Bulwark Takes - Mel Brooks Did Literally Everything

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

Sonny Bunch and Catherine Rampell take on Mel Brooks' 100th birthday and AFI's new ranking of Blazing Saddles as the funniest movie ever made. They dig into his EGOT-winning career, his fearless mockery of Hitler, why his comedy still holds up — plus the upcoming Spaceballs sequel and Catherine's middle-school Spaceballs obsession.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Bullwork Takes. I'm very excited to be joined today by Catherine Rampel, who I learned a very fun thing about just moments ago as we were getting ready for this video. But this is going to be a fun video. We are celebrating Mel Brooks, who is turning 100 on Sunday. Sunday is his 100th birthday. You know, it's cannot imagine the landscape of Hollywood or American comedy without Mel Brooks. He is kind of the defining figure. And he, I look, man, one at all. He's a literal egot winner, the Emmy Grammy Oscar Tony. He is a Kennedy Center Honors awardee. I interviewed Carl Reiner back in 2009 when he won that award. And it was like, it was one of the great thrills of my life listening to Carl Reiner talk about Mel Brooks and their

work together. Best-selling author, he's done it all. But Catherine, the big news here, the big exciting news is that the American Film Institute has decided to, on the occasion of Mr. Brooks's 100th birthday, bump up Blazing Saddles to officially, on their very official list of official comedy classics, be the number one funniest film of all time. You love to see it. Yes, they are the authority on the matter, but I don't even know that we needed their blessing. Blazing Saddles is obviously the funniest movie ever made, a movie that could not get made as it is today, of course, but it is a brilliant satire, brilliant slapstick. Like, there's just so much good stuff in that movie. I think about it all the time. And I quote it all the time because I'm a

very cool person. And I just, you were saying before the before the show, you were talking about how you went through a Mel Brooks phase. Yes, I definitely did. I, I just imagine, you know, it's one thing, it's there, we all go through phases. I, but I can only imagine like high school Catherine Rampel running around quoting Mel Brooks to everyone. It was more middle school. You know what it was, it was that I was in this, it was like a debate club thing, competitive. It was, what was the term for it? Maybe one of our viewers will know. But it was like this debate slash performance thing that I think still exists, where in addition to like actual debate, you would recite poetry or monologues or whatever. And I did a 10-minute condensed version.

of space balls, of course, where I played all of the characters. Again, I was super cool, just like I am today. And I did all of the characters in different voices, and I competed with it. And I'm sure that there is very embarrassing footage somewhere in my parents' house

of this performance. But yeah, like Spaceballs, even today, you know, I still could probably recite most of it. easier to do a 10-minute version of the entirety of Spaceballs, probably than Blazing Saddles, given the racial slurs in Blazing Saddles. But, yeah, but, you know, Space Balls also one of the comedy grades. I think actually one of my favorite things about Mel Brooks is that he's, like, still producing content. You know, they're coming out with a Spaceball sequel.

I don't know when that is, do you know, it's like next year? I think it's coming out later this year, I want to say. I'll look at, I'll effort the release date real quick here. Yeah, they're doing like a sequel to that. They're doing a sequel to something else. I'm trying to remember a young Frankenstein or something. One of the other classics, I think, is getting rebooted. They did History of the World Part 2 a couple of years ago.

And I think even though these movies are old, and yes, parts of them are probably not going to hold up great given changing social mores and whatnot. there is really just so much good solid comedy in them and comedy nerds love it. And I think there's still a real following, which is why there's going to be an audience. I'm sure for Spaceball's 2 and the other sequels that are hopefully lined up. I just love that like he's 100 years old or about to be 100 years old and they're still mining the catalog. There's still like I don't know how involved he is creatively with these things, but his, the spirit of the work still goes on.

And I love that, like, you know, he didn't wait until he had passed away and his estate decided to do something with these properties, you know, with the IP. He's going to oversee it while he's still around. Yeah, the new Spaceballs is coming out April 23rd, 2027.

