Showing posts with label Patrick McGilligan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patrick McGilligan. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Funny Man Patrick McGilligan

A deep dive into the life of Mel Brooks. This book starts, as many good books do, at the beginning, with Brooks' birth in 1926. The whole first chapter is devoted to his first eighteen years, growing up in New York as the youngest of five, being coddled and cosseted. The books moves on to his time in the army during WWII, his time in television, and his movies. There are touches on his marriages and other romances. 
This book is not sycophantic, acknowledging that Brooks was often a horrible coworker and employee, stealing ideas, not crediting people, and often raging at them. 
I'm not sure why, in this day and age, various slurs were in this book They weren't needed for verisimilitude and any number of other words could have been used instead. 

Three and a half stars
This book came out March 19, 2019
Borrowed as audiobook from Hoopla
Opinions are my own