The “thrilling” movie that’s inspired Mel Brooks for 90 years: “It leaps over your expectations”
Whenever someone calls themselves the best at something or the greatest at something, it always runs the risk of sounding arrogant. When Mel Brooks does it, though, he’s speaking from experience.
After all, he’s one of Hollywood’s greatest-ever comedians, and he knows it. You don’t spend eight decades in the business and win everything that there is to win without believing at least a little bit of your own hype, and Brooks even thinks he won some of those awards because of who he is.
He’s also adamant that Blazing Saddles is the funniest film in cinema history, and while you could raise an eyebrow at that sentiment coming from the most biased place possible, since he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in it, enough people have agreed to ensure he’s not blowing hot air.
The EGOT-winning veteran is fully aware of his place in the annals of entertainment, and having been around long enough to inspire and influence more generations than most, you can’t really call him an egomaniac when his fingerprints are embedded into half a century’s worth of big-screen comic escapades.
However, even though Brooks is confident that he was responsible for the finest comedy to ever grace the silver screen, he wouldn’t dare point to himself as the architect of the medium’s ultimate masterpiece. Again, there’s a whiff of bias because the 1936 musical is one of his all-time favourite movies, but if one picture helped him overcome multiple adversities, then who’s to say it won’t do the same for somebody else?
“If you take risks, you are going to fail,” he told Esquire, a mindset he’s been operating under since the 1950s. The Producers was a risk, Blazing Saddles was a risk, and Young Frankenstein was a risk, and many studio executives were adamant they would fail. They didn’t, but whenever Brooks felt that way, there was only one place he would turn.
“When you do, my advice is to watch Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” he explained. The plot finds Astaire’s Lucky Garnett enrolling in a dance class taught by Rogers’ Penny Carroll. At first, he can barely string two steps together, but by the third act, he’s a natural. It’s simple storytelling, but it’s informed everything that Brooks has accomplished in his career.
“You were waiting for that Fred Astaire explosion, and when you get it, it leaps over your expectations,” he said. “You’ll never see a more thrilling dance in your life. That’s the kind of stuff that I love. Give them what they expect, and then try to top it.”
That’s the mantra that has defined him as an entertainer, and Brooks thinks that if it worked for him, it’ll work for anyone else. They may not end up as awards-laden legends, but the concept of, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again” is universal, and applicable to all walks of life.