So next year, early next year, it'll be out. Spaceball's the new one. Originally, there was a joke, remember, in, at the end of the first Spaceball, Balls. Spaceballs, too, the search for more money, the quest for more money, whatever. And he was like, I was going to call it that. And then we decided not to. That was, you know, that was little too on the nose. But it definitely, it's, it's funny too, because we are in such a, it's a very weird kind of doldrums for comedy at, at movie theaters right now. Like,

there just aren't a ton of them. Scary movie five, I think, is like the, is the only real big recent or whatever, whatever number of scary movie they're on. But even, but like, you look at scary movie, and that's, that's a movie that itself, you know, kind of ties directly back to just the very parody ideas. One thing I've always loved about Brooks. And one thing that comes through in all of these parody films, is his love of the source material that he is parodying, right? Like, you can't make a parody about Westerns like that if you don't actually love Westerns. And he's talked about this before that, like, that's the key to understanding all of this. You can make fun of it, but you, you, you, you, you.

You have to actually love it and understand why it works to break it down. Yeah. And, you know, there are other ways in which he used comedy in really interesting and innovative ways. I remember seeing interviews that he's done where he talked about how radical it was to do the producers and have a funny Hitler character. You know, this was not that long removed from World War II, right? That was like in the 60s. Yeah. Yeah. And the wounds still very fresh for a lot of people around the world, a lot of Jewish Americans who presumably were consuming this film as well. And he talked about how the most

powerful move you can make in the face of great evil is to laugh at it. And, you know, that there was like a social mission almost in the comedy. If it's like stupid, you know, it's this slapstick and silliness and all sorts of. of other things, but that in and of itself is a power move. And I always loved that. And it's really true, even for modern politics, like Donald Trump, for example, can stand almost any insult, it seems like, except when people laugh at him, you know, that famous White House correspondence dinner that apparently sent him off on his political career. So there's really, you know, there's really a a potency in being able to laugh at terrible figures of history.

And in some ways, Mel Brooks was an innovator in that art. Actually, another film where, what's the name of the film? Where he sings a song as Hitler as well, where he sings about how he wants just a little piece. But it's a little, you know, a little piece in the world. But it's a little piece of Poland, a little piece of France. And it's, you know, again, this was a favorite. character for him to lampoon throughout a lot of his work. And then obviously, mind a lot of other

silliness and genres. Like one of my other favorites is Robin Hood Men in Tights. Great film. I haven't seen it in year. So, like, who knows how much politically incorrect stuff is in there today. But definitely loved it as a child and, you know, found some great talents in it as well. So it's just, it's so lovely that he's still around. And, and, and, and, hopefully creating more work. What's your favorite of the Melbrooks of Rovro? Well, so the little piece of Poland is from to be or not to be. Oh, thank you. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. No, so this is like I, it's, it's funny that you just mentioned Robin Hood and Benonites because that is actually my favorite of the Mel Brooks movies. It's not the one most people go for, but it is, it's the one that came out when I was

12 and very into Robin Hood. And it's like, well, this is, this is amazing. This is the funniest thing I've ever seen. I, you know, and, you know, I had seen, I don't know that I had actually seen all of Blazing Saddles at that point, but I'd definitely seen bits and pieces because it was constantly on cable, right? This is the other thing about his movies is that they were actually great TV movies because you could hop in at just about any point and laugh for a while and then, you know, and then stop watching. A little harder on basic cable, some of the language issues, you know, didn't quite translate. But his movies were so good.

But Robin Hood Men and Tights, it was one of the first times I can remember seeing a movie that was breaking the rules of movies and then putting them back together, right? Like there's the shot in Robin Hood Men and Tites where the crane, the camera crane comes crashing through the stained glass window. Everybody's like, what's going on? And it's like, that's a silly thing, but it's also just very funny. And you're like, wait, they can't, they're not supposed to be able to do that.

