Oeuvre: Mel Brooks Retrospective

As I said in my first review, the Oeuvre project was just something that I started with a friend to keep in touch, as well as keeping our critical minds sharp, and to give us a chance to explore and revisit films we might never have watched otherwise.  

For the past month and a half or so, I've been watching and reviewing the films of Mel Brooks.  I had heard of almost all of his work but I had never seen most of them and exploring unknown decades of his career was intriguing.

Its always interesting to watch a director change over time.  Whether they evolve or stagnate.  As long as I've known about Mel Brooks, I've known him as a comic legend.  The common man equivalent to Woody Allen.  There was even a debate over which of these New York Jewish comedians was "better" on 'Siskel and Ebert.'  (http://siskelandebert.org/video/8R52X9UUUHXO/Sneak-Previews--Mel-Brooks-or-Woody-Allen-1980)

Is that reputation justified?  Somewhat.  Do I think he's worthy of his iconic status?  Sort of.  After watching all of his films, I can definitively say, he's more visual than Allen.  In fact, his visual flair may be Brooks' greatest asset.  He's not a auteur but he has an eye for the sight gag and his passion for meta humor must have been revolutionary.  He had a talent for surrounding himself with and reusing talented performers such as Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Marty Feldman, and Dom DeLuise.  These casting favorites, along with a long career as a parodist gave Brooks a brand he would live by for the rest of his career.  I don't think he integrated himself as a star of his own films as successfully as Allen, in fact I think it was often a detriment to his material.  Perhaps his films would have been stronger with someone else in front of the camera.  And unfortunately, that self-imposed label as a parodist would haunt him.  I firmly believe that the only reason 'Life Stinks' is treated with such vehement disregard is because it is such a radical departure for him. 

When I think of Mel Brooks at his best, I think of self-referential comedy, broad slapstick, gross-out jokes, social commentary, and a love of the absurd.  Of all his films, I think 'Blazing Saddles' is the one that best encapsulates his career.  It deftly blends satire of the Western genre with an undercurrent of racisms and general prejudice.  Its climax is the most self-aware Mel Brooks has ever gotten without tripping over himself, and the screenplay sparkles with line after line of quotable material.

Its hard to watch his career from beginning to end without thinking about his influence but also about how time seemed to pass him by.  While he was making 'High Anxiety', the Zucker Brothers were about to hit it big with the absurdist parody 'Airplane!'  A year after he retired with 'Dracula: Dead and Loving It', Wes Craven released one of my favorite horror/self-aware comedies, 'Scream' and only a few years after that, Keenen Wayans released 'Scary Movie' which itself felt like a Brooks style parody of Scream.  We reached a whirlpool of parody circling parody, a snake eating its own tale.  I can't help but think of Brooks as one of the grandfathers of that style of comedy.

Brooks had a legendary rise to stardom as a comedic filmmaker with The Producers, winning best original screenplay for his first film.  How many can claim that?  Diablo Cody is the only name that comes to mind.  Though his star dwindled and faded away with flops towards the end, its clear how numerous films of his wind up on multiple Greatest Comedies of All Time lists.

For good or ill, hilarious or mind-numbingly terrible, his films were consistently his.  And that's one of the greatest compliments I can pay any director.

***

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The Director's Oeuvre: Mel Brooks - Silent Movie

With 'The Producers', 'Young Frankenstein', and 'Blazing Saddles', Mel Brooks had proven that he could handle himself with ambitious, gutsy comedies.  But in 1976, he attempted something truly daring, Three Stooges sans the comedy.

Silent Movie is about a once-great filmmaker named Mel Funn (ugh) who attempts a comeback by presenting a major Hollywood studio with a screenplay for a silent film.  The studio, in danger of being bought out by the evil corporation Engulf and Devour, wants nothing to do with the outdated concept.  Mel convinces the Chief that this picture could save the studio if he gets the biggest celebrities in the world to star in it.  The Studio Head agrees and we're off.

