Exclusive: Mel Brooks programs his 20 favorite films at American Cinematheque. Read the list

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred

Mel Brooks has been watching movies for about as long as anyone alive. The comedy icon, who turned 100 in June, was born in the silent era and grew up in Brooklyn devouring double bills at his neighborhood theater in the 1930s. That movie-mad kid would go on to become one of the giants of filmmaking, directing classics like “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” and giving us a song-and-dance Frankenstein’s monster, cowboys farting around a campfire and the mystical power of the Schwartz.

So when the American Cinematheque recently invited Brooks to program a series of his favorite films — something he had never done before — there was no telling where his tastes might lead.

Beginning Sept. 3, the Cinematheque will bring Brooks’ 20 selections to the big screen in “Programmed by Mel Brooks: 100 Years at the Movies,” running through Nov. 12 at the Aero, Egyptian and Los Feliz 3 theaters. The lineup spans nearly nine decades of Brooks’ own lifetime: The oldest film he chose was released when he was 4; the newest came out when he was 93.

From ‘Springtime for Hitler’ to Yogurt’s merchandising pitch in ‘Spaceballs,’ here are the many sides of a filmmaker who reinvented on-screen comedy.

What made the cut? Some choices make perfect sense for Brooks: comedy classics like Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” (1931) and the Marx Brothers’ “A Night at the Opera” (1935). Others are more surprising, from Kevin Costner communing with the Sioux in “Dances With Wolves” (1990) to Eddie Murphy resurrecting a blaxploitation legend in “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019). The list is overwhelmingly American with just one foreign-language film, Federico Fellini’s bittersweet 1953 comedy “I Vitelloni.”

For Brooks, the exercise offered a chance to reconnect with what drew him to movies in the first place.

“It was wonderful compiling a list of all these marvelous movies for American Cinematheque,” Brooks said in a statement to The Times. “It reminded me about why I first fell in love with the art of film.”

Earlier this year, with Brooks’ centennial approaching, the Cinematheque began thinking about how to mark the milestone. The organization has screened his films regularly for decades and Brooks has appeared at its theaters a dozen or so times to discuss his work and collaborators. Simply putting “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” back on the marquee wasn’t going to cut it.

“The question was: How do we do something different and interesting?” says Chris LeMaire, the Cinematheque’s director of programming, in a phone interview. “Then it became: What if we reached out to Mel and asked if he wanted to put his programmer hat on and take over our calendar and see what he would come up with?”

The Cinematheque already invites filmmakers and other guests to choose individual films for its weekly Sunday Print Edition series, but handing someone an entire series to program was another matter.

“We didn’t even say how many films it could be,” LeMaire recalls. “We kind of said, ‘How many do you want to show?’ ”

To mark Brooks’ 100th birthday, the American Film Institute reshuffled its classic comedy rankings, elevating ‘Blazing Saddles’ to the No. 1 spot.

Brooks conveyed his selections through his assistant, who would speak with him by phone and relay the titles to the Cinematheque by email. Rather than arriving all at once, the list grew over several days as Brooks kept thinking of movies he wanted to add.

Source: Read the original article on www.latimes.com