![\"Mel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Mel-Brooks-Actor-Filmmaker-2016-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n
Mon 11 August 2025 16:15, UK <\/p>\n
Comedy is entirely subjective, much like any other art form, and there\u2019s an argument to be made that the sentiment is especially true for people who built their careers on making people laugh. Mel Brooks<\/a> has created some of the funniest movies in Hollywood history, but what tickles his funny bone?<\/p>\n As anyone would expect from somebody born in 1926 who\u2019s still going strong almost a century later, his personal preferences lean towards the generation of performers he grew up around. Not that he\u2019s got anything against comedy\u2019s constant evolution and embrace of modernity, but he definitely prefers the old school.<\/p>\n He\u2019s adamant that Harry Ritz deserves to be called<\/a> \u201cthe funniest man ever,\u201d and he peaked in the 1930s and 1940s. Similarly, he called Madeline Kahn \u201cthe single best comedian that ever lived,\u201d and she did her best work in the 1970s. Brooks also has a soft spot for the Marx brothers and the Three Stooges, who reached the apex of their popularity before World War II.<\/p>\n Most, but not all, of his favourite films hail from a similar era. The EGOT-winning icon has always been obsessed with Fred Astaire and the \u2018Golden Age\u2019 of Hollywood musicals, but he also watches Ridley Scott\u2019s Gladiator once a month<\/a> alongside longtime friend Carl Reiner and declared Matt Damon\u2019s The Bourne Identity as one of the 21st century\u2019s best movies, so he\u2019s not beholden to a single time period or genre.<\/p>\n If someone is feeling down, comedy is about the best pick-me-up there is, and Brooks has been responsible for salvaging many a miserable day when The Producers, Blazing Saddles, or Young Frankenstein is fired up to shake a viewer out of their stupor. The best comedies are timeless, and he\u2019s written, directed, produced, and starred in several of them, with five films ticking that box for him.<\/p>\n As expected, when The Skanner<\/a> asked Brooks to rattle off a quintet of pictures that are always guaranteed to leave him in stitches, 80% of them were hardly modern. \u201cBilly Wilder\u2019s Some Like It Hot, Preston Sturges\u2019 The Palm Beach Story, Charlie Chaplin\u2019s City Lights, and Harold Lloyd\u2019s Safety Last,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are really my favourites.\u201d<\/p>\n Those movies were released in 1959, 1942, 1931, and 1923, which checks out, based on the filmmaker\u2019s fondness for the classics. And yet, a bawdy, R-rated smash hit made an appearance, although Brooks wanted to make it clear he wasn\u2019t too enamoured with its successor. \u201cI thought The Hangover was really funny,\u201d he added. \u201cBut the sequel just exploited the first.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Brooks appreciates Todd Phillips\u2019 2009 franchise-launcher so much that the \u201chysterical\u201d scene where the hapless protagonists find themselves trapped in a hotel room with Mike Tyson\u2019s pet tiger lurking in the bathroom was named as one of his 11 favourite scenes of all time<\/a>, which he described as \u201can amazingly funny concept.\u201d<\/p>\n The sequel? Not so much. The Hangover Part II was basically a carbon copy of the original that didn\u2019t bring anything new to the table, and Brooks isn\u2019t the only one who thought the cash-grabbing second chapter only existed to exploit the success of the first. The opener always makes him laugh, but the less said about the next one, the better.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Mon 11 August 2025 16:15, UK Comedy is entirely subjective, much like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[32329,96,25723,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-59748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-charlie-chaplin","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-mel-brooks","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}