Entries tagged "“Mel Brooks”"

Today’s Resource: Young Frankenstein

I’m promising myself I’ll find and post one thing every day that makes me happy.

 

 

 

Ah yes, back when film comedies had women who really did comedy in them.
Comedy perfection, every one of them: Teri Garr, Madeleine Kahn, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and my higher power, Mel Brooks.

I am one of few white people in Thiruvananthapuram

I’m glad to be in the “developing” part of the planet for the first time in my life.

The heat and the humidity have got me thankful to be wearing the kind of garb I would have derided as hippie while Stateside. Just the latest fulfillment of the prediction of my favorite sage (Mel Brooks’ 2000 year old man) “We mock the thing we are to be.”

Some impressions so far:

  • the most chilled out people I have ever been around: even in the face of pelting rains and a breaking ship out in the Indian Ocean, people seemed nonplussed.
  • coverage of education and test scores in major pages of the Mumbai paper everyday.
  • standing for the national anthem before the 3 hour Bollywood movie about love in 2050
  • waiting for and never seeing a kiss in said movie
  • having a 12 year-old girl tell me that she’s learning about global warming in school. I let her know she’s ahead of our President, “He doesn’t even believe in global warming.”
  • TATA should include an oxygen tank with every Nano
  • Almost no women on the streets in Mumbai.
  • teaching a nine-year old boy about melanin after he was amazed by being able to see my veins.
  • latest upmarket trends in Mumbai: Mexican food and jogging
  • public education is practically free at all levels for everyone
  • a shipping CEO pointed out to me that India was able to skip the manufacturing / industrial stage of economic development and go right to a service economy because of English fluency. A strange silver lining to colonialism I pointed out. The most opened/uncontrolled elements of empire outgrow and outlive them (Rome/roads; England/English+education; USA/Internet)
  • the guy who tried to recruit us as extras in a Bollywood film wanted proof that we were really married to each other. He didn’t think there were any lesbians in India and had never met one. “How many people do you have in this country?” I asked. “”1 billion,” he replied “Oh you have a lot of lesbians. A whole lot. It’s a huge, untapped market.”

Harvey Korman is gone and so is comedy with heart

He died at 81. This is very sad news. I loved Harvey Korman. He was brilliant comedic performer with a pitch perfect sense of camp.

My favourite memory of him is as the (Jewish) Fairy Godmother in a Carol Burnett sketch asking the knight in white armor, “You vanta blintz prince?” As one of the only Jewish kids in a small town, this scene would send me into its of giggles anytime anyone in our family quoted it. It was a fast love affair with the ridiculous, camp, comedic large life that felt right to me and that I saw almost nowhere else.

His passing has prompted me to watch a whole lotta video clips of him on the Carol Burnett Show and in Mel Brooks movies. Mel Brooksis one of my few heroes (I pour a kiddish cup for him at Seder).

I had two, no three feelings (these may seem like thoughts, but I assure you I felt em :-):

1) Damn, Harvey Korman was brilliant and why didn’t I get to see him in much these last 30 years?
2) There were so many more women that these guys performed with (Carol Burnet, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman) and so much more togetherness in that supposedly more sexist time than i see now
(insert avg. TV sitcom or summer Ferrell/Sandler/Stiller movie here)
3) Wow our comedy (the comedy of MSM) seems less silly, good-hearted and campy than the Mel Brooks/Burnett/Korman era. It’s really distant and snarky-guy based or childish without being childlike.
The stuff of the Harvey Korman era is why I wanted to do comedy in the first place. Time for more fun and comedy with heart!



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