Speaker 1: Where'd you grew up New York?
Speaker 2: I grew up in New York.
Speaker 1: I grew up from Williamsburg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Williamsburg is actually a section of Brooklyn. Just whether
Speaker 3: Whitnimsburg Bridge enters Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing that's not afraid to enter Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Welcome to this special Happy Birthday mel Brooks episode of
Speaker 1: Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and contributions to
Speaker 1: American popular culture. With mel Brooks becoming a centenarian, it's
Speaker 1: the perfect time for a retrospective. I'm Jonathan Friedman, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joey Angelfield. Producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of a
Speaker 1: Dot Javareem Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of
Speaker 1: the American West, and Atheist United Studios.
Speaker 2: To chat with Patrick mcgillian, a biographer and film historian
Speaker 2: whose books include Funny Man mel Brooks. Patrick, Welcome to
Speaker 2: Amusing Jews.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2: So, Patrick, why mel Brooks, Well, the.
Speaker 3: Honest answer is the contract always. But I lived in
Speaker 3: la I used to see mel Brooks around at restaurants,
Speaker 3: I was on the set of History of the World.
Speaker 3: He was a good At the time that I chose him,
Speaker 3: I thought he was a really good subject. There was
Speaker 3: one book about him that was a smaller book, and
Speaker 3: it was pretty good, but I thought there was a
Speaker 3: better story, more deeper story behind his great success and
Speaker 3: his great comedy brand.
Speaker 1: Speaking of a deeper story, your book is very expansive,
Speaker 1: with six hundred and fifty pages, somewhere in that ballpark,
Speaker 1: and you do a good job of showing the two
Speaker 1: sides of mel Brooks. Right there's the charming, endearing, antique,
Speaker 1: lovable mel Brooks, and there's also the controlling, insecure, even
Speaker 1: angry mel Brooks.
Speaker 3: I didn't know very much starting out, but you know,
Speaker 3: having met him and having paid some attention, and you
Speaker 3: know this, some of his comedy is very, let's say, adamant.
Speaker 3: He's sometimes angry, but certainly the seeds of this comedy
Speaker 3: are angry and usually I wrote a book about Clint Eastwood,
Speaker 3: and I think my entire pitch was behind a guy
Speaker 3: who plays such a you know, hard tough guy on
Speaker 3: the screen has to be a guy who's hard and tough,
Speaker 3: you know, in private, or he's the greatest actor of
Speaker 3: all time. And so I went back into Melic's boyhood
Speaker 3: in his professional life to see that there was a
Speaker 3: lot of There was a lot of disappointment, failure, seeds
Speaker 3: of anger controlling everything that you said. And I think
Speaker 3: for me what was turned out to be really interesting,
Speaker 3: which I hadn't anticipated at all. It was there was
Speaker 3: a whole struggle to define himself as a writer and
Speaker 3: to be a writer, and to do that he often
Speaker 3: had to control writers and have secret collaborators. I think
Speaker 3: he's a great editor of writers. You put him in
Speaker 3: a room with three writers, He's going to choose the
Speaker 3: best joke. But that's in a way that was that
Speaker 3: was part of his neurosis, if that's the right word.
Speaker 3: That you know, he was acclaimed early on as a writer,
Speaker 3: and he was more of a joke smith, a guy
Speaker 3: who could come up with jokes, and he had to
Speaker 3: learn to be a writer. And he was surrounded by
Speaker 3: great writers and famous writers on staffs where he worked,
Speaker 3: and that made him insecure and to a certain extent
Speaker 3: that made him angry, you know, not at them, you
Speaker 3: know at himself.
Speaker 1: I know with the writer's room on Sid Caesar's shows,
Speaker 1: he was known more as a talker, right, he would
Speaker 1: kind of like shout people down and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he wrote anything down on paper.
Speaker 3: He had struck up a friendship with Sid Caesar after
Speaker 3: World War Two and since Or was surging into fame,
Speaker 3: and Sid Caesar, to his credit, recognize this guy as
Speaker 3: a great joke teller at a great quick wit, you know,
Speaker 3: and brash, brash wit. And he hired him as kind
Speaker 3: of his personal joke teller and started bringing him to
Speaker 3: you know, writing meetings and sometimes against the opposition and
Speaker 3: to the consternation of the you know, highly paid professional
Speaker 3: writers there. And but Mel you know, immediately started making contributions.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he had to stick his foot in the door
Speaker 3: and bargin, you know, in order to scream out his jokes.
