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Once Mel Brooks began to “make a noise,” thankfully he never shut up

- May 19th, 2013

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There’s an apt evaluation in the first minute of the documentary Mel Brooks: Make a Noise.

“Mel was not interested in the little laugh,” observes writer/director Barry Levinson.

“He literally wanted you to collapse and fall on the ground and can’t breathe.”

If you think back to Mel Brooks‘ most famous movies, such as The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, History of the World, Part I and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, not to mention the classic TV show Get Smart, Levinson kind of nailed it, I think.

Mel Brooks never was particularly subtle. But his comedy was far from dumb. A lot of it was based upon history and philosophy.

“He is truly an intellectual, which astonishes people,” says Joan Rivers.

That combination of grounded structural smarts and madcap comic stupidity is fully and lovingly chronicled in Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, which airs Monday, May 20 on most PBS affiliates as part of the American Masters series.

This expansive documentary features new interviews not only with Brooks and the afore-mentioned Levinson and Rivers, but also with the likes of Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Cloris Leachman, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Richard Lewis, David Lynch, Richard Benjamin and Tracey Ullman.

Others who unfortunately have passed away – including notable Brooks collaborators such as Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman – contribute to the doc not only with archival interviews, but also through the numerous clips from Brooks’ best-known and lesser known projects.

Brooks – real name Melvin Kaminsky – is 86 now. He obviously has outlived many of his contemporaries. But when you speak with Brooks today, he still can knock you over with his energy.

“I’m not such a comedy giant,” Brooks told a room full of TV critics earlier this year. “I’m 5-foot-6.

“There are guys not as funny, but they are bigger, and I think that counts.”

Brooks mostly stayed behind the scenes early in his career, allowing his ideas and concepts to be funneled through performers such as Sid Caesar.

“Sid Caesar was so good,” Brooks says in the doc. “That (S.O.B.) held me back because of his Promethean talent. I could have been out front doing it, but never as funny and as incredibly moving as Sid Caesar.”

Brooks’ face became recognizable through his famous “2000 Year Old Man” comedy routine with Carl Reiner, which they performed everywhere, in live shows and on TV. And then as time went on, Brooks popped up on-screen in his own movies more and more, moving from bit parts to leading roles.

“Well, it happened when Gene (Wilder) deserted me, I think it was Silent Movie,” Brooks told critics, recalling his 1976 film.

“He got a part somewhere. He went overseas. He wasn’t available and I got the money and I was ready to do Silent Movie. And I said, ‘Well, nobody talks, so I could get away with this.”

While every comedy career has its early struggles and ups and downs, things certainly worked out for Mel Brooks. He is one of only 14 entertainers to have achieved the coveted “EGOT” (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards).

“Being rather bizarre looking and being very short, I needed another tool so that I would be accepted,” Brooks says in the doc. “So I used comedy.”

Acceptance achieved, many times over.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

@billharris_tv

 

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Christopher Guest fondles a chest in new HBO series Family Tree

- May 9th, 2013

Chris O'Dowd in Family Tree

Family Tree makes sense now, thanks to the internet. As a story 15 or 20 years ago, it just wouldn’t have been as relatable.

“I think for certain the popularity of Ancestry.com, and other sites, helps us to frame this in a way that most people can understand,” said Christopher Guest.

“It just happened to coincide with my own kind of searching, initially without the benefit of the internet, and then using various sites. So I think that’s true, that most people are aware of this happening now.”

Guest, of course, is famous for his movies, such as This is Spinal Tap, Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration.

But now Guest is venturing into TV as the co-creator, alongside Jim Piddock, of Family Tree, which debuts Sunday, May 12 on HBO Canada.

Family Tree stars Chris O’Dowd (picutred above, known for his roles in Bridesmaids and Girls) as 30-year-old Tom Chadwick, a man who is adrift in terms of his own identity, having recently lost both his job and his girlfriend.

After receiving an old chest of mysterious contents from a great aunt, Tom gradually becomes obsessed with his lineage. The story starts in England and eventually takes Tom to the United States.

Guest, Piddock and many other familiar faces from Guest’s movies make appearances in Family Tree, in roles of varying size. But according to Guest, the part of Tom had to be cast correctly for Family Tree to have a chance at success.

“From my standpoint, this keys entirely on the main character, Tom Chadwick,” Guest said. “So it was vital to have someone who could do a variety of things.

“It had to be a funny person, but also someone who could handle things that were almost more emotional in a sense, and reality-based, because it’s not really a sketch situation. It’s based in some kind of reality, even though it’s funny.

