HBO’s New Mel Brooks Documentary Looks Pretty Great

This has been a very good year for Mel Brooks fanatics looking to learn more about the comedy legend’s life and career. Earlier this year, the exhaustive biography Funny Man — which made Vulture’s list of the “10 Comedy Books of 2019” — was released, and this week HBO will debut a documentary about Brooks that looks very promising. Titled Mel Brooks: Unwrapped, the documentary is a mix of new and old moments featuring Brooks and former creative director for the BBC Alan Yentob. It combines footage from Yentob’s 1981 documentary about Brooks, I Thought I Was Taller (which you can watch on YouTube), with new footage in the form of “candid conversations and mock interviews.” “This doesn’t seem like a big production to me really,” Brooks says. “I mean, what the hell are you people spending on it? $28? I mean, you don’t even have a good ending!” If the trailer is any indication, it’s the perfect setup for what Brooks calls an “idiot documentary” about his fascinating life and beloved films: “All my films are serious. They’re not dramatic — that’s the difference.” Mel Brooks: Unwrapped airs on HBO this Friday at 9 p.m.