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Funny Man: Mel Brooks Audiobook
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A deeply textured and compelling biography of comedy giant Mel Brooks, covering his rags-to-riches life and triumphant career in television, films, and theater, from Patrick McGilligan, the acclaimed author of Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light.
Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy award–winner Mel Brooks was behind (and sometimes in front the camera too) of some of the most influential comedy hits of our time, including The 2,000 Year Old Man, Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. But before this actor, writer, director, comedian, and composer entertained the world, his first audience was his family.
The fourth and last child of Max and Kitty Kaminsky, Mel Brooks was born on his family’s kitchen table in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926, and was not quite three-years-old when his father died of tuberculosis. Growing up in a household too poor to own a radio, Mel was short and homely, a mischievous child whose birth role was to make the family laugh.
Beyond boyhood, after transforming himself into Mel Brooks, the laughs that came easily inside the Kaminsky family proved more elusive. His lifelong crusade to transform himself into a brand name of popular humor is at the center of master biographer Patrick McGilligan’s Funny Man. In this exhaustively researched and wonderfully novelistic look at Brooks’ personal and professional life, McGilligan lays bare the strengths and drawbacks that shaped Brooks’ psychology, his willpower, his persona, and his comedy.
McGilligan insightfully navigates the epic ride that has been the famous funnyman’s life story, from Brooks’s childhood in Williamsburg tenements and breakthrough in early television—working alongside Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner—to Hollywood and Broadway peaks (and valleys). His book offers a meditation on the Jewish immigrant culture that influenced Brooks, snapshots of the golden age of comedy, behind the scenes revelations about the celebrated shows and films, and a telling look at the four-decade romantic partnership with actress Anne Bancroft that superseded Brooks’ troubled first marriage. Engrossing, nuanced and ultimately poignant, Funny Man delivers a great man’s unforgettable life story and an anatomy of the American dream of success.
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“McGilligan has found a good critical balance as he extols his subject’s comedic and artistic virtues while being forthright about Brooks’s occasional stubborn attitude toward creative and financial control…Well researched, engaging, and of interest to all of Brooks fans.”
— Library Journal
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“An illuminating portrait of an artist ‘whose intensity both advanced and impeded him.’”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Tells the story of a man who has never stopped hustling in an almost pathological pursuit of the twin needs to entertain and be famous for it.”
— New York magazine -
“Narrator Stephen Hoye picks up on McGilligan’s snarky tone, delivering the numerous negatives about the mercurial writer/actor/director/producer with admirable objectivity.”
— AudioFile -
“Highly detailed….A veteran showbiz biographer, McGilligan has produced a book rich with knowledge of the industry and overflowing with the fruits of his research.”
— Newsday -
“Superb…Will be essential reading for anyone interested in Brooks or, more broadly, how Hollywood functioned during the second half of the twentieth century.”
— Publishers Weekly
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Pick of Best New Books Now in Paperback
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About Patrick McGilligan
Patrick McGilligan is the author of the Edgar-nominated Alfred Hitchcock, the New York Times Notable Books Fritz Lang and George Cukor, and books on the lives of film directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux, as well as actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the acclaimed five-volume Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and, with coauthor Paul Buhle, the definitive Tender Comrades.
About Stephen Hoye
Stephen Hoye has worked as a professional actor in London and Los Angeles for more than thirty years. Trained at Boston University and the Guildhall in London, he has acted in television series and six feature films and has appeared in London’s West End. His audiobook narration has won him fifteen AudioFile Earphones Awards.