Download PDF Funny Man Mel Brooks Audible Audio Edition Patrick McGilligan Stephen Hoye HarperAudio Books
Download As PDF : Funny Man Mel Brooks Audible Audio Edition Patrick McGilligan Stephen Hoye HarperAudio Books
A deeply textured and compelling biography of comedy giant Mel Brooks, covering his rags-to-riches life and triumphant career in television, films, and theater, from Patrick McGilligan, the acclaimed author of Young Orson The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock A Life in Darkness and Light.
Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy award-winner Mel Brooks was behind (and sometimes in front of the camera, too) some of the most influential comedy hits of our time, including The 2,000 Year Old Man, Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. But before this actor, writer, director, comedian, and composer entertained the world, his first audience was his family.Â
The fourth and last child of Max and Kitty Kaminsky, Mel Brooks was born on his family's kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926, and was not quite three years old when his father died of tuberculosis. Growing up in a household too poor to own a radio, Mel was short and homely, a mischievous child whose birth role was to make the family laugh.Â
Beyond boyhood, after transforming himself into Mel Brooks, the laughs that came easily inside the Kaminsky family proved more elusive. His lifelong crusade to transform himself into a brand name of popular humor is at the center of master biographer Patrick McGilligan's Funny Man. In this exhaustively researched and wonderfully novelistic look at Brooks' personal and professional life, McGilligan lays bare the strengths and drawbacks that shaped Brooks' psychology, his willpower, his persona, and his comedy.Â
McGilligan insightfully navigates the epic ride that has been the famous funnyman's life story, from Brooks's childhood in Williamsburg tenements and breakthrough in early television - working alongside Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner - to Hollywood and Broadway peaks (and valleys). His audiobook offers a meditation on the Jewish immigrant culture that influenced Brooks, snapshots of the golden age of comedy, behind-the-scenes revelations about the celebrated shows and films, and a telling look at the four-decade romantic partnership with actress Anne Bancroft that superseded Brooks' troubled first marriage.Â
Engrossing, nuanced, and ultimately poignant, Funny Man delivers a great man's unforgettable life story and an anatomy of the American dream of success.
Download PDF Funny Man Mel Brooks Audible Audio Edition Patrick McGilligan Stephen Hoye HarperAudio Books
"A superb biography. Meticulously researched, incisive & well written. Despite its length, the book is a mesmerizing & a quick read. There are informative discussions of all aspects of Brooks's career: television, stand up, film & theater. Should remain the definitive biography for decades to come."
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Funny Man Mel Brooks Audible Audio Edition Patrick McGilligan Stephen Hoye HarperAudio Books Reviews :
Funny Man Mel Brooks Audible Audio Edition Patrick McGilligan Stephen Hoye HarperAudio Books Reviews
- My high school pal and I sneaked off one Friday night to see “Blazing Saddles.†We were 17, which made us ‘legal’ to get into an R-rated film. It still felt like an act of rebellion. Our parents wouldn’t have approved. The campfire scene alone was worth the ticket, but there was so much more.
There’s so much more to Mel Brooks, too, and “Funny Man†is a serious biography about a seriously funny man. Behind the talk-show antics and the big-screen parodies is a self-made entertainer who worked hard to achieve and maintain his standing as one of the most reliable laugh-makers around. If dying is hard and comedy is harder – well, the business of comedy is harder still, if Mel’s career is any example.
Fueling Mel’s rise from teenage Brooklyn wiseacre to national clown is an out-size ego. The talent hasn’t always been strong enough to support the ego. His career has had plenty of failures amid the enormous hits. But those hits – “Get Smart†in TV, “The 2,000-Year-Old Man†in recordings, “The Producers†on Broadway and a string of movies _ are pretty darn solid.
Comedy isn’t all fun and games, and neither is Mel. He covets credit and at times seems to want more than his fair share. He covets the money that laughter generates and at times seems to want more than his fair share. His first shot at being a husband was a misfire and he wasn’t the best ex-husband either. Tread carefully Mel is as well-armed with lawyers as he is with humor.
(Mel does have an eye for and an appreciation of talent. For example, when no one else would take a chance on young David Lynch, Mel did. Lynch had the freedom to make “The Elephant Man†his way because Mel backed him up.)
All this and more make Mel Brooks a real person, not just the character he’s created for our amusement. And author Patrick McGilligan makes “Funny Man†a fascinating read – a well-sourced, painstakingly researched tale of a success that has had plenty of high notes and more than a few sour ones. But I’ll take those laughs any day. - Yes writers are funny men and women, Brooks included, but the Brooks antics, his massive ego, his lack of character and his boorishness is nothing to celebrate.
- A superb biography. Meticulously researched, incisive & well written. Despite its length, the book is a mesmerizing & a quick read. There are informative discussions of all aspects of Brooks's career television, stand up, film & theater. Should remain the definitive biography for decades to come.
- Very long book, and heavy
- I loved this book. Author Patrick McGilligan tells a great story of Mel Brooks’s life and career. But the book is more than that; it is also a history of American comedic television. I’m a big Brooks fan and I couldn’t put the book down. But there is a darker side to Brooks that McGilligan also describes that is equally as fascinating as Brooks's comedic side. As a biography in general I think this book is well worth reading. But for anyone familiar with Brooks’s work, it is a must read.
Disclosure I received a complimentary copy of this book via Edelweiss for review purposes. - This is an incredibly boring 600-page book that doesn't even start to cover Mel Brooks' interesting career until around page 177, then goes into lengthy unnecessary detail about minute day-to-day things that you'll never care about, includes a whole lot of side stories about other people that don't directly relate to Brooks, before wrapping up the last 25 years of his life in the quick final 50 pages. And virtually none of it is funny.
The book confirms that Brooks is a complete jerk and horrible human being, at the same time overstating the success of many Brooks' projects. The writer is biased, including subjective language and making some things up when he doesn't know, and claims that many of Brooks TV shows and movies are successful when in truth his career is filled with mediocre flops and only a few true successes.
There's too much about Anne Bancroft's career, which really has nothing to do with Brooks, and there is very little about their reported marriage issues. I came away not having any better idea of the couple other than they like to play games with celebrity friends.
The biggest disappointment is the very short section on the Broadway production of The Producers, which gets less space than some of Brooks movies that were royal flops.
It's not worth reading, unless you just want reinforced what a terrible guy Mel Brooks is. He certainly stole most of his ideas or became successful off the creativity of other people. It makes him seem like an insensitive, overbearing fraud, not the genius the book jokingly proclaims him to be. He wasn't a funny man and this isn't a funny book. - Beginning with numerous references to Will Holtzman's biography, I wondered when this author would begin to write something original. Then slogging through Mr. Brooks' various imagined slights and feuds with contemporaries, his contentious dealings and slick contracts with collaborators, and his flagrant abuse of other talents, it's difficult to feel any compassion for Mr. Brooks.
He may be the funniest man in the world, but he's certainly no "mensch!"
I'll continue to enjoy watching "The Producers," "Young Frankenstein," and even "The Twelve Chairs," but I won't ask for an autograph, nor will I seek out another book written by Mr. McGilligan. - First chapter listened to if the remaining are 1/3 as good it will still be the best book of the year. Gtg chapter two is on.
