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.
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?’ ”
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.
“It was really neat to see it unfold because he sent an initial list and we were like, ‘Wow, this is great,’ ” LeMaire says. “Then a few hours later, he thought, ‘Well, we can’t forget John Ford. We’ve got to throw in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ Fast-forward a few more of these cycles where he was thinking about it and that’s how it got up to 20.”
Brooks is letting the selections speak for themselves, offering up the movies he loved without feeling the need to make a case for them.
“He didn’t provide much explanation, didn’t say why he was picking all these films,” LeMaire says. “I think that’s really beautiful in that sense.”
To LeMaire, the breadth of the list reflects both Brooks’ long view of movie history and the eclecticism of his own work.
“He was born before the sound era, so you get the sense that he’s put this list together based on actual experience, watching firsthand as cinema evolved over the decades,” LeMaire says. “There’s such a mix of genres on this list, and that mirrors how his films work — the love of cinema history and the lovingly satirizing ways of dealing with genre.”
Some connections to Brooks’ own career are particularly direct. He produced David Lynch’s 1980 drama “The Elephant Man,” while Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror classic “Psycho” inevitably calls to mind Brooks’ 1977 Hitchcock spoof “High Anxiety.” Brooks also included one of his own films, “The Twelve Chairs,” his 1970 comedy based on the Russian novel.
Hardly one of his best-known films, “The Twelve Chairs” has proved one of the trickier titles for the Cinematheque to screen. LeMaire says it and Paul Mazursky’s 1986 comedy “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” another Brooks selection, lack readily available digital restorations, making suitable screening materials harder to track down.
Brooks left the screening order up to the Cinematheque. LeMaire chose “City Lights” to kick off the series. “When Mel Brooks says he wants to show a Charlie Chaplin film, it just seemed like: Well, that’s the way we’ve got to open,” LeMaire says.
Brooks is not currently expected to appear at any of the screenings. Could he nevertheless turn up as a surprise? LeMaire isn’t making any promises.
“I wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” he says. “I’ll be there with everybody else, wishing and hoping.”
Asked to name his own favorite Brooks film, LeMaire doesn’t hesitate: “Young Frankenstein.”
“I might have seen that more than any other film ever, honestly,” he says. “So it really is such a dream come true that he responded with enthusiasm and put this together for us. It’s a dream come true for me personally.”
Here is the complete lineup for “Programmed by Mel Brooks: 100 Years at the Movies”:
Sept. 3 — “City Lights” (1931), Aero Theatre Sept. 4 — “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), Aero Theatre Sept. 5 — “I Vitelloni” (1953), Aero Theatre Sept. 6 — “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), Aero Theatre Sept. 9 — “The Elephant Man” (1980), Aero Theatre Sept. 19 — “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984), Los Feliz 3 Sept. 20 — “Shane” (1953), Los Feliz 3 Sept. 23 — “The Miracle Worker” (1962), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 6 — “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 10 — “Top Hat” (1935), Aero Theatre Oct. 11 — “Dances With Wolves” (1990), Egyptian Theatre Oct. 16 — “Jojo Rabbit” (2019), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 17 — “Double Indemnity” (1944), Egyptian Theatre Oct. 18 — “Schindler’s List” (1993), Egyptian Theatre Oct. 20 — “A Night at the Opera” (1935), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 22 — “Dolemite Is My Name” (2019), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 24 — “Broadway Melody of 1940” (1940), Los Feliz 3 Oct. 25 — “Ed Wood” (1994), Egyptian Theatre Oct. 31 — “Psycho” (1960), Egyptian Theatre Nov. 12 — “The Twelve Chairs” (1970), Egyptian Theatre
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