Mel at 100: The Mel Brooks Movie Rankings. Plus: ‘Scary Movie’ Is Terrifyingly Awful

20:01Sean Fennessey:Yeah, he's a lexiconographer. You can like import things. What about for you? We've not talked about Mel very much over the years on the show. I wonder if my parents have seen a single Mel Brooks film. It's like complete opposite. I was raised in a sad household where we did not have this on VHS, just Apollo 13. But I relate to what Yassi said about it, just like the Mel Brooks sense of humor and point of reference and really how you engage with the things that you love, specifically movies, seems to have always existed in my mind and certainly shaped what I think is funny and how I understand things to be funny.

20:41But there's not a single moment where anyone sat down and was like, OK, here's Spaceballs. I remember I was culturally aware enough to remember like the Robin Hood men in tights moment. And, you know, at that point, he was obviously incredibly successful, had a lot of hits, was a household name. And Robin Hood also kind of, you know, I knew what that was. But I think I probably saw them in snippets over time before, you know, I finally got my own blockbuster card and was like, OK, like, let's check this out. Um, and so probably did like a second education as like a, you know, film history trying to trying to catch up on what my parents did not teach me.

21:25Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I feel like I split the difference between both of you guys where some of the movies were a huge part of my childhood and were present all the time, but not all of the movies. So for whatever reason, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and Blazing Saddles were very present from like 5 to 12. And then on my 11th birthday, me and friends went to go see Robin Hood Men in Tights. That was a very memorable movie-going experience. And I loved that movie. But I didn't do the thing that I did with so many directors that I started to fall in love with around that time in my life and go back and look for Life Stinks on VHS or follow up on High Anxiety.

22:07Was that a co-ed birthday party or am I going to say not? It was not. It was not.

22:12Sean Fennessey:I've still never had a co-ed birthday party, actually. Oh, I got a name and laugh. That's rare. Wow, I'm proud of that one. I don't want to be reductive, but Adam, are you Jewish? It wouldn't hurt. That is a hovering piece of context for not just, I think, Mel Brooks' humor, but his conception of his own humor. Yeah. I mean, again, you don't have to be Jewish like Mel Brooks' movies, but my dad is Jewish. I grew up with a Jewish family, and I think it's like maybe a little more present in Jewish households. He's talked about that. He's talked about that rye bread commercial where it's like you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it, but it wouldn't hurt.

22:55And his conception, I think, of like what is Jewish, it's very kind of like pop cultural Judaism or a very kind of like 20th century American Borscht Belt idea of Judaism, to be clear. But like it's pretty important to the movies, you know?

23:10Sean Fennessey:It is, but I think because so much of what he achieved happened before we were born or before we were really engaged, the way that Jewish identity informs American comedy makes it just comedy. And so, you know, I'm not Jewish, but I am from Long Island. I would say roughly 50 % of my best friends growing up were Jewish. Like, I was very proximate to the Jewish experience. Sean said, I have Jewish friends. I did, but I did, and I do. Um, and so this also took for characters to openly be making, um, Jewish references in the comedy. And I was just watching High Anxiety this morning and there are several of them even in that movie, which is coming from, you know, it's a parody of a British filmmaker who often worked with waspy American stars.

23:56Sean Fennessey:And yet he's infusing a movie like that full of all these Jewish references. But I think because Mel Brooks becomes like, I think fair to say the dominant American comedic voice of the second half of the 20th century. Like, is it is that wrong? I feel like it probably is. The dominant voice that then gets echoed by a lot of other voices, like whether they're copying him or they're, you know, reechoing him or counterpointing him. He's pretty important. And I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about it with our scrupulously researched chat, but these movies were huge hits commercially. Like they weren't just kind of hits for comedies.

24:32I mean, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, these movies that finished in the top like three or four in the box office in the years that they were released. I mean, that's pretty significant. He's kind of untouchable in that regard.

24:44Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I do feel like that middle period is the thing that often goes a little overlooked and we'll talk about it here in this conversation. But just to put a little context around it. So, you know, Mel is from Brooklyn. He's born June 28th, 1926. I hope we're not cursing anything by recording this episode a little bit early to celebrate the centenary. But, you know, there's a terrific documentary, a very long documentary about his life on HBO Max right now that Judd Apatow co-directed that celebrates his work and kind of charts his life through New York, joining the service, eventually coming back and becoming a part of the TV revolution and working for Sid Caesar.

25:22Sean Fennessey:and then eventually, as you said, Get Smart and forming this brilliant comedy partnership with Carl Reiner. And all of this happens in the 50s and 60s before he becomes a voice in movies. And in fact, one of the things that the documentary does really well, I think, is show you how sort of not assured any of this was. That like, it's kind of a miracle that he became this totemic figure that Adam was talking about. And I thought it'd be helpful to kind of try to figure out what it is that he does that is so special that I only really can comp to Mad Magazine, which is also something I really liked as like a 10, 11, 12 year old.

25:55The way I brought my Mad Magazine collection to collection day in the fifth grade. Really? And I was like, y 'all bitches can't fucking touch me right now, okay? I have a hundred Mad Magazines.

26:05Sean Fennessey:Mad Magazine I was not allowed to subscribe to, but they did have at the library. And so I could look at it behind plastic coating in the library. And I spent a lot of time in the library as a preteen. We're probably not surprised a lot of people hear that. and I would just look at old mad magazines for hours and hours and it had the similar effect of this where on the one hand I found I find that his comedy is parodying something that you know exists and you're laughing because you have a relationship to it but then also to your space balls point it's like a portal to something you don't know about and you're too young to experience and so it it almost informs you as to what you're going to be getting when you get older in a way that I found really intoxicating as a young person I don't know what do you what do you think his comedy is about?

26:47I mean, I think obviously it's, it's satire, right? But I also, you know, I couldn't help but think now looking back, I didn't get it when I was a kid, but like how much it's about being other, you know, and it's not just the Jewish other. It's so much about like race and class and like the brilliance of being able to like weave that into your like kind of dumb, kind of edgelordy, honestly, original edgelord Mel Brooks comedy is incredible at that time.

27:16Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I agree. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, so much of satire and parody relies on like a deep knowledge and understanding and love or at least like real fixation on the material itself. And so, you know, to that point of when you're watching it as a young child and you're kind of learning about the structure of these movies and learning about the adult world through the parody. It's because you do have to understand it and like really be a nerd about these things in order to send them up in the way that he does. So I kind of received all of these as like a pop culture, you know, a cultural omnivore and someone who really consumes things and wants to like chew it up and make other things of it in the same way that I do or that my like my favorite filmmakers do.

28:09And, you know, to Adam's point that many people since then. Many people we also lionize on this podcast are like, OK, so what if I take everything that I love and mix it all together and then add in my own sense of humor? So I think what's so amazing about Mel Brooks is also how pop he managed to make all of it. And as you said, these were huge hits in the 70s. And they are also like a deconstruction of, you know, cinematic tropes over the course of 50 to 70 years. Like, it's quite nerdy.

28:42Sean Fennessey:Yeah. The metaphor I always think of is, what if you took a piece of paper and ripped it up into 50 pieces and then tried to put it back together again? That's kind of what the Mel Brooks movies feel like, where it's like there's a puzzle component to it. It feels a little jagged around the edges. You're never going to get it exactly right. And in its, you know, obscurity and the reforming, like there's something fun and funny about it. What do you think about his comedy in general, Adam? yeah like the two things two distinctions that i think are fun with him like one is that unlike mad magazine who he's a lot like you know like a lot of the times his movies feel like mad magazine panels but they're three-dimensional and flesh and blood and all that and even the kind of yiddish humor between the two and like you know mad magazine had all kinds of you know old yiddish names and sounds like you're clearing your throat like that's a lot of their comedy but mad was counter-cultural and pushed against authority and i always thought brooks's movies kind of wanted to buy in like there was a lot more love than there was kind of like anti-establishment pushback like he wasn't making fun of a consumer culture or pax americana or anything like that it was very again jewish showbiz which is like i want to be part of it and poke a kind of gentle fun at it but also he's at a juncture in film history where he's obliged to do that like the marx brothers and abbott and costello all these queens they did make fun of hollywood in real time no one should think that parody got invented in the 70s or god forbid later than that but some genres were just old enough that when he made fun of them in the late 60s early 70s it was really powerful because the nostalgia for things like the western you know which blazing saddles among other things is like a revisionist western they were doing all kinds of those in the in the 70s in a kind of serious way it did it in a funny way but he had a long enough frame of reference by the 60s or 70s that enough time had passed that he could kind of get away with this but it was also very reverent no one could watch young frankenstein be like oh he hates these movies that's where the newer ones get interesting with like space balls and and prince of thieves and the the dracula one we're like does he like these movies or are these things that are kind of impinging a little bit on his territory he doesn't seem to have the same effect for them i can't wait to talk about this aspect of space balls it's why it's his most interesting movie for me whether it's his best one, but we'll get there.

30:53Sean Fennessey:Yeah, that's an interesting way of thinking about it too. I feel that even when I watch the newer ones, and I think it's his own fault because what happened is after his movies became such huge hits, the culture in serious filmmaking almost had to account for the fact that a Mad Magazine or a Mel Brooks might be coming for them. And so this kind of like arch tone or ironic tone that you find in a lot of contemporary mainstream, like big tent movies, Marvel movies, action movies, the kind of the wink that has arrived. I think he's kind of instrumental into that. And so he becomes, he doesn't, he's not, he's not made obsolete by that move, but it did make, I think it made it harder for his stuff to hit in the 90s.

31:38Sean Fennessey:And especially, you know, after that, because, and it's part of the reason why I think he pivots to Broadway, which I haven't even mentioned, but, you know, he has this third act of like extraordinary success with the producers and transforming the producers into a musical. And he constantly has had to pivot away from his core successes because of his successes. Everyone catches up. Yeah, yeah. And so when you have like... Go ahead, Adam. What I was just going to say, one other distinction that's interesting, it ties to what you're saying, because I love what you said about how people feel obliged to build the archness for the comedy in because they don't want to be made fun of.