Speaker 3: But later on he's on staff with you know, Larry Galbart,
Speaker 3: Carl Reiner, Woody Allen. Eventually these are consummate writers besides
Speaker 3: being consummate funny men. And by consummate writers, I mean
Speaker 3: they could sit down and write. You know, Mel had
Speaker 3: to for a while find somebody who would sit at
Speaker 3: the typewriter. You know, he wasn't even able to do
Speaker 3: that you know, and then all the way up through
Speaker 3: most of his career he has ghost writers, so that
Speaker 3: there's a ghostwriter behind the producers. The story is very fascinating.
Speaker 3: A lot of people in Hollywood knew it. There's you know,
Speaker 3: Gene Wilder is the writer of Young Frankenstein. Has many
Speaker 3: writers on blazing saddles with Mel controlling them and picking
Speaker 3: out what's best, and then he has writers all the
Speaker 3: way through the rest of his career. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: he didn't become a writer, or that you even have
Speaker 3: to sit down and type to be a writer, or
Speaker 3: that you even have to write to be a writer.
Speaker 3: You know, because Billy Wilder was kind of famous for
Speaker 3: in his collaborations for being the walker. It would be
Speaker 3: a walker and a sitter, a sitter would be typing,
Speaker 3: and you know, Mel would be the walker and there
Speaker 3: would be a sitter, but Billy Wilder could pretty much dictate,
Speaker 3: you know, the dialogue and the scene, and you know,
Speaker 3: the sitter was earning their money just typing and then
Speaker 3: pitching in and doing little bits here and there. And
Speaker 3: Mel was a he was a bit more at sea
Speaker 3: to be in with. And then it took him a
Speaker 3: long time and I mean you're talking about him being
Speaker 3: to some extent his comedy being fierce and adamant and angry.
Speaker 3: I think today, you know, especially verging on one hundred,
Speaker 3: you know, he's he's seen as a very cuddly tiger,
Speaker 3: you know, and a lot of that, a lot of
Speaker 3: that anger was taken away by success, sophistication, experience, etc.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found really interesting as
Speaker 1: well looking through your book is that when mel isn't performing,
Speaker 1: it isn't like the mel Brooks character that we all know.
Speaker 1: His personality isn't quite as strong. Maybe it's almost vacant
Speaker 1: at times, kind of like since Caesar. Sid Caesar's reputation
Speaker 1: was that when he wasn't on, he almost had no
Speaker 1: personality at all.
Speaker 3: I wish I knew whether it was true of Sid Caesar,
Speaker 3: even though I met him, but it was much later
Speaker 3: in his career. But you know, Carl Reiner off camera
Speaker 3: was was gentlemanly and sweet and quick, you know, but
Speaker 3: never angry. But you know, you could hear mel shouting
Speaker 3: in the room, you know, at his staff and boss
Speaker 3: as staff as the boss, you know, as they're coming
Speaker 3: down to his room in the studio, you know, in
Speaker 3: the seventies and eighties, so he had a side in
Speaker 3: private that was very domineering as well charm more charming,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't say more charming, because you know, part
Speaker 3: of his greatness, I think is that he took that
Speaker 3: likability and that charm that only Sid Caesar saw, you know,
Speaker 3: early on, and he gradually brought it into the room
Speaker 3: and onto the screen so that we see a guy
Speaker 3: on the screen who's in your face, you know, frequently,
Speaker 3: but it is very funny, which is a winning quality,
Speaker 3: and very charming, sometimes dapper, you know, and singing and
Speaker 3: you know, being you know, giving us his Frank Sinatra
Speaker 3: imitation inside. So I mean his I think his greatness
Speaker 3: as an entertainer is that he took that brand and
Speaker 3: all of the sort of complexity of it, and as
Speaker 3: you say, sometimes it was out of balance, you know,
Speaker 3: off screen or on screen, and he found a balance
Speaker 3: in most of his greatest work that people love as
Speaker 3: a brand. You know, he kept that whole idea of vaudeville,
Speaker 3: stick and kitch and bad puns and you know, fart
Speaker 3: noises and any kind of noise that gets a joke.
Speaker 3: You know, he took that from the twenties in the
Speaker 3: thirties when he grew up and when he loved it,
Speaker 3: you know, when it was dying, you know, and he
Speaker 3: took it off the screen from the people who were
Speaker 3: then really prominent in movies and on the stage, who
Speaker 3: were very well known entertainers. He loved that, you know,
Speaker 3: he loved that in a way, it's dumb comedy, you know.
Speaker 3: And he took that dumb comedy and he alone carried
Speaker 3: it into you know, the post sixties, and had carried
Speaker 3: alone for a while before he handed it over to
Speaker 3: you know, the next generation. Who who the judd apatous
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, the dumb and dumber people, and
Speaker 3: who took it farther and farther, you know, So it's
Speaker 3: no longer fart jokes. It's shit jokes. And but it's
Speaker 3: it's it's a Jewish tradition going way way back in vaudeville.
Speaker 3: In comedy. Uh, it's sometimes verbal quick wit, and sometimes
Speaker 3: it's very clever, clever, clever wordplay, and other times it's
Speaker 3: it's you know, uh, it's it's dumb jokes, you know.
Speaker 3: And sometimes it's slapstick and knock about, you know. And
Speaker 3: he's pretty good at slapstick and knock about comedy too.
Speaker 3: And he, you know, while Woody Allen is on you know,
Speaker 3: the East Coast in the seventies making Annie Hall and
Speaker 3: trying to be sophisticated and cosmopolitan and more deeply and
Speaker 3: deeply serious and bergmanesque, you know, Mel is honing his
Speaker 3: own little like you know, workshop of keeping this other
Speaker 3: tradition alive, which wood he knows and understands and loves,
Speaker 3: and so you know, he goes back to it in
Speaker 3: films like Broadway Danny Rose, which is you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of movie that Mel would love to have made,
Speaker 3: you know, whereas would he always would have loved to
Speaker 3: have made any movie that Mel made because they made
Speaker 3: him laugh, you know. And then he'd say that the
Speaker 3: greatest thing about Mel is that Mel loves his own movies,
Speaker 3: you know, and he loves his own work, and he
Speaker 3: loves himself, and the audience loved that about him. Wood
Speaker 3: he couldn't love his movies, you know, they were they
Speaker 3: were always imperfect. You know, they weren't as great as
Speaker 3: Igmar Bergmann or great as Felini, you know, his great,
Speaker 3: his great idols. But it didn't matter to Mel because
Speaker 3: he was not trying to perfect anything other than like
Speaker 3: a longstanding it to exist in a long standing tradition
Speaker 3: and do it the best he could.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting comparison because, you know, mel Brooks's movies
Speaker 1: are kind of big movies in that sort of over
Speaker 1: the top way, and Woody Allen's movies are small, and
Speaker 1: so in some ways we can understand why mel Brooks
Speaker 1: didn't make that many films and Woody Allan made perhaps
Speaker 1: too many films. But what you're saying is interesting that
Speaker 1: maybe Woody Allan kept making more films because he was
Speaker 1: never satisfied, whereas mel was very satisfied with his movies
Speaker 1: and wanted them to kind of have their own space.
Speaker 3: In some way, wood he's a writer. While we're having
Speaker 3: this podcast, wood he is writing something. Okay, it may
Speaker 3: never get published, produced, scene, it may not deserve any
Speaker 3: of those things, or it might, but he's a born writer.
Speaker 3: He's going to die a writer. You know. That was
Speaker 3: Mel's psychological you know thing, But it wasn't something that
Speaker 3: got him up in the morning and made him go
Speaker 3: back to work. Got him up in the morning, was
Speaker 3: wanting to go on top of the mountain and say
Speaker 3: my name is mel Brooks. And what he admires that,
Speaker 3: you know, even though that's not what he's doing at all.
Speaker 3: So I would say he always had trouble telling a story.
Speaker 3: That's why he needed writers. He could tell jokes, but
Speaker 3: telling a story, being a storyteller from beginning to end,
Speaker 3: that takes a writer. That's that was his that was
Speaker 3: his hang up. And I think there's a certain point
Speaker 3: in the early eighties or late seventies, depending on when
Speaker 3: you want to date it, where he just starts retelling
Speaker 3: the same story, the same jokes and the same stick
Speaker 3: and some movies are better and some movies are worse,
Speaker 3: but it kind of peters off. Then he goes back
Speaker 3: to Broadway and he tells the same story that he
Speaker 3: was telling in the movies, which isn't you know for him,
Speaker 3: as actually a kind of step higher because he always
Speaker 3: in love, was in love with the stage and Broadway.
