Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (37 page)

When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, one thing was understood: Nobody was funnier than Mel Brooks. Yes, we all enjoyed our Woody Allen movies and our Blake Edwards movies, but there was never any real debate: Mel Brooks was the king.

He is the original gangster of comedy. His work dates back to Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner, for chrissakes. He is the 2,000 Year Old Man. He’s responsible for, at minimum, two of the top ten comedies of all time,
Blazing Saddles
and
Young Frankenstein.
(There is a legitimate argument to be made that he is responsible for more than half of the top ten.) One could say
Blazing Saddles
is still the edgiest comedy ever made; screamingly funny and original, yes, but all in the service of important thoughts about race. I’m not sure it could be made again today.

I hesitate to use the word
important
when talking about comedy, or movies in general, but Mel Brooks is important. His movies are important. And even now, in his late eighties, he’s as funny as funny gets—and a hell of a lot quicker than the rest of us.

Mel Brooks:
So, what was it before Apatow?

Judd Apatow:
What was it before? It was Apa-toe.

Mel:
Okay, not such a big move. I mean, people from Europe, they made
really
big moves.

Judd:
Oh, you mean before they shortened it? I think it could have been Apatovski.

Mel:
Yes, it could have been that. You have no idea?

Judd:
I think it was Apatapatovski. There’s this strange man that keeps sending me information about my history and I’m not even asking him to do it. He recently sent me a photo of my great-great-grandfather’s cemetery plot.

Mel:
Where, in the Bronx somewhere?

Judd:
Brooklyn. He said, “I just happened to go to the gravestone of your family member.” Should I be nervous?

Mel:
No, there’s a lot of people like that. They don’t mean any harm. There’s a guy that sends me stuff on my Uncle Louis. His people came from Poland. My people came from Kiev. I don’t know what they’re talking about but anyway, I had an Uncle Louis. My real name is Kaminsky. K-A-M-I-N-S-K-Y. Danny Kaye’s name, too. A lot of talented guys named Kaminsky. I think Hank Greenberg’s name was Kaminsky. Anyway, so he was telling me about my Uncle Louis, who was a zealot. He was a rabbi and a zealot in Poland. And it’s where we just keep moving. We move, you know, they arrest us, and then we move. And so Uncle, Great-Great-Great-Great-Uncle Louis, my grandfather’s uncle, was always getting arrested. I asked the guy, “Well, why?” He said, “Well, on Saturday he would pick up a brick and break windows and they’d say, ‘Louis, you know we’re Protestant, we’re Catholic, we’re open for business. We’re not Jews.’ He said, ‘Nobody should be open on Saturday.’ ” So I come from that stock. You can see a lot of that in me. I’m a bit of a zealot. I’m a zealot when it comes to bagels. I have never eaten—I think I’ve eaten two or three bagels in California and I just break into tears. It’s the water.

Judd:
You’re not on that non-gluten kick.

Mel:
No.

Judd:
You’re full gluten. Well, I should do this introduction of you because it’s a long one.

Mel:
Really? Why don’t you do the highlights of Mel Brooks? Go ahead.

Judd:
Well, according to this—

Mel:
Like the highlights of
Hamlet.

Judd:
Okay, ready? (
Reading
) “In every medium through which entertainment could possibly pass, Mel has made people laugh all over the world.” It says here, you are one of only eleven people in history to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award.

Mel:
Right, I also got other awards. I have a fifty-yard dash from PS 19. I have many awards that I just don’t brag about. But they’re important to me.

Judd:
Are they, though? Do you care? Like, do you care that you won the Oscar?

Mel:
You know, when I was younger, I really did. It was thrilling. But then as you get older, you’re more interested in your cholesterol.

Judd:
When a bad movie wins an Oscar, do you get mad because you’re like,
That kind of ruins my Oscar?

Mel:
No, no, no. I forgive and forget. It’s not good to have a grudge against anything.

Judd:
Actually, I disagree. There are a lot of reasons to have grudges. I’m mad at everyone in this room right now. This is quite a crowd we have here.

Mel:
We have a good crowd.

Judd:
These are fans. These are hard-core fans.

