8/10/2023 0 Comments Snappy pizza![]() ![]() Brooks had a retort for each of Caesar’s rebuffs, which eventually wore him down and finally won him over. By then, Brooks has homed in on someone new.Īn early target was comedian Sid Caesar, whom Brooks worshipped and relentlessly perused. Only later do you realize that the joke might have been made at your expense. ![]() ![]() It’s like your body gets the joke before your mind does. After all, how does comedy work? Someone observes something, captures what makes it unique, then turns it on its ear-you might have only been half-listening, but suddenly you burst out laughing. He advertises himself as the bullseye when really, he is the one firing the shots. His goofy demeanor is completely disarming. (For example, he always referred to his movie star wife by both first and last name, Anne Bancroft.) Like the Trojan Horse of comedy, Brooks presents himself as an innocuous gift, worms his way into an impenetrable room, and launches a no-holds-barred attack from the inside, leaving his victims dying with laughter. He is always sincere, and he is always irreverent. Neither antisemitism nor social norms can get him to be anything other than himself. They eat a herring-in a Western.īy now, we’re so used to this kind of bonkers comedy it’s easy to overlook how much of a trailblazer the 96-year-old is. “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew,” by Jeremy Dauber, a professor of Jewish literature and American studies at Colombia University, is not only a biography of the comedy genius but a smart, snappy, and insightful investigation into how Brooks can take any subject and “make it funny by making it Jewish.” In Brooks’ world, someone doesn’t just eat a fish. Too young to enlist in World War II, he headed to the Catskills’ famed Borscht Belt for a summer gig, providing rim shots for the comedians. He honed his comedy chops on the stoops and streets of his Brownsville neighborhood.Īs a teenager in Brighton Beach, he took up the drums, allegedly using a shortened version of his mother’s maiden name, Brookman, as his stage name because that’s what fit on the bass drum. He was quick with a smile, a natural mimic, and good at making people laugh. “Until I was six, my feet didn’t touch the ground,” he remembers. Review of Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew, by Jeremy Dauber Review by Michael Quinnīorn in Brooklyn in 1926, Melvin Kaminsky was the youngest of four boys whom the fatherless family doted on. ![]()
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