Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks

Mel Brooks (Melvin Kaminsky), b. Brooklyn, 1926 1968: The producers. 1970: The Twelve Chairs. 1974: Blazing Saddles; Young Frankenstein. 1976: Silent Movie. 1977: High Anxiety. 1981: History of the World—Part I 19S7; Spacebalh. 1991: Life Stinks!. 1993: Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A besetting handicap of modern comedy is its belief that media conventions and genre take-offs are funnier than human predicaments. The noblest comedians created a character who might have lived and suffered anywhere, without self-consciousness. The events of their comedies are everyday and ordinary. But for Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, humor grows in the hothouse of burlesque. Their own comic attitudes are less subtle and appealing because their clenched personalities are preoccupied with the cliches of entertainment and the task of rip-off parody. With Allen, this may be a substantial loss. But in the case of Brooks, everything suggests a brash, superficial personality dependent on the role of stage scbmuck