Speaker 3: So to take his greatest works to Broadway and have
Speaker 3: them be one of the greatest, you know, among the
Speaker 3: greatest musical hits of all time, is another zenith, you know,
Speaker 3: for him. But I think you know, when you're doing
Speaker 3: Robin Hood and uh Dracula and uh you know, the
Speaker 3: movies towards the end of his career, some of which
Speaker 3: are good at times, very good. At times he's repeating
Speaker 3: ideas you know that we're on Sid Caesar that were
Speaker 3: sketches that he's now stretching out into a movie that's
Speaker 3: less exciting than the first time anyone sees something like
Speaker 3: The Producers, which is, you know, a very astonishing movie,
Speaker 3: or Blazing Saddles, which I think is for me is
Speaker 3: his masterpiece, or Young Frankenstein, which is a perfect movie.
Speaker 3: It too is a Sid Caesar sketch drawn out as
Speaker 3: a movie, but done by Gene Wilder because it was
Speaker 3: written by Gene Wilder. So and mel Co wrote it.
Speaker 3: Then you know, he came in to give it the
Speaker 3: professional gloss and to be the producer and director of it.
Speaker 3: And it's beautifully directed. So and Jean didn't even want
Speaker 3: mel in it because he didn't want mel winking at
Speaker 3: the audience. You know, he didn't want that wall broken.
Speaker 3: So I think if there's a point after that where
Speaker 3: the movies are you either like them or you don't
Speaker 3: like I happen to love Space Balls and find it
Speaker 3: very fresh and original. Of course it wouldn't be fresh
Speaker 3: and original today, but it was fresh and original for
Speaker 3: mel because that really wasn't a genre they had spoofed.
Speaker 1: You have the read and I see your schwartz is
Speaker 1: as big as mine.
Speaker 2: Now let's see how well you handle it. I grew
Speaker 2: up with Spaceballs and Young Frankenstein, and I remember when
Speaker 2: I had like a coming of age birthday, my parents
Speaker 2: showed me Blazing Saddles and I quickly understood why, you know,
Speaker 2: I had to be a certain age to see it,
Speaker 2: you know, because it took a certain amount of maturity
Speaker 2: to take it on. But I also, you know, I
Speaker 2: remember at the end of History of the World Part
Speaker 2: one there was a joking reference to being a part two,
Speaker 2: and my parents told me, like, that's mel Brooks. He's
Speaker 2: making a joke. He's never going to make that. So
Speaker 2: then I was pretty guffawed to see them make a
Speaker 2: History of the World Part two. But yeah, I'm wondering,
Speaker 2: have you watched History of the World Part two where
Speaker 2: you disappointed? What did you think about it?
Speaker 3: I did watch it out of curiosity, because when I'm
Speaker 3: done with the book, then it's work. But I did
Speaker 3: watch it out of curiosity and also to see not
Speaker 3: really what I thought about it in terms of its merits,
Speaker 3: but what I thought about it, you know, and look,
Speaker 3: someone's editing him, but he's no longer the young pup
Speaker 3: that he was in the nineteen fifties where he's spewing
Speaker 3: out brilliance every minute, and everybody who is in comedy
Speaker 3: adores him. So everybody would love to work with him.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't mean that people aren't good or aren't
Speaker 3: first class. You know. I thought jud Appetow's documentary about
Speaker 3: mel Brooks was was great, not because it was one
Speaker 3: hundred percent truthful, not because it was the greatest documentary
Speaker 3: ever made, but because Judge Appatow understood he was incredibly fond.
Speaker 3: Judd apt Appeta is a towering uh comic talent, filmmaker
Speaker 3: and writer. So there's you know, I don't want to
Speaker 3: say they're equal, because it's somehow it it it's not
Speaker 3: fair to either of them, but he's equivalent to to
Speaker 3: a mel Brooks, you know, and so there's nothing to
Speaker 3: say that there were there weren't parts that made me chuckle,
Speaker 3: but it was it was diminished capacity, you know, and Mel,
Speaker 3: not mel being in control at the top of his form.
