On Theater: Mel Brooks still reigns supreme

“Wind was never broken across the prairie in a Ken Maynard Western.”

This was the quote highlighted in a Playboy interview that explained its subject’s rise from a well-known director to the emperor of movie comedy. Small wonder — he’d had 2,000 years to perfect his craft.

That is, of course, if you take seriously the title of the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner record (as in long-playing) “The 2,000 Year-Old Man.” Brooks reveled in that skit as a comic who’d been around and seen everything — quite literally.

Brooks will share those millennia of funny business with local fans March 13 when he brings the movie that inspired the above quote, “Blazing Saddles,” to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The 3 p.m. flick will be followed by an intimate chat between Brooks and local theatergoers.

“Blazing Saddles” startled (and upset) audiences with the five-minute campfire scene that had a bunch of cowboys eating plates of beans and then proceeding to do what people usually do after eating beans. That flatulence added inestimably to the movie’s grosses — either way you want to take that.

After “Blazing Saddles” came the deluge — “Young Frankenstein,” “High Anxiety,” “To Be Or Not To Be,” “Silent Movie,” “Spaceballs,” just to name a few.

Then Brooks had a brilliant idea, in a career full of them. Why not take one of his old movies and turn it into a Broadway musical? Say, “The Producers.”

Replacing the aging Gene Wilder and the late Zero Mostel, Brooks called on Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. The reviews and the box office grosses were phenomenal, leading to the movie version with the same two leads.

The success of this venture led to the disinterment of “Young Frankenstein,” a modest stage success. A revival of “Blazing Saddles” on Broadway also has been mentioned.

Now, with a 2009 Kennedy Center award among his many laurels, Brooks is weighing new creative ventures as he heads into his 90s. He may discuss a few of these when he chats with local fans on the thirteenth at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts.

Meanwhile, he can look back on a career like no other in his phase of the industry and observe, as he did in “History of the World”:

“It’s good to be the king!”

--

TOM TITUS reviews local theater.

*

IF YOU GO

What: Mel Brooks

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 3 p.m. March 13

Cost: Tickets start at $49

Information: (714) 556-2787; scfta.org