‘Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man’ Explores an Entertainment Legend Still in His Comedic Prime

One day, around 20 years ago, I was standing next to Mel Brooks in the middle of a recording studio. It was 7:00PM, and everybody was on a dinner break during the taping of the original cast album to Mr. Brooks’ 2007 Broadway musical version of “Young Frankenstein.” Someone turned on “Jeopardy,” and almost immediately a “clue” flashed on screen: “First Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.” The proper response was “Tomás de Torquemada” or just plain “Torquemada.” At this point, we all looked at Mr. Brooks waiting for him to respond — because famously he had actually played Torquemada in a classic comedy production number in his 1981 hit movie “History of the World, Part I.”However, Mr. Brooks didn’t react, or even register that he recognized this bit of “Jeopardy” as something relevant to his own vast canon of humor. It occurred to me at that point that Mel Brooks has made jokes, comedy routines, spoofs, parodies, one-liners, wisecracks and other assorted nonsense bits on so many hundreds, if not thousands, of topics — don’t forget he was spoofing history decades before “History of the World,” with his iconic stand-up comedy bit about the 2,000-year-old man— that he couldn’t possibly register a response to more than a fraction of them. In fact, you probably couldn’t watch “Jeopardy” for more than ten minutes without coming across some subject or other that Mel Brooks hasn’t made a memorable joke about.At nearly four hours, the new documentary by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, is almost long enough to cover Mr. Brooks’s long life — he turns 100 on June 28 — and career. The vast majority of the running time is interviews with its subject, newly conducted by Mr. Apatow, as well as culled from dozens of appearances on talk and panel shows, going back to even before the release of his 1967 breakthrough film, “The Producers.” “The 99-Year-Old Man!” is as much a testament to the editor, Joe Beshenkovsky, as to the directors; Mr. Brooks was remarkably consistent in telling his stories over the years, and there are many instances of the editors stitching together an account of an incident from multiple interviews taped decades apart. For instance, there’s his highly memorable story about how Cary Grant, that most charming of Hollywood leading men, was a surprisingly pedantic conversationalist and luncheon companion. (One criticism would be that I wish that Mr. Apatow and Mr. Beshenkovsky had identified all the sources of these many interviews, quite a few from British television, for the benefit of all of us Melvinist scholars.) On the positive side, Mr. Apatow’s own interview with Mr. Brooks is especially valuable in that his subject is much more relaxed and frank than usual, and not constantly “on.” In fact, “The 99-Year-Old Man!” is an excellent counterpart to the filmmaker’s memoir, “All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business”—which, published in 2021, provided me with some of the few joyous moments during the pandemic. Both accounts go back to his childhood in Brooklyn, when he was still known as Melvin Kaminsky, through his early days as a tummler in the Jewish Alps (the Catskills), and his combat service during World War II.The bulk of the first part takes us through Mr. Brooks’s early days in television, an intensive collaboration that included both “Your Show of Shows” and “Caesar’s Hour,” through which he was repeatedly undermined by producer Max Leibman, but supported by comedy superstar Sid Caesar. Mr. Apatow’s film is particularly compelling as we follow Mel through the early 1960s, when the Caesar association was over and he hadn’t yet made his transition into producing, writing, directing — and eventually starring in — motion pictures. In these years, he had a far less enjoyable stint writing for Jerry Lewis (“I couldn’t handle him,” Mr. Brooks tells Mr. Apatow) for what turned out to be one of that funnyman’s best films and also his first experience writing for Broadway, on what turned out to be a legendary flop show called “All American.” At this time Mr. Brooks mainly survived on royalties from his “The 2,000 Year Old Man” albums, created with longtime best friend Carl Reiner, before co-creating the TV spy spoof “Get Smart” (1965-1970). But during these years he managed to woo and wed the beautiful and talented young actress Anne Bancroft, thus becoming half of a 41-year-long power couple.Part One climaxes with Mr. Brooks’s first two masterpieces, “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles” (1974) and the second part begins with the third, “Young Frankenstein” (1974). Surely it’s no coincidence that the three greatest classics of Mel Brooks’s career are the same as that of actor and writer Gene Wilder. They both had prolific careers apart from each other, but their all-time milestones are the three films they made together.Teri Garr, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Mel Brooks on the set of ‘Young Frankenstein’ (1974). 20th Century Fox Part Two takes us through those next few slightly lesser films where he served as star, director, author, as well as frequently, producer and even songwriter: “Silent Movie” (1976), “High Anxiety” (1977), “History of the World, Part I” (1981), and “To Be or Not to Be” (1983). They suffer perhaps because Mr. Brooks was trying to do too much.Mr. Brooks also talks about those non-spoof “serious” movies that he produced but deliberately received no credit on, like “The Elephant Man” (1980). “Spaceballs” (1987) was a return to form and has proven to be his most popular effort among people born after 1970, who can relate to a parody of “Star Wars” more easily than they can to vintage westerns or black-and-white horror films.Mr. Apatow’s account more or less glosses over the 1990s, when he hit a dry spell and created, for him, lower-quality spoof ventures like “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” (1993) and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” (1995). But then, pushing 75, he created one of the most successful shows in the history of the musical theatre with the stage version of “The Producers” (2001) winning 12 Tony awards, making it the most decorated show ever, and running for six years. The Broadway version of “Young Frankenstein” (2007) was unfortunately, and unfairly, compared to its predecessor, but remains a beloved gem amongst those of us who saw it or worked on some aspect of it.Mel Brooks is hardly retired, even as he approaches centenarian status. He narrated a not-especially-memorable streaming series titled “History of the World, Part II” but more promisingly, there are upcoming expansions of his comedy franchise with a “Spaceballs 2” and “Very Young Frankenstein” set to be released when Mr. Brooks is 101 or 102. I, for one, am just glad that it hasn’t occurred to anyone to use AI to synthesize the voice of the late Carl Reiner and give us “The 2060 Year Old Man.” “Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!” Directed by Judd Apatow & Michael Bonfiglio.Streaming on HBO Plus, Amazon Prime & other services.

‘Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man’ Explores an Entertainment Legend Still in His Comedic Prime

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