The Twelve Chairs

Comedy and music go hand in hand. Always. Mel Brooks knows how essential this is. He used to be a drummer, after all. Back in his teenage years, he was a student of the great drummer Buddy Rich. There’s a fundamental rhythm to comedy that oftentimes gets overlooked. If the timing of the musicality is off, then the comedy falls flat. That’s why, in so many of Brooks’ films, you will see elements of music. Whether the characters themselves are breaking out into song, or he has composed a title song, or the dialogue itself is particularly snappy and hits you over the head before you even realize what the hell just happened, it’s all in the same family. You cannot have good comedy without some form of music being present. That’s why Mel Brooks is, in some ways, as much a musician as he is a co...