Mel:
And they’ve washed.

Judd:
Yes.

Mel:
They’re all clean. I’m smelling, they all smell good.

Judd:
Well, our first question here—people are going to stand up and read questions.

Mel:
Sure.

Judd:
Steve Bugdonoff. Glendora, California. Did I say it right? How did I do with my pronunciation?

Steve:
Horrible.

Judd:
Oh no. Let’s hear it. Let’s hear what it is.

Steve:
It is Bogdonoff.

Judd:
Bogdonoff, see, that is not the way anyone says that name.

Mel:
You are the only one who would say Bogdonoff. We have Bogdonovich. We have ways of saying Bogdonoff. But most of us would say Bugdonoff. Even though it’s your own name, I think you’re in the minority. I mean it.

Steve:
First of all, Mr. Brooks, thank you for this opportunity. As a longtime fan, my question is: Classic comedy like
Blazing Saddles
probably couldn’t be made today and—

Mel:
I agree. Probably couldn’t. The N-word couldn’t be used as frequently and spiritlessly.

Steve:
Yet the film so perfectly lampoons bigotry, so my question is: How do you feel about today’s standard of political correctness?

Mel:
I think that word in and of itself is pale and kind of weak. And jejune. I’m very bright. Jejune. Jejune—you’ll have to look it up—but it’s just timid and I don’t think anybody really covers racial hatred the way it should be covered. I agree with you. I agree with you even though you say your name wrong.

Judd:
How did people react to it at the time?

Mel:
At the time, there were letters. There were many letters from many people that said, How could you
say
that word? You’re hurting so many people with the using the N-word, you know. And I had hired a very dear friend of mine who was working at the Vanguard in New York at the time when I was writing the movie. Richard Pryor, probably the best stand-up comic that ever lived. Man, he was the best. I said Richard, “I want you to write this movie with me.” He fell in love with Mongo. He wrote a lot of Mongo. So anyway, I would say when the little old lady with the bonnet is walking down the street in Rockridge and Cleavon Little greets her and says, “Good morning, ma’am, and isn’t it a lovely morning?” And she says,
“Up yours, nigger.” Boom, you know, it’s like, wow. Everything gets silent. But then we kind of save it a little bit. He goes into the jailhouse and he’s in kind of tears and talks to Gene Wilder, who was the Waco Kid, and Gene says, “Well, what did you
expect?
‘Come home, marry my daughter’? This is 1874, this is, these are people of the land. These are pioneers. You know, morons.” And that kind of took the edge off. But, you know, that was a tough one. John Calley—God bless him, he died last year—ran production for Warner Brothers at the time. So I said to John, “Can we beat the shit out of a little old lady? Can we actually punch a horse? Can we use the N-word? Can we?” And Calley said, “Mel, if you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it.” And I never, that was early in my career and I never forgot what he said. I’ve gone, you know, uh, with the caveman masturbating in the
History of the World
—I was ringing the bell. I never forgot that advice.

Judd:
The next question is from Richard Walden.

Richard:
It’s an honor.

Mel:
It’s a pleasure.

Richard:
Who was the funniest celebrity you know? And I don’t mean someone who is funny on camera, but someone we might not think is funny, but in real life—

Mel:
Carl Reiner is a seriously, seriously funny guy. He lost his wife, Estelle—she was a great singer, great person, great friend of Anne and I, just a wonderful person. Carl is still alive, he’s ninety-one. He’s a great comedian to this day. Estelle used to just rifle through magazines to buy things. She bought things through the mail all the time. She’d pick a dress, she’d pick a thing. She’d pick an iron. If there were Ginsu knives, Estelle had them. So anyway, the doorbell rang after she had passed away and a guy came and said, “Package for Estelle Reiner,” and Carl wondered what it was and he took it and he said, “It’s not a package for Estelle Reiner; it
is
Estelle Reiner.” It had come from the Neptune Society and they, you know—but I mean,
the guts.
That’s a brave comment.

Judd:
You and Carl are as funny as ever, but do you find that other funny people you hang out with have stayed funny—or did some people lose
their sense of humor? I mean, why is it that you guys are always current and hilarious and it didn’t fade at all, in any way?

