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
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.
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.
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin....
I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.
I also try to surround myself with people I love - make a family out of the company. So I tend to use the same people over and over. There's a sort of Mel Brooks Repertory Company.
Why should I waste my good time making a straight dramatic film? The people who can't make you laugh can do that.
Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.
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.
My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.
I always thought it was great to be able to make people feel better. It was a little like being God.
Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.
I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?
There's a lot of things that I've done to stick into the box set. You never have it this good. I think people should bargain. They shouldn't just buy the set, it's a little expensive [anyway]. But they should say - I'll give them dialogue, I'm a good writer.