David Kronke: Enough about you...

I was invited to but didn't attend the taping of a Turner Classic Movies program Tuesday evening featuring Dick Cavett interviewing Mel Brooks, and now I'm a little sorry I didn't. A friend who was there said it was pretty jaw-dropping stuff. The closest Cavett apparently came to asking Brooks a question about his storied career was when he asked him how he -- Cavett -- would have fit in in the "Your Show of Shows" writing room.

Instead, Cavett reminisced about strolling through Central Park with Woody Allen, at which point my friend realized the whole enterprise was a misbegotten idea -- Cavett clearly preferred Allen's more erudite sensibility over Brooks' slapstick, scattershot approach to comedy. The producers kept trying to get Cavett on-message, to no avail; at one point an hour or so into the proceedings, Brooks -- who, I'm told, was hilarious anyway -- pointed out that he had been sent a memo listing about 80 questions that would be discussed in the evening and that Cavett hadn't asked one of them.

After three and a half hours of this, my friend and his pal got up to leave, as did a lot of the rest of the audience, despite the producers' pleas that they stick around. Can't wait to see how much if any of this apparent mess ever actually makes it to TCM.