About
In 1983, Mel and Anne traveled to London where he filmed an hour-long showcase called "An Audience with Mel Brooks." This was in fact a series produced by ITV London, on Saturdays nights, featuring one celebrity entertaining an audience intersperced with celebrities. I've only seen Mel's, but it seems about equally scripted and improvised, with several celebrity audience memebers being obvious plants. Still super fun. My favorite part (of course) is when he drags Anne up onstage to sing with him. Worth a watch if you can find it. Seriously.
From Wikipedia:
An Audience with... (usually followed by the name of the featured comedian or singer) is a popular British variety television programme produced by ITV London (formerly LWT) and traditionally broadcast on Saturday nights. The first episode was An Audience with Jasper Carrott in 1978 and the latest (shown on ITV) was An Audience with Neil Diamond on 31 May 2008.
In 2007, selected An Audience with... shows were individually released on DVD. Prior to this, the October 1985 show featuring Billy Connolly had been issued on its own, both in VHS format and on DVD.
A special edition aired in 2008, An Audience without Jeremy Beadle, which was the first ever edition honouring a posthumous celebrity, as Beadle died in January 2008.
Here is one fan's discription of the show, from sukip.com:
Ever since the 1980s, London Weekend Television has issued a series of specials entitled "An Audience With ...", with a 'kicker' of its audiences always comprised of OTHER celebrities. AAWMB(1983) was recorded in London, again with a live audience of actors, supposedly to "flog" Mel's brand new To Be or Not To Be(1983).
He recorded and released his "Hitler Rap" as a fun accompaniment, included at the beginning of this special. It was a Top 40 hit in Australia in 1986 - its lyrics are naturally clever (during the bridge, Mr "Heil Myself" raps, "Say, your boots ain't black and your shirt ain't brown/ Get back Jack, you can't get down!"). That much is typical Mel. But the vid clip is populated by the extraordinarily sexy...or, rather sleazy, Solid Gold dancers! Mel mock-flirts with them shamelessly during the song. Bet you never knew Mel had THAT in him, did you? The sashaying women intone "Heil, Sieg Heil!" ever-so-breathlessly. See it, if only for the dripping S&M, and very gay "Nazi" boys in tight black leotards and jackboots with suspender belts over their naked torsos. The choreography is pretty damn-suggestive, but otherwise very tight.
Once the documentary proper starts, Mel is his usual munchkin-like self, playing around with his audience--we get to play "spot the celeb" as the camera pans around, and as they stand up to ask questions (I've spotted Bob Geldof, the bald lead singer of Hot Chocolate, Liam Neeson, Helen Mirren, Jonathon Pryce, Jonathan Miller, Derek Nimmo and Gordon Jackson, as well as our own Australian expat from Kogarah, Sydney, where I also grew up, Clive James. He's still around!).
However, you get most impressed by how much fun the audience is having; how much LOVE there was in the room: Mel Brooks on any day is a gift!There are, of course, "ringers" who eventually come up on stage, and I won't spoil who they are ... But we get a really good primer on Mel's biography, delivered as a standup act. We discover that he was a corporal in the US Army during World War II as he tells the hilarious true story of how he got a Bronze Star. We also find out that Mel got his break in showbusiness as a "pool tummler", or was it "pool tumbler"? - because he used to take a dive into a pool as part of his standup act in the Catskills, supposedly a Jew trying to commit suicide: "Business stinks, I don't wanna live! -and then I'd jump" was part of his early routine as a teenage comic at The Borscht Belt resorts up in the NY mountains.
Later he recalls how he and Carl Reiner recorded their comedy-routine featuring Mel's comedic character The 2,000-Year Old Man. The character itself is technically greater than 40 years old, but cannot date or even age, because the whole act is about timeless issues of life, death, having children, and meeting up with famous historical figures! Mel later claims that "I am probably the only Jew that ever made a dollar out'a Hitler", but it's only when you see him repeat the same Nazi Party refrain in the original 1968 Producers, in this comic documentary in 1983, and again in 2001 (Recording The Producers), that you realize it's a lifelong joke. ...
Mel proves himself a credible crooner, as he does a very passable "Moonlight Becomes You" and spoofs a Jewish "Dancing in the Dark". The highlight of the singing section is a little ditty that he and Ronny Graham wrote back in 1952 but could never sell or perform. Mel says "it's an ode to cowardice", so of course no-one wanted to hear it after WWII. I love it. It's called "Retreat": its chorus goes "Run away, run away! If you run away you live to run away another day, Hey!". So you just have to love him."
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