At nearly 100, Mel Brooks has been such a lasting fixture in comedy, television, theatre and movies, that fans could hardly be blamed for not knowing that at one point, he was broke and considered washed up by the industry.
Divided into two parts, the documentary Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!, directed by Judd Apatow (This Is 40) and Mike Bonfiglio (The Zen Diaries Of Gary Shandling), delves into the highs (Your Show Of Shows, Young Frankenstein) and lows (depression, divorce, unemployment, box office flops) of Brooks’ personal and vast professional experiences. The documentary features terrific new and archival interviews with the ace raconteur himself, as well as his sons Nicholas and Max, and his late wife Anne Bancroft, and includes interviews with comedy luminaries, including Conan O’Brien, Ben Stiller, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, and Carl and Rob Reiner.
Part One covers the first four decades or so of Brooks’ life, beginning with a boyhood as Melvin Kaminsky spent with his three brothers in Brooklyn in the care of their tough, widowed mother, who lost her husband to tuberculosis when he was 34. As a teen he landed a gig as an “understudy busboy” in the Catskills where he made his stage debut and took note of the joyous response the comedians who performed there received. Brooks encountered his first serious antisemitism when he joined the Army in the last months of World War II (“Jew Bastard” was a common remark), missing the Battle Of The Bulge by being born six months too late.
The job in the Catskills would prove to be the first of several fortuitous moments for Brooks. Writer and actor Don Appell, who arranged that summer employment, introduced him to Sid Caesar, for whom Brooks would write on Your Show Of Shows in the early days of television, and where Brooks met Carl Reiner. As Brooks readily admits, “if there was no Sid Caesar, there would never have been a Mel Brooks.” Reiner and Brooks, who became lifelong best friends, were at a party with comedian and talk show host Steve Allen, who suggested they make an album of their party routine, which turned into The 2000-Year-Old-Man.
Part One also touches on his first marriage to Florence Baum, a dancer on The Colgate Comedy Hour (she turned down Dean Martin for Brooks) and the three kids they had in quick succession. Expecting to make movies, he left television, to disastrous results. Anger and anxiety contributed to the end of the marriage. While practically destitute, he had the very good luck to see Bancroft on stage, and he climbed his way out of the showbiz dumpster with The Producers and Blazing Saddles in 1974.
The second half picks up the same year because, incredibly, Brooks had two No. 1 movies in 1974, the other being Young Frankenstein. There are more movies (High Anxiety, Life Stinks), producing (The Elephant Man, Frances, My Favourite Year, and The Fly were under his banner), and a very successful partnership with Bancroft. That it lasted 40 years was no doubt due in part to psychoanalysis and a dose of feminism – unlike his first wife, who he forced to quit working, Bancroft was initially the bread winner and Brooks “didn’t want to deprive the world of her talent.” Brooks would eventually take The Producers to Broadway and becoming an EGOT with the show’s Tony Award wins.
Apatow asks only a handful of fairly softball questions, most of which don’t yield particularly detailed answers. The directors let Brooks (and the footage) do what he does best: Reflect thoughtfully on his remarkable 99 years on this plane, tell stories and entertain.
I loved how the directors framed Brooks across multiple talk show appearances animatedly telling the charming and hilarious story of his meeting and going to lunch with Cary Grant. It’s one that many people have heard before, including me, and it was just as captivating again, as are all of Brooks’ tales.
One question I did appreciate was Apatow asking whether Brooks was focused on preserving his legacy. “No, not about me,” Brooks explains, “but for the little, short, funny-looking Jews who are trepidatious about going into show business. If I can do it, you can do it.”
Brooks backs those sentiments up, working with young comedians on The History Of The World, Part II, the upcoming return to Spaceballs and a possible Young Frankenstein series.
The documentary, especially the first half, is notably absent of female voices. Bancroft’s interviews from decades ago are lovely to revisit – she fell fast because Brooks “looked like my father but acted like my mother”- but that’s pretty much it for a female perspective. There are a few Black comics interviewed: controversial Dave Chappelle offers commentary, as does Robert Townsend, and we hear from Richard Pryor about working with Brooks for seven weeks on “Blazing Saddles” before the studio replaced him with Cleavon Little. Part Two is better in that respect, with other family members, actress Daphne Zuniga and comedians Tracey Ullman, Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer turning up.
Those criticisms aside, it’s wonderful to spend 216 minutes with Brooks and his many friends, with more than a little tinge of sadness for those who are gone. And as Brooks reminds us, the importance of comedy shouldn’t be undervalued. “Comedy is joy… We have to look forward to little happinesses.” But even more so, as perhaps Jewish people can especially understand, “Comedy is a sensational and sometimes spectacular political weapon.”
“Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!” Parts One and Two Are Available On HBO and HBO Max.