32:11The other thing about Brooks is he does not care if people take him seriously or think he's smart. and it's a big difference between him and woody allen who if i say his name three more times in the mirror he'll pop up behind us and talk about the knicks and and all that but like woody allen wants you to think he's smart he literally is like here's a dostoevsky joke you know i've read kafka those jokes in those woody allen movies not to derail the puck they're not that smart they're just mentioning smart things and smarter filmmakers he wants you to know he only watches Fellini and Bergman. Mel Brooks is like, no, I watch Westerns and I watch horror movies.

32:45He's brilliant without acting like he's smart. And that's really influential too. It's a distinction between him and Alan, who people used to compare all the time and who had totally different filmmaking careers in the relationship to Hollywood and success and awards. I mean, Mel Brooks won an Oscar before Alan did, but his movies weren't being nominated for best picture all the time. So I just think that that idea between smart and brilliant or smart and intellectual is also a good thing to think about that I wanted to think about with Brooks, which is like, he really didn't care if people took him seriously to a point, I think.

33:18But he wanted to be liked. And I think that's the distinction between him and Woody Allen, right? Woody Allen kind of had like a contemptuous posturing where like, I relate to my King Mel Brooks so much as someone who also desperately loves and wants attention and to belong. That's the positioning towards Hollywood. And like, it does come with a bit more honey, you know, than a little more prickliness than Woody Allen had.

33:39Sean Fennessey:I think it's really well put. We saw it even at CinemaCon this year at 99 years old. Mel Brooks made a video as a companion to the Spaceballs sequel that's coming out next year. And he still has that kind of desperate quality to be loved and remembered and celebrated. And if he's listening to this podcast, thank you, Mel. You know, we appreciate you. You are loved. Does Mel listen to podcasts? I don't know. He seems pretty on it. Yeah, he seems like he has, first of all, sharp as a tack. Yeah. It seems like he has kind of his finger on the pulse. I mean, even back to the Spaceballs and the changing of his comedy, I think that was like a credit to him of like seeing how comedy was changing and allowing it to enter his space and like letting improv happen and stuff, which was like, sorry to cut you off, Amanda, but like I think that was actually kind of cool.

34:25Whether or not like it ended up continuing to work, it's like he wasn't like so brittle about like it's my way or the highway.

34:32Sean Fennessey:Right, right. I just I mean I hope Mel is spending his hundredth year you know doing doing other things reading Dostoevsky he wants to be entertained he's listening to the Madonna bands play in 19 hours he's a big fan yeah there's something I'm trying to remember which review it was but Pauline Kael said something like he keeps grabbing you by the lapels and telling you to laugh but it's the grabbing that's funny yeah like like it's not so much that what he says is all that funny but that enthusiasm to be like there's a jet like there's a neediness to it but it's also very generous and he certainly wasn't like judicious or skimpy with the jokes right i mean he predates like the zazz team and and but they took a lot from him just from that idea that he took it from other people too you know marx brothers but just joke density like if this one's not funny the next one of the next 13 will be you know and and and and that when it's done well is why people watch the movies over and over and over again thinking about him as a as a filmmaker, which is not a way he is discussed very frequently.

35:33Sean Fennessey:And I was thinking about what you were saying, Adam, where I do feel like his first three movies are actually a bit more socially minded. I don't think he's necessarily showing off per se or trying to intellectualize aggressively, but because of maybe just the time that they're happening and it is this countercultural moment, they feel more like they are addressing something that is happening socially as opposed to, I think, more or less everything that happens after 73 where they feel kind of iterative to genre or something that he really likes and what like he just wanted to spend time making a silent movie and those movies maybe don't have as much on their mind but as a film director you know he's kind of janky at times like there's a kind of crudity to the way that he makes movies and even when he's like spending a lot of time on a hitchcockian uh dissection there's stuff in it where you're like oh wow he looked paid really close attention to the blocking or the camera movement and then And there's other times where you're like, the cameras just sit in the middle of the room and like characters are walking into that frame.

36:32Sean Fennessey:And, you know, there is like a yeoman's quality to the movies that I think when you're a young kid, maybe makes them seem like it's happening in front of you. Like it feels a little bit more simple that I maybe hadn't thought about as much until I showed Spaceballs to Alice yesterday, which is like kind of a mistake given the language. We did this at home and it was also, but Knox was like very afraid of certain parts of it, which I thought. Oh, interesting. Was fascinating because he's not afraid of like the actual violence in real Star Wars movies. But I guess it felt more human and more approachable.

37:04Yeah, yeah. And to your point about, you know, feeling when you're a kid that there's the line between, you know, it's a movie and you watching at home does feel alighted in his movies, which I think is part of what makes them funny. There is like we're all in this together. We're all in on the joke. There's even a little bit, you know, to the warmth of these movies, even when they are, you know, biting or lewd or mean. There is, as Adam said, it's more about love than anything else. But yeah, it's definitely seemed to my four-year-old like way more real and thus way more threatening to him.

37:42Sean Fennessey:Yeah, there is a groundedness that like space, Star Wars does not feel like Spaceballs, even though it feels exactly like Spaceballs. There's something uncanny about that. well I mean we talked about technique one of the first things he made I don't know if we're going to go film by film but did you guys all recently Sean probably has because he just sits and does this stuff do you watch the critic the short he made no no no he's short yeah not in years I haven't seen this in years so it's like it's it's actually one of the more counter-culturally minded things where it's like an abstract like a putatively like award-winning short animated film and then the voice of an old guy on the soundtrack which is Brooks being like I don't get this like what is this what are these lines what does this mean so the tension is between you know like technique and abstraction and symbolism and then like the regular person who kind of doesn't get it and if you watch it it has this wonderful quality of like it doesn't deny the fact that abstract art is good and enjoyable and that it might take a lot of talent to make but like the regular moviegoer is kind of baffled by it and doesn't care it's a it's a wonderful balance because he's not putting it down i think i don't want to get it wrong on air but i think he won an Oscar for that or was nominated for it as a short.

38:49And that's kind of like maybe a bit of a clue into how seriously he takes technique, which is like, I could do it if I have to. But there's something kind of slovenly where this stuff doesn't really oblige it, which is why I think the best made of his movies, again, we're kind of jumping all over the place. But when you talk about the one that doesn't feel like people are just plunked down and walking through him, like Young Frankenstein is incredibly well made. camera placement and lenses and sound and sets i mean that's what people wrote about it at the time when you read reviews like this is like a perfect formal parody i don't feel that way about blazing saddles like being a western and i certainly don't think silent movie is like a great parody of silent movies but but young frankenstein is amazingly well made and kind of explains why he wanted david lynch to make the elephant man that way because i think brooks does love black and white and he has a certain respect for like surrealism and abstraction and expressionism even if it's not in his skill set to do it all the time he clearly respects it you know

39:50Sean Fennessey:but those later movies are horribly badly made yeah like Dracula doesn't love it which I have a lot of affection for is very cheaply made that's the other strain of this conversation too is that he's not only like a very sophisticated artistic mind but that he's a huge part of film history because he produced several movies that are all-time films. I mean, he had a hand in helping select filmmakers that we revere now and talk about as legends of the form at fairly early stages of their career and pushing them forward and also not making those choices about him, you know, not being front and center around the promotion of the movie or, you know, he actually was fearful sometimes of being a part of those productions because people thought they wouldn't take the film seriously.

40:36Sean Fennessey:But he had this incredible knack for working with Cronenberg and working with Lynch. And you mentioned Francis to me yesterday. Erasure. Well, not formally listed as a producer. Neither was he on Elephant Man. I know, I know. But you famously don't think women can be lead protagonists in films. So I understand why you did that. Yeah, I do famously believe that. um and so that the anecdote in his autobiography about what he said to the studio executives about the elephant man like he doesn't write it sentimentally but it kind of makes me tear up when i think about it where they gave all these notes and he was like okay yeah we'll take your notes then he wrote them a letter back and he's like thanks for this but like we don't take the opinions of savages we're not touching a frame of this movie you people are barbarians like i'm paraphrasing it he had the schlep to kind of do that you don't think of david lynch as someone who needs to be protected right because on eraser head if anything he needed to be protected from himself because he made this insane movie the way he wanted to make it with no money but i mean the elephant man's a pretty mainstream production and the fact that it survived to whatever that final cut is like that that is on brooks and lynch knew it which is why he took every opportunity at every award ceremony to talk about brooks and that beautiful story if you guys know it about the coat do you guys know that story that tell it for us here when lynch was in england to shoot it was too cold and he didn't have a coat so mel brooks literally went and bought him this coat and he directed every day and then it brooks is afi retro lynch still had the coat because he kept it perfectly in this chest of drawers and he was like dave you know like mel brooks kept me warm you know stuff like that i mean how can you not love yes he's gonna cry you know i literally cried so many times during the prep for this podcast.

42:19It's like, The Elephant Man, the documentary, anytime I saw him on screen with Anne Bancroft, just to be sure. He's a, like, back to our early conversation, he's a very sentimental person and a sentimental artist. And I think you pick that up through his work and also the way he lived his life.

42:38Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and also, like, he's a singular performer and a singular writer-director, and yet I think also defined by his great partnerships over the years. You know, his marriage to Anne Bancroft and they appeared together on screen. His, his work with Gene Wilder, which is just my favorite thing, like in the history of movies, you know, like Gene Wilder in the producers and young Frankenstein. I don't think there is a funnier person who has ever been in a movie. And, you know, he does this like over and over again. He finds people, obviously Carl Reiner, who he builds like huge emotional connections to incredible chemistry and repartee.

43:15And it's,

43:16Sean Fennessey:it's so interesting because I've been thinking a lot about him as a star as we've been preparing for this. And to me, his least successful movies are the ones where he is the star. And he even talks about this. It's kind of explored a little bit in the documentary, this idea that because of that need to be loved and that sense of like living up to the moment and having this incredible ambition, you can feel him almost like overreaching beyond that. But when he trusts his instincts to lean on someone else, he makes this amazing work. and there is like a little mini tragedy inside of that, you know, where like I'm watching Life Stinks and I'm like, if this was a different actor, would this movie work?

