“High Anxiety” wasn’t all that good? What in the hell does it take to make you laugh?
“The Birds” parody alone makes it a classic.
It had a few good scenes. The bit with Ron Carey looking at the “blow ups” of the picture was good. Etc.
The problem was that most of the film wasn’t made of good scenes. Just some filler. And Mel’s overacting hurt a lot.
It’s a “once is more than enough” film. I’ve watched YF and BS a bunch of times over the years. Never get old.
^^What he said.
I’ve seen High Anxiety several times over the years. It gets less and less funny each time, and it started out low.
Very true.
The ‘comic who yearns to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor’ is a cliché, but I don’t think Mel has ever been in that category. He knows himself.
So? Just have him appear in the beginning.
Very similar to Spike Milligan. Genius comedic writer, amazing thought processes etc. Not very good performer - either on radio and television (and his thankfully, very few movies).
Admittedly I haven’t seen the movie in a long time but I thought it was very funny. It helps if you are a big Hitchcock fan.
Extra points for seeing Barry Levinson attacking Mel in the shower.
Gene Wilder wrote in one of his autobios that after working with him on Blazing Saddles he thought Dom DeLuise to be the funniest person he ever met.
Patrick McGilligan’s biography, Funny Man, has a few brief statements on Kahn’s stopping her work with Brooks.
373 - on Silent Movie. “Kahn reportedly declined the role of the sexpot who seduces Mel Funn … she didn’t find the character as substantial as the ones she played in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.”
488 - “Kahn’s biographer said the actress … had taken as a ‘personal slight’ the fact that the director offered her ‘no substantial’ roles in subsequent films.”
501 - on Men in Tights. “Kahn’s biographer reported that Brooks tried to inveigle her into playing the role of filthy Latrine … but Kahn demurred.”
McGilligan made Brooks out to be completely ruthless when it came to picking writing partners and actors. If he stopped thinking someone could do the job they were out, even if they had worked with him for a decade. That’s the way a business has to be run, I believe. It would look a lot better if his career hadn’t gone into the toilet after his miracle year of 1974. Maybe he should have taken a second look at some of his choices.
True that his movies underwent a steady decline after that year, but I would hardly say that his career “went into the toilet” given that the musical version of The Producersi won a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards in 2001 (two of them to Brooks personally).
By what standard was Space Balls or Men in Tights failures? Even History of The World & High Anxiety were pretty good. I mean never again reaching the impossible heights of having made 2 of the funniest movies ever in the same year is far from “into the toilet”.
I think the correct answer was that he didn’t make roles she wanted to play anymore. Brooks really only has one type of main female character in his stuff (and main is a stretch too).
Is that supposed to be a negative? That’s the only role she could have played and it’s a good comedic role. Tracy Ullman seemed happy to do it. Kahn was wrong for Maid Marion. Amy Yasbeck is 20 years younger and the same age as her Robin.
BTW: Does he get any credit for one of the best movies of all time, My Favorite Year? He produced it and helped write it on the QT.
Og; I love that movie. Good point: he made great movies in more ways than one.
BS grossed $119 million, YF $89 million. Brooks directed seven more movies. Five of them had grosses in the $30s, one did $10, and Life Stinks did $4. The remake of The Producers? Also in the $30s. In box-office terms, that’s the toilet.
By my personal standards of comedy, those films also were the toilet for someone like Brooks.
I should have specified that I was talking about his movies. He hit huge once on Broadway. When he tried again with Young Frankenstein, the results were … not as good. Not a failure, but the number of performances declined by over 80%. And when he tried television again he came up with The Nutt House. You have to be a super Brooks fan to remember that. Ironically, it combines the fast pace and sight gags from Airplane! with the overacting of his using troupe.
When he appears it becomes a mel brooks movie above all. So Gene was just reasonably looking out for his own brand.
I always thought Brooks helped Wilder achieve a higher level of comedy than he managed otherwise, while Wilder helped tamp down Brooks’ zany excesses.
When I saw Mel Brooks live on stage a few years ago (after viewing Blazing Saddles with him and a bunch of fellow fans), he alluded to just that. Man oh man, was THAT an event to see.
Not for the 1970s it wasn’t. Silent Movie and High Anxiety both had a domestic box office 8-9 times their budgets, and even History of the World did three times its budget. Not the stratospheric level of the first four, but certainly not “in the toilet.” Spaceballs and Robin Hood made less than twice their production costs (the rough rule of thumb for profitability) but have apparently sold well on DVD. I’ll grant that Life Stinks, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and The Producers remake were both critical and financial disasters and in fact “in the toilet.”
Both in critical appraisal and in profitability, Brooks’ movies underwent a steady decline rather than an abrupt nosedive after 1974. But yeah, by the 1990s he was pretty much done as far as movies go.
Nothing illustrates that better than The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother --made the year after Young Frankenstein, with Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Madeline Khan obviously still at the peak of their comic genius. Also with Dom DeLuise, Roy Kinnear and Leo McKern. Written and directed by Wilder.
It’s not unwatchable–but it’s not very good. Certainly not in comparison with YF.
A scriptwriter plotting things out who is friends with someone they have worked with in the past and still admires them will tend to think “Oh, this part would be great for Madelaine, let me pad it out and make it suitable for her.”
Mel apparently didn’t think that way after HW:P1.