It may surprise some people to hear that comedy LPs were once a big thing. When I was at school in the seventies, these treasured pieces of vinyl went from person to person, carried home in satchels and cases, to be played on the family record player. Our very own Monty Python released several, but the real gems were those imported from America.
I don’t think they generally had a full release in the UK, so when someone’s parents or siblings acquired one, they were suddenly very popular. I remember very few of them now. Some were wonderful, cutting edge comedy. Some were definitely not meant for teenage boys. And then there was The 2000 year old man.
If you grew up in the UK, the 2000 year old man was probably your first introduction to Mel Brooks. His earlier work had been almost exclusively on American television, and inaccessible on this side of the Atlantic. Although by the seventies he had moved into making movies (The Producers was released in the UK in 1969; Blazing Saddles in 1974), his fame was US-based, and his name wasn’t yet well known here.
So I picked up this new autobiography with real interest. I certainly consider myself a fan. His own movies are a very eclectic mix, from the slapstick to the macabre, and those produced by Brooksfilms, his production company, will surprise you if you didn’t know. He produced The Elephant Man for example, thought kept his name off the credits in case it misled people.
Being a fan of Mel Brooks is sometimes difficult. Even his most ardent admirers have to admit some of his films are a little hit and miss. Moments of brilliance, followed by a forced gag that falls flat. But the brilliance is what you remember. This book is somewhat similar, though the moments of brilliance come further and further apart.
The first section, where he tells of his childhood, growing up in Brooklyn, is touching and he paints an endearing picture of his formative years. His tales from service in World War II are straightforward, honest and surprisingly candid. As he moves on after the war into the world of reviews and television, there are wonderful stories of how he got his breaks, and the pressure of writing for live television week after week for The Show of Shows and Sid Caesar.
As the book progresses though, the momentum is lost somehow. When he moves on to the movies, it all becomes a bit repetitive. Each movie gets a chapter, and we hear how he raised the finance, who he wrote the script with, how he chose the actors, and so on. It’s ‘this happened, then this happened, then that happened’ over and over again.
Certainly there are some wonderful stories about the writers and actors he worked with, but they can be few and far between, and sometimes you’d forget which film was being discussed if it wasn’t at the top of each page.
The other problem is that Mel appears to be too nice. Everyone is ‘wonderful’, ‘amazing’, ‘perfect’, ‘a real talent’, a superstar’. It becomes meaningless after a while. He is, I think, fully aware of his own talent – quite rightly – and plays up to it along the way. And he is strong enough to admit to some of his mistakes and near misses.
But ultimately, I found the book something of a disappointment. In the earlier part, I got a feel for him as a child and a young man during the war. But from the late forties on, the real Mel Brooks largely disappears into the shadows, and all we see is his work and all the fabulous people he worked with.
Anyone has the right to write whatever they wish in an autobiography or memoir. But it’s a shame that this is, in the end, a bit shallow. I love Mel Brooks and his work. For all the occasional moments of failure in his movies, they are the work of a man at the top of his craft. Hilarious, touching, moving, political, satirical. Few can match him. I just wish I had learned a bit more about the man himself.
