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

[Fenchurch]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 2:34am

Clark, I couldn't disagree more. In my experience as a musician, I've found orchestration and harmony are far more creative than simple tune writing. Harmonic progressions are inherent in writing a melody, but like any other craft, if you have a limited amount of tools, you can only create so much, and brooks is obviously limited, so much so that it would be an insult to real composers to call him a composer, and an insult to great songwriters like Stephen Sondheim to call him a songwriter. He's a lucky amateur with some great ideas, but that's all.

[B3TA07]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 2:47am

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

[clarkstallings]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 3:03am

I wish there was an authority we could ask on this. We'll never find consensus.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 6:46pm

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.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 6:48pm

His songwriting is good, I think, though his lyrics are certainly much stronger than his melodies.

[Fenchurch]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 6:49pm

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

[Julian2]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 7:53pm

Not a composer if you get nit picky about the terms.

[sydney23]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 8:44pm

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?

[EponineThenardier]

Posted: 7/3/07 at 9:00pm

I'm liking him less and less as time goes on...for personality sake.

I hated the Producers. I thought one or two of the tunes were cute and hum worthy, but other than that. Probably my least favorite composer. I am baffled Producers won best score.

I adore Young Frankenstein though and hope the music is far better than Producers.

[2ndBalcony]

Posted: 7/4/07 at 1:26am

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