“(O’Dowd) is a wonderful actor. And he’s able to improvise brilliantly as well, and that’s a vital thing, because otherwise, there’s no show.”

Regarding improvisation, though, Guest wanted to make it clear that often people misunderstand the way he works.

“We’ve been given an opportunity by HBO to do the kind of work that I do, which is, I think, not terribly normal – constructed with outlines, then we go and do it,” Guest said. “If this had been a movie, I think I could have gotten it made. But it doesn’t lend itself to that format.

“This actually took longer than a conventional screenplay to write. We knew the basis of the story, and then we had to go into the intricacies of these people’s lives. So in this particular case, (O’Dowd) has a background of knowing what his character’s early life was. Whatever he’s going to improvise is built around those (facts). Those are sacrosanct.

“This isn’t just people showing up and messing around. So it’s a deceptive way of working, I suppose. This is quite strict in the way you have to do it. Every scene has a point. It doesn’t just meander.”

Investigating your roots certainly is an enterprise that can meander. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be amusing, as Family Tree hopes to prove.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

@billharris_tv


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Discovery series Never Ever Do This At Home appeals to the defiant kid in all of us

- May 1st, 2013

Norm Sousa (left) and Teddy Wilson (right)

We all suffer from warning-label fatigue.

I mean, who even reads those things any more?

Especially when it comes to everyday household items and products, most of us assume we know what’s safe and what isn’t.

But the idea of the new Canadian series Never Ever Do This At Home is to test those accepted safety rules, just to see if we’re being lied to, I suppose.

Debuting Monday, May 6 with back-to-back episodes on Discovery, Never Ever Do This At Home is the first English-language adaptation of a TV format that has proven popular in several European countries. The Canadian version is co-hosted by Teddy Wilson (pictured above right) and Norm Sousa (pictured above left).

As Wilson says in the first episode, “The one place in the world where you’re supposed to be safe and sound is actually super dangerous, if you don’t follow the rules.”

To which Sousa adds, “On this show, we’re going to break all those rules, just to see what happens.”

The setting is a beautiful old farmhouse in Southwestern Ontario. Like, what did that poor house ever do to anyone?

If there’s a victim in Never Ever Do This At Home, it’s the house. It doesn’t get to wear safety goggles like those wimps Wilson and Sousa.

Anyway, this series taps into the defiant little kid that exists within all of us. You know, the one who bristles at authority and rules, and gets tired of being told “no” to virtually anything that sounds as if it might be fun.

“Don’t set off fireworks in the house,” we’re told. But what would happen if we actually did?

Fittingly, setting off fireworks in the house is the first experiment conducted in Never Ever Do This At Home. Let’s just say it’s a good thing there’s a team of firefighters close at hand.

For my viewing interests, Never Ever Do This At Home works best when it focuses on potential disasters that we all truly may have wondered about, such as the fireworks thing, or what would happen if you heated up a can of soup directly on the burner of a stove.

One of the experiments in the first episode involves the creation of a room-size, walk-in microwave oven, to see if it will thaw a gigantic frozen fish. A setup like that isn’t as interesting to me, because it’s not something any normal person ever has thought to do.

This series is more relatable when they stick those cans of soup on the stove, because there’s a far better chance a normal person at one point may have wondered, “So what really would happen if I did that?”

Never Ever Do This At Home has cameras capturing every angle of the mayhem, including highly specialized so-called “phantoms” that can record 2,650 frames per second for the ultimate in slow-motion replay.

Through its 13-episode first season, the series simultaneously focuses on the science behind what occurs, with experts in various fields brought in not only to explain what’s happening but to help maximize the destruction. This is a TV show after all.

Be advised, though: If you see a real-estate listing any time soon for a beautiful rural farmhouse that really looks great from the outside, be very, very wary.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

@billharris_tv

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Hockey legend Gordie Howe straight as an “Aero” in new CBC biopic

- April 24th, 2013

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It’s an old line that has been repeated often in pro hockey circles, and I have no idea who said it first. But it went something like this:

“For many years in the old six-team NHL, there usually were four good teams: Toronto, Montreal, Chicago and Gordie Howe.”

That’s not to discount or denigrate Howe’s teammates with the Detroit Red Wings. He had some great ones, especially in the early to mid-1950s, when the Wings won four Stanley Cups in six years.

Rather, the comment was meant as a great compliment to Howe, who carried the Wings through the rest of the ’50s and throughout the ’60s before he decided to retire in 1971.

What happened in the aftermath of that first retirement forms the narrative of Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story, a made-for-TV movie that premieres Sunday, April 28 on CBC.

