Mel Brooks in the Cultural Industries: Survival and Prolonged Adaptation

Description

Which strategies has Mel Brooks used to survive, adapt and thrive in the cultural industries? How has he gained his reputation as a multimedia survivor? Alex Symons takes a unique, artist-focused approach in order to systematically identify the range of Brooks’s adaptation strategies across the Hollywood film, Broadway theatre and American television industries. By combining a cultural industries approach together with that of adaptation studies, this book also identifies an important new industrial practice employed by Brooks - defined here as ‘prolonged adaptation’. More significantly, Symons also employs this method to explain the so far neglected way that Brooks’s adaptations have contributed towards changing production trends, changes in critical attitudes, and towards the ongoing integration of the cultural industries today. An essential read for film students and scholars researching adaptation, this refreshing new approach will also be valued by everyone studying the cultural industries. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Rethinking Adaptation Studies: Survival Strategies in the Cultural Industries 2 From Sitcoms to ‘Parody-coms’: Writing for American TV, 1949–89 3 Prolonged Stardom: Audio Records, TV and Film, 1961–2004 4 Recycled Hollywood for the TV Generation: The Rise of Parody and the Fall of Mel Brooks the Director, 1974–95 5 The Integration of the Film and Theatre Industries: The Producers, 1968–2007 Bibliography Index