Hilarious Hollywood hyphenate Mel Brooks is the subject of a new
American Masters profile tonight (May 20) at 9 ET on PBS — and earlier today, he’s also my guest on
Fresh Air…
The American Masters 90-minute special [as always, check local listings] is written, produced and directed by Richard Trachtenberg, who also serves as the off-camera interviewer guiding Brooks through questions about his life and career.
And what a life. From TV’s Your Show of Shows and Get Smart to movie and Broadway versions of The Producers, from producing 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums with Carl Reiner (left) to the very dramatic The Elephant Man movie by David Lynch, Brooks has been a creative dynamo. Yet, as tonight’s Mel Brooks: Make a Noise biography reveals, Brooks also has had bouts of depression, and times where climbing one pinnacle of success has left him sliding down into a valley of uncertainty.
Make a Noise is structured without narration. Brooks tells his own story, entertainingly and very candidly, and his tales are interspersed with samples from his many movies and TV and stage shows.
There also are lots of interviews with those who worked with or for Brooks. Some are new ones conducted for
Make a Noise — including Carl Reiner, David Steinberg, Nathan Lane, Cloris Leachman, Joan Rivers, Tracey Ullman, Susan Stroman and Barry Levinson. Others are vintage interview clips, featuring Brooks himself, as well as Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Richard Benjamin, Marty Feldman and Anne Bancroft.
The interview with Bancroft (right), in which she recounts her first meeting with future husband Mel Brooks, is the most revealing and delightful piece in the entire documentary — and there are plenty of other delightful pieces in contention. She marvels at his sheer audacity and tenacity when he introduces himself — while he, in a separate interview, tells of seeing her singing a sultry song in a TV variety show appearance, while
Make a Noise unearths and shows us that very appearance.
There’s another nifty bit of scholarship, too, even though it’s underplayed. There’s a photograph of the newspaper headline announcing the 1964 wedding of this unlikely but beautifully matched couple, and the headline itself underscores the different show-biz wattage of the two at the time: “Anne Bancroft, Comedy Writer Married in NY,” read the headline.
Another superb moment comes when Stroman (left), Brooks’ collaborator on the hit Broadway adaptation of
The Producers, tells a sad but beautiful story of how Brooks urged her to take over direction of the play after her husband, the original appointed director, died suddenly. “It saved me,” Stroman says tearfully of Brooks’ partnership in
The Producers.For those who know little about Mel Brooks, Make a Noise is a very smart, fairly thorough primer. (An even longer version, featuring deleted segments, goes on sale Tuesday on DVD.)
Make a Noise manages to cover many aspects of Brooks’ life and career while uncovering some surprises even for those well-versed in the Brooks canon. Among the fresh stuff Trachtenberg delivers: the surprise Brooks film that ranks as his most popular DVD release, and Brooks’ response to the question, When did he first become aware of Adolf Hitler?
I’ve been able to ask Brooks many questions of my own, including in some interviews conducted exclusively for TV Worth Watching.
And today, May 20, I interview Mel Brooks once again, with a whole new set of questions, for NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. As with every time I get to talk to him, I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface — and I always come away amazed by the clarity and vividness of his memories, and the youthful exuberance of his stories and his entire demeanor.
It was a pleasure to talk with him — and I hope, if you tune in or visit the Fresh Air website, the pleasure is yours, too.