Speaker 3: You know, he didn't have have to be quite so
Speaker 3: much for the Broadway shows because he wasn't directing, he
Speaker 3: wasn't doing all the writing as other people came in,
Speaker 3: and he was working from his own script thirty forty
Speaker 3: fifty years old, or a script whose properties he possessed
Speaker 3: and owned. But to go back from to the start,
Speaker 3: you know, and at that age, you worry. I mean,
Speaker 3: I worry about Larry David doing his show with Barack Obama.
Speaker 3: I want them both to look good, you know. And
Speaker 3: Larry David, he's older than me, so I don't want
Speaker 3: him to lose a step, you know, I want him
Speaker 3: to be great. So I'm sure all the people did
Speaker 3: that did that with the best hopes in mind and
Speaker 3: the best ideas in mind. They probably took the best
Speaker 3: ideas in the room. They have to respect Mel's opinion regardless,
Speaker 3: And so it was. I chuckled and I was amused.
Speaker 3: But diministry turns, I thought.
Speaker 1: In your book also you write about how mel Brooks's
Speaker 1: comedy is consistent to a fault, and by the time
Speaker 1: we get to the nineties with Robin Hood, men in
Speaker 1: tights and Dracula dead and loving it, basically fans had
Speaker 1: abandoned that kind of humor. He wasn't keeping up with
Speaker 1: the times.
Speaker 3: I think that's what it was. Those films look pretty
Speaker 3: good when you see them now, like Robin Hood men
Speaker 3: in tights, I'm kind of fond of. They all look good.
Speaker 3: They're well cast, the people are, the performers are great.
Speaker 3: Mel himself is very funny. He's he's a consummate director
Speaker 3: at that point. And I think the movie, the remake
Speaker 3: of Ta Be or Not To Be is pretty good,
Speaker 3: considering it's impossible, you know, and that it's possibly a
Speaker 3: dumb idea, you know, to remake that movie, but I
Speaker 3: think it's pretty good. I think, yes, he's he's his
Speaker 3: carrying forward of that old tradition where you know, Madeline
Speaker 3: con shows her legs and we go, oh, those are
Speaker 3: beautiful jewels you have on, you know, or you know,
Speaker 3: whatever the joke is is no longer funny. You know,
Speaker 3: the Harvey Korman Carol Burnett school of comedy on television,
Speaker 3: which is kind of lewde and lascivious, but never really
Speaker 3: it's gone, you know, because we've seen women on the
Speaker 3: bathroom farting and shooting and dumb and dumber people doing
Speaker 3: that and all kinds of scatological you know, dialogue that
Speaker 3: was shocking. You know, it's more shocking. It's probably not
Speaker 3: more shocking than Blazing Saddles in the N word, it's not,
Speaker 3: you know, but it's as shocking and a whole whole
Speaker 3: different cultural sphere. So so they brought it in and
Speaker 3: it is never going to go away. Now the N
Speaker 3: word comes in and goes back. It depends on like
Speaker 3: sometimes with this black filmmakers, the actor, it's not as certainly,
Speaker 3: or it's hip hop music, you know, so it goes
Speaker 3: in and it goes out. But it's still shocking in
Speaker 3: Blazing Saddles because you don't see it, you know, used
Speaker 3: in that kind of way by anybody else, in a
Speaker 3: Richard Pryor esque way. And possibly you couldn't do it nowadays,
Speaker 3: but you can do everything else.
Speaker 1: I remember at the Society for Nineteenth Century Historians presentation
Speaker 1: that you gave on Blazing Saddles, you mentioned that it
Speaker 1: is the only true Western.
Speaker 3: I think it's a Western, you know, you know Western,
Speaker 3: like who is a Richard Slatkin his name, you know
Speaker 3: who wrote Gunfighter Nation, which is a famous, famous like
Speaker 3: history of what the gunfighter myth, and it examines literature
Speaker 3: and films too. He notoriously or famously opposed, you know,
Speaker 3: considering Blazing Saddles a Western. I think it's a great
Speaker 3: Western because it gets all the cliches. It reminds you
Speaker 3: they are a cliche. Then it breaks the fourth wall
Speaker 3: into like the studio to show you they're filming it
Speaker 3: as a cliche. And then it ends up with the actors,
Speaker 3: you know, watching it eating popcorn and then writing off
Speaker 3: into the sunset in a limousine, you know, which is
Speaker 3: exactly Adam. You and I've probably discussed as I'm not
Speaker 3: the world's greatest fan of Westerns because I find they're
Speaker 3: full of bs. You know. Julius Epstein, who wrote Casa
Speaker 3: Blanc I told me, you know, he never wrote a Western,
Speaker 3: or he might have written a semi Western, like with
Speaker 3: his brother on assignment was but he said he couldn't
Speaker 3: take him seriously. There's such bs, you know, and they're
Speaker 3: usually historical bs, which is worse, you know, because all
Speaker 3: Westerns are an argument about what is factual and what
Speaker 3: is historical, and you see just horrible things, you know,
Speaker 3: that are accepted as truth, you know, in American culture
Speaker 3: because of Western So I like the ones that are
Speaker 3: completely opposed to all that, or completely diverge from all that,
Speaker 3: or try to be honest or realistic about you know,
Speaker 3: what the West happened to be? And Blazing Saddles does
Speaker 3: you know it?
