American Masters
Mel Brooks: Make a Noise
Premieres nationwide Monday, May 20, 2013 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT) on PBS (check local listings)
TCA Biographies
Mel Brooks
Director, Producer, Writer, and Actor
Mel Brooks, director, producer, writer and actor, is in an elite group as one of the few entertainers to earn all four major entertainment prizes – the Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar. His career began in television writing for Your Show of Shows and together with Buck Henry creating the long-running TV series Get Smart. He then teamed up with Carl Reiner to write and perform the Grammy-winning 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and books. Brooks won his first Oscar in 1964 for writing and narrating the animated short The Critic, and his second for the screenplay of his first feature film, The Producers, in 1968. Many hit comedy films followed, including The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be, Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. His film company, Brooksfilms Limited, also produced critically acclaimed films such as The Elephant Man, The Fly, Frances, My Favorite Year, and 84 Charring Cross Road. For three successive seasons, 1997-1999, Mel Brooks won Emmy Awards for his role as “Uncle Phil” on the hit sitcom Mad About You. Brooks received three 2001 Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards for The Producers: the New Mel Brooks Musical, which ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2006. The Producers still holds the record for the most Tony Awards ever won by a Broadway musical. He followed that success with The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, which ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009, and both musicals continue to be performed and enjoyed by audiences all over the world. In 2009 Mel Brooks also received The Kennedy Center Honors, recognizing a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. His most recent projects include the Emmy-nominated HBO comedy special Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again, a follow-up HBO special Mel Brooks Strikes Back! and a career retrospective DVD box set titled The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection Of Unhinged Comedy.
Robert Trachtenberg
Writer, Director, Producer, and Editor
Robert Trachtenberg is a Los Angeles-based photographer specializing in portrait, entertainment, and fashion photography. Editorial clients include Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Tatler, and Glamour. Entertainment and fashion clients include Neiman-Marcus, NBC, HBO, ABC, TBS, TNT, TCM, Disney, and MGM. Trachtenberg’s photos have been selected for numerous awards, including the American Photography Annual, Communication Arts, and American Photo Magazine‘s Images of the Year.
Trachtenberg has written, produced and directed several documentaries. American Masters On Cukor was the first feature-length film about legendary Hollywood director George Cukor. American Masters Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer profiled the life and work of the innovative performer. For Turner Classic Movies, Trachtenberg again wrote, produced and directed the Emmy-nominated Cary Grant: A Class Apart, as well as a film about Hollywood pioneer Irving Thalberg. Specials directed by Trachtenberg have starred Mel Brooks, Alec Baldwin and Gene Wilder, as well as the eight-part series Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence, and AFI’s Master Class – The Art of Collaboration with guests including Steven Spielberg, composer John Williams, actor Mark Wahlberg, and director David O. Russell.
Trachtenberg is also the author of the bestselling book When I Knew, published by Harper Collins, and has contributed to T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
Susan Lacy
Series Creator and Executive Producer
Susan Lacy has been an award-winning originator of primetime public television programs since 1979. As the creator and executive producer of American Masters, she has been responsible for the production and national broadcast of more than 185 documentary films about our country’s artistic and cultural giants, those who have made an indelible impact on the American landscape. Now celebrating its 27th season on PBS, American Masters has garnered unprecedented awards and is consistently recognized by television critics as “the best biographical series ever to appear on American television.”
In addition to her executive producing role, Lacy is an award-winning filmmaker. Her 2004 Judy Garland: By Myself earned her an Emmy Award for writing and an Emmy nomination for directing. She wrote, directed and produced Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind (IDA nomination for Outstanding Documentary) and Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note (Emmy Award and DGA nomination). She produced the Peabody Award-winning films LENNONYC, a film exploring John Lennon’s life in New York City, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time, directed and produced Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval, and directed and produced Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice – all for American Masters. She produced, wrote and directed American Masters Inventing David Geffen, which premiered November 2012 on PBS and is available now on DVD and Blu-ray via PBS Distribution.
Under her leadership, American Masters received 24 Primetime Emmy Awards: eight for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series since 1999, five for Outstanding Nonfiction Special, and 11 in various craft categories, with 40 additional nominations. In its 27-year history, the series has received 24 nominations for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series and Outstanding Non-Fiction Special combined. American Masters received the 2012 Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award for Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television, in addition to 12 Peabody Awards for John Hammond: From Bessie Smith to Bruce Springsteen, Unknown Chaplin, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, Paul Simon: Born at the Right Time, Alexander Calder, F. Scott Fitzgerald: Winter Dreams, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, LENNONYC, A Letter to Elia, and Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter. The series also received Grammy Awards for Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors, an Academy Award and four nominations.
Lacy’s career in public television began in 1979, as deputy director of performance programs at Thirteen/WNET New York. She was senior program executive for Great Performances and worked as director of program development with The American Playhouse, where she was a founding member. Lacy then ran the East Coast office of Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute from 1984 to 1987. She was a consulting producer at Time-Life Video during the launch of Time-Warner’s new initiatives in long-form documentary production. Lacy also led programs at both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Lacy was one of the select 2005 honorees at the Museum of Television & Radio’s “She Made It” event, which recognized 50 exceptional women who have created and informed the genre, and a 2008 Washington, DC, Women of Vision Awards recipient, honoring those in film and video who inspire and mentor. She was honored again in Washington, DC, in 2010 as the recipient of the Cine Golden Eagle Lifetime Achievement Award. She currently serves on the board of the Film Forum in New York City. She served on the board of governors of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for two terms and was a trustee of the Independent Documentary Association. Lacy is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Independent Features Project, and New York Women in Film & Television.
Lacy holds a BA in American Studies from the University of Virginia, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an MA in American Studies from George Washington University. She was a Graduate Teaching Fellow, a Smithsonian Fellow and completed a residency at the American Academy in Rome. In 1994 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Long Island University, and in 1996 she was named Distinguished Alumnus of the Year at Mary Washington College, the women’s college of the University of Virginia.
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