They're breaking, they're shattering the whole illusion here. And it's so funny. And like Carrie Elway is saying, you know, unlike some Robin Hood's, I can speak with a British accent, which was just perfect, just a perfect kind of comment on the, the, the Kevin Costner, Robin Hood that had come out in the years before. I love that film so much. And the first time most of us had seen Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle as his sidekick. I just, I love the movie. And it has always been my favorite.

We have not mentioned maybe his greatest film, Young Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein. People love Young Frankenstein. But again, I was always a men and, Heights guy. I wanted to ask you, Catherine, because you're, you are a, you're a New Yorker, you love theater. There's a

huge second, strike that, there's a huge like fourth act to his career because he, you know, he's one of, he's making early television sketch comedy with your show of shows. Then he's making the great satirical films of all time. And then

the move to Broadway where he has an enormous amount of success. It took, That is a total blind spot for me. I've never, I've never seen the stage productions of either Young Frankenstein or the producers. But, but you have,

right? I mean, tell me, tell me what, how that translates to, to the stage. Yeah. I mean,

the producers was just this phenomenon when it landed on Broadway in, I want to say, the late 90s, early 2000s, somewhere around there. I think I was in high school. And, yeah, 2001,

2001. 2001. Okay. Yeah. 2001, that sounds about right. Terrific cast, Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Katie Huffman. And it was just, again, this phenomenon because the material was so good, the songs were so good. It was so funny.

And the cast was just like spectacular. I think they were on TV all of the time. They went on this very successful tour with this production. And in many ways, the show was pretty different, actually, from the film, maybe of necessity because it's a musical. And, you know, they have to take their creative license. Some of the songs were like, because the original film did have some music, springtime for Hitler in Germany, that made its way onto the stage version as well. But it was just, it was such a delight. It was so funny.

They tried to actually make a film version of the musical. version of the film a few years later and with the same director of the Broadway show, Susan Stroman, a director of choreographer, and that was a bust. They had the same cast and it's just like, it didn't translate. A lot of times, you know, the film of the stage show doesn't always work. You really have to kind of create it from scratch. So that was not a huge success, but I saw it anyway, and I enjoyed it because I knew all of the songs and I loved the performers. Young Frankenstein, as I recall, was not the same commercial or artistic success on Broadway. And I think didn't last that long as I recall.

But producers ran for many years and, as I said, went on tour. So I saw it on tour at some point. It came to where I lived in Florida. And Alan Ruck was playing the Matthew Broderick character, which had its own sort of ironies because they were both in Ferris Bueller's Day Off together. And here Alan Ruck is, again, like playing. a little bit fill in second fiddle to his buddy, Ferris Bueller slash Matthew Broderick. But he was terrific to really good people, even for the touring versions, which is often not the

case because who wants to go on tour if you're a big star? You know, it's hard work. But yeah, it was great. I do wonder if that ever gets revived again. Again, there are parts of it that I think probably would need to be adapted given how, you know, memories have changed. There's a song, Make It Gay, which was about how the way to have a spectacular show about Hitler was to make it super gay.

And I remember it being funny, but I don't know how it would strike audiences today and my ear today if I listened to it. So, yeah, it was great stuff. You should listen to the soundtrack. It is funny how comedy is more susceptible than just a about anything else to changing mores and changing values.

Because, you know, like, good comedy is based on pushing boundaries, right? It is, and if you're already pushing boundaries, you know, well, God only knows where those boundaries will be 10 or 15 years from now. You know, Blazing saddles got wrapped up in the whole, in the late 2010s,

there were, you know, efforts to take things off of streaming services or put warnings on them. It was one of the ones who got slapped with the warning. But I just like, if you watch that movie now, it's a movie, like, I hate to be pedantic about it, but it's a movie about how racism is bad and stupid and self-defeating. And like that, you make that today and it would be decried as, you know, woke nonsense, right? Like, it just, it, it's, it's, it's amazing. It's kind of amazing the silly fights that we, we wind up getting into. Oh, I think, I think it would