I honestly can't put into words how much I don't like most of this movie.  I spoke to my friends about it and I liked it the most out of the three of us, yet the more I think about it the less I find anything redeeming.

Mel Brooks plays Mel Funn (UGH).  This is the first film of his in which he truly stars, and it marks the beginning of a downward spiral for Mel's career, in which he becomes more interested in promotion of the Mel Brooks brand than he is in making a good product.  I really can't stand Brooks in this movie.  He goes through the whole 87 minute runtime with a look of nauseating self-satisfaction on his smug face.

Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise play Funn's associates, Bug-Eyed and Fat Ass respectively.  The former has bug eyes and a brain disorder, and the latter is fat.

This movie has nothing interesting to offer about anything.  Occasionally there will be a decent scene of slapstick humor, like when the Big Bad Executive and his Associate can't put on a coat.  Its a lame joke but they honestly do come up an admirable number of ways to not put on a coat.  The problem is, and its a problem that lingers over the entire picture, that Mel Brooks just hired his buddies to be in the movie.  Even at its limited peaks, it suffers because it stars actors who don't know how to do physical comedy.  There is no scene in this movie that Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin couldn't do a million times better.  "Don't you know slapstick is dead?!" exclaims a studio head, before slipping on his chair and proving his own point.

Lets be clear, Mel Brooks is not interested in telling stories.  He's interested in yuck yucks.  Characters don't need to have character.  Narrative arcs?  Who needs em?  Who needs character development when I have a scene about seeing-eye dogs?  There's a scene that deals with Mel Brooks', sorry Mel Funn's alcoholism but its only there to give you the illusion of character development and apart from the sight gag of a giant bottle of hootch, the scene is a dud.  "All hail the king of the winos!" cry the bums.  Somebody give me a drink.

The plot claims to be a movie about making a movie.  Its not.  We never see a camera, never see film roll once.  There are a dozen ways Brooks could have presented the film-within-a-film angle in a compelling and intelligent fashion.  He rejects all of those in exchange for the crassest and most commercial of choices.  Silent Movie is a movie about cameos.  Good God, the cameos.  Paul Newman, James Caan, Anne Bancroft (I wonder how they got her?) and [in your best Archer impression] OH MY GOD!  BURT REYNOLDS! All waste their time and contribute nothing.

There is a scene where they try to court Liza Minelli on a studio lot but they have to go in disguised as knights in shining armor, but get this, THEY CAN'T SIT DOWN!  And every time they try to, you won't believe this, they keep knocking stuff over and breaking things!  This goes on for four and a half side-splitting, gut-busting, never-ending minutes!  At the end, Liza inexplicably realizes that this buffoon is Mel Funn and even more inexplicably, wants to be in his movie.  Why?  Because comedy, of course!  Fuck you, Mel.

Of all the cameos, and indeed the entire film, only the legendary mime, Marcel Marceau comes out with his dignity intact.  He appears for less than a minute to show these amateurs how its done.

This movie leaves none alive.  Literally every major actor in this movie have faced the Reaper, save Mel Brooks, who made a deal with the devil for this 87 minute wank fest to be commercially successful, and Bernadette Peters and thats only because she's a ginger-haired vampire.

Unlike the vastly superior but intensely overrated 'The Artist,' this movie is completely devoid of meaning.  What does this movie have to say about silent films?  Nothing.  What does this movie have to say about fighting your way out of obscurity?  Nothing.  What does this movie have to say about Hollywood?  Nothing.  Famous people are famous.  That's about it.  This whole thing is one bad joke.  Brooks watched the slapstick comedy of Chaplin, Keaton, and the Three Stooges and said "I can do it better!" and then he saw the work Woody Allen was doing and said, "And I can act better than him too!"  Poor Mel.  He didn't have anyone around to tell him this sucks.

This movie's legacy is a lot like a good silent film.  The less said, the better.