The Oscar-winning movie that “really annoyed” Mel Brooks: “Tell me, are you nuts?”
Even though he’s dedicated most of his career to comedy and created some of Hollywood’s most indelible laughs as a result, Mel Brooks still has the occasional issue with movies that scream ‘Oscar bait’ from the rooftops, especially if they make light of his unbreakable golden rule.
Since starting out as a writer and performer in the early 1950s, there have been few lines the EGOT winner isn’t willing to cross. In the case of The Producers and Blazing Saddles, those comedy classics faced massive backlash from the studios precisely because Brooks was going somewhere mainstream comedy films had never gone before.
Despite coming under mounting pressure from the people footing the bill, he was proven right when the two pictures became established classics and made his name as one of comedy’s brightest shining lights. In his seven-decade stint in the spotlight, Brooks only thinks he’s gone too far once, which is an impressive return in a constantly evolving medium like comedy.
However, as much as he built his repertoire on poking fun at everyone and everything, including subjects that were largely considered taboo until he tore them down and mercilessly mocked them, the celebrated veteran has always maintained an ironclad principle that he’s deeply connected to on a personal level.
He’s a Jewish World War II veteran, and yet, Brooks’ back catalogue has repeatedly shown that he’s got no issues making fun of Adolf Hitler. That said, he’s always made a point of saying that anything revolving around deriving humour from concentration camps is a no-go area, which is why he was so irritated by an Academy Award-winning dramedy.
“You have to separate it,” he explained to Der Spiegel. “For example, Roberto Benigni’s comedy Life is Beautiful really annoyed me. A crazy film that even attempted to find comedy in a concentration camp. It showed the barracks in which Jews were kept like cattle, and it made jokes about it. The philosophy of the film is people can get over anything. No, they can’t. They can’t get over a concentration camp.”
Writer, director, and star Beningi claimed Oscars for ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best International Feature’ for a film that also won ‘Best Original Score’ and notched nods for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Original Screenplay’, and ‘Best Editing’. From Brooks’ perspective, mining a real, traumatic, and harrowing real-life scenario for laughs was beyond reprehensible.
“I always asked myself: ‘Tell me, Roberto, are you nuts?'” he posed. “You didn’t lose any relatives in the Holocaust, you’re not even Jewish. You really don’t understand what it’s about. The Americans were incredibly thrilled to discover that it wasn’t all that bad in the concentration camps after all, and that’s why they immediately pressed an Oscar into his hand.”
Brooks was somewhere between perplexed and indignant that any picture had sought to find lighter moments in one of history’s darkest periods, especially an actor and filmmaker who had no ties to the era. He did, and Life is Beautiful, aiming for pathos and gentle comedic exchanges, left a bad taste in his mouth.
