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Young Frankenstein: A Mel Brooks Book
The Story of the Making of the Film
Mel Brooks

Hachette Audio
October 2016/ ISBN 978-1478942849
Nonfiction/Memoir / Movies / Audiobook - 1 CD

Reviewed by Leslie C. Halpern
 

 

This brief audiobook takes a fond look back at the making of 1974’s Young Frankenstein, arguably the finest and funniest film Mel Brooks ever made. Filled with quotations from the major players involved in the movie, audio clips, interview and review excerpts, and memories of the director himself, the book offers more information about the writings, the acting, the directing, the music, the special effects, the makeup, and the sound. A PDF also provides rare photographs most fans have never seen.

The goal here seems to be celebrating a special time and project in the director’s life, not about airing any dirty laundry or spilling any long-kept secrets of the past. We learn the movie began with an idea by Gene Wilder, who was working on the original screenplay. A life-long fan of James Whale’s Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein movies, Brooks jumped at the chance to direct and co-write the screenplay with Wilder, who had recently co-starred in his comedy Blazing Saddles.

Brooks discusses how he selected each actor, and what challenges they faced in recreating an authentic black-and-white horror film that contained outlandish comedy spoofs. His stories about the creative contributions of the late Gene Wilder are especially poignant.

The narration includes a variety of different voices, which is helpful when reading quotations from articles, interviews, and reviews. Brooks’s highly distinctive rasp is used to full advantage when recounting his own stories in his own words, rather than the words of others. The strangely self-deprecating foreword written and read by Judd Apatow (comparable to a modern-day Mel Brooks) serves to bridge the generations and perhaps usher in this comedy classic for younger folks who may never have seen it.

Brooks is known for directing full-length feature films that come in under two hours – sometimes well under two hours. Likewise, this entertaining book says all it needs to say and nothing more. Readers might dawdle over the photographs, but can race through the text faster than lightning strikes on a dark and stormy night.

Reviewer Leslie C. Halpern is the author of Passionate About Their Work: 151 Celebrities, Artists, and Experts on Creativity, Rub, Scrub, Clean the Tub: Funny Children's Poems About Self-Image, and Shakes, Cakes, Frosted Flakes: Funny Children's Poems About Table Manners.
Reviewed 2016
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