Mel Brooks To Receive Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award

Matt Grobar
·2 min read

Mel Brooks has been set as the 2021 recipient of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award.

He’s the latest in a distinguished line of artists to receive the honor, joining the likes of John Huston, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, Robert Preston, Roger Corman, cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and composer Ennio Morricone.

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LAFCA’s members will decide on other honorees December 12. They will be honored alongside Brooks early next year.

Brooks is a prolific writer, director, producer and actor with a career spanning more than seven decades, whose iconic films include The Producers (1967), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

Brooks began his career as a comic and writer on Sid Caesar’s variety series Your Show of Shows. Later, with Carl Reiner, he created the comic character The 2000 Year Old Man, penning the hit comedy series Get Smart! with Buck Henry.

Brooks achieved the coveted EGOT designation with Tony Award wins for The Producers back in 2001, having previously won an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar. He also received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009 and got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.

“Mel Brooks is a national treasure and a comedy filmmaking legend,” said LAFCA President Claudia Puig. “Most of our members could probably quote whole swaths of his screenplays from Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Producers and so many others. I know I could. He not only has made us laugh uproariously, he has broken comic barriers and paved the way for and influenced generations of filmmakers after him. We are thrilled to be honoring the incomparable Mel Brooks.”

Brooks recently partnered with Hulu for History of the World, Part II, an eight-part variety series inspired by his classic 1981 film, which will enter production this spring. Brooks also recently wrote and performed the Oscar-contending original song “At the Automat” for Lisa Hurwitz’s documentary The Automat, which made its world premiere at this year’s Telluride Film Festival.

A new memoir from Brooks, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business, is set for publication via Random House imprint Ballantine Books on November 30.

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