Let's Just Be Friends: Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks vs. Terry Gilliam

I’m starting out with what I consider an easy one. Sense of humor is generally so involuntary and so tied to each individual that one can hardly blame someone for not connecting with one comedian and not another.

Basically, I don’t think Mel Brooks is funny and that hurdle is a mile high. I’ve never been big into the prepackaged joke/gag/skit style humor. Parody, on the other hand, is a mode I’ve liked from a very young age and I was initially flattered by Brooks’ nods and winks, his trust that I would appreciate his send-ups of clichés and recognize his references to movies. Today, it all seems a little too easy. The inversions are just so obvious; too frequently reliant on crudity rather than creativity. With long, contrived windups and go-for-the-gut humor that works only on a single level, I end up seeing the punchlines coming, waiting for them to arrive and then sighing at their delivery.

Even when conflicting senses of humor crash, a film can still be salvaged if it has a solid core of characters, story and technical craft. “Young Frankenstein” (my favorite by Brooks) and “Blazing Saddles” both have characters that [just barely] manage to establish themselves as more than pale parody shadows, but the same can’t be said for most of his work. The plots are similarly bare and derivative (only “The Producers” manages an original premise), and although this may be intentional, it is not a requirement of parody. The recent work of Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz”) is a great example of how to make fun of a genre while still taking advantage of its pleasures. As for artistic merit, Brooks is too concerned with setting up gags to bother with beauty or style.

Terry Gilliam is my pick for a better alternative, though they might not initially seem similar. Gilliam has also worked in the skit format (Monty Python and the Flying Circus) and in feature-length parody (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but his films are characterized by the type of humor I particularly enjoy: absurdity, anarchy and unpredictability.

Both directors have used ironic post-modern endings: Mel Brooks in “Blazing Saddles” and “Spaceballs”; Terry Gilliam in “Holy Grail”, “Time Bandits” and “Brazil.” Yet Gilliam’s endings possess deeper meaning and emotional weight, whereas Brooks – planning only as far as the next episodic skit – blunders into abrupt pitfalls by failing to develop characters, prepare a climax or decide on a resolution. He finds himself in dead ends, ultimately climbing over the fourth wall to escape.

However, the top reason Gilliam always engages me more is his ability to creatively balance comedy with quality. His sense of atmosphere, for instance, is so encompassing that it’s like walking into a time period that never happened. Rather than comically undermining well-recognized archetypes like Mel Brooks, Gilliam invents characters like none we’ve ever met, and does so without sacrificing our desire to relate and cheer for them. His stories are full of originality, imagination and ingenuity, with humor rising out of a network of fresh ideas. Mel Brooks picks through well-worn material, turning genre clichés on their heads and roughly shaking the humor out.