This is the first book-length study examining the career of Mel Brooks as part of an academic dialogue – looking specifically at how he has survived working within the cultural industries from 1949 to date. While the various critical studies, biographies and the scattered academic articles about Brooks have so far discussed his perceived ‘bad taste’ comedy, his Jewish ethnicity and have discussed his work as ‘parody’, this study examines Brooks from a new perspective – that of a long-term survivor in the cultural industries and as a specialist in adaptation. By studying his projects in film, theatre, audio records and television, this book suggests that Brooks has survived in what are regarded to be competitive and historically changing industries, primarily as a result of his own personal strategy – most simply understood as that of recycling content through adaptation. While other artists have practised adaptation, Brooks has taken this production strategy to the extreme, sometimes by repeatedly adapting the same material. These strategies have allowed Brooks to inordinately prolong the commercial life of his inventions, as well as those of other artists, thus getting the most out of his ideas over an extended period of time.

This book suggests that Brooks has made a significant, and so far unrecognised, contribution to the historical development and transformation of production trends in the cultural industries through his adaptation strategies. He has produced adaptations between different media, mixing and moving content between different traditions of production, and so has contributed towards the establishment of new production trends that have been repeated by other artists.