43:50Well, I have a contrarian view on this and I do not understand the Life Stinks slander. In my home, Life Stinks was a masterpiece and I still, I rewatched it. And I think people are unfairly harsh on it. I think it's a really good movie. I can't go that far with Yassi, but I do, and I agree with you broadly that the movies centered around him are not as strong as, you know, the producers or Young Frankenstein, you know, or even Blazing Saddles. But at the same time, every time he shows up in, you know, the 12 chairs or Blazing Saddles or anything, my, like, I perk up in a way. And there is something about his energy and, you know, almost like his cuddliness, which is such a weird thing to say about someone who is just making, you know, like a lot of dick jokes or related parts jokes throughout that is so essential to, I think, both his specific comedy, but also that only he can bring.

44:46And so to me, the movies are singing the most when he is there on screen.

44:51Sean Fennessey:I don't disagree with that at all. I think Spaceballs is a great example of that. I think it's more like when we're trained on him. I felt this way watching High Anxiety this morning. I was like, this is a lot of time with Mel. This is a lot of time with Mel's fixation on these kinds of thrillers and his own psyche and what he deems to be. Well, also just like a lot of psychoanalysis. And once again, therapy does not make good movies, even comedies, but. One reason that movie kind of fails is that Hitchcock was funny on purpose. Yeah. So when you're parodying him and when you're satirizing him, you're kind of just like emphasizing something that's already there.

45:28And I also think that his affection for Hitchcock and respect, they're almost too much for the movie to work. Like, you know, I would rather watch a Brian De Palma movie in terms of dealing with Hitchcock than high anxiety. It's like too close and too on the nose. And he's in it way too much. But and reviews pointed this out, you know, when that movie is good is when he's just doing like a showbiz. When he just sings a song. Yes. When he just sings high anxiety for some reason. It's actually pretty good. Same with the Tokamata scene. And in History of the World Part One, where when he kind of just does like showbiz song and dance stuff, all the pretense kind of falls away.

46:02And again, he's such an entertainer. yeah

46:06Sean Fennessey:well what should we do should we talk about each movie before we do that actually I did want to mention you mentioned Zucker Abrams Zucker Apatow obviously being somebody who made the documentary like those are two very clear heirs two people who very saw themselves in his work and then tried to create their own things in the aftermath of that you know we talked about the scary movie movie at the top of this episode that movie wildly unsuccessful though it may be very much operating in the same frame one of the reasons why that franchise in general is kind of dumb is because it's doing what high anxiety did one time where it's just like right has a lot of fealty to the original material to the point of it not even being a joke um but who who else springs to mind that you think that he is correlated to or that like i don't know adam who's his who are his greatest heirs well i mean it's not just it's not a direct there but it's an echo and he did avoid you know he he appeared on it which kind of cinched the link but i've always thought that that idea of him as a portal to other things is very similar to the Simpsons, you know, that idea of there's a whole world and there's a whole universe of pop culture that kind of gets remade in the Simpsons image.

47:12And there's a whole world that's kind of remade in Mel Brooks's image. And those overlap a little bit. And I love when he was on the Simpsons, he's Homer's driving around for some reason. He says, I saw that movie, Young Frankenstein scared the hell out of me. You know, it's a great Simpsons line. But he even there kind of alludes to the 2000 year old man and his shtick. He just, I mean, always simpsons guest voices are good but he felt particularly game you know that was like particular game recognized game in terms of showing up on something that's kind of you know a kindred sensibility but i think you mentioned some of the big ones and the judd apatow one for sure i think he's someone who has a lot of reverence for for brooks i feel like i see tendrils of him in so many things that are like just more specific like he loves sign comedy which I love like I love the the when you're rewarded for watching and there's just like a funny like signage and that's everywhere that's in the Simpsons that's in all of the Parks and Rec you know and various franchises that's in Widow's Bay which is on now you really are rewarded there's just a funny newspaper clipping you it's all over Mel Brooks's stuff like or like even like um oh my god what's his name the family guy

48:25Sean Fennessey:Seth MacFarlane even Seth MacFarlane for sure Mel Brooks' thing to like take things a little too far like the farting scene and Blazing Saddles that's all over Seth MacFarlane's work you know like I think he has like certain flourishes that certain people just took and put into their work and they might not be like direct heirs but his fingerprints are all over like so much of the comedy I've watched since I was a teenager yeah I was thinking about Seinfeld and Larry David too and just that like that idea of the assimilation of the Jewish experience just into a social experience, a cultural experience.

48:55Sean Fennessey:And like that tonality that those shows have is very, very similar to a lot of the Mel Brooks sense of humor. I don't know anything else. You can also use him to explain why other things aren't funny. Like the producers is a good thing to use to explain why Jojo Rabbit sucks so much. You know, like you can use you could use things that Brooks has worked on to see people who've kind of learned those lessons wrong or who come at it from places that don't have whatever we want to say is good about Brooks, either the warmth or the affection or the wit. or the innovation because, I don't know, like oft imitated, not duplicated is a cliche.

49:28And it's not quite true of Brooks, but his best work has aged well. And there's a lot of filmmakers, even non-comic ones from the 70s, where that's not true. And yet the paradox, which we'll get to later, is I can't speak for all Gen Z people, but I do teach at U of T and I use Brooks clips, not to teach about Mel Brooks, but I use them for like my film economics class, like the producers and space balls, because I think they're so lucid as parodies of the industry. And they go over like crickets. And I'm like, do you guys find this funny at all? They're like, no, it's interesting. It's not funny.

50:02Sean Fennessey:So like, why is that specifically? And I feel that that's, he's not a very sexy contemporary figure of inspiration for comedy or really for all that much. And I think some people are surprised when they go back and especially look at their first three or four movies. There's a real like real artistry. in those first few movies that I think surprises people, but maybe it's not funny enough. You know those kids reaction videos, like kids react to Nirvana or kids react. I want like kids react to zero mustel. Like what, how can kids react to zero mustel in the, I must say that, I must say that's the one that goes over the most, like a lead balloon, because just the acting style is so manic and crazed and, and unsubtle.

50:47And maybe even that doesn't go over so well, because it's a movie technically, I mean, not technically, it's about Broadway rather than about Hollywood. But even the Star Wars stuff, I'm like, he's making fun of marketing within his own movie, like the closing gap of VHS windows and Star Wars being all about merchandising. Maybe it just hits too close to home and they're like, that's not funny. Or I resent the implication of that being funny. But it's very funny. You think it still plays or no? I feel like, I mean, I don't know. I have not sat with a Gen Z person and watched Blazing Saddles. But I wonder if that would hit a little harder for them.

51:20I don't know. In a good or bad way, though, because it's so incorrect. Well, yeah, it depends how they feel about certain things. It's so weird. Yeah.

51:28Sean Fennessey:I was thinking about this when you were watching the movies. When, at the very beginning of the producers, when Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are having that first conversation and he splashes the water in his face and he's like, I'm wet! I'm wet! And then he gets slapped and he's like, I'm in pain! That's like such a primal, gut-busting, like, I didn't see that movie when I was six either. You know, I saw it maybe as a teenager. Yeah. And so I don't know if I'm like, I'm not hanging on a nostalgia with it. Like, I actually think it's very funny and feels transferable to the future. But I could see, I don't know, something like silent movie just not making any sense to a contemporary audience.

52:05Sean Fennessey:Like there may be being some ability to focus on that story and maybe not understanding the reference points of like, what does it mean to get Burt Reynolds and James Caan and Paul Newman. No, silent movie would be impossible for them. You can't look at the screen long enough to know what's going on. I could barely look at the screen long enough to know what's going on. And the pacing and just kind of the way that you interact with a movie is so very, very different. I'm surprised to hear that some of the actual jokes just don't transfer to younger kids. They might just be so bored by the other two and a half hours of the boss.

52:39I wonder if I'm having a Reality Bites moment where I'm like, someone needs to define irony for me right now. But are we just so irony-pilled? are the newer generations, like, what's funny is irony, always. Like, that's, like, the standard of humor. And, like, it's not super ironic, the tone of it. I think it's broad.

53:00Sean Fennessey:And there might be something to the broadness. I do think that there is a real broadness to most contemporary comedy, too. It's shorter. Well, I was going to say, when you were describing, like, the manic style is too much for young people, as if, like, everyone on YouTube is not absolutely just manic yelling, like, all directly. And it's obviously slightly different, but it's not an energy or even, you know, like a satire type thing. Like people are yelling at the screen all of the time to 20-year-olds, you know, and they mean it. I think it's because it's not very young. Many of the heroes of his films feel like middle-aged people.

53:33Sean Fennessey:They don't, it doesn't feel like youthful and exuberant in that same way. Mel Brooks looks like 45 his entire career. He looks amazing for 99, but he looked 45 when he was 25. Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting observation. I mean I literally put that in the notes I was like are these movies aging well and I don't mean that in terms of like the political correctness or anything like that but more like do they have the same level of cultural energy and celebration that's something like you know like we just did 2001 with uh with Spielberg on the on the rewatchables and that is a movie that out here if you run that movie on 70 millimeter in a movie theater it will sell out like it it has a kind of like film school cult quality to it that like i don't think blazing saddles does and if you put blazing saddles on 70 millimeter i'm not sure if it would sell out at least not as fast in the same way i would do does that make sense adam yeah i can't remember the last time mel brooks played in repertory in toronto whereas they play 2001 you know they play 2001 all the time i'm thinking of including blazing saddles and of course i'm doing this fall on satire i really am like not just saying it because we're on the pod because the intersection in that movie of you know like jewish humor and black characters and re-evaluating the western i mean at the time that was such a conversation piece and i don't know how you would talk about it now the question of like are those his jokes to make are those his words to use good questions by the way and fair questions and it's not like people are only asking them for the first time now but they asked them differently when that movie came up if you read the reviews of blazing saddles then it was very and i'm not saying these reviews are right but people are like this is vulgarity punching up against racism and intolerance and this is a movie that's trying to deal with something that's kind of like absent and that pressurizes those old westerns which are very white and which have a certain attitude about black characters and Native American characters he was kind of seen as being on the side of the good guys if not like a doctrinaire leftist you know, you watch Blazing Saddles now, I don't know if people are going to be able to get past just the spectacular incorrectness of the language and I mean that kind of might be fair enough but I want to show it I kind of just want to show it to see what a room full of kids are going to do with it.

