Remembering Gene Wilder — as mensch, mad genius and the only Wonka who matters
A new documentary finds pure imagination and wonder, even in career lowlights
A new documentary finds pure imagination and wonder, even in career lowlights
After yet another indictment, life in Trumpworld is uncannily imitating Mel Brooks' 'Producers'
Jeremy Dauber's 'Disobedient Jew' demonstrates why the comic and filmmaker's work was markedly different in his early years
All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business By Mel Brooks Ballantine Books, 480 pages, $25 Mel Brooks’ memoir begins with a promise. In a preface, the 95-year-old actor-writer-director vows to make an intimate confession to his reader — one not to be shared with anyone. Then, he thinks a bit more about the…
From one Brooks, how many rivers flow? There’s a bit of trivia about the filmmaker, who turns 95 on Monday, that I often turn over in my head. On an episode of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” Carl Reiner said that the two funniest people he knew were Brooks and a 16-year-old kid named Albert Einstein….
While Mel Brooks has dabbled in the local politics of a frontier town, enjoined theatergoers to join a Nazi kickline and famously proclaimed “It’s good to be king,” he’s never made a video endorsing a political candidate. Even at 94, there’s a first time for everything. On October 21, Brooks’ son Max posted his father’s…
And nowwwww, it’s springtime for Trump and the GOP. (Oooh, it’s springtime!) Winter for all of America. In a glorious comeback that made us wish “The Producers” was still on Broadway, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane revived their roles of conniving producers Max Bialystok and Leo Bloom for Jimmy Kimmel’s annual post-Oscars show. Except this…
Comedy, explained Aristotle, has a vague history, because at first no one took it seriously. We cannot know for certain if Aristotle was deadpanning, but his observation would amuse Saul Austerlitz. According to Austerlitz, American film comedy has not been taken seriously, either. In fact, the author quips, it is American film’s “bastard stepchild.” With…
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