Early in Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio’s two-part HBO documentary, “Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!,” the titular man himself is seated for yet another interview, for yet another show, that’s, yet again, wholly dependent on Brooks’ talent, wit, and humor to entertain the masses. Apatow, perched opposite the near-centennial comedy legend and inquiring about his hundreds of previous sit-downs, asks if he had to create a public persona just to get through all that talking.
“I did a lot of interviews,” Brooks says. “Half of them were completely fake.”
“Do you think people know who you really are?” Apatow asks.
“No,” Brooks says — and we’re off. The documentary jumps back to his childhood in Brooklyn, when Brooks’ father died before Mel was 3 years old. At 18, he was drafted into the Army to fight the Nazis (an experience he may have drawn from in his screenwriting), but not before he studied stand-up comics in the Catskills, where he met Sid Caesar. Then it’s “Your Show of Shows,” where Brooks bonded with Carl Reiner (and broke through with “The 2000-Year-Old-Man”), one failed marriage during a fallow creative stretch, a hit TV show (“Get Smart”), and blammo: “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” — the hits rolled in.
Despite his claim to a certain abstruseness, “The 99-Year-Old Man!” operates as if the audience does know Brooks, and well. Hitting career highlight after career highlight with limited introspection in between, co-directors Apatow and Bonfiglio craft a fine testimonial to a titan of comedy, albeit one without many surprises.
Instead, the three-and-a-half-hour doc leans into a kind of cumulative intimacy: Much of “The 99-Year-Old Man!” chronicles Brooks’ “great stories,” as Apatow calls them, by stitching each one together across multiple archival interviews: Brooks will start recounting the time he met Cary Grant to Johnny Carson, then continue on a different talk show before delivering the punchline to a third interviewer. His narrative is seamless, which emphasizes Brooks’ storytelling expertise, but each montage also works as a means to verify the truth staring us straight in the face: Brooks is an incredible talent and a lovely human being.
Initially, it’s hard to quell the knee-jerk reaction: “No duh!” But the film’s point is rarely as simple as, “Remember that?” It’s closer to, “Will you look at that — will you look at him.” Apatow and Bonfiglio are in awe, not only of Brooks’ artistry, but of his character. And through their dedication to capturing a life well-lived, soon enough, you are, too.
Loads of footage commemorating Brooks’ marriage with Anne Bancroft magnifies those tender feelings. “The 99-Year-Old Man!” goes out of its way to foreground their equally enamored partnership, with Bancroft describing her heart jumping every time she heard her husband’s key slide into their front door, and Brooks remembering how he took every opportunity to spend even more time with his wife outside of the house. Their seemingly impromptu duets on live TV are about as sweet as anything in the doc, and there’s plenty of warmth to curl up with.
“That’s the hard part about living that long,” Samantha Brooks, Mel’s granddaughter says. “He’s lost so many friends.” To that end, two of Apatow’s interview subjects died in the time between recording and release, including David Lynch, who shares a heartfelt account of Brooks hiring him for “The Elephant Man.” At the time, Lynch was worried a beloved, blockbuster comedian like Brooks wouldn’t connect with his sole directorial feature, “Eraserhead.” But he did, and Lynch never forgot it.
Mel Brooks in ‘The 99-Year-Old Man!’Courtesy of HBO
“Mel is a smart fellow,” Lynch says. “He knows about human nature so much. He’s got a lot going on in that mind of his. It’s really busy, and he sees so much.”
He feels it, too. If Bancroft was the love of Brooks’ life, then Carl Reiner was his best friend, and losing them both — 15 years apart — would be enough to topple a lesser man, as well as his documentary. In Part 2, Apatow sits down with Rob Reiner, who tells him that Brooks kept coming over to Carl’s house “for months and months” after his passing — a loss Brooks was there to witness first-hand. When Apatow asks about those final moments together, Brooks says he shouted at the medics “for an hour,” hoping they could bring Carl back.
Both stories, Rob’s and Mel’s, evoke an acute sorrow — a lonesome man desperate to spend a few more seconds with his friend, even in his memories — but Brooks and “The 99-Year-Old Man!” earn their exclamation mark by refusing to wallow.
“You can’t indulge yourself in being incredibly unhappy and miserable because it doesn’t make the pain go away, or better,” Brooks says. “You don’t have to pay God or the world or spirits for losing somebody great. You don’t have to pay for it.”
Such a sentiment shouldn’t surprise anyone who can sense where Brooks’ comedy comes from: the respect he has for his audience, the antipathy he feels for oppressors, and the playfulness with which he approaches every subject. Turning our implicit appreciation into explicit recognition, “The 99-Year-Old Man!” makes sure to regularly surface great jokes crafted by its habitual humorist, and it even carves out a section on the power comedy possesses as a tool for dismantling tyranny (with assists from Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, and… Josh Gad? Sure!).
The man himself, it’s clear, wants to be remembered as more than just a funnyman. He’s a screenwriter and a songwriter, an actor and a director, a comedian and a dramatist. It’s obvious he savors a good laugh more than anything, but that doesn’t mean he can or should be reduced to his favorite thing. We may know Mel Brooks as well as we can know anyone who lives, for us, primarily on screens. But “The 99-Year-Old Man!” is a good reminder that when it comes to kind and talented people, there’s always more to see.
Grade: B
“Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!” premieres Thursday, January 22 on HBO and HBO Max. On HBO, Part 1 airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, followed by Part 2 on Friday at the same time. Both parts will be available Thursday on HBO Max.
