Friday, December 16, 2016

Six top books for comedy nerds

At B&N Reads, Brian Boone tagged six books for hardcore comedy fans, including:
Young Frankenstein, by Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is responsible for at least three of the top five comedy films of all time, and topping that list is Young Frankenstein. In this coffee table book, Brooks relates in tantalizing detail the process of how his classic spook of classic monster movies was conceived, produced, and received. (In short, it was the idea of dearly departed star Gene Wilder to make a movie about the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein, a legitimate scientist who can’t but help to reanimate live tissue in an old castle. He took it to Brooks, who took it to studios, who somehow let him do it in black and white.) Actors, designers, and other people involved in the film add in their two cents (along with a forward by comedy icon Judd Apatow), which weave around script excerpts and never before seen set photos.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue