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sunshine_revival, but that means prompt number five has come to say hello to us.
The films Mel Brooks is best known for are broad genre parodies that cram plenty of jokes about specific movies of the time as well as skewering the various tropes of the genre in question. The first time you watch a Mel Brooks comedy, you'll be laughing at an awful lot of things that are designed to be funny. The second time you watch it, knowing where the genre comedy jokes are going to be, you'll spot some of the social commentary that goes on underneath all the jokes. Which is pretty par for the course for a man who spent significant amounts of Word War II spotting traps left by Nazis and singing American Jewish songs into a bullhorn as a response to Nazis singing propaganda songs over loudspeakers.
After all, the show in The Producers is supposed to be an obvious flop, full of things that you would think would be offensive to the theater-going audience, but the audience can't get enough of it. The characters in Blazing Saddles use period-appropriate language to talk about the Black sheriff, language that very well might still be in use in some circles, even though it would theoretically make the movie-going audience uncomfortable to hear. President Skroob in Spaceballs is at the head of an imperialistic, warmongering empire that has been wasteful of its own resources and is conquering other places to keep itself propped up, mostly using war to keep the economy going. That wouldn't sound anything at all like some other country where a person might be watching the first run of the film in theater…or on video.
And there's Get Smart, the TV show, which is so very much a commentary on the Cold War, and doesn't even try to hide it. That Don Adams is fantastic at physical comedy only makes it better and funnier. (Since they share the same actor and situations, it's my firm belief that Inspector Gadget (the cartoon) is Agent 86 with a cyborg body, repurposed for fighting supervillains in a post-Cold War environment.) It had a much longer run than Police Squad!, which is too bad, because the concept of Police Squad! was clearly effective, given how successful the Naked Gun movies were, even if the creators of the show didn't realize that the visual gags they were relying on wouldn't work for an audience that was mostly listening to the show instead of watching it for the time slot it was in.
(There's going to be another Naked Gun movie, and another Spaceballs movie. I'm thrilled for the Spaceballs movie. I'm not sure about Liam Neesan as the new Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun. It follows the same idea (Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor who portrayed Frank Drebin delightfully), but I'm not entirely sure that he's the right person for the role. I'm thinking of Hot Fuzz!, and Simon Pegg's character in the same, as the correct idea for Frank Drebin, and based on the trailer, I'm not sure that they're going in that direction.)
There's so much in the works of Mel Brooks that revels in "vulgar" humor, so expect boob jokes, virginity-protection alarms (and chastity belt jokes), plot points interrupting someone urinating, and the like, but the vulgarity is often there because comedy involves a lot of vulgarity, and often uses the vulgarity to hide the sneakier or higher-concept comedy, or to get someone from one bit to the next. Because vulgar humors about things not working in the future, and computer countdowns messing with the people unluckily still stuck on the self-destructing ships, are things that relate to the audiences. It helps to understand the genre that Mel Brooks is parodying, so that you can see where the call-backs are, but if you're not an expert in those films, the vulgar humor of having a chandelier dropped on your head will carry you through without needing to realize that this sword-fighting sequence is completely modeled on Errol Flynn.
He didn't do any work on The Princess Bride, but if you're in the mood to do a fair amount of laughing, you could put on The Princess Bride, and then put on Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and you'd have a great afternoon, because both of those pictures are classics and worth watching as well.
sunshine_revival, but that means prompt number five has come to say hello to us.Challenge #5:
Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.
Creative prompt: Write a fic or original story about a character reluctantly doing something they are hesitant about.
The films Mel Brooks is best known for are broad genre parodies that cram plenty of jokes about specific movies of the time as well as skewering the various tropes of the genre in question. The first time you watch a Mel Brooks comedy, you'll be laughing at an awful lot of things that are designed to be funny. The second time you watch it, knowing where the genre comedy jokes are going to be, you'll spot some of the social commentary that goes on underneath all the jokes. Which is pretty par for the course for a man who spent significant amounts of Word War II spotting traps left by Nazis and singing American Jewish songs into a bullhorn as a response to Nazis singing propaganda songs over loudspeakers.
After all, the show in The Producers is supposed to be an obvious flop, full of things that you would think would be offensive to the theater-going audience, but the audience can't get enough of it. The characters in Blazing Saddles use period-appropriate language to talk about the Black sheriff, language that very well might still be in use in some circles, even though it would theoretically make the movie-going audience uncomfortable to hear. President Skroob in Spaceballs is at the head of an imperialistic, warmongering empire that has been wasteful of its own resources and is conquering other places to keep itself propped up, mostly using war to keep the economy going. That wouldn't sound anything at all like some other country where a person might be watching the first run of the film in theater…or on video.
And there's Get Smart, the TV show, which is so very much a commentary on the Cold War, and doesn't even try to hide it. That Don Adams is fantastic at physical comedy only makes it better and funnier. (Since they share the same actor and situations, it's my firm belief that Inspector Gadget (the cartoon) is Agent 86 with a cyborg body, repurposed for fighting supervillains in a post-Cold War environment.) It had a much longer run than Police Squad!, which is too bad, because the concept of Police Squad! was clearly effective, given how successful the Naked Gun movies were, even if the creators of the show didn't realize that the visual gags they were relying on wouldn't work for an audience that was mostly listening to the show instead of watching it for the time slot it was in.
(There's going to be another Naked Gun movie, and another Spaceballs movie. I'm thrilled for the Spaceballs movie. I'm not sure about Liam Neesan as the new Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun. It follows the same idea (Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor who portrayed Frank Drebin delightfully), but I'm not entirely sure that he's the right person for the role. I'm thinking of Hot Fuzz!, and Simon Pegg's character in the same, as the correct idea for Frank Drebin, and based on the trailer, I'm not sure that they're going in that direction.)
There's so much in the works of Mel Brooks that revels in "vulgar" humor, so expect boob jokes, virginity-protection alarms (and chastity belt jokes), plot points interrupting someone urinating, and the like, but the vulgarity is often there because comedy involves a lot of vulgarity, and often uses the vulgarity to hide the sneakier or higher-concept comedy, or to get someone from one bit to the next. Because vulgar humors about things not working in the future, and computer countdowns messing with the people unluckily still stuck on the self-destructing ships, are things that relate to the audiences. It helps to understand the genre that Mel Brooks is parodying, so that you can see where the call-backs are, but if you're not an expert in those films, the vulgar humor of having a chandelier dropped on your head will carry you through without needing to realize that this sword-fighting sequence is completely modeled on Errol Flynn.
He didn't do any work on The Princess Bride, but if you're in the mood to do a fair amount of laughing, you could put on The Princess Bride, and then put on Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and you'd have a great afternoon, because both of those pictures are classics and worth watching as well.
