jews beating their
breasts, God
designated one to
be crazy and
amuse the
breast-beaters.

— Mel Brooks

In addition to the video box set,
look for the newly released CD The

2000 Year Old Man in The Year 2000
(Rhino Records, $16.99), with Carl
Reiner. Recently, Reiner and Brooks
did two shows for 400 die-hard fans
of the old sketch in which Reiner
plays the straight man, interviewing
Brooks' very, very old guy on his views
of the modern world.
"We got a 44-minute beauty of a
CD," says Brooks. "Other questions
have come up since the originals."
Like?
"Like Velcro. It was not mentioned
then. The 2000 Year Old Man actual-
ly swoons when he talks about a new
thing called the swirl, where you can
get vanilla and chocolate out of the
same spout — bigger than the Mir
space station, and it never has acci-
dents."
Maybe it doesn't. But we can
always count on Mel Brooks cracking
us up.

❑

Robert Hawkins writes for Copley
News Service.

10/24
1997

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