Playing Howe is Michael Shanks (pictured at top and bottom), a veteran Canadian actor best known in recent years for his role as Dr. Charlie Harris in the series Saving Hope. Mr. Hockey also stars Kathleen Robertson as Gordie’s wife Colleen, and Dylan Playfair and Andy Herr as Gordie’s hockey-playing sons Marty and Mark.

Howe was 43 years old when he retired from the Wings, but he quickly grew bored with his glad-handing job in the Detroit organization.

An upstart league called the WHA offered Howe the unique opportunity to play pro hockey with his sons, who were ineligible for the NHL because they were too young. Also, the WHA gave Howe a chance to offset the astonishing underpayment he had experienced with the miserly Wings, particularly for a player of his stature.

So Mr. Hockey follows the Howe family from Michigan to the Lone Star State, where Gordie, Marty and Mark lace up their skates for the WHA’s Houston Aeros.

Shanks plays Gordie as a man who understandably is protective of his boys in the goon-ridden WHA, but he has to learn to let them fight their own battles. Conversely, Marty and Mark are just as worried about their old man, fearing he’s going to keel over and have a heart attack.

Many dismissed the whole thing as a publicity stunt, but Howe had the last laugh. Not only did he string together six productive seasons in the WHA, he then amazingly played a full final season back in the NHL when the two leagues merged in 1979-80.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Hockey is similar in feel and tone to a couple of other CBC hockey-related biopics in recent years, namely Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story (2010) and The Wrath of Grapes: The Don Cherry Story (2012).

Certainly if you wanted to touch upon the entirety of Howe’s hockey career, he would need at least two biopics as well. But the comeback is what people tend to remember most about Howe, which does a disservice to the true legend of what a dominating player he was in his prime.

Hockey fans love to debate who the game’s greatest players were. But exact order notwithstanding, everyone’s list includes the likes of Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe.

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

@billharris_tv

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Much VJ Search is a throwback sugar rush

- April 18th, 2013

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The young men and women involved in the Much VJ Search are all so perky.

Just wait until the winner has to find an apartment in Toronto. That’s when the perkiness will disappear, my friends.

But there’s no need to put a damper on things yet. The Much VJ Search is continuing, with the finale taking place Friday, April 26, conveniently on MuchMusic.

The Much VJ Search has been around in various forms for quite a few years now. The idea is to anoint a new on-air personality for the channel, which has undergone many changes since it was such a powerful force on the Canadian TV landscape in the 1980s and early 1990s.

If you watch any episode of this year’s Much VJ Search, it’s actually nice to see that young people still can get excited about something.

It’s almost impossible to get most people in their late teens or early 20s to look up from their smart phones. So to find a group of young contestants who are openly passionate about wanting this TV gig, there’s almost a heartwarming throwback feel to it, for lack of a better term.

This year’s Much VJ Search began with a cross-Canada bus trip. Eliminated contestants were left on random street corners to fend for themselves. Okay, not really. But by the time the bus arrived in Toronto at the MuchMusic headquarters, only 12 competitors remained, and that number immediately was whittled to 10.

It certainly seems as if the youngsters picked for the Much VJ Search emerged from the same central casting agency that selected the contestants for Big Brother Canada, which currently is airing on Slice. Yes, the Big Brother Canada folks are older, but there’s an unmistakable similarity between reality-TV participants on various shows.

And that’s what the Much VJ Search is, essentially: A reality TV show that increasingly has incorporated elements from other reality TV shows.

The town-to-town touring thing had an American Idol feel to it at times, at least in the early weeks of any American Idol season.

When the top 10 contestants on the Much VJ Search settled in Toronto for the stretch run, they found out they would be living in the MuchMusic studios, dubbed Camp Much for the occasion. That, of course, brings Big Brother to mind.

And then the top 10 were divided into five groups of two, each mentored by an existing MuchMusic VJ: Damian Abraham, Phoebe Dykstra, previous Much VJ Search winner Liz Trinnear, Scott Willats and Tyrone (T-RexXx) Edwards. You know, exactly like The Voice.

The underpinnings of the music industry have been altered so dramatically since the glory days of MuchMusic, a VJ needs to know far more about pop culture than ever before. The channel now is way more of a pop-culture channel for mid-teens and tweens than a music channel for people in their 20s. That’s not a criticism, merely an observation.

But again, even if it’s pop culture and not music necessarily that we’re taking about, it’s nice to see young people excited about something, anything.

With all its perkiness, watching any random half-hour of the Much VJ Search will leave you with a sugar rush similar to eating a dozen doughnuts in one sitting.

Um, not that I’ve ever done that, but you get the idea.

Bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

@billharris_tv

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