"Few people have had an impact on comedy even half as big as Mel Brooks. The man's quick wit and fearlessness in irreverently tackling serious subject matters proved to future generations that anything is funny if one looks at it in the right way. On paper, a comedy featuring a song called "Springtime For Hitler" sounds like a recipe for trouble. But not only did The Producers please audiences, it also earned Brooks an Academy Award for best original screenplay, beating out Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
After that debut film and his sophomore effort, The Twelve Chairs, his output mostly turned to genre parodies. Blazing Saddles lambasted westerns, High Anxiety did Hitchcock, Spaceballs poked fun at Star Wars, and the list goes on and on."
