Mel Brooks turns 100 this Sunday, June 28. It is the best possible demonstration that laughter undoubtedly lengthens life. Being so far from the tributes that are prepared in his honor on different stages in New York and London, where some of his best creations continue to be performed regularly, The best thing is to see (or see again) the definitive audiovisual tribute about the life and work of someone who came to be justly recognized as the funniest man in the world.
on the platform HBO Max both episodes of are available Mel Brooks: the 99-year-old man! (The 99 Year Old Man!), almost four hours of unmissable documentary tour dedicated to celebrating Brooks, honoring his career, capturing the best moments of his life and trying to understand the secret of such enduring success in the world of comedy.
By the way, Brooks always found a way to explain in words (unbridled talkativeness was always one of his best attributes) why he reached so high. He had an invaluable ally in that search: the very high concept he had and has of himself. “I was always a big fan of my own work. Of all the authors I know, I am one of the funniest and most entertaining,” he once said. When he met the first one who celebrated that sentence as a joke, he had to explain that he had never been more serious.
But the truth of Brooks’ tireless and endless humor lies between the lines of the documentary directed by one of his best disciples and, above all, a true representative of the same breed of artists. Like the honoree, Judd Apatow He recognizes himself first and foremost as a comedian. Someone who chose as a lifelong vocation the very complicated task of earning your daily bread by making people laugh.
In the case of Brooks, it is clear even in the smallest folds of his multifaceted work that above all Comedy worked in his case as a survival mechanism. And an antidote to death. “When you die, everything is very silent, you don’t go anywhere. Comedy, on the other hand, is pure joy and bliss. It’s something alive, which keeps us going,” he says in a section of the documentary through an archive interview rescued by Apatow.
Brooks has not been seen in public for a few months. But he never showed any signs of wanting to retire. Quite the opposite. Its last appearance (virtual, in this case) took the form of a pre-recorded video that was presented for the first time in front of a select audience made up of the highest executives of the film industry and the owners of the largest exhibition chains in the world. That happened in mid-April at the 2026 edition of CinemaCon, the annual convention organized in Las Vegas that functions as a thermometer of the state of the most powerful industrial cinema on the planet and a preview of the next big releases generated in Hollywood.
There, Brooks formally announced the title of his next film. Spaceballs: The New One It is nothing less than the sequel to SOS there is a madman in space, the celebrated parody of Star Wars which hit theaters in 1987. “Spaceballs 2: in search of more money It’s not going to be the title of this movie,” Brooks says in the preview with his unmistakable voice with a strong New York accent, hoarse and emphatic. “Why not? Because after all these years I found the money. “It was in the basement of my house,” he concluded before clarifying why he chose “The New One” as the title of the sequel. “It’s the same as the previous one, but newer,” he said.
Brooks reserves the role of producer and the promise of an appearance, as in the first part, as Yogurt, a character certainly similar to Master Yoda. The direction is by Josh Greenbaum from a script signed by Josh Gadone of the additions to a cast that recovers several of the original figures: George Wyner, Bill Pullman, Dahne Zuniga and Rick Moranis, who leaves behind with this film a voluntary retirement from acting that he had begun in 1997.
The theatrical release of the second part of SOS there is a madman in space It is confirmed for April 23, 2027, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the appearance of the original film. The plot details and the new characters remain secret, as Amazon MGM announced through a statement that seems to be written by Brooks himself: “They are locked away as if they were protected by a maximum security Schwartz shield.”
What is proven that Brooks did write, in addition to announcing it with his voice, is the exhilarating text with his unmatched comic stamp with which he announced in 2025, through a video, the confirmation of the sequel. He did so, as expected, with the same visual style used at the beginning of each new episode of star wars: “38 years ago there was only one trilogy of Star Wars. But since then there was… a trilogy of prequels, a trilogy of sequels, a sequel to the prequel, a prequel to the sequel, countless television series derived from the film, a film derived from the series that had been derived to television and that at the same time is a prequel and a sequel… But 38 years there was only one Spaceballs. Until now…”
Also in April, while being represented at CinemaCon by much of the cast of this long-awaited sequel, Brooks recorded another video. In this case with a message of congratulations and greetings to Eddie Murphywhich that month received the annual lifetime achievement award given by the American Film Institute (AFI), the same institution that in recent hours honored Madness in the West (Blazing Saddles1974), one of Brooks’ best creations for cinema, as the funniest American movie of all time.