55:44Sean Fennessey:This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Upsizing to a large popcorn? Smart move. Staying for the post-credit sequence? Smart move. Finding ways to be financially savvy? Very smart move. Maybe the smartest, especially when you choose to bundle home and auto with help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. like a good neighbor State Farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state should we talk about the films yeah Adam I will be making you rank things which is one of my favorite things to do here I love ranking things my second favorite thing I do on the podcast you don't like to rank things either I hate you know that about me that's great I love it I love it you know why?

56:35Because it's fake?

56:36Sean Fennessey:No, it's great fodder for discussion. Okay. You know? We like to fight. It gets you to express your feelings about things, to communicate about what is and isn't good. I mean, we can go through the films chronologically. I mean, I think we've just had like a very healthy conversation about Blazing Saddles and kind of what it means and how it changed things. And, you know, as we're going through like the orthodoxy of the end of the Western at the center of Hollywood, that it arrives at a good time. But, you know, his first movie is The Producers. And as you said, It's a Broadway satire, although played straighter in the first half than I had remembered when I revisited it and then much more outsized in the second half once we get to the production of the show, Springtime for Hitler.

57:14Still funny. Still funny. Just got to say it. Still funny.

57:17Sean Fennessey:I found this movie to be way more polished than I remembered, especially having watched some of the newer films before going back to this. And it definitely does not feel like a first-time director to me. and part of that is maybe because he's got this incredible cast around him and the idea is just so fully conceived like it is arguably his single best idea for a movie and it is one of the very few movies of his that is not directly referencing another movie just like it but it also has all of the language of the Busby Berkeley and the older musicals that that have like an actual visual reference and probably lend some of that polish just by, okay, so if we recreate Springtime for Hitler and make the spinning thing into a swastika, then we have some film language and we also have some jokes built in.

58:13So I think that helps with the polish.

58:16Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think so too. And it's also a backstage musical in that way too, where you're watching the construction of something, which is also a lot of fun. I don't know. How do you feel about the producers now, Adam? It's great. And he had, I mean, what Amanda was saying is so true, about the film language and you go one level more which is that that was it's lenny riefenstahl's film language too lenny riefenstahl and busby berkeley are on a similar wavelength formally speaking you know that idea of like a mass spectacle and that idea where you know you convey ideology through imagery so like he's making fun of busby berkeley but he's making fun of lenny riefenstahl once removed in the springtime for hitler thing and also again you don't you don't want to just keep playing the card of like oh you had to be there none of us were there in 1968, but when you think about the fact that that's only 20 years after the mid-40s and after the end of World War II, it is not insulated by all these iterations of Nazi humor, like in a lousy movie like Jojo Rabbit, where there's just so much space that he's kind of, you know, drawing with and drawing from.

59:12And the producers is in there 20 years later, which is one reason why it was so shocking. Like the shock in the movie gets mirrored by the shock that the movie kind of caused. And it kind of bothers me that the Broadway musical is so successful that it's made all that feel safer. Again, I mean, good for him. I think that musical made him richer than any of his movies. But the original movie is pretty stark and pretty startling. You know, it's not that cuddly or cute. And it's not wildly successful at the time, but it does win him an Oscar.

59:45Sean Fennessey:Yes. Yeah. Was it, I saw it on the documentary. Wasn't an actor took out like a full page ad was it about this film it got like two really bad reviews and then my god I wish I remembered who the actor was a very famous actor took out like a full page ad and was like this movie is amazing you guys all need to go see it and then the word of mouth started to spread and then it shifted and then he won the Oscar sorry that I can't remember sorry I didn't write it down was this one of the VHS tapes in your house as well like did your parents like this one no the producers and the 12 chairs were like not present yeah same for me these movies were not made available to me when I was really young for whatever reason but like The producers, I suspect, will end up in the top five of our rankings, but we can come back to that.

1:00:25Sean Fennessey:The Twelve Chairs is a really interesting movie. Definitely did not see this until much later on in life. And I think it's the forgotten film in the Brooks filmography among the 11 movies. It's an adaptation of a 1928 Russian novel. And you can see him reaching for something here after the ultimate success of producers that you were just talking about. And maybe not quite being up for the challenge in a way. but it is, it does feel weirdly in the tradition that he does follow through where there's like a certain kind of story archetype that he falls in love with and then kind of wants to pull apart and make fun of.

1:01:01Sean Fennessey:You going to defend? You going to step in? No, no, no. I'm just like, could anybody step up to the challenge of like making a buddy comedy of Bolshevik Russia? Like, I just don't think it's like, it already was sort of doomed. It's rough, you know? And like to Amanda's point, like when he's on screen, it's like magical. but like just the storyline is just not fun or that funny. You know, and there's funny moments and Frank Langella, really a hot stud. I knew you were going to say that. FanDuel had that. I could have put money on that. You guys being into Frank Langella at that time. But it's because it takes a minute to place it.

1:01:36And like, you know he's in it and then you're like, wait, wait. Wait a second. That was his reputation at the time. He was cast as Dracula because he was a fan. To the dame generation. you know it's very it's very different i didn't kill him he's a normal person he's a regular person um thoughts on the 12 chairs adam i mean it's not one i watched over and over again it's a little bit of a forbidding context because it's a literary adaptation you know it came out before woody allen did love and death within you know like those two movies are very parallel in terms of trying to like tangle with you know modern or almost modern modern you know you know pre - or modernist literature.

1:02:14I mean, I think it's funny. It's very convoluted and blustery. I'm also not a huge Dom DeLuise fan, which is hard with Mel Brooks because he always has Dom DeLuise on hand. I don't dislike Dom DeLuise. He's pretty domineering in the film. I think Langella won a big acting prize for that movie. It was a National Board of Review or the New York Film Critics Circle. I mean, he's great. He's fabulous. Dom DeLuise is a little big.

1:02:40Sean Fennessey:I mean there's a certain kind of physical archetype too that Brooks kind of returns to over and over again where it's like the round guy the skinny guy the kind of kvetching girl he has like a series of strategies that he's deploying in a lot of these movies. Twelve Chairs is not one of my favorites Oh you guys are being mean. I mean I don't think it needs to be in the top five It's fine. It's not terrible. It's worth seeing and to me like exemplifies that Brooks thing that we were talking about of you don't totally understand the source material until you see the movie and you're like oh you know the Russians I was never fully schooled in the Russians you know so I I try my best but I appreciated having this as a little bit like if you read Brothers Karamazov then you'll enjoy it more no no I think now you know now that I've seen 12 chairs I should go back and be like oh I see what they're trying to do here Honestly, the ending is quite beautiful and touching, and I had to tear up a little bit.

1:03:36And I mean, I think it's definitely worth watching. I think it's, you know, it's worth watching if you want to understand Mel Brooks, because I think it's a through line of all of his, well, not all, but many of his movies. It's like he does care about upending things he doesn't believe in, such as communist Russia.

1:03:54Sean Fennessey:Yes. And so that's important, at least in understanding his, you know, orientation towards the world and his politicalism or whatever. if that's not a word. Yeah, no. But you guys are all saying bottom half. That's fine. I'm not advocating for it at number one. I just, you know, I liked it. I mean, you're a classics major, you know? Like, you're going to bat for the great works. I get it. But I wasn't a Russian literature major. That's what I'm saying. So I appreciate 12 chairs. You know, we all need our cliff notes. Yeah. I think it's also an interestingly important movie that gets him to say, maybe don't take yourself too seriously.

1:04:27Sean Fennessey:You know? Like, maybe, like, let's think about something more lizard-brained in terms of what people think is funny. And he learns this real discipline working on the TV shows, on your show of shows, and doing late-night talk show or, you know, Tonight Show appearances or Ed Sullivan appearances or Jack Parr and Steve Allen and honing the 2 ,000-year-old man stuff where, like, he knows what gets people laughing in the room. And Blazing Saddles, to me, is, like, the ultimate example of, like, I know what people think is funny, and there's certain things that no one's ever been able to do in a movie, and I'm going to do it.

1:05:01And some of it is about scatological humor.

1:05:05Sean Fennessey:Some of it is about like sexual desire. Some of it's about race. Some of it's just about repeating things that, you know, corn pwn cowboys say in movies and putting a funny bent on them. But I don't blazing saddles. I think it's like a lightning bolt because it seems so obvious. And it felt like nobody had ever really done this before. There were Western comedies before this. There are like a lot of lighthearted Western movies in the 40s and 50s, but maybe not quite as severe as this one. So I think the reason why this is, this isn't my favorite Mel Brooks movie, but it feels like it is the movie that people who are older than us always bring up first.

1:05:42Yeah. I think it's the most important. Sorry? I think it's the most important Mel Brooks movie. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Oh, you were, yeah. Because like just the intersection of like, well, he didn't write it, which is interesting, but he brought in this writer's room. He has Richard Pryor as a writer. You could tell your class that if they start to get angry. but like it's you know he's really making commentary about important things and it's not not just race and others and it's about capitalism right it's about this greedy thing trying to you know oust this town and these people not knowing what's good for them how power operates yeah and how they're still punching down against you know this black sheriff who's who is trying to do what's good for them I think and and it's really fucking funny on top of it I think I think madeline khan and it is one of the greatest performances ever i mean we were talking about people who he had good relations with she got it she understood the assignment i think she like created the assignment and then he like wrote the parts for her but i mean no the sense of resentment in that town towards the new sheriff and the way cleveland little plays it like just his just the degree to which he is flustered by the task of just existing daily and dealing with this and trying to deal with these people and be better and chin up and head high and all that it's funny and he also all the broad you know all the fart jokes and all that they have some wonderful heightened jokes in there like mongo only only only pawn in game of life is probably the best line in any mel brooks movie it's the one i use the most in my daily in my daily life we're all we're all only pawns in the game of life that's a that's a that's a great line also where where are the white women at in front of the kkk is funny today i think i still think your Gen Z would think that's funny.

