Mel Brooks Is 92, And Seems Just The Same As He Ever Has Been

Is there anything he can’t do? “Brooks and the director Susan Stroman mounted a musical version of [Young Frankenstein], a show that Brooks now calls ‘lugubrious.’ It was only moderately successful, so he cut about 40 minutes, bringing the entire evening (with intermission) down to about two hours, and that version has been playing at the Garrick Theatre in London since last September. Was it hard to edit himself? ‘I did it in a couple weeks. I knew what to do.’ He cut three songs and added a new one. (Singing) ‘It could work! My grandfather wasn’t wrong. You could re-animate dead tissue’” He finds it hard to believe ‘It Could Work’ wasn’t in the original show, since it’s the ‘Rain in Spain’ moment, the song that makes the musical a hit. In imitation of Dr. Frankenstein, he seems to have reanimated his own dead show.”