List Details Violations Across Several Locations

Twenty of Mel Brooks' favorite films of the past century will screen this fall in Los Angeles as part of a series the 100-year-old comedian and director programmed himself. The American Cinematheque, Los Angeles' year-round nonprofit film festival, worked with Brooks to assemble his favorites list, which spans from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) to Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, the 2019 dark comedy about a Nazi-era German boy whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. "For the first time, Brooks is publicly sharing his favorites, with the series offering unique insight into his knowledge and appreciation of film history spanning the last century, the American Cinematheque said in its description.

The event honors Brooks' 100th birthday, which fell on June 28. The series excludes Brooks' own famous films such as The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Instead, his list — ranging from classics like Double Indemnity and Psycho to big-budget musicals and niche comedies — includes only one of his own movies, The Twelve Chairs, perhaps his "biggest commercial flop, which he has continued urging people to watch. Only two films from the past 25 years made the cut: Jojo Rabbit and Dolemite Is My Name, the 2019 Eddie Murphy biopic of comedian and filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore.

The next most recent selection dates to 1994. Chris LeMaire, the American Cinematheque's director of programming, told the Los Angeles Times that Brooks refined his choices over several days, calling his assistant with updates that were emailed to the Cinematheque. Brooks offered no explanations for his picks. Jeremy Dauber, a Columbia University Yiddish professor and Brooks biographer, said the 20 films provide "a little bit of a skeleton key into his own biography, emphasizing "familial and personal relationships" and artistic influences, and showing "the kind of real mensch that Brooks is at this point in his career.

The nearly all-American list includes formative works from his childhood and youth, from Chaplin and Marx Brothers comedies to musicals like Fred Astaire's Top Hat (1935) and Broadway Melody of 1940, plus John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Psycho, which inspired Brooks' 1977 Hitchcock parody High Anxiety. Federico Fellini's semi-autobiographical 1953 film I Vitelloni adds Italian cinema. Some picks are deeply personal, including The Miracle Worker, the 1962 film that won Brooks' wife, Anne Bancroft, the best actress Oscar for playing Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher.

"She was his miracle worker, said Sue Matheson, a film scholar at University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada, who edited a collection of essays on Brooks' work. Brooks fell for Bancroft at first sight in 1961 during a New York TV taping and pursued her despite her status as "an unapproachable screen goddess. "His whole life changed when he met her, Matheson said.

"He said he would have stayed a TV comedy writer if he hadn't been with her. Other selections reflect lifelong relationships, including with comedian Carl Reiner and his late son, director Rob Reiner, who helmed two films on the list: the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. A Brooks representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.