The only movie Mel Brooks watches once a month every month: “12 times a year”
Watching the same movie once a month every month in perpetuity sounds like it could get really boring very quickly, but Mel Brooks has no issues dusting off one of his all-time favourite films a dozen times a year, and he probably knows every single frame by heart, seeing as it was released a quarter of a century ago.
Weirdly, it’s not his actual favourite. The EGOT-winning comedy legend declared the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical to hold that honour, even though it’s not the picture that he fires up 12 times a year. That might be because he loves musicals in general, so maybe he mixes it up by throwing in several of his most cherished pictures, especially when he’s a massive Fred and Ginger fan.
Comedy has been Brooks’ lifeblood since the 1950s, but he’s no stranger to R-rated fare either. His production company was responsible for David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and he’s known to have a soft spot for hard-hitting and action-packed epics like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity.
To make things even stranger, the movie that Brooks revealed he watches once a month didn’t make his list of the ten greatest titles to have been released since the turn of the millennium, even though it was literally the first film of the 21st century to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’. Clearly, he doesn’t rate it as highly as others, but for whatever reason, he can’t get enough of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.
It’s definitely rewatchable, but not ‘once a month’ rewatchable. Scott’s sword-and-sandals spectacular boasts some stunning visuals, visceral set pieces, and Russell Crowe on Oscar-winning form as Maximus, and for better or worse, made a lasting impact on cinema by reigniting the craze for big-budget period pieces.
Adding another bizarre layer to his appreciation for Gladiator, Brooks also revealed that he didn’t do it alone. “Carl Reiner and I watch it once a month,” he told The One Show. “So we watch it 12 times a year.” He said that in 2017, which means that a 91-year-old Brooks and a 95-year-old Reiner would get together every 30 days or so to hand out, sit back, relax, and watch Crowe slice and dice his enemies.
Crowe happened to be sitting next to him at the time, and he’d love nothing more than to be a fly on the wall watching Brooks and Reiner watching him in Gladiator. “We do say things like, ‘I would have cut that scene,'” the Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein creator joked before continuing the love-in by revealing himself as “one of the dozen people who actually went to see The Insider.”
Despite his unusual enthusiasm for Gladiator, though, a tragic question remains. Does he still continue the tradition of watching Scott’s Oscar winner every month, even after Reiner’s passing in June 2020? Knowing how much he valued his longtime friend, there’s every reason to believe Brooks has carried on as an ongoing tribute to somebody he’d known and worked with since 1950.
