Legendary film director Mel Brooks has called it quits with Hollywood after more than fifty years saying he can no longer compete with reality when it comes to conjuring up absurd and bizarre comedy plots.
“Donald Trump, has trumped anything I can come up with,” he told the Rochdale Herald.
“You think a musical of “Springtime for Hitler, and Germany” was the height of absurd comedy? You haven’t been reading Trump’s midnight tweets, they’re the heightliest,” he punned.
“Farting cowboys singing De Camptown Lady…doo dah..? That’s got nothing on:
‘The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.’ or ‘My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body,’ it’s comedy gold, or should that be “comedy orange”,” punned Brooks, again.
“Or how about: ‘I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke,’ if Bob Hope had a gag writer that good, he’d still be alive and entertaining the troops,” joked Brooks, demonstrating that at the age of 90 he had lost none of his trademark razor sharp wit.
Brooks whose seminal celluloid comedies include “The Producers”, “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein was in London to attend the 70th EE British Academy Film Awards where he received an honorary BAFTA from Prince William.
Speaking after the ceremony Brooks expressed his immense pride at having received the award from a direct descendent of King John, “Without whom,’Robin Hood, Men in Tights’ would never have been possible, let’s not forget that,” he cracked.
Commenting on speculation that at the age of 90 he might himself have a go at producing a filmic satire of the month old trump presidency, Brooks admitted that the possibility had occurred to him but that with most of his old collaborators having died, he would have problems finding suitable actors for the rolls.
“Harvey Korman would have been ideal for Trump, and Gene Wilder dragged up to play Kellyanne Conway…and of course Cleavon Little as Obama, it would have been a scream,” he sighed adding that he would have been tempted to take the role of Steve Bannon himself.
“Assuming I live that long…or indeed any of us live that long,” he said pointing out that it is Trump who has his finger on the button that controls the United States nuclear arsenal, and that it is Bannon who has his finger on Trump’s button.
“But then maybe that’s what we deserve, after all no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” he said quoting American satirist H L Mencken.
“You’ve got to remember who voted for Trump… simple people…people of the land. The common clay of the American West. You know… morons,” he added paraphrasing Gene Wilder’s most memorable line from Blazing Saddles.
