The Book of Mormon (musical) with tyrannical, charismatic men with way too many children, our heroes... must confront a one-eyed, genocidal warlord with an unprintable name... That's enough to test the faith of even the most optimistic gospel spreaders (not to mention songwriters). Yet in setting these dark elements to sunny melodies "The Book of Mormon" achieves something like a miracle. It both makes fun of and ardently embraces the all-American art form of the inspirational book musical. No Broadway show has so successfully had it both ways since Mel Brooks adapted his film "The Producers" for the stage a decade ago." Jon Stewart, host
Mel Brooks successful. Brooks then wrote an adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer", but was unable to sell the idea to any studio and believed that his career was over. In 1972, Brooks met agent David Begelman, who helped him set up a deal with Warner Brothers to hire Brooks (as well as Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger) as a script doctor for an unproduced script called "Tex-X". Eventually, Brooks was hired as director for what would become "Blazing Saddles", his third film. "Blazing Saddles" starred Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn,