If you’ve watched Mel Brooks’ series of HBO specials over the past few years (and if you haven’t, what’s wrong with you?), you’ll recognize the face of Alan Yentob, who interviewed Brooks for one of those specials. Their history goes back a long way, to when Yentob, before and after becoming creative director for the BBC, interviewed and profiled Brooks back in his days making
The Producers – the original Sixties film, not the subsequent hit musical. Tonight’s new Mel Brooks special,
Mel Brooks Unwrapped, revisits and cannibalizes those old British profiles, showing us now what unsuspecting Brits saw then: a manic, antic, brilliant, free-range comic, with more energy and one-liners than he knew what to do with. But he channeled them well then – and in packaging bits from his past in a newly filmed story in which Yentob comes to interview Brooks again, more than 50 years later, Brooks
still knows how to channel his own creativity and comedy. Well done, Mel. But no surprise there…
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.