1:07:26Like, I would guess Richard Pryor wrote that line. He was supposed to be that character. He was. Yes. It's crazy. Yes. But it is also, and to its credit, like, still really bracing some of this stuff. Even now, you're like, wow, can't believe that you guys did this, said this, got away with this. And I'm like, I'm laughing because I know what you're going for. And I'm also cringing, which, you know, is powerful and works. And the other thing about this is that it was a massive hit, which, you know, I mean, that's significant when we like do the history of it all but um also i just want to say another instance where madeline khan does the uh the singing number you know all of these movies at some point you're just happiest when someone's doing a song like marlene ditchell yeah very very

1:08:08Sean Fennessey:funny yeah i mean i set so the movie comes out in 74 this is the first of two brooks films in 74 and the number two movie at the box office this year's blazing saddles made 45 million dollars and the number two movie at the box office is young frankenstein number number excuse me number Number two and number three. It's crazy. Big year for him. This has basically not happened before. I mean, maybe Steven Spielberg in 1993. Really, it's hard to find years where someone's... You were on a podcast with him, right? I was. Yeah, up-and-coming filmmaker. Very exciting. Yeah, Sean calls him Steven now.

1:08:41Steven, yeah. Isn't that his name? I mean, Young Frankenstein... Young Frankenstein's my... I mean, I don't want to... Like, that will be my number one, or it'll be close to it. you know like that's an that's an amazing film to me yeah it's discipline the discipline of some of the not all the performances because like marty feldman i can go either way but wilder in that film i'm sorry what hump that man is a genius wilder cloris leachman yeah terry gar and especially not especially because they're all good but peter boyle in that movie is brilliant yeah as a physical as a physical comedian as a voice and as a body I mean you know that's one of the best one of the best Frankenstein Monsters performance ever comedy or not

1:09:25Sean Fennessey:yeah lest we forget Gene Hackman as well please Gene Hackman is the blind man incredible as the blind man I mean Putting on the Ritz came on in my adult beginner ballet class yesterday and the way I couldn't stop laughing because I just watched Young Frankenstein do you know did you ever see the Bob Baker performance where they do the Putting on the Ritz like they do the local marionette theater here in Los Angeles where we take our children sometimes does like a Halloween special and one of the segments in the Halloween special is they just recreate Put on the Ritz from Young Frankenstein as part of it and they have the little Peter Boyle Frankenstein marionette which is wonderful.

1:10:00Sean Fennessey:Yeah, this movie I think this is probably my dad's favorite movie or one of his favorite movies he definitely showed this to me at a very young age. Another thing where there's all this kids content that it becomes portal to horror stuff too and I think this is another movie too if you see it at a young age and then you start to see some of the benchmarks like the tools that people use for horror movies but it's not scary really for the most part and so seeing this at a young age probably also pushed me into that stuff but it is still just like laugh out loud funny Wilder again is like electric in this movie his energy and his like frustration with the world and the way that he's constantly you know Frankenstein and all that stuff is so funny to me I don't know that's another comedy thing that's carried through like I feel like 30 Rock had so many jokes that were like mispronunciation of a name 30 rock is a great Mel Brooks inspiration trip too also the signage or whatever sure yeah yeah I used to I used to when I had really bad anxiety I used to carry a cd in my car of Gene Wilder's fresh air appearance and it was like it would soothe me it was like he's such a sweetie pie he was just perfect perfect man I know I really loved him um so we love young cargain's young cargain's a big favorite I think for many of the Mel Brooks heads, this is usually right near the top.

1:11:18Well, it's the best achievement in basic filmmaking on its own. And because there are so many Frankenstein movies, I guess it is a satire, but it is also just another installment. And there's something about Young Frankenstein is so successful to me and knows its material so well than the later Frankenstein movies I've seen. I'm kind of like, do we need it? I kind of think we already have it. But that's because it stands on its own.

1:11:48Sean Fennessey:Totally. At his best, he could do that, right? He could kind of detonate a genre for a long period of time and make it not remakable. Yeah, the word with that one I think of is it's very disciplined, which is an odd thing to say for a movie that's so insane and not everything in it works. But the formal, the way the camera works in that movie and the way the sets work and especially Boyle's performance, the discipline is amazing. Okay. Right. What kind of ballet are you doing to putting on the Ritz? I mean, that's just kind of up-tempo, you know? It was like movements. Do you veer into jazz? We were doing a moving art.

1:12:21It's like an exercise. Oh, like tendus? Yeah, tendus. Okay, great. Yeah. I'm learning ballet. Thank you guys for asking. Tendus, as it's said in my family. My husband read that was in charge of reading the ballet book, and we got some wires crossed.

1:12:36Sean Fennessey:I was just at a ballet recital yesterday for my five-year-old. Ballet is on the brain. She's probably better than me. I doubt it.

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1:14:15Sean Fennessey:1976. So after coming out of this year, you'd think that this person could do anything that they want. I mean, he really is at the absolute top of Hollywood. And this is one of the biggest blank check movies of all time to make an homage to silent cinema in silent movie with Marty Feldman and... It's a weird movie. It's like, I think it's really well executed, but not very fun to watch. And especially if you've seen it before, it feels very long to me. Yeah. And maybe some of that is just not having the discipline to sit through silent cinema at a certain point. I can't know anymore if like my brain damage from having an iPhone for so long and like the erosion of my ability to pay attention.

1:15:03I don't know what it would have been like to see this movie in 1976. I just can't understand that. People had a way different relationship to sitting and watching a film that takes place almost exclusively you have to watch.

1:15:14Sean Fennessey:So I don't know. I think to Adam's point about Blazing Saddles or the producers being close to World War II, this is still maybe 45 years removed from the height of silent cinema, so it's not as far away. But I don't have a problem watching Chaplin now, but this movie, because it's so gimmicky, it doesn't play as well. It's very clever, and it has a great energy to it. What do you think of it? What do you make of it, Adam? I'm going to argue, well not argue i mean like no one's comparing him to like jacques tatty as a filmmaker right but when tatty does something like this in playtime it's a master filmmaker he's doing it there's like a social point and it's the language of silent cinema without being like a pastiche of silent cinema i would rather watch silent movie than the artist you know but so much of mel brooks is humor is verbal so much of what he's really good at if we're talking about what he's an all perverse that he gives himself this challenge and to yassi's point because you're so right yassi about like background signage and sight gags like that is part of his arsenal and he gets to do a lot of it in silent movie yeah but he's not blake edwards when it comes to like staging party scenes and he's not jacquette t when it comes to like physical comedy i just think the movie suffers from the fact that it's not really the things he's best at they're like pretty good it's affectionate like i don't doubt that he wanted to make it i just don't think it's that funny and i was i did not feel like re-watching it for this at all.

1:16:41It's definitely worth watching just for the Anne Bancroft Marty Feldman eyeball comedy because that is really funny. She does an amazing job.

1:16:50Sean Fennessey:She's very game. I think also if you're not as into Marty Feldman and not as into Dom DeLuise, they're both pretty essential to the movie. I think the celebrity cameos are fun. They're fun. It's fun to watch. But you could also you could just watch clips of it and not watch the whole thing which, you know, becomes more of an issue as you move on in Brooks' filmography. And it's also, it works in concept or some of the ideas are funny, but it doesn't work as a movie movie. And then, I mean, Adam's right. You're just cutting him off from his voice. That's half of his skill set. There's a great Marcel Marceau bit, though.

1:17:26Sean Fennessey:That joke still plays really well to me. And just watching Marcel Marceau do his thing for 30 seconds in the movie is so wonderful. Where he's trying to come into the room that is blowing the wind through the windows. is fantastic. But that almost to me wounds the movie because you're like, this is a silent comedian and you guys are not silent comedians. And there is a kind of skill here that you're platforming in the middle of the movie that makes us feel like the rest of this isn't working quite as well. I appreciate the effort. Didn't go over as well as his two previous movies either. You know what else we didn't mention, maybe because it was too close to his work, is Naked Gun and Police Academy.

1:17:59Sean Fennessey:Yeah, Zucker, Abrams, those guys, Airplane and Top Secret and the Naked Gun films and Scary Movie. Speaking of the shower scene. Yes. That to me is like so wonderful. That was great. We're a tall man. Burt Reynolds. Knock, knock. We're just a big tall man in a coat. Yes. That is good. There's good stuff. Yeah. Again, if you're trying to educate yourself, it's definitely worth watching. It is like I watched this movie 20 years ago and I watched it today and I was like, I don't know if I need to be watching this right now. High anxiety. We've glanced that at a couple of times. This is one year later his homage to Alfred Hitchcock thrillers and is, I would say, fairly loyal to the way that a lot of them play out.

1:18:46Sean Fennessey:You know, you can feel like notorious and spellbound. And I think a lot of those 40s movies in particular, a little bit of North by Northwest. Adam, what do you what do you make of High Anxiety? It's not my favorite again. I mean, again, he's caught. He's caught between affection and reverence and just a kind of cheesiness. and the fact that Hitchcock was funny in the first place. There's individual gags in it that are very good. That's the one where the orchestra is actually playing the score, right? When they go by on the bus. When they go by on the bus, which is extremely funny. I remember thinking the shower scene is very disappointing, given that you have the shower scene.

1:19:20It's one of the funniest, like, it's one of the greatest scenes in movie history. Like, oh, what's Mel Brooks going to do with this? And it's just like this very pent-up thing with a rolled-up newspaper. Okay, but Barry Levinson shrieking like that really made me laugh. I was like Barry Levinson man you're really not you had one moment on screen and you were like I will make them remember me.

1:19:38Sean Fennessey:I love Robert Ridgely is the flasher at the beginning of the movie too which is just really almost like seems like the pretense for the colonel and boogie nights. There's like some sort of correlation between those two characters. I like it. What do you think? I like it. But it's it's another one where it's like oh OK you're doing psycho. Oh you're doing North by Northwest. Oh OK. There's the you know the vertigo movement. Oh OK. It's the birds. And apparently they used the same bird wrangler as Hitchcock did himself. This is according to an incredibly long Kenneth Tynan profile in The New Yorker from like the late 70s.