Mel:
Yeah, there’s a couple. I don’t know, even someone like Shecky Greene, one of the funniest guys that ever lived, went through a dark time. He had stage fright and suddenly he wasn’t funny for three or four years. I think he’s back doing everything well. Unless he’s dead, I don’t know. But people go through different periods and they’re assaulted by different memories or psychic problems or just physical maladies and they just don’t feel
funny.
And you know, but I have never—God bless me, I’m knocking wood. I feel good. I have salmon and tomato every day. I like cucumber soup. It’s cold but I like it. But I feel well and I have never given up my joie de vivre. I just love being alive and being in comedy, you know. But it happens. It happens to people.

Judd:
Was it a big deal for you to make yourself a star of your movies?

Mel:
It was. You know, I would have been a star ten years before I became a star. There was a great, great star, a great actor-comedian, Sid Caesar. And had I not run into Sid Caesar I probably would have gone from the Borscht Belt—“You’re looking at me, ladies and gentlemen, I met a girl who was so thin, this girl was so skinny you can’t believe it. I took her to a restaurant, the maître d’ said check your umbrella. That’s how skinny this girl was”—and, you know, those were the kind of jokes that I used to do. God bless. Anyway, I ran into Sid Caesar and I realized, you know, this guy’s truly a genius, because he’d be in a sketch with Imogene Coca and she would go on and on about a car that was wrecked because it backed into the drugstore and then it smashed into the candy store, and he—Sid thought it was somebody else and he was laughing. The greatest laugh you’d ever heard. He was just on the floor spitting with laughter, and then, little by little, he realized that Imogene—it was his car. It was the family car. And then he just got quiet and more quiet. And then without asking him, without rehearsing, without directing him, she kept on with the story and tears ran down his eyes. You know nobody came with glycerin. He just cried. And the audience went bananas. The greatest sketch ever. I was one of the writers.

Judd:
But did that delay your feeling like you should be the star because you were watching the greatest?

Mel:
No, I was seeing stardust and I was seeing magic. And I was seeing real comedy and that was enough.

Judd:
All right, the next question is from Don Moore.

Don:
Yes sir. I was just wondering, Mel, you’ve had such a long career in show business and a successful career, does it bother you on any level that your legacy will be that of funny guy, comedy writer?

Mel:
Strangely enough, I’ve always been just a little irritated, perturbed, upset that I have never been recognized in this business by my peers—by my fellow directors—as a director of movies. I have never been saluted or, really, thought of. I’ve been thought of as, you know, a funny writer, a producer of funny stuff and a performer, a funny performer, but I’ve never been considered…Kubrick thought I was a good director. Hitchcock thought that I should have won the Academy Award for
Young Frankenstein.
Just for the backlighting, he said.

Judd:
When comedies work, they feel effortless, so I think people get no sense that it took so much more work than making CGI dragons fly. They don’t really give people credit for that.

Mel:
You’re right. They see what’s green screen and think,
How did they do that? Look, the wings look so
real.

Judd:
I think that’s always been the case with the Oscars.

Mel:
Well, Woody won for, you know—

Judd:
Annie Hall.

Mel:
Yeah,
Annie Hall
, but there was a lot of heart and warmth in
Annie Hall
. I should have won for
The Producers
. It was crazy.

Judd:
Well, they think misery is harder to create.

Mel:
I think to make people sad is easier than to make them laugh. I do. I mean, they’re both hard, you know. Dickens did them both. Nikolai
Gogol. Those are two guys you should read if you want to do sad sometimes and you want to do comedy sometimes.

Judd:
I think there’s nothing harder to do than make a movie that is tear-down-the-house funny. It is harder than any kind of movie to make. To figure out a way to get that kind of momentum, that kind of joy from the crowd—to create tension and release, tension and release, for ninety minutes? I mean, I saw
Young Frankenstein
when they played it here in Santa Monica a few years ago and it was the biggest laughs I’ve ever heard in a movie theater. Every moment of the movie. There wasn’t, like, you know, the moment that kind of resets—it just kept going and going. It’s almost a miracle.