Mel Brooks

Bragging finds its way into most autobiographies, but I have never read any autobiography with as much boastfulness as “All About Me!” (2021) by Mel Brooks. Yet except for the final chapter, in which he describes the awards he has won and the glowing things famous people have said about him, none of this is grating. It's just part of the fun, and besides, as it has been said, it's not really bragging when it's true.

Certainly it's true that Brooks is a comic genius. Everything he touches show more turns to laughs. The book has a few personal details — his childhood in Brooklyn, his World War II service in Europe, his meeting and marriage to actress Anne Bancroft — yet the focus falls mostly on his many show business successes, each remarkable in its own way. He wrote skits for Sid Caesar, won a Grammy with Carl Reiner for the 2000 Year Old Man record, helped create the “Get Smart” TV series (he's the one responsible for Maxwell Smart's shoe-phone) and then directed a string of classic movie comedies before turning to Broadway, where years before Ethel Merman in “Anything Goes” had first inspired him to go into show business.

Brooks may boast a lot, but he gives plenty of credit to Caesar, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Nathan Lane and many others. I don't remember him saying a negative word about anyone. Even Hitler gets a kind word for inspiring “Springtime for Hitler,” the play within “The Producers.”

Most of his films are spoofs of film genres. “Blazing Saddles” takes on westerns, “Young Frankenstein” (my personal favorite) spoofs classic horror films, “High Anxiety “plays with Hitchcock, etc. While “Spaceballs” may be having fun at the expense of “Star Wars,” it is actually a remake of “It Happened One Night,”Brooks says.

One secret to his success, he confesses, is that he always ignored Hollywood producers. He would always agree with whatever orders producers gave him, then go ahead and do everything his way. The producers always forgot their instructions to him when they saw the final result — and when they started counting the money that flowed in after the film's release.

If Brooks didn't listen to producers, he always listened to audiences, even if that audience was fellow writers or members of the cast and crew on a movie set. If they laughed he kept the joke in; if they didn't laugh or didn't laugh hard enough, he took it out.

People will always laugh at Mel Brooks films. And that is something to brag about. show less

Were I to ignore my scoring rules, this would be a 5-star book but only for the audiobook read by Brooks, himself. Without his voice, this would definitely remain a 4-star book. Brooks does not dwell to deeply or fulsomely about the darker periods of his life. And for me, that's fine. I was more interested in the stories of his childhood and career, the behind-the-scenes stories of his movies, and in his tales of friendship with so many famous people. And Brooks delivers on all those.

One of my sons, the same one who gifted me with Frederick Joseph's Patriarchy Blues, gave me Mel Brooks' memoir for my birthday. That's partly my own fault for introducing him to Mel Brooks' films like The Producers and Blazing Saddles. I love much about Mel Brooks, and this book has added one thing more. The focus of much of the book is on the movies, but he also talks about his time as a writer for Sid Caesar, his songwriting (I didn't know he wrote so much of the music for his films), and show more his long loving marriage with Ann Bancroft. Brooks mostly tells stories but along the way he manages to reveal who he is as a human being, and that is a person I would like to know better. show less

Thoroughly enjoyed this, read by the man himself. I think he strikes a good balance between humility and blowing his own trumpet. He certainly has a lot to blow about. I had no idea. Makes me want to see lots of his old movies, starting with Blazing Saddles!