Shortly after, in May, it was confirmed that Brooks’ monumental archive (with nearly 160,000 documents and more than 5,000 photographs) will be placed in the custody of the National Comedy Center, the most important space for preserving the art and history of comedy in the United States. In that collection there are drafts, production documents, notes and visual material that cover all the stages of each of Brooks’ creations over the last seven decades.
Some elements of that archive have extraordinary value, such as the notebook with notes and jokes about different comedy situations that Brooks used during World War II, while he carried out tasks as an engineer and specialist in digging up mines in the US forces installed in different areas of the European front, especially France.
The original handwritten lyrics of “Spring for Hitler” are also kept there, the song that identifies better than any other. The producers. Graphic and visual sketches of the scripts young frankenstein, Madness in the West and other films, and a huge collection of photographs, some of which appear in the autobiography he wrote when he turned 95: All about me! My extraordinary life in show business.
Brooks was born a century ago, on June 28, 1926, in Brooklyn (New York) as Melvin James Kaminsky. And he dedicated his entire life to one goal: go out to find the audience’s laughter. Not a modest or kind smile, but the loudest laugh possible.
His style of comedy was never subtle, elegant or distinguished. He preferred unbridled mockery, irreverent reference, direct provocation, parody in the broadest sense. He believed in the direct impact of the vulgar joke or the eschatological reference.
There is no better example than one of the classic scenes of Madness in the Westwhen it occurred to him to fill the screen with flatulence noises after showing a group of cowboys sharing the classic plate of beans and beans next to the caravans. “I have bad taste, but with a deep basis of intellectuality,” he once said consciously to return all the reproaches he received in this regard.
There is almost nothing available from Brooks on the streaming platforms that operate in Argentina. Only Netflix includes in its catalog the definitive version of The producers (2006), with Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane and Uma Thurman (the same play they performed in Buenos Aires Guillermo Francella and Enrique Pintitwo great admirers of the comic centenary), and in Disney+ can be seen The anxieties of Dr. Mel Brooks (High Anxiety1977), a great tribute in a mocking tone to the cinema of Alfred Hitchcockand the second part (in series) of The crazy history of the worldpremiering in early 2023 with Brooks hosting each segment.
The core of his work is not available to new generations in streaming: The twelve chairs (1970), Madness in the West (1974), young frankenstein (1974), the silent feature film The last madness of Mel Brooks (1976), The crazy history of the world (1981), To be or not to be (1983), SOS there is a madman in space (1987), What a bitch life! (1991), The Crazy, Crazy Adventures of Robin Hood (1993), Dracula: dead but happy (1996). There is always the hopeful consolation that at some point, like so many other times, his greatest creation for that medium will return to open TV, Super Agent 86 (1965-70), that unsurpassed satire on the world of international espionage that since its premiere became a favorite of several generations of Argentines.
There was nothing in show business that was foreign to Mel Brooks: actor, producer, director, film and TV scriptwriter, playwright, songwriter. That is why he is one of the few members of the EGOT club (the winners of the Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy). The HBO Max documentary covers all aspects of his life, including the sentimental one, with a very special chapter dedicated to Anne Bancroft, the immense actress who became the definitive companion in art and life of the centenarian artist.
In 2021, the Associated Press agency asked him if he thought a lot about death. “I stopped doing it after I turned 60,” he responded, “because if I did I would be thinking about it all the time. If it were to happen it would be a sad day. For everyone, except me. I enjoy life. “I like to do it while I can.”
