All About Me! by Mel Brooks

Are you a Mel Brooks fan?  If you are, you’ll certainly enjoy this autobiography of Mel’s life in show business.  If you aren’t a fan, you’ll still enjoy this autobiography of Mel Brooks, nee Melvin Kaminsky, and his life in show business.   

Mel Brooks says he had nothing to do during the pandemic, so he wrote a book!  The publication date is 2021.  Mel, having been born in Brooklyn in 1926, must have been somewhere around 94 as this autobiography came together.  The writing style is conversational.  The text includes song lyrics, jokes, favorite routines and dialog sequences that Brooks includes to illustrate various points.  There are a lot of pictures.  The 451 pages are organized largely according to Brooks’s artistic endeavors so a chapter on writing for TV and Sid Caesar, a chapter on Carl Reiner and the album the 2,000 Year Old Man, a chapter on Get Smart (had no idea that was Mel Brooks!), The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood, etc.

Mr. Brooks does not dwell either excessively or introspectively on his personal life but he does offer occasional insights about how an event affected him or how a person helped to shape him.  He gives a pretty good accounting of his childhood, his early adulthood, and he does write about meeting Anne Bancroft, their marriage and life together.  His first marriage is not mentioned at all, although he has pictures of and writes warmly about his children from that marriage.

I admit to seeing none of Mel Brooks’s movies from start to finish, only snippets here and there.  I don’t think I was old enough or savvy enough to appreciate Mel Brooks in his early years, but as a baby boomer much of the culture that he writes about, entertainment and otherwise, is very familiar.  Brooks says his humor isn’t Jewish humor it’s New York humor, but what is New York humor if it isn’t Jewish?  In any event, until 1968, I knew little of New York, and I don’t think I would have been attracted to his work even if I had known more.  After reading this book, my favorite Mel Brooks movie would certainly be Blazing Saddles--the race jokes, the acting, the concept, just hysterical. 

After the first 70 pages or so, Brooks concentrates on discussing his work rather than his life except as it relates to his work.  He goes into some detail about what is involved in making a movie, selecting a cast, how writers write solo and how they write in a group, what it’s like to be the director and what it's like to take instruction from a director.  Brooks writes about what makes comedy work and the joy he gets from hearing the laugh.  He has a fairly exhaustive chapter on the Broadway production of The Producers.  He covers the business side of making movies and shows in the chapters describing his own production company, Brooksfilms.  I liked the insider looks at the entertainment business, life in California, his attempt to have John Wayne play the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles, his friendships and professional relationships with Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder and Dom DeLuise among so many others.  

This book brings into focus Mel Brooks and his talent for doing just about everything—comedy writer, comedic vision, actor, screenplay-writer, songwriter, director, producer and did I leave anything out!  Mel Brooks frequently uses the adjective “Promethean” to describe others he’s worked with but I think the term could be applied to him as well.  Mel Brooks is a Promethean talent.  He’s intelligent, endlessly creative, articulate, analytical and funny. 

Brooks snuck a little bit of politics into the book.  When chosen for the Kennedy Center Honors in the earlier part of the 2000s, Brooks refused to accept the award from then-President George Bush.  He writes:  “I didn’t want to be honored by Bush because as a veteran I was very unhappy about Americans being sent to war in Iraq.”  Come on, Mel, just tell us you’re a Dem and be done with it.  A few years later in 2009 he accepted the same award from President Barack Obama.  

This book is not gossipy or fluffy.  Mel Brooks is a funny guy who is very serious about his comedy.  If you like reading about show business, comedy, Broadway or the creative process, Mel Brooks fan or not, it will be worth your while to read this book.  Democrat or not!

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier

“It is a pity you were not born a boy,” he said, “you would have discovered then what danger meant. Like myself, you are an outlaw at heart, . . . .”  A page or so along the pirate emphasizes the point, “It is a pity indeed you are not a boy, you could have come with me.”  So says our French pirate to the fair lady who meets his eyes above the embers of their dying campfire. 

Ah, there’s the rub.  What does a woman do if she is too independent-minded and too clever for the time and place in which she lives?  What does a woman do who longs to be more than her sex will typically allow? That is, in the words of Professor Higgins, why can’t a woman be more like a man? Of course, were the woman in question a man, our French pirate would not care a fig if he came along for the ride or not! Perhaps a woman should be a woman.  

Frenchman's Creek, Helford River, England

Our heroine, Lady Dona St Columb, is an upper-crust Brit in 17^th century London.  She has a husband and two small children.  She gets involved with a dashing French pirate who parks his boat along the banks of a creek on her country estate.  While this plot line may seem a bit thin and contrived, the novel’s theme is neither.  This is a tale of star-crossed lovers!  Regardless of plot, thick or thin, who can resist a story of two people finding their soulmate only to find that soulmate to be just out of reach. 

 As in Mary Anne and My Cousin Rachel, Du Maurier’s female protagonist is not all that likeable.  Lady Dona is at first glance petulant and imperious, a bit abrasive.  As we read on, though, she acquires more dimension and depth.  She softens a bit.  Perhaps, we concede, perhaps she is just like anyone else, looking for true love.  Perhaps through no fault of her own she ended up with a husband ill-suited to her temperament.  Perhaps she should leave him?  Perhaps she should follow her dreams.  After all, don’t we all deserve to be happy?

About a third of the way through, I found the book hard to put down.  Du Maurier’s writing is expert, the setting is bucolic and remote.  The romance is high and the suspense is unrelenting!  The energy builds with the dopey husband, the dashing pirate, candelight dinners, the twists, the turns, the moonlit dramas and the sailing ship.  In fact, I’m not so sure that the excitement doesn’t continue right up until the closing sentence of the book.  Indeed, after reading the last word, I was disappointed to look up and see only my own living room and myself sitting there in a mere tee-shirt and sweatpants.  No silk gown, no candlelight, no creek and no pirate. 

What is the upshot of all this adventure?  Ultimately, it seems, men are daring and unafraid of being afraid.  Women are nurturers and naturally seek a safer harbor.  But you must read the book for yourself! Like Mary Anne and My Cousin Rachel this is probably more of a woman’s book.

Reading History

 My first video post!  I've just completed Will Durant Volume 6 of The Story of Civilization, The Reformation.