How do you feel about Mel Brooks as a composer.... — Page 4

Tech, I wasn't implying that Schönberg wasn't a "real composer."

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This conversation is like the ones my buddies and I have about screenwriting. I get p**sed as a screenwriter when a director puts the "A Film by Luis Mandoki" sort of credit on a film as if to imply he wrote AND directed the project.

However, without Brooks, there would be no "Springtime For Hitler" or "Keep It Gay" or "King of Old Broadway". Sure, someone far better trained worked on the score, but that was AFTER Brooks did the original inspiration work and probably the melody and certainly the lyric work.

Director Frank Capra used to claim he put "the Capra touch" on all of his films (ie he reworked the screenwriter's work and turned it into a Capra film). Robert Riskin the screenwriter dropped a ream of blank paper on Capra's desk and said, "Here Frank, put the Capra touch on this."

No Brooks, no songs, no score, no show.

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That's true. Brooks is a creative force, just not a composer.

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So Fenchurch,

now Stephen Sondheim is just a songwriter too?

and did George Gershwin become a composer only once he learned to orchestrate? but he was still just a songwriter when he wrote "rhapsody in blue"

and was Stravinsky not the composer on the "songs" he wrote which he had Ravel or Korsakov orchestrate? (even though he was actually a brilliant orchestrator in his own right?)

can we just stop this now?

I'd say Brooks composes at least as well as Sondheim does standup.