Speaker 1: Does it?
Speaker 3: You know? You said Joey talked about how you know
Speaker 3: people you watched Blazing Saddles as a kid and you
Speaker 3: got it. But you can't show it to college kids
Speaker 3: today without them first laughing but not getting it. You know.
Speaker 3: So when I show it to my film classes, I
Speaker 3: afterwards come in with a list of like thirteen questions
Speaker 3: or you know, however many there are saying, you know,
Speaker 3: why is it funny that there's only one ice cream flavor?
Speaker 3: You know at the Howard Johnson's ice cream stand. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't know, but they're laughing. You know, who is
Speaker 3: Madeline Khn making fun of or vamping in the movie?
Speaker 3: They don't know, but they're laughing, so they don't know.
Speaker 3: It's actually a richly textured script from you know, we
Speaker 3: only mentioned you know to the writers mel Brooks and
Speaker 3: Richard Pryor, but it was originated by Andrew Bergman as
Speaker 3: a as a as exactly what it was about a
Speaker 3: black sheriff comedy about a black sheriff coming to a
Speaker 3: white town. So he has a huge hand in it.
Speaker 3: And then he and then there are two other like
Speaker 3: really well known comedy writers who became or were really
Speaker 3: well known for being experts, you know. So it was
Speaker 3: this superbly textured, layered, dense comedy in which you could
Speaker 3: be laughing at one joke, like, you know, the Indians
Speaker 3: come on and they speak Yiddish. The kids don't know
Speaker 3: what they're speaking. I teach them, Marquette. You know, they
Speaker 3: don't know what they're speaking, they don't know why the
Speaker 3: jokes are funny, and they're laughing. That's good. But still
Speaker 3: it's a movie. And again you can see Young Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: and it's a sophisticated movie. It's a dumber comedy, but
Speaker 3: you have to know what it's making fun of for
Speaker 3: it to get the joke. And that's a level of
Speaker 3: sophistication that I think even if I showed Young Frankenstein
Speaker 3: and asked everybody, why is that funny? You might have
Speaker 3: had to read the novel, you know, to know why
Speaker 3: it's super funny. You know, the producers, the producers, they
Speaker 3: couldn't possibly get I don't think they could possibly get it.
Speaker 3: I'd have to explain it. And when you explain a
Speaker 3: joke to someone sometimes they go, oh, I get it,
Speaker 3: and they laugh, but you know, it's the moment of
Speaker 3: laughing is really gone.
Speaker 1: I have one last question for you. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: difficult one, but what would American comedy be without Mel Brooks.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, if you asked any comedian you know,
Speaker 3: would they would tell you there would be a big
Speaker 3: hole in the middle. You know, there would be the
Speaker 3: Golden Age and then there would be today. But the
Speaker 3: transition aged the post sixties to the like late eighties,
Speaker 3: early nineties, when the when the new generation starts to emerge.
Speaker 3: You know, the airplane folks you know, for example, are Jewish,
Speaker 3: and that's that's an old tradition comedy. Even though they
Speaker 3: were very funny and risque and good filmmakers, not where
Speaker 3: you know they are but the middle, but they didn't
Speaker 3: really command, you know, attention in the same way that
Speaker 3: Mel did. He commanded attention. He took that brand, He
Speaker 3: made that brand so that today if I go out
Speaker 3: on the street with my microphone and say, what do
Speaker 3: you think of Mel Brooks, you know, and I live
Speaker 3: in a like immigrant graduate student university neighborhood. Probably nine
Speaker 3: out of ten and the tenth would be a Chinese,
Speaker 3: you know, medical student who can't understand what I'm asking,
Speaker 3: you know, or something. But nine out of ten would
Speaker 3: know who he was, and they would smile and they
Speaker 3: would laugh, you know. He he was very very important
Speaker 3: as a as a to keep that part of comedy alive.