1:20:13So, but, you know, there it's not, he's just like redoing movies again. And there is some humor and enjoyment in that. It's like, you know, I like it too because I also really like Hitchcock movies. And to Adam's point, Hitchcock is funny and interesting. and there's a lot to work with camera-wise and things to put on screen. But it's different from something like Blazing Saddles, which is referencing a lot of different movies but adding some sort of commentary. There's not a lot revealed about the world or about Hitchcock in High Anxiety.

1:20:46Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think that's really well put. I think this is where maybe some bad habits form that kind of carry over into the 90s a little bit. But again, it's still better than most of what you would watch even from that year. I didn't have a bad time. Yeah, it's not a bad time. After a little old man. He only makes two films as a director in the 1980s, but they're two of the most important movies that he ever made. 1981's History of the World Part One comes next, which I think is a bit of nostalgia bait for people that are our age. Sure. Adam, what is your read on History of the World? I love that Orson Welles is in it.

1:21:20That's really funny. And I love the Spanish Inquisition scene, which I think is one of the best set pieces in any of his movies you know turning the Spanish Inquisition into the Esther Williams swimming thing and the nuns and Brooks himself is having so much fun in it I like to think of him in that scene that's one of the scenes I like thinking when I think about him as a performer but it also uses the anthology format well like silent movie is making fun of one era of films but it's kind of relentless and monotonous and high anxiety is disciplined in that it's making fun of hitchcock but the results vary history of the world's great because it's like well this one doesn't work but there's another one coming along in about 10 minutes so i don't think all the episodes are good but the good ones are good you know i find the greek stuff pretty funny i find the french revolution stuff funny the coming attractions for part two my i the one thing i've ever showed my kid is the viking funeral the Vikings take off their helmets and they still have the horns on which I just think is an A plus visual joke it's not his best movie but I can watch it you know I think parts of it are really funny what do you think of it?

1:22:30I love it I mean maybe it's the nostalgia also I think to Adam's point like I was thinking about it and it's like Blazing Saddles works because the plot is really simple but then when you get to like high anxiety he's trying to do a really kind of complex storyline along with all of the like references and then it gets kind of like rough, right?

1:22:51Sean Fennessey:It's like, what am I supposed to be paying attention to? Exactly, like where it's like when it's really simple, you can hang all the jokes on it and it works. And then here he's like, there is maybe not any plot there. I mean, I think there's a very thin plot, but then you just get to laugh because he gets to have fun with all of the parts of history and still gets to make his like social satire, you know? Well, yeah, that's the thing. I mean, this is like a sentimental favorite for me. And it also because of what I saw pretty early on in the run. And again, it's also bitsy, right? You could only see, you know, parts of it.

1:23:19Sean Fennessey:It's like a big episode of Saturday Night Live or something. Yes. But I definitely saw this before I became aware of like people's history of the United States or whatever, you know, and just the idea that, okay, like you are taught history one way in history books, but we can riff on it. We can have fun with it. We can do other. It's probably one of the first times I encountered it. Yeah. It's kind of insightful in that way. You know, but if you're 10 and you haven't thought about that before, it definitely is insightful. And that's how I, you know, interacted with it. So I'm a big fan. I have a question that's kind of overarching and I think it's going to get, we're going to get more into it when we get to Spaceballs and further.

1:23:52But it comes up in a few of the other movies. How do you guys feel about how Mel Brooks handles homosexuality in terms of comedy?

1:24:01Sean Fennessey:I think it's fairly contemporary to its time. which is there's like a blend of fear around it that is also, there's like something subterranean that's like that desire is also real, you know? Like he's a partner comedy person and he knows that when you make a bond with someone that there is something there. But like men, if you were born in the 20th century, especially in the first half of the 20th century, a lot of parents were raising kids to fear that or to hate that. And so like it's this convulsion of like, well if you're an artistic person you're accepting and open-minded of all people but there's this male anxiety about and it's often very you know it's often about men and men together.

1:24:44Sean Fennessey:So I don't know you think there are a lot of examples of it in this movie? No I mean actually this movie had like kind of a good one where in the beginning it's in the very beginning where he's like there's the first homo sapien marriage followed by the first homosexual marriage was actually kind of being like it's always been around and like I just I was trying to like figure out it's not as clear to me as like the racial stuff where you clearly know where what he's coming from. But I did kind of feel like he was also sending up homophobia a lot. And we'll get into it maybe more with Robin Hood Men in Tights because it's way more prevalent there because it was the 90s.

1:25:13But I still felt in that like he was maybe more making fun of people being homophobic.

1:25:18Sean Fennessey:One of the hallmarks of his comedy is he doesn't hate anybody, you know, or if he is hating them, he's hating everybody equally. I think he kind of trained a generation of people to think that way, that like everyone is worthy of parody, but no one deserves to be dismissed. You know, he certainly hasn't, he certainly hasn't been reclaimed in a progressive vein, right? There's no active reclaiming of him the way that there are some filmmakers who aren't maybe Mel Brooks, like other kinds of satirists, right? Like, you know, Paul Verhoeven where people like actually, you know, or they'll look at some other films and they'll go actually with Brooks.

1:25:50There's kind of no actually, it just kind of is what it is. I think it's affectionate and regressive and childish and juvenile and not mean-spirited, which is not the same thing as calling it particularly progressive or subversive or alternative. Like, I don't think people see these movies as acts of real identification or allyship. They're not trying to be, you know?

1:26:12Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and yet I think that there is a sense that he's on the right side at the time and that never really changed, right? Like, people who were coming out against Blazing Saddles were usually like the fustier critics, the older critics of their time. And it wasn't really about the race parts, right? They were coming out against like, this is gross. You've debased the form of film by putting fart jokes in it. It wasn't even about what we would think they would be up in arms about. I did just want to cite briefly To Be or Not To Be, which is a film that he starred in with Anne Bancroft, which is Alan Johnson directed the movie.

1:26:49Sean Fennessey:I didn't revisit it for this conversation. Adam, I don't know if you've seen it recently, but it's the rare case of having a starring part in a movie that he didn't write or direct. Yeah, but what it has in it via him is affection for older movies, not just in that it's a remake. It's very affectionate for Lubitsch, right? For the original, but it's also not one hundredth as good as the Lubitsch to be or not to be, which is the problem. Like the spirit is willing, but the film is weak. Yeah, it's not a movie I would choose to remake if I had an option. It's interesting because Young Frankenstein is Frankenstein in so many ways, but just calling it Young Frankenstein and letting the characters inside of the movie acknowledge the story of Frankenstein in some way makes it feel different enough, whereas this just being a one-to-one remake of an all-time classic makes it a little bit less successful.

1:27:41Sean Fennessey:So a few years go by here and Spaceballs comes. Now, Spaceballs is released 10 years after Star Wars and four years after Return of the Jedi. So it has been fully subsumed into the mainstream culture. And honestly, it's not starting to expire by any means, but it is settled. Like, it's settled business. This is like new cultural canon in America. And a long time goes by before he does it. And a lot of it is like pretty faithful to the story of Star Wars. You know, he is in that mode of just kind of retelling the story in some ways. With different characters, there's more gross-out humor, there's more foul language, there's more ridiculousness.

1:28:21Sean Fennessey:And yet, I think, at least among my friends when I was a kid, this was an iconic movie. A movie that we watched over and over again. It's sleepovers. The phrases from the movie. I'm sorry. Hello, my baby. Hello, my darling. Dancing alien. Height of comedy to me. Maybe even now. I was laughing hysterically watching it like three days ago. Especially because John Hurt came back. It's really, really good. That was explaining that to a four-year-old. I was like, okay. We fast-forwarded through that part. I should have, but I didn't. I was just like, I don't know if I want John Hurt's abdomen splitting open in front of my daughter.

1:28:57That was one where he was just interested in the dance. He was like, why is that guy dancing? Who was that guy? Good question. Well, he's an alien. That's in the spirit of what is her legend.

1:29:05Sean Fennessey:He really is your son. I love this movie. I think it was pretty flawed when I was looking at it through my 43 year old eyes yesterday. What do you mean flawed? Well, what was it meant to be? It's similar to High Anxiety where I'm like, this is almost over reliant on the source text. Yeah. And it makes it a little bit, it made it a little bit less successful as a satire for me. I think the best stuff is stuff that Adam cited earlier, which is like the way that because it has some distance, is able to look at the mass consumer culture that came up around Star Wars. And it's really funny around that.

1:29:41Sean Fennessey:You know, doing the joke about Spaceballs 2 within Spaceballs is so funny. A good example of a movie where when Mel shows up in the movie, you know, as Yogurt or as the president, he's so funny. He's kind of like redoing his character in Blazing Saddles as the president. And Yogurt is incredible. It's just so entertaining. But I don't know. There were a couple moments where I was like zoned out a little bit, to be honest with you. It doesn't mean that I don't love Spaceballs and it isn't a personal favorite of mine, but up against stuff like Young Frankenstein, it pales in comparison a bit. Well, I'd propose you, because we've done this kind of subjective thing where I said I didn't like Marty Feldman and he asked me, I was like, how dare you?

1:30:20For me, the thing that carries Spaceballs is he cast Bill Pullman before that was a thing. That's true. And I'm a Bill Pullman appreciator. He's sneaky case as one of the greater American actors in the last 30 years, at least judged by the good stuff. he's so funny doing Harrison Ford without impersonating him. There's one bit, I mean, we don't just want to do bits and none of us are funny impersonators, but there's one, he's with the princess and he's like, she's like, aren't you cool? He's like, the cold doesn't bother me. And then you just see him shiver a little bit. Like the line reading I've had in my head for like 40 years.

1:30:53I think having him and John Candy and to a slightly lesser extent Joan Rivers in the same movie is kind of an amazing assembly. And Moranis, who was... not long for Hollywood after that for a bunch of reasons. I mean, it's not his last performance or anything, but like Mick Moranis didn't get overexposed because of the choice he made to back away from making movies. He's hysterical in that. Incredible. Dark helmet.

