Method in Madness. The Comic Art of Mel Brooks by Maurice Yacowar
When Bob Silverman designed the jacket for Maurice Yacowar’s book on the comic art of Mel Brooks, he chose Ruby Shadow for the title. He apparently deemed its M to be too tame for the topic. In any case, it got replaced by the sweeping glyph found in another bold 1970s script: the initials are taken from Charade.
Al Elliott’s Charade – a Canadian creation just like the book – did come with a Shadow style. The shadow was customized to match the one in Ruby Shadow, though. Printed in two colors, the alliterating title is combined with what looks like skewed caps from Venus. The all-caps roman at the top is Hess Old Style.
About the book, from the inner flaps:
The critics hate Mel Brooks. But does that stop him? When a Playboy interviewer once remarked, “You’ve been accused of vulgarity,” Brooks replied, “Bullshit!” No critic could ever stop Mel Brooks from being one of the best-loved comedians in film history—in fact, his movies consistently out-gross (in every sense of the word) those of much-praised Woody Allen. Mel Brooks is funny, and the people love him.
How does he do it? Is he really as crazy as he seems? Maurice Yacowar, whose previous book (on Woody Allen) received unanimous critical acclaim, takes us on a Brooks-lover’s tour through his work on television with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, his records as the “Two-Thousand-Year-Old Man,” and all of the films from The Producers to Blazing Saddles, from Young Frankenstein to High Anxiety. The resulting tribute will have film buffs nodding their heads nostalgically, and fans laughing out loud on every page.
Mel Brooks turned 100 years old today. Happy birthday!
Device from the front flap. Note the two forms for s in “Madness”.
Tite page. The book’s interior was designed by Dennis J. Grastorf using Caledonia.
3 Comments on “Method in Madness. The Comic Art of Mel Brooks by Maurice Yacowar”
Happy 100 Birthday to actor Mel Brooks!
You know, the font Gv. Time is very similar to Charade and Ruby.
Gv Time is not “inspired from 60's and 70's script lettering”, as its maker claims. Rather, it is a poorly made copy of Candice by Alan Meeks (Letraset, 1976), with tightened spacing and squeezed capitals.
The acceptance of such a clear case of derivative design to MyFonts is yet more proof that there is no quality control in place at that platform.
Legal/ethical issues aside, it’s also poor on a technical level. Despite being advertised to “support multilanguage”, Gv Time is of no use for languages other than English. To give a few examples: tilde in ñ is the wrong way around, acute in é is too small and too far to the left, dieresis is ä is not centered, ß doesn’t match the style, etc. Heck, even English users will run into bloopers like a semicolon that sits far too high.