Mel Brooks
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Defending Your Life, The Producers and Spaceballs: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
The best film by America’s greatest comic filmmaker arrives on Blu-ray this week in the form of Criterion’s release of Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life. Some Brooks partisans might argue on behalf of the more acidic and self-flagellating Modern Romance or the more influential Real Life (and if you caught me on certain days I could probably be convinced that Mother is as great a movie as anyone has ever made), but Defending Your Life is the director’s most philosophically dense, emotionally satisfying, and conceptually ambitious comedy, an inquiry into the meaning of existence as serious as Tree of Life […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 2, 2021 -
Hat in Hand
In September 2015, I launched a Kickstarter campaign—a tongue-in-cheek effort to raise $308 to make 12 hats embroidered with the word “movies.” Three years later, I find myself president of Movies Brand, a company that has released more than 30 products emblazoned with the word “movies,” worn by the likes of Mel Brooks, Josh Safdie, Ana Lily Amirpour, Larry Karaszewski and some 2,000 others. So, how did a Kickstarter joke turn into a real business? Well, it depends on what you mean by a real business. Some background may be in order here. My first love wasn’t hats. It was […]
by Kentucker Audley on Sep 17, 2018 -
Watch: Mel Brooks on Working with Orson Welles
In this short interview snippet, Mel Brooks holds forth about his experience working with Orson Welles on History of the World, Part I. What did Welles intend to spend his fee on? 100 Cuban cigars and Sevruga caviur – not Beluga, since Sevruga was good enough and half the price.
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 24, 2015