Speaker 3: And you know what, all comedy shouldn't be Ern Slubitch
Speaker 3: who is you know, the master and there or Billy Wilder,
Speaker 3: you know, both of whom are very risque, you know,
Speaker 3: comic directors. But you know, comedy also has to be rude,
Speaker 3: uh and arrogant and naughty in every possible way. Uh
Speaker 3: and uh. Mel kept that alive. And and so when
Speaker 3: we see somebody today and say we love Seth Rogan,
Speaker 3: you know you say you love Seth Rogan, You know
Speaker 3: I do love Seth Rogan. To me, Seth Rogan is
Speaker 3: a marker of something I want to see that will
Speaker 3: probably be funny. You know, Well, ask Seth Rogan about
Speaker 3: Mel Brooks. I'd be very surprised if he didn't say,
Speaker 3: I'm here because of Mel Brooks. You know, he's not
Speaker 3: gonna say I'm here because of Woody Allen, although a
Speaker 3: lot of them will say that too.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting what you're saying. There's kind of
Speaker 1: two streams that come out of, in my mind, the
Speaker 1: early days of film comedy. There's the Three Stooges on
Speaker 1: one side, and there's the Marx Brothers on the other side,
Speaker 1: who are the sophisticated version. So in a way like
Speaker 1: mel Brooks blends them together.
Speaker 3: He does. He does because he doesn't quite go down
Speaker 3: to the Three Stooges level. But that's why we love
Speaker 3: the Three Stooges. You know, there has to be three
Speaker 3: Stooges comedy today, you know. I mean, so he blends them. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's gonna in a scene he's quite capable of going oh,
Speaker 3: you know, or doing something really really stupid on purpose
Speaker 3: for a laugh. That's part of comedy.
Speaker 1: And then on the other side, of course, there are
Speaker 1: messages in mel Brooks's films if you look in the
Speaker 1: right places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I would say less, you know, mostly not
Speaker 3: like he's not political except he's against Hitler. Well that's
Speaker 3: pretty important, you know, it's very important to say you know,
Speaker 3: because it's very important to say that he was. He
Speaker 3: was proudly Jewish, and he made that. He made that
Speaker 3: popular in American culture. And he was of course virulently
Speaker 3: anti anti Semites, you know, so uh and made that
Speaker 3: funny and made that popular. So he'd be a good
Speaker 3: antidote for like, you know, white nationalists. Stick them in
Speaker 3: the jail cell and make them watch mel Brooks movies.
Speaker 3: You know, they'd probably end up laughing after a long
Speaker 3: time when they were forced to watch, and then they
Speaker 3: might get their brains cleaned, you know, because he did
Speaker 3: stand for something. Maybe it's a little more mysterious, you
Speaker 3: know what he or a little bit more scholarly to
Speaker 3: discuss what he stood for, but not not when it
Speaker 3: comes to being a proud, proud banner wearer of Jewish
Speaker 3: identity and comedy. You know, he banner waiver.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one way to some of mel Brooks is
Speaker 1: that he is the quintessential New York Jew.
Speaker 3: He is, he is, He's probably going to be California
Speaker 3: Jew when he dies, though, because he's made himself, you know.
Speaker 3: That was that was the thing in the seventies at
Speaker 3: Woody Allen was the East Coast Jewish New York director,
Speaker 3: and Mel was the West Coast Jewish movie director. And
Speaker 3: really you have to say that Mel is he's really
Speaker 3: striving for entertainment, the broadest possible entertainment, the biggest possible laughs,
Speaker 3: the biggest possible audience, the hot, biggest possible recognition. And
Speaker 3: what he's not really doing that. He stumbles into that
Speaker 3: now and then, but he doesn't do that, and he
Speaker 3: looks down his nose at it, or he envies Mel
Speaker 3: being happy with that.
Speaker 1: You know, well, thanks so much for joining us, Patrick.
Speaker 3: And give us a good subject. I like talking about.
Speaker 1: It and to our audience. Now back to your regularly
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