be criticized from both ends of the political spectrum. From the right, it would be seen as too woke, and from the left it would be seen as too offensive because it actually shows the triggering stereotypes or whatever, you know, or, you know, various racist tropes. They are poking fun of, obviously, but there's a lot of use of the N-word and things like that that I'm not sure would go over so well with audiences today if it were made today. But again, the whole point of the film is lampooning racism that gets in the way of communities thriving, shall we say. We should say that our colleague Jonathan last mentioned that they did kind of sort of remake it in 2002 as Paws of Fury, The Legend of Hank.

It's an animated film with cats and dogs as the various. So you can remake this film. You just have to use cats and dogs living together. I haven't seen the film. I shouldn't prejudge, but somehow I don't think it's going to have the same punch. It doesn't quite hit the same. Let's wrap up here with your, all right, what is your favorite bit from Spaceballs? You had a whole Spaceball's routine that you performed.

What is your favorite gag or bit or character or joke from that film? Oh, my God. I don't know. There's so many things to choose from. I love the ludicrous speed and going to plaid. I love Rick Moranis as the Darth Vader, dark helmet figure. Pizza the hut. I don't know.

There's just, there's so much to choose from when they're combing the desert. Like some of it is just like, you know, dumb puns. But I, I, they land with. me. I love the dumb puns. I have like dad humor, you know, a lot of the time. So, yeah, what's yours? The dumb puns are, are kind of the key to the whole thing because I've written about this before, but it is, there's a weird way in which the best of these sorts of movies work with literary humor as much as anything else. Like, it's a joke that only makes sense if you can see the word. Um, you know, like when you say comb the desert and you see the giant

comb and you think oh comb i i don't know it's just it's a it's a it's it's it's it's like an english teacher joke almost yeah but the uh oh boy my favorite um my favorite melbrooks bit the 2000 year old man the the this the comedy sketch he does with carl reiner where um they are uh where you just just go watch it you can you can find it on google there's there's a it's a four minute Google video of him and Carl Reiner kind of doing the hits from that. But it is wonderful. He remains very, very funny. There's a great documentary about Mel Brooks on HBO Max that I think was directed by Judd

Apatow called The 99-year-old man. And if you just want a good, if you just want a good overview of his life and career, watch that. It's well worth your time. It's, you know, it's, it's just so much fun. It's so much fun. And he is, like, he is actually, he is a great American. Like, Mel Brooks is 100% a, like he fought in World War II.

He, you know, goes and achieves the American dream of success out in Hollywood. He reshapes how we look at the world. I just, I cannot, I cannot emphasize enough how, how important he is to the world of comedy and really just film in general. It's a delight. I'm glad he is still with us to make it to 100. Yes. And hopefully he gets to see these sequels that are being made. And all of the moichendizing as yogurt put it in space balls.

Another spaceball's line I should have given a shout out to is, I am your father's brothers, nephews, cousins, former roommate, which was obviously a parody of Lukai and your father. So anyway, just so many gems, so many gems. Thank you, Mel Brooks, for making my life better, for making the world a better place, for giving us things to laugh at, and for helping helping shrink how intimidating authoritarian figures can be because we can laugh at them and putting them in their place. I love that. I love that he did that back in the day. and I love that there are so many comedians

who have taken up that legacy in the years since because great weapon. Laughter is. A lesson we need now as much as ever for sure. Catherine, thank you so much. We're going to find that video of you doing these baseballs in 10 minutes.

We're going to put that on the YouTube page. I think my mom has it somewhere. Hopefully it's on some medium that we cannot actually access. some VHS that's been left in the sun too long or something. Beta Max. All right. Catherine, thanks for being on.

Remember to make sure you hit like and subscribe, share this with friends. And again, go watch. Go watch the 99-year-old man. It's on HBO Max. It's the best two hours that you'll spend with a funny man,

with a funny man and his funny friends, of which there are many.