1:31:17Sean Fennessey:Yeah. So I think that some of the, yeah, the satire is good in terms of what star Wars became. Brooks always said he made that movie because his kids watch star Wars on VHS over and over again. And that's why I think technology and VHS are so key to what's funny in the movie. like the when will then be now bit I mean Sean's probably right that it's flawed but this is one of those where I'm playing my card of like who cares it's flawed I can't imagine a time before I watched it it's like a conduit to like me being seven years old it's like the naked gun to me like is the naked gun flawed yeah because it's just a send up of a thing but without any real like and this is kind of that too and I'm like I don't care they're combing the desert I know the giant comb is very funny and then they gave the black guys a pick that's one of the best moments and they're like did you find anything we found shit i also point out it's a pg movie he uses his one fuck so well because it's so superfluous do you remember do you watch me remember what it is i just watched yesterday what is it i forget the whole movie there's no f word and then right at the end when the spaceship is breaking down they're like you have two minutes to get off and rick man is just like oh fuck even in the future nothing works and when you're a kid watching it at a sleepover that word is like a detonation going off like maybe not for a 10 year old but i was eight i'm like oh my god they said that and i'm allowed to watch the movie because we were allowed to watch the movie because our parents probably didn't realize that there was an f word in it because it looks like star wars well also assholes is uttered like nine times in the film nine times yes yeah my parents are immigrants they didn't care about that kind of stuff they were like oh we're gonna watch basic instinct i was like i'm nine um they did not care about that kind of stuff.

1:32:56This is just, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm with Carrie Eyre, babe. Also, there's also random other bits, like the Hell in My Baby is Alien. There's the Vinny character. I'm like, is that Max Headroom? You know, like, there's other kind of bits that are just like, I didn't grasp them then, but now I look back and I'm like, oh, you were also playing off of other pop culture moments. We did a Star Wars draft a few months ago, which is quite controversial in many ways. But I can't remember. Spaceballs was not eligible in the main category. It was maybe eligible in the wildcard, like Star Wars related type thing.

1:33:34I think it would have been, yeah. But I mean, there's an argument that it's just one of the better Star Wars movies that has been made, especially in recent years and given Mandalorian and Grogu, which is both a testament to it being a good movie and also it being very Star Wars dependent. Yes. You know, which is, I'm kind of with Adam with like, who cares at some point but I agree with you sitting through it and it's not because my child was scared I was just kind of like okay I got a couple more movies to get through here let's you know let's keep it moving I remember the jokes but that's also true of any comedies that you've watched a million times that's right you know no that's part of it too I'm sure that's a part of

1:34:10Sean Fennessey:my experience with the where I've just I know what beats are coming around every corner that movie was a big hit and also became an absolute VHS classic and four years go by before life stinks which I had not seen. I had not seen it. I just saw it for the first time a week ago. And I don't know why it got past me. I guess I was eight when it came out. And so we weren't rushing out to the theater to see that one. My parents were obsessed. That's why we saw it. We'll then speak on it. I mean, again, when I was eight, it's different. But I still think it holds up. I think he's playing pretty straight for Mel Brooks, which is kind of cool.

1:34:51It's a, it was, and Adam will know this better, or you guys will know this better, but I feel like there was just like a stretch of films that had a similar premise where it was like, what if a rich guy had to be poor? Like Brewster's Millions, maybe it was one of them. Trading places. Trading places. Sorry, that's the only thing I'm thinking of. Trading places. And I thought this one was uncharacteristically like had a real plot, was like had this real tenderness about a person discovering his humanity and like seeing what it's like to live, you know, how a lot of people live. I thought Leslie Ann Warren was incredible.

1:35:26And I even watching it last week, I was like, I still think this is, I think it holds up. I think it's a good movie. Maybe it's not a prototypical Mel Brooks movie. And so in that sense, I don't know how it falls in the canon because like there's jokes, but not maybe to the like slapstick level of his normal films.

1:35:42Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Although except the slapping, the literal slapping part with the guy who thinks he's John Paul Getty. That's like the Three Stooges moment. That part is really fucking funny. What do you make of Life Stinks? It's an outlier. It's not a parody. Although it's referencing Frank Capra and certain the class commentary of certain screwball comedies. It might have been more interesting. If it had been more explicitly a 40s movie, it might have brought that out a little bit. The movie I would compare it to, not that much. But it's like the Coens making Hudsucker Proxy where they're like, this is about a different era of filmmaking and kind of values within filmmaking which they're a lot less sincere about in hudsock or about you know class and and wealth and then brooks i mean i think yes he's right life stinks is very sincere i think one thing that's really interesting though sorry to cut you off adam i just have to say it but that i didn't know this at the time but then now having known this it really hit me hard because the leslie ann warren character's whole thing is like her story is how she was a dancer and she married her husband and he left her and And she gave up her career.

1:36:49And that's not exactly, but it mirrors the story of Mel Brooks and his first wife. And I'm sure he was putting that in there for some sort of mea culpa. It's a guilt thing. And that really touches me. Okay, sorry. I'm a little... I wonder if she talks about it. It's hard not to think about her in that one.

1:37:07Sean Fennessey:Yeah, Leslie Ann Warden is wonderful in this movie and a very underrated actress in general. But that actually made me a little queasy, knowing that, especially having watched the documentary. it's hard because he takes from so many people and then you don't want to compare him to anybody and you know like the cohen comparison is unfair but the other comparison because it's a little more contemporary like both versions of pennies from heaven not the really recent but you know like the the pennies from heaven bernard peter one you're singing detective i feel like that's what he's sort of kind of going for here he wants it to kind of feel old but then it's bound up in contemporary does this weird special effects ending with the cranes or the construction and equipment fighting it just to use this word again it's not super disciplined and i don't love him in it you know but i haven't watched in a long time i'm just trying to think of who would be a an interesting steve martin steve martin yeah steve martin yeah steve martin would have been and steve martin made a lot of movies like this dirty round scoundrels is a kind of similar energy yeah um like high concept but more grounded execution it it's an interesting movie um Especially because it's sandwiched between all of these very clear parodies.

1:38:13Sean Fennessey:And we're going into the final two movies, which we can talk about maybe together, which is Robin Hood, Men in Tights, and Dracula, Dead and Loving It. And they're very similar films that are working off of historical literary ideas that have lots of movie adaptations that come before them. And so these movies are just gag machines. They're just blueprints for jokes. and in some cases they're you know very clearly repeating the classic structure of the Bram Stoker novel or of the Robin Hood story but in other cases they're just kind of veering off and doing their own thing and doing like very contemporary comedy that maybe won't age as well too or like references to stuff that's in the culture that isn't going to be as long lasting that being said like I said I was 11 and 13 when these movies came out and I loved them I thought they were so funny and their juvenility like that didn't really bother me at all.

1:39:05Sean Fennessey:I purposefully did not rewatch them for this conversation because I don't want to break the spell on these but you did rewatch them. I'll tell you what Robin Hood Men in Tights still it's fine. Yeah it's dumb but I it's still like I was like I love this. I love the Richard Lewis's mole moving all over his face. Dave Chappelle is a star from 19 years old. Yeah it's and Carrie Elwes was like to me Tom Cruise when I was that age you know because of Princess Bride and this the Hey Abbott guy there's just like there's amazing it's just this still did it for me I couldn't get through Dracula Dead and Loving It I did try like faithfully to watch it and like love and respect my new friend Steven Weber but I could not do it I was like I'm sorry this is not working oh yeah you and Steven Weber are homies now well yeah I think we're close personal friends that's awesome congrats wonderful man love wings yeah I rewatched both of them Here's my thing on Robin Hood Men in Tights, which did have cultural significance to our generation.

1:40:03I just don't care about Robin Hood, just like the story in general. I like the broad idea. Politics, pro. Maid Marian seems fine. King John, definitely a herb. But like, you know. You didn't watch the Kevin Costner one? I didn't care about that at all. It's so boring. The Disney Robin Hood.

1:40:21Sean Fennessey:Bryan Adams. Bryan Adams, exactly. Is great. Yeah, it is. Is that why he's the hot fox? yeah he's a hot fox formative to my young sexuality was that hot fox Robin Hood but otherwise just like okay he steals from the rich to give to the poor what about Russell Crowe that I mean no and there's a new one Hugh Jackman's doing it now and I gotta like we're gonna do a whole podcast I just I don't really how many times do I gotta watch this I support the idea and I'm out so I was kind of bored by it he's kind of the mom Donnie of his time though you know you gotta consider that as I said great politics I like the idea do I need to do at least one single laugh and it was yours.

1:41:01So I was a little bored. I'm more of a Princess Bride in the Cariole's fantasy parody. And then you see a lot of the shadow puppets in the sword fight. We didn't even talk about Austin Powers. A lot of Mel Brooks in Austin Powers. Just a few years later

1:41:21Sean Fennessey:after these movies. What do you think of these two movies, Adam? So first of all, 70s disney robin hood most oft-sighted movie from people i know as a kind of like childhood like oh these characters are attractive like that's that is that that that is that is everybody yeah we're horny for those foxes absolutely yeah but um i think i think i think ben and tights is both good and bad because prince of thieves deserves it so much yeah because like prince of thieves i think one of the worst kind of big hit hollywood movies from the early united alan rickman accepted because he's brilliant in that movie and was good in everything but it's such an awful narcissistic dreary movie and it has that horrible brian adams song and like it was like a hit kind of without people really wanting it to be and like costner's a big star at that point so i feel it deserves it but it's also such a lousy movie that making fun of it relentlessly for two hours gets tiring and he does bring other robin hoods into it but not that many like there's a little bit of a nod to the Errol Flynn one, which is one of my favorite movies ever, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

1:42:25My little embarrassing disclosure for this movie, and I remember it from being a kid, the Maid Marian song, because Mel Brooks loves songs and we talked about song numbers. It's actually very pretty, the song that she sings about herself or Marian. I can still hum it in my head, and I'm not that weird a person. So that says something that I still remember. And her chastity belt is really funny too. I love that girl.

