Is Mel Brooks a great filmmaker?
Well, he’s directed 11 movies, some of which are considered to be all-time comedy classics — yet he generally doesn’t get much praise for his directorial skill.
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People clearly love Brooks, but he tends to be recognized for his accomplishments as a writer and performer more than as the auteur who delivered the fartiest scene in cinema history.
This may not be entirely fair. In addition to the fact that directing comedy is its own unique skillset, Brooks did show off some more obvious moments of filmic grandeur over the course of his career. Part of what made Blazing Saddles work was the fact that so much of it had the look and feel of a genuine Hollywood Western.
And Young Frankenstein similarly went out of its way to evoke the style of classic Universal monster movies, complete with authentic props and black-and-white cinematography that Brooks insisted on using, even though it nearly derailed his deal with the studio.
But Brooks clearly never felt as though people in the industry truly respected his filmmaking talent. “I was never recognized as a movie director,” Brooks stated during a 2013 interview with The Aquarian. “Never! They always talk about my being a great writer and comic, and an important producer.”
Brooks went on to note that he was “never saluted as a filmmaker” with the exception of a “few colleagues.” But this group of colleagues happened to include one of the most famous directors of all-time: Alfred Hitchcock.
Brooks first met the Master of Suspense while working on the Hitchcock parody High Anxiety. Brooks often tells the (possibly spurious) story about going out for a meal with Hitch at Chasen’s in Hollywood, whereupon the acclaimed director ate a gargantuan meal then casually instructed the server to “do it again,” minus the dessert. “I’m going to eschew whatever the fuck that was,” he told Brooks, rationalizing the order by stating that “you only live once.”
According to the biography Funny Man by Patrick McGilligan, the comedian had a series of meetings with Hitchcock, who was “flattered and cooperative” and provided feedback on Brooks’ High Anxiety ideas. Brooks noted that the legendary director had “seen The Producers and had liked it, he really liked it.”
In his memoir All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Brooks wrote that Hitchcock even pitched a joke for High Anxiety: “He told me the following: ‘Our hero is running from someone who’s trying to kill him. He’s running full tilt, full speed. The killer is right behind him and closing in. He comes to a dock and sees a ferry. The space between the ferry and the dock is about eight feet. He leaps with all his might and comes crashing to the deck of the ferry. He just makes it. But unfortunately, instead of going out, the ferry is coming in.’”
When Brooks showed Hitchcock a rough cut of the parody movie, the screening didn’t seem to go so well at first. “He left only once when the birds were shitting all over me,” Brooks later recalled. When the film ended “he got up, without a word, he just departed. He left. I said, ‘Oh my God, he didn’t like the film.’”
But the next day, Brooks received a box of “a very fine French wine” worth around $25,000, with a note reading, “Have no anxiety about High Anxiety, it’s a truly wonderful film. Love, Hitch.”
Speaking with The Aquarian, Brooks revealed that Hitchcock “once said to me, ‘Nobody appreciates your directing skills. High Anxiety is brilliant! The back lighting!’ He thought of me as a wonderful director, but no one else did.”
It’s just too bad that Hitchcock never lived long enough to see Spaceballs.
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