BEFORE: I think this film marks the halfway point of the Summer Rock & Doc Block - this is the 23rd film since I opened with "The One and Only Dick Gregory", and I've got 23 films to go after this, I think, unless another one pops up at the last second. I've resisted all inclinations to tear the chain apart and re-assemble it in a "better" order, I just keep telling myself that I've got a clear path to the end if I just stick with the program, and after that I've got a clear path to watching "Thor: Love & Thunder" sometime in August. It would be more helpful if I had a clear path to October 1 after that, but that's going to take some time for me to come up with one.
I thought I'd have nothing but time, though, I've been sidelined due to roof repairs at the theater, but then between making a list of things to do around the house, plus helping an animator friend enter her new film into festivals, trying to catch up with "Moon Knight" and clearing my DVR of episodes of "Restaurant: Impossible" and "Bar Rescue" from the spring, and then trying to plan BBQ Crawl vacation #3 for October, I've been finding myself with less time than I thought. I could stop watching movies, that would free up some time, but I'm anxious to get to the end of the doc chain and get back to fiction films, so instead I'm doubling up on Mel Brooks today. Next week I've got 4 docs about members of "The Rat Pack" so I don't want to fall behind.
Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner carry over from "The Automat".
THE PLOT: At the age of 91, Mel Brooks is unstoppable, with his musical "Young Frankenstein" opening to critical acclaim in London in late 2017. Alan Yentob visits Mel at home in Hollywood.
AFTER: Well, I'm not really sure if this counts as a MOVIE, it seems to be some kind of TV special cobbled together from different interviews with Mel Brooks over the years, it seems he was visited by a guy from the BBC once every decade, three or four times in all. The BBC interview show was called "Imagine" and this hour ran as an episode in season 31, but HBO Max is running it as if it's a stand-alone movie, so I guess it is? Let's just say it is.
The problem is, the format is very confusing, because Brooks and his friend from the BBC did something a little different every time they got together, and they decided to pretend to not understand the premise of being interviewed, which is a joke that wore thin probably the second time. But no, by all means, do it again ten years later. And ten years after that. The topic of discussion each decade has a lot to do with what Mel Brooks was pimping at the time, which ranged from "The Producers" playing on Broadway to "Young Frankenstein" playing on stage in the West End. Well, at least he was consistent.
But all the bouncing around in time is very jarring - it's London in 1991, and then it's Hollywood California in 1981, and then it's 2017 and the young Mel Brooks is suddenly very old. We know it's the same guy, but all this recycled footage ends up feeling like a flashback within a flashback, the interviews always referencing the previous interviews. My guess is that none of the interviews produced a solid hour of workable material, so they all had to be mashed together or nested within each other. It's also possible that Brooks told the same stories each time, so cutting out all the repetition from the four interviews created one usable hour, just one where the interview's subject just kept jumping around in age.
So there's probably a definitive documentary that will be made one day about Mel Brooks' life and career, but this sure isn't it, it's got its own agenda, which, sad to say, is promoting his current projects and then a lot of dicking around. But hey, if you want to watch Mel Brooks shopping at Whole Foods and buying chicken meatballs and thin spaghetti for a night at Carl Reiner's house, then you've come to the right place. Brooks' marriage to Anne Bancroft is somehow summed up in just three still photos, and his career is reduced to one clip from "High Anxiety", another from "Young Frankenstein", and two from "The Producers" - the rest is anecdotes about old Jews vacationing in the Catskills, and I feel like I've heard those from him many times over the years. I'd love for Mel to live to be 100, but not 101 because that would mean another tiresome visit from Alan Yentob.
Also starring Tom Jones (last seen in "Tina"), Sherry Lansing, Alan Yentob
with archive footage of Anne Bancroft (last seen in "The Elephant Man"), Peter Boyle (also carrying over from "The Automat"), Sid Caesar (ditto), Cary Grant (ditto), Madeline Kahn (ditto), Imogene Coca (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "The Man With the Iron Fists"), Marty Feldman, Teri Garr (last seen in "Spielberg"), Zero Mostel (last seen in "The Front"), Buddy Rich (last seen in "Count Me In"), Dick Shawn (last seen in "Way...Way Out"), Gene Wilder (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me").
RATING: 4 out of 10 drum lessons from Buddy Rich
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