1:42:47Sean Fennessey:And I love Amy Yazbeck in general. I think she's really funny. Could have been great if given more stuff like that. She was married to John Ritter. And Elwes is very, I mean, I agree with Yassi. Kerry Elwes is great. He's a great light comedy star. And he's spoofing himself in Princess Bride here for sure. He's very enjoyable. It's hard not to like him doing that shtick because he's actually good at it. He's not just a good looking guy who's doing it. He can do it well. there's a lot of newer Mel Brooks stuff in here right like you were saying like very contemporary jokes like the Home Alone Kid the Reebok Pumps the Arsenio Hall that was the thing and they are kind of funny if you experience them but probably not if you didn't yeah short child flesh yeah that's right and also his own self-referential jokes are great too like the when they make Dave Chappelle the sheriff at the end and someone goes a black sheriff and he goes why not it worked in Blazing Saddles yep it's good to be the king is back in this one like you know and i kind of like when he does that just because i'm a big melbergue fan i'm like you deserve it go ahead and reference yourself you're right it's very i find both these movies very charming dracula is way junkier but i also just like love dracula movies so i'm willing to forgive it a lot of stuff too you know yeah and i like those actors i love i can't remember the guy's name who was in ally mcbill who plays um oh peter mcnichol yeah yeah peter mcnichol yeah yeah and steven marbert's great and amy azbeck is back and yes and mel is very funny in dracula as well yeah um but yeah they're not as successful so i argue the problem in that one is leslie nielsen because leslie nielsen had the magic powers working with the zazz people like magic how good he is in those movies when he kind of stepped away from them which he did a few times because there's wrongfully accused which isn't really a zazz movie and there's um what's it called 2001 a space travesty like nielsen tried to become a little cottage industry of these things on his own.

1:44:43I just don't think that he's funny acting for Brooks. They did not. They didn't work out. He did a bunch of these.

1:44:48Sean Fennessey:I mean, it's forgotten. He did Spy Hard. Oh, Spy Hard. He did Wrongfully Accused, which was the fugitive one. He did Repossessed, which was like an exorcist style one. He made a bunch of movies. I love that. I love that movie. Your eyes just lit up. The happiest you've seen the whole podcast. No, it has that bit where Jesse Ventura and Mean Gene Okerlund show up at the end to commentate on the exorcism like it's a WWF match I think that's really funny Senator okay 11 movies we also cited obviously huge hand in the elephant man and the fly as a producer and Francis your beloved Francis and along with all of his TV work none of that we're not talking about any of that we're just talking about the 11 movies that he directed most of which he wrote or co-wrote it sounds like our favorite me and Adam is young Frankenstein I don't know where you guys stand on that?

1:45:42Sean Fennessey:I don't know if it's easier to work from the bottom up or the top down or what. I'm not going to argue with Young Frankenstein at one. If you want to. My favorite is Blazing Saddles, but I can understand why Young Frankenstein is better. Okay. Then you would do Blazing Saddles comes at a number two. Historical significance. Yeah. And I think that they both play, so to speak, right now. Yeah, they do. You know, like, and I know you're going through this experience with the students, Adam, but, you know, maybe you can share this episode as part of your curriculum, you know, as some olds talk about why some of this stuff is funny and relevant and still works.

1:46:16That's what everybody, that's what makes people laugh is here's why this is funny.

1:46:19Sean Fennessey:And I'm over 40. As long as they can illegally download it, they'll watch it. I mean, this was candidly a concern I had about doing this podcast in general, which is just like people talking about what is funny is inherently awful. Sure. Having done many episodes of The Rewatchables about funny movies where you're just like, remember that time? Like, that's all you do. But, He holds so much weight in the culture in terms of influence that it felt like we should do it. Okay, Young Frankenstein 1, Blazing Saddles 2. Yeah. Number three. Now, I would assume that Spaceballs is the most beloved. I would say that the producers is the most important.

1:46:53And then what is this list for?

1:46:55Sean Fennessey:Well, it's a subjective act in which we're making Adam uncomfortable with having to categorize in this way. Let's give the one that won the Oscar for writing. Okay. Number three. Look at Lucas. He's way ahead of us here. put the producers in a number through. It's as though he knew that Adam was going to say that. The good news is this list doesn't impact anyone's life. So we can do whatever. This will give Mel Brooks another 100 years of life. And also, we're going to at you and mention you on every single when this list is published without context. It's going to be Yassi Salik's Mel Brooks movies in order.

1:47:31I will be removing my Instagram account. That's not how Mel Brooks needs to know me. We know that won't be the case. And do we think we go with Spaceballs at four just because we all seem okay with it? I think so. Yes.

1:47:42Sean Fennessey:I think that makes sense. I think the hard work starts now. Okay. Five through 11 is very complicated. I guess History of the World Part 1 is probably a pretty easy number five. I think so too, yeah. Right? It's got a lot of joyful moments. It's very well liked. And if you want to skip over a certain sequence that you don't like, you can do that while watching the movie, which is one of the ingenious aspects of its design. Did anyone watch the TV show? The most recent one. I did. I watched a little bit of it. It's quite funny. it has so many cameos you can't not like it it's so funny that he's IP when he worked off of IP for so long alright 6 through 11 I'm man can we just do it alphabetically I kind of feel like Robin Hood that's what I was going to say I think that that is sentimentality operating for me but you know what I'm a part of this show I like Life's Nick stinks better but it's because it's such an outlier I don't know how it's supposed to be ranked you know.

1:48:41Sean Fennessey:Life stinks will not be getting in the top six. It's fine. Okay Robin Hood. Let's go with Robin Hood out of respect to the very funny people who are in it. There's good performances in it. Yes. Tracy Ullman we didn't even mention. Tracy Ullman is in that movie. Latrine. That's her name. That's an incredible character name. Alright Amanda since you don't love Robin Hood but we put it at number six. What do you want at number seven? Let's see.

1:49:13We've got, what's left? We've got 12 Chairs, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Dracula, Dead and Loving It, which is definitely not. That's gotta be Dead Last. And Life Stinks, you want Dead Last as well. So it's between Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and 12 Chairs. You know, they're all trying things with varying levels of accomplishment, but none embarrassing and none that wildly funny.

1:49:43So I don't. I'll eliminate silent movie. It can go later. And then between high anxiety and 12 chairs, you can do. High anxiety is more watchable than 12 chairs because you, it's hard. I think maybe being, being seventh on a ringer podcast about Mel Brooks might peak literally two people's interest in watching the 12 chairs. Okay. I mean, I thought it was the most interesting. And also, just don't make movies about therapy ever. You know, we're done. Go to therapy. Don't make a movie about it. The end.

1:50:11Sean Fennessey:I don't agree with that at all. Okay. But I, as someone who treats movies as therapy. That's good. That's just a Jackie King thing. So then we'll say the 12 chairs at seven. We'll say high anxiety at eight. And then silent movie, Dracula doesn't loving it. And you can't put life sticks. Life Stinks is better than Dracula, Dad, and Loving It. Much better. Oh, we thought that you were putting those in order. No, I wasn't putting them in order. I was just saying their names. It's also more successful than Silent Movie, in my opinion. Go ahead, Yassi. Do the final three. How would you like it to go?

1:50:44I think I would do Life Stinks, Silent Movie, and then Dracula, Dad, and Loving It.

1:50:48Sean Fennessey:There you go. Is Life Stinks better than Silent Movie? It has Paul Newman in it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You're right. I could go either way. Okay, we can. as long as Dracula Dead and Loving It is 11. It is 11. Yeah, that one's bad. I'm so sorry. That one's bad. It does, but Dracula Dead and Loving It has Lisette Anthony being hot. Like, I don't know if you guys recall that part. Adam, you remember that part? I do, but I haven't watched that movie since I was like 11 years old. It didn't save the film. Well, it made me feel 11 years old. Yeah, I also saw that movie. I mean, honestly, them in the big jacket.

1:51:20It's like just really good. And James Caan is so hot. There's really amazing moments.

1:51:24Sean Fennessey:Apologies to your childhood. Life stinks at 10. You know, you always call me a contrarian. And I just happen to think for myself, which is a rare commodity this day and age. And so I think watch Life Stinks for Yourself, you guys. Make your own decisions. Watch Life Stinks for Yourself. Do your own research. Would you like to recount this ranking? Sure. At 11, Dracula, Dead and Loving It. At 10, Apologies to Yossi, Life Stinks. At 9, Silent Movie. 8, High Anxiety. 7, The Twelve Chairs, which Adam Naiman and I hope you check out. 6, Robin Hood, Men in Tights. 5, History of the World, Part 1. four Spaceballs three the producers two Blazing Saddles and number one Young Frankenstein I feel that we've done the work here I feel good about it oh yeah absolutely Adam where can we find you in the city of Toronto in the ringer in the New Republic watching the day's horrible season unfold I'm around I'm always I always just seem to be around every month or so you guys try me out and you're like are you still there?

1:52:24I am but you know I love being here

1:52:27Sean Fennessey:that is not what we say to you. First of all, speaking of the Jays, can you just take Bo Bichette back? What the fuck, dude? Yeah, sorry about that. You know what? As someone who is at Game 7, I have a really brilliant insight. Can I share this on a ringer podcast? Please. When you can win the World Series, you should win the World Series. When you're like one out away from doing it, you're like, really? Six months later, this is what I think we should have done. I know at the time it seemed okay. We probably should have won the World Series. And then Bo Bichette would have stayed. And Sean would be happier.

1:52:58and I would be happier as someone who was at that game. No, it didn't. But you guys will be in Toronto and I look forward to seeing whatever you do there.

1:53:09Sean Fennessey:Yeah, we look forward to it too. We do. That's in the province of Ontario? Yes. Yeah, you can make me name all 50 states anytime. We live in Canada. There are a lot of responses to that, to whether we'd be able to name all the provinces and territories. Adam, just so you know, I've been to Saskatchewan and Winnipeg. So, I respect Canada. That's Canada bingo. You get, you get, you get to both of those places. I get to vote out in Canada. Could you guys grovel it? We want Adam to like us. Thank you guys for, thank you guys for having me on as always. Thanks for being here. Yasi, where can we find you?

1:53:44You can find me like, you know, one day away from Grippy Socks in the Google Doc at all times prepping for my podcast band plane on the Ringer Podcast Network. Give it a listen.

1:53:55Sean Fennessey:Wonderful. Thanks guys to both of you. Thanks to Lucas Cavanaugh, Sarah Reddy, and Jamie Yukich for their production support on this episode later this week. It's finally time to talk about Steven Spielberg and Disclosure Day, which is his new film. We'll see you then.

1:54:28Turn it up!

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