“All About Me!”
Mel Brooks
Ballantine, $29.99
Mel Brooks writes that although he has directed, produced, acted in, and written musical scores for the 11 movies that have made him justifiably famous, he thinks of himself primarily as a writer. And who can argue with the man who wrote the iconic scripts for his three funniest movies, "Blazing Saddles," "The Producers," and "Young Frankenstein"? Now he's written his autobiography, and how could it be anything but a work of comic art?
Unfortunately, it's not. There's a big difference between writing sketches for comedians to perform and writing prose. One medium is dramatic and the other is, well, prosaic. Even funny material sometimes just lies there on the page until gifted actors breathe life into it. Some authors, like Moliere and Oscar Wilde, have the gift of writing dialogue that makes us laugh out loud when we read it; others, like Shakespeare and Mr. Brooks, need the services of trained actors to breathe life into them.
"All About Me!" is peppered with the banter, quips, and snappy comebacks of which his conversations with other people in the business were replete, but lacking the voice and timing with which they were delivered most of them fall flat in the reading — though apparently, when they were first uttered, they were hilarious: Mr. Brooks spends more time on the reactions than he does on the jokes. His best audience was his lifelong friend Carl Reiner, who, typically, "broke up and hit the floor, clutching his belly and laughing like crazy." "Carl hit the floor" and "Carl really broke up" become the book's mantra.
And not just Carl: "Johnny Carson sometimes would literally fall off his desk chair while laughing uncontrollably." And again, "The audience exploded and Johnny hit the floor." It kept happening: "Sidney was in the middle of tuna fish and coffee and he exploded with laughter."
But in his professional work, Mr. Brooks had the wit to cast brilliant actors to mediate between his scripts and the theater audience; without Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, what would "The Producers" have been? (Actually, when he made it into a Broadway musical starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, it was a huge hit.)
He learned his art from masters; he was a junior member of the writers' group that gave the world Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in "Your Show of Shows." His talent for persuading people to fund his projects had a lot to do with their success. Gene Wilder, when "The Producers" was first pitched to him, was highly skeptical that Mr. Brooks would ever find backers for the show. "You're doing a play about two Jews who are producing a flop instead of a hit, knowing they can make more money with a flop, and the big number in it is 'Springtime for Hitler'?" Right. And as controversial as the subject was, many more people were enchanted than offended.
Not all of his films were mega-hits, but the ones that just broke even, like "Life Stinks," "The Twelve Chairs," and "Spaceballs," gave him an opportunity to experiment, expanding his repertoire from writing to directing to performing.
The book delivers what the title promises, exclamation point and all — an unedited account of a life that must have been fun to live but is sometimes monotonous to read about, because the formula becomes mechanical: Mr. Brooks gets an idea, casts performers, scrabbles for funding, shoots or mounts the show, and everything turns out fine. Then he does it again. But there isn't much detail to separate one project from another, and the people in his life are reduced to supporting players.
We could use some interesting and funny anecdotes about what happened on the set or in the dressing room, but what we too often have to settle for is a roll call of who was present to witness his triumph: "the beautiful and talented Nanette Fabray," "the beautiful and talented Lesley Ann Warren," "the beautiful and talented Teri Garr," "the beautiful and gifted Jessica Lange," and "the lovely and talented Misty Rowe" seem to coalesce, and we never find out any more about these people than Mr. Brooks's inevitably hyperbolic opinion of their talents.
The exception is Anne Bancroft, who fell in love with him after hearing his "2000 Year Old Man" routine, married him, and gave him love, support, and her considerable acting talents when he needed them.
Mr. Brooks says his ambition was always to create shows with more to them than a bunch of dumb, tasteless gags, though there are plenty of those (like the wordless scene in "Blazing Saddles" in which a dozen cowboys sit around, eat beans, and fart). But he wanted more — he aimed at the dignity of satire and parody.
"Silent Movie" was his homage to and a sendup of the Chaplin-Keaton era (and you have to hand it to Mr. Brooks for getting it made in black and white and without sound). "The Twelve Chairs" was an adaptation of a serious Slavic short story (though Mr. Brooks found a way to incorporate himself and Bancroft singing "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" in Polish). "High Anxiety" was his tribute to Alfred Hitchcock (who sent him a case of Chateau Haut-Brion in appreciation). "To Be or Not to Be" (a remake of the older Jack Benny film) ridiculed the Third Reich (still a ripe target, even after the war ended). "Life Stinks" was intended to be an exploration of Big Questions: "What happened to society? What happened to brotherly love? And what happened to caring about your fellow human being?" (No obvious answers emerge, and aren't the second and third questions the same thing?) And then on to "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," about whose female lead he said, "As far as genius is concerned, I know only two for sure — Orson Welles and Tracey Ullman." I don't think he was joking.
Toward the end of the book, more of his writing is on display, like the two-page opening verse of a song in the film version of "The Producers," as well as a lyric "that really stopped the show" titled "Hell Itself," which he sang in character as (you guessed it) Hitler. When the musical version of "The Producers" opened, he basked in what he called "an explosion of some of the greatest reviews of my career, and for that matter the greatest reviews of any show ever on Broadway." He quotes what Ben Brantley wrote in The Times, followed by "a brief version" (two full pages) of his acceptance speech for the Tony Award he won for Best Book of a Musical. These are followed by lengthy encomia from Larry David and President Obama. Mr. Brooks luxuriated in the fact that the show's producers won 12 Tonys — one more than "Hamilton," which had "threatened to knock us out of the winner's circle."
The latter portion of his life was hardly as triumphant, or as much fun, as the former. Anne Bancroft died of cancer in 2005, to which he devotes only one short paragraph. What did he say at her funeral, and what did others say? That would be worth knowing. He has lost several people who were, he says, important to him, but he never mentions the deaths of Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel (who succumbed to a heart attack at 62), Madeline Kahn, whom he praised extravagantly when she starred in "Young Frankenstein," and others. When you hit your 90s, I guess you have to expect your circle to diminish, but he seems curiously unmoved.
Summing up his life's work, he says, "I can honestly say I've done it as well as anybody." It's hard to argue with a career like his. But I prefer to remember him as an unpaid interviewee in a short documentary from last year on of all things the Automat, that iconic chain of eateries that were half restaurant, half slot machine, remembered so fondly by those old enough to do so. He brings back the experience of eating there vividly, through an accumulation of wonderful details (you gave the cashier a dollar and she instantly slid 20 nickels to you, without ever making a mistake).
That sounds like an engrossing performance, even though no one fell off their chairs.
Richard Horwich taught English at Brooklyn College and New York University. He lives in East Hampton.
Mel Brooks formerly had a second home in Southampton with Anne Bancroft.