This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish comedian Mel Brooks.
Mel Brooks
The Latest
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The Schmooze Mel Brooks, Out of His Element
Spend an hour with Alan Yentob and you quickly realize just how good Dick Cavett is. Yentob hosts “Mel Brooks Strikes Back!” a conversation with the comic genius that premieres on HBO December 10 at 9 p.m. It comes a little more than a year after Cavett performed similar duties in another HBO special, “Mel…
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Culture The Disappearing Yiddish Accent
They say that Yiddish has been dying for the past 200 years. Up until about 50 or 60 years ago, saying as much was kind of a crude bluff, but now it would be a lie to say that Yiddish hasn’t been severely diminished. According to UNESCO’s most recent list of endangered languages, Yiddish falls…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: The Art of Being a Jewish Son
David Suskind was the Oprah of his day. From 1958 until 1987 he hosted a television talk show that discussed controversial issues, from Vietnam to race relations. One of his most popular programs, which he rebroadcast on a regular basis, was “How To Be a Jewish Son.” Originally broadcast in the fall of 1970, it…
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The Schmooze Paul Mazursky From ‘Curb’ to Warsaw and Beyond
At 81, Brooklyn-born screenwriter and director Paul Mazursky may be most familiar to some HBO-TV viewers as Sunshine, the ill-fated poker dealer in “The Sopranos” and Norm, strictly unamused by Larry David’s antics in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A new book, “Paul on Mazursky,” out from Wesleyan University Press this fall, reminds us that Mazursky’s varied…
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The Schmooze Kibbitzing With Mel Brooks, Dick Cavett and Carl Reiner
Courtesy of HBO Dick Cavett calls Mel Brooks more than a comedy star; he’s a “super nova.” Mel Brooks calls Dick Cavett “spectacularly gentile.” The two share the stage on the appropriately titled HBO special, “Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again,” an hour-long, anecdote-filled, hilarious love fest debuting September 9 at 9:00 p.m. Brooks…
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The Schmooze A Picture Out of Focus
Is Broadway ready for dancing girls in the Warsaw ghetto? Can an American musical high kick through the darkest moments of Jewish history and still avoid giving offense, or worse, falling into kitsch? “The People in the Picture,” a new musical playing at the Roundabout theater until June 19, raises this question, treading where even…
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Books The Ones That Missed the Cut
Earlier this week, Saul Austerlitz wrote about his recent author tour and five not-as-terrible-as-you-think movies. His blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: One of the trickiest aspects of writing…
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The Schmooze The Man Who Brought Big Ideas to the Small Screen
The reputations of talk show hosts do not have a particularly long shelf life. How many people under the age of 40 recall Jack Paar? Who under 25 knows Johnny Carson? But Stephen Battaglio’s new biography, “David Susskind: A Televised Life,” makes the case for remembering an impresario who brought a brash exuberance to the…
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