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"He declared, in front of his old apartment complex, on West Seventy-first, “This is it! The ugliest building on the block.” It certainly was. “Four hundred and seventy-five dollars a month,” he explained. “My friends and I would take gourds up to the roof, after Halloween, and toss them off. The goal was to shot-put a pumpkin so you hit the street between the rows of parked cars—you’d really have to use your geometry. When someone misjudged, we’d do the right thing, and run away."
— Bryan Cranston takes The New Yorker’s Tad Friend on a walking tour of his old stomping grounds on NYC’s Upper West Side. Read more. -
Ben Greenman:
The long, hilarious career of the filmmaker, comedian, actor, and performer Mel Brooks has been documented before, but never quite like it has been on the new box set “The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy.” While previous career retrospectives have focussed on Brooks’s films, this collection assembles odds and ends from around the margins of his career, ranging from classic inteviews with Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson to sitcom appearances on shows such as “Mad About You” to rarities such as the 1978 parody newsmagazine “Peeping Times” and Brooks’s teaser trailer for the 1962 Italian film “My Son, the Hero.”
The set will be released today. While we are pleased to offer the exclusive clip above—it’s a snippet from a 1981 British documentary in which Brooks reflects on his early years, explains his relationship with his mother, and generally acts the tummler—we are doubly pleased that Brooks agreed to discuss the new collection with us. Click-through to read the conversation.
