Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Melvin James Brooksis an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, composer, songwriter and veteran. He is known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. Brooks began his career as a comic and a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner in the comedy skit, The 2000 Year Old Man. He also created, with Buck Henry, the hit television comedy series, Get Smart,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth28 June 1926
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible. The job is to make people laugh. I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.
We want to get people laughing; we don't want to offend anybody.
Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin.
Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.
Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.
I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.
Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
I've never been happier than when I was writing the musical score of The Producers. One song after another tumbled out of my head in what was the most soul-satisfying experience of my career. And in my less than humble opinion, I must say that it turned out to be surprisingly good.
There's no lightning. There's blood, sweat and tears. There's a good idea and there's 18 months of due diligence, hard work, day and night.
That's Tom Meehan. You wouldn't dream he'd come up with those home runs. You'd think: 'Tom Meehan. Gentile, structure, taste. But you wouldn't think he'd come up with the jokes. But he's got it. He got it all.
I think people should buy 20 of them. Buy 20 and save a lot of them for Christmas presents. Who knows how many of these they make? They might be gone.
I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.
It's talent. Either you got it or you ain't.
I wouldn't have done this show without Nathan Lane, because he's God's gift to Broadway, ... And Matthew's a surprising find -- I didn't know he could sing and dance.