Mel Brooks wrote this based on his experiences working as a junior comedy writer on Sid Caesar's "Your show of shows." The first time I saw this movie I laughed from beginning to end. Mark Lynn Baker plays the Benji Stone (the young Brooks) whose real name is Stoneberg. He has the right innocence for role. He gives a great performance. But this movie is Peter O'Toole's. He plays a larger then life Earol Flynn character. He is drunk and about to be thrown out of the country by the IRS. He teaches young Stone the difference between the man and the star, and how stardom sometimes overtakes the man's own identity. One of high point of the movie is when Baker takes O'toole have dinner in his mother's apartment in Brooklyn. O'toole also coaches Baker on getting the girl of his dreams, played by Jessica Harper. One of the great scenes has Mark Lynn Baker trying to teach Harper how to tell a joke. All this takes place with the backdrop of late 1950's television. A time where TV was still a novelty. Every scene makes you at least smile, and most make you laugh out loud. Richard Benjiman show great skill as a director even though this one of his earliest films. I guess all those years as an actor paid off behind the camera as well.