Mel Brooks names the greatest comedians of all time: “They were perfect at what they did”
Comedy is an art form that’s entirely subjective and constantly evolving. For example, laughs aren’t necessarily guaranteed if viewers who grew up with Judd Apatow and the ‘Frat Pack’ are shown movies from the 1930s and 1940s. Of course, the best comedic minds are timeless, and Mel Brooks fits seamlessly into that category.
Part of that is because of how the boundaries he pushed. Nobody wanted to make The Producers, based mainly on studio executives assuming that audiences weren’t in a position to laugh at a movie where a lot of the humour was based around Adolf Hitler. It was an understandable concern, but one that was ultimately made a mockery of when the film became a classic.
Much the same can be said of Blazing Saddles: once again, Brooks wanted to test the limits of acceptable big-screen comedy, and once again, the people footing the bill had their concerns. In what would become a recurring theme of his career, though, the filmmaker was proven right, and he added another one of the all-time greats to his collection.
He grew up watching, listening, and working with the performers who inspired him, but Brooks put his own spin on mainstream comedy to evolve it into something new, daring, and different. The Producers and Blazing Saddles still hold up when watched today, and his identifiable style was rooted in what he called the embodiment of comedic perfection.
“There were three different brothers who formed my sense of comedy timing,” he told the Directors Guild of America. “There were the Marx brothers, and the Ritz brothers, and then there were the Three Stooges. Those groups of men formed my sense of how many seconds it took from setup to explosion, from straight line to punch line. They were all perfect at what they did.”
The EGOT winner’s fondness for the Ritz siblings is hardly a secret, even if he had a favourite. Brooks called the youngest brother, Harry, “the funniest man who ever lived,” so it’s no surprise that the troupe would be included in his summation. The Marx brothers and the Stooges still have fans worldwide, almost a century after they started tickling funny bones, too, so it looks like he’s got a soft spot for the collectives that stand the test of time.
Fittingly, Brooks and Gene Wilder fall into that category. Their collaborations on The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein continue to win over new converts with each passing generation, and the influences that the former harboured from his youngest days set the stage for him to take his own place among the pantheon of comedy greats.
There’s a clear and definite straight line between the Ritz brothers, Marx brothers, the Three Stooges and Brooks’ signature style of comedy, and he’s proven himself more than worthy of following in their footsteps.
