All about me! : my remarkable life in show business

Biography & Autobiography. Performing Arts. Nonfiction. HTML:At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words. �??Laugh-out-loud hilarious and always fascinating, from the great Mel Brooks. What else do you expect from the man who knew Jesus and dated Joan of Arc?�?��??Billy Crystal For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny. All About Me! charts Mel Brooks�??s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar�??s Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers�?? room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks�??s stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers. All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft. Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie, listeners will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved ent… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Doondeck

Not as funny as I thought it would be. Not a lot of insight, even regarding the loss of Anne Bancroft. I lost interest about half way through. Still love him though.

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LibraryThing member bookczuk

2022 pandemic read. I particularly loved the first part of this book, especially because Brooks grew up in Brooklyn, and his family moved to Brighton Beach, which is where my family lived-- Brooklyn and Brighton Beach. He went to the same high school and my mother and her younger siblings, though

was a year behind the youngest, and lived 4 streets away. Good to read about that slice of life in that time. Also loved the reminiscing about the Sid Caesar days, the Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein etc, all of which have special memories for me.

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LibraryThing member Steve38

Well, you get what you expect I suppose. Not really an autobiograpy but a series of sketches and rehashes. It starts of well enough with his memories of childhood and serving as a young soldier in World War Two. But as soon as you get to his writing and film career it takes a serious nose dive.

Chapters on each of his films picking out his best jokes and listing all his collaborators with thanks, each one of them 'still a great friend'. Just like an acceptance speech at the Oscars. You'd guess most of it written by a young researcher rather than Mr Brooks himself. Scipts he can write. A decent autobiography? No.

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LibraryThing member waldhaus1

I’ve only seen a few of his movies but am working to correct that. I learned of this listening to the MacBreak weekly podcast and am thrilled I took the advice and have listened to it. Some of his older films are hard to locate. Nothing like a good challenge.

LibraryThing member nmele

One of my sons, the same one who gifted me with Frederick Joseph's Patriarchy Blues, gave me Mel Brooks' memoir for my birthday. That's partly my own fault for introducing him to Mel Brooks' films like The Producers and Blazing Saddles. I love much about Mel Brooks, and this book has added one

thing more. The focus of much of the book is on the movies, but he also talks about his time as a writer for Sid Caesar, his songwriting (I didn't know he wrote so much of the music for his films), and his long loving marriage with Ann Bancroft. Brooks mostly tells stories but along the way he manages to reveal who he is as a human being, and that is a person I would like to know better.

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LibraryThing member addunn3

Good review of Mel Brook's work. Not great writing, but well worth the trip down memory lane.

LibraryThing member Andy5185

So much fun to listen to Mel Brooks talk about his life. The audiobook was worth it for me.

LibraryThing member hardlyhardy

Bragging finds its way into most autobiographies, but I have never read any autobiography with as much boastfulness as “All About Me!” (2021) by Mel Brooks. Yet except for the final chapter, in which he describes the awards he has won and the glowing things famous people have said about him,

none of this is grating. It's just part of the fun, and besides, as it has been said, it's not really bragging when it's true.

Certainly it's true that Brooks is a comic genius. Everything he touches turns to laughs. The book has a few personal details — his childhood in Brooklyn, his World War II service in Europe, his meeting and marriage to actress Anne Bancroft — yet the focus falls mostly on his many show business successes, each remarkable in its own way. He wrote skits for Sid Caesar, won a Grammy with Carl Reiner for the 2000 Year Old Man record, helped create the “Get Smart” TV series (he's the one responsible for Maxwell Smart's shoe-phone) and then directed a string of classic movie comedies before turning to Broadway, where years before Ethel Merman in “Anything Goes” had first inspired him to go into show business.

Brooks may boast a lot, but he gives plenty of credit to Caesar, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Nathan Lane and many others. I don't remember him saying a negative word about anyone. Even Hitler gets a kind word for inspiring “Springtime for Hitler,” the play within “The Producers.”

Most of his films are spoofs of film genres. “Blazing Saddles” takes on westerns, “Young Frankenstein” (my personal favorite) spoofs classic horror films, “High Anxiety “plays with Hitchcock, etc. While “Spaceballs” may be having fun at the expense of “Star Wars,” it is actually a remake of “It Happened One Night,”Brooks says.

One secret to his success, he confesses, is that he always ignored Hollywood producers. He would always agree with whatever orders producers gave him, then go ahead and do everything his way. The producers always forgot their instructions to him when they saw the final result — and when they started counting the money that flowed in after the film's release.

If Brooks didn't listen to producers, he always listened to audiences, even if that audience was fellow writers or members of the cast and crew on a movie set. If they laughed he kept the joke in; if they didn't laugh or didn't laugh hard enough, he took it out.

People will always laugh at Mel Brooks films. And that is something to brag about.

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LibraryThing member Treebeard_404

Were I to ignore my scoring rules, this would be a 5-star book but only for the audiobook read by Brooks, himself. Without his voice, this would definitely remain a 4-star book. Brooks does not dwell to deeply or fulsomely about the darker periods of his life. And for me, that's fine. I was more

interested in the stories of his childhood and career, the behind-the-scenes stories of his movies, and in his tales of friendship with so many famous people. And Brooks delivers on all those.

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