THR Icon on HBO Doc, Looks Back on Career

At 99, Mel Brooks does not speak like a man arranging his legacy. He speaks like a man still chasing the next laugh.

Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!, the new HBO documentary directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio (and titled as a nod to Brooks’ classic “2000 Year Old Man” comedy routine with Carl Reiner), excavates with unusual tenderness the life and career of arguably the most influential American humorist since Mark Twain. Twain, of course, never stooped to fart jokes or hunchback gags in pursuit of a giggle. Brooks did both, proudly, repeatedly and to seismic effect. That anything-for-a-laugh ethos is not a flaw in his canon but its animating principle. Brooks’ comedy is funny because it refuses reverence. It is funny because it is reckless. It is funny because it believes, with almost religious conviction, that laughter is worth the risk.

Across nearly a century, Brooks has repeatedly tested the limits of taste, commerce, politics and patience. He has offended studio executives, television censors, foreign governments and polite society at large, often all at once. He also has reshaped the grammar of American comedy, leaving behind a body of work that includes The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part 1, High Anxiety and Spaceballs. Several of those films were dismissed or misunderstood on arrival, only to be adored later. Others were instant detonations. All of them bear the same unmistakable fingerprint: an artist who believes that nothing is sacred except the laugh itself.

The HBO documentary tracks Brooks from his childhood in Brooklyn through World War II, the writers room of Your Show of Shows, his creative marriage of nearly 41 years to Anne Bancroft, his lifelong brotherhood with Reiner and his creative partnerships with Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor and countless others. What emerges is not merely a portrait of a comic genius but a portrait of a man driven by affection. Love, not cruelty, is the motor of Brooks’ humor. Love of people. Love of laughter. Love of the audience.

Brooks recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the risks that paid off, the ones that didn’t and the strange clarity that comes with having spent a century testing how far comedy can go before it breaks.

What’s your favorite joke of all time?

Myron Cohen was one of the Jewish comics that used to work the Borscht Belt in the Catskills. He told a joke that I loved: A guy walks into a grocery store and says, “I would like a half a pound of lox. I’d like a quarter of a pound of cream cheese. I’d like six bagels.” And then the guy says, “Excuse me, I don’t like to pry, but I see that all your shelves are filled with these red boxes of salt. Salt, salt on every shelf. Just boxes and boxes of salt. How come? Do you sell a lot of salt?” And the grocer answers, “Me, if I sell a box of salt a week it’s a miracle. I don’t sell much salt. But the guy that sells me salt — boy, can he sell salt!” That’s one of my favorite jokes.

Let’s talk about some of your movies and just how groundbreaking and envelope-pushing they were. Blazing Saddles jumps to mind. What were your studio notes on that? They must have been a little bit perturbed.

No, actually. That was Warner Bros. John Calley was in charge of production, and he was crazy about the script. The notes were like, “Keep going! Be as crazy as you want.” He encouraged stuff that was in questionable taste, like the farting scene and stuff like that.

Once you filmed the farting scene, was the studio happy with it?

Well, the guys that wore suits, the executives, were very unhappy with it. But John Calley — who never wore a suit, he just wore casual clothes — he loved it. Even though the suits had something to say about finance, they had really nothing to say about content. I still had final cut, so I knew I could do mostly whatever I wanted.

Did Blazing Saddles ever end up on TV?

It did end up on TV. Of course, they murdered it by bleeping out anything they felt was in questionable taste. They had their own ideas of what the public could take, and they were cowards.

You hear people say, “No one could get away with making that movie anymore.” Do you think you could still make Blazing Saddles today?

Sure. There were certain words we used [that would not fly today]. We used the N-word a lot, because Richard Pryor used it a lot and he was one of our writers. There were so many different things in Blazing Saddles that were in questionable taste, but who cares? Good taste doesn’t mean a thing. They realized that funny is money, so they let us get away with a lot of stuff.

Plus, it wasn’t just bad taste. It was coming from a great place. You had a message there.

You’re absolutely right. It’s good to have something underneath everything, an engine. We attacked race prejudice, and that worked for us because we knew we were right. When you know you’re right, nothing can stop you. The material was considered questionable, and we were warned we’d better be careful. But we weren’t. We were not careful at all. We were dangerous — and the more dangerous we got, the better the movie got.

Gene Wilder — what was his secret? Why was he such a brilliant comedic performer?

He was a very rare actor. Gene actually listened to the other actor facing him. He really stuck to the story. And he kept the story going by listening and responding. He breathed. A lot of actors don’t breathe. They just say their line right after it’s their part to go on. Gene considered what the other person was saying to him. I would call it naturalism. Gene always made it so real.

One of my favorite movies of yours that doesn’t always get mentioned as often as the others is High Anxiety.

I just got a call from Ted Sarandos to congratulate me on this HBO thing. I said, “What’s your favorite Mel Brooks movie?” He said, “High Anxiety.” It was weird. Most people would’ve said Blazing Saddles or The Producers or something a lot more popular, but he loved High Anxiety.

I’m in good company. Did he tell you why?

He thought it was just nifty. It was neat. It was funny. And he thought it was a great takeoff of the Hitchcock genre.

Was Alfred Hitchcock alive to see it?

Oh, yeah. We had a rough-cut screening — just the cast, the crew and Hitchcock.

You must have been nervous.

I was very nervous. At the end, Hitchcock didn’t say a word. He just left. We thought that somehow it didn’t click with him and we had made a mistake. But the next day, on my desk was a big, wooden box with a red ribbon on top of it. It was a box of Duhart-Milon, a Rothschild wine. There was a note: “Have no anxiety about High Anxiety. It’s wonderful. Alfred.”

I learned so much in the documentary about your time fighting in World War II. I didn’t realize to what extent you were deployed overseas and how dangerous it was and how deeply it affected you.

When I was 17 and a half, I was heading for my final semester at Eastern High School in Brooklyn. A guy came around and said, “If you join the Army Reserves, we’ll take care of your semester and send you to …” and he rattled off some colleges. “We have room at Georgetown. We have room at VMI.” I said, “What’s VMI?” And he said, “Virginia Military Institute, the West Point of the South.” I said, “Am I allowed to go to such a school? Send me to this VMI.” They taught me how to ride, and they taught me how to fire a rifle. A kid from Williamsburg, riding a horse and wielding a saber! It was just insane. But I did learn things — simple things like honesty, never lie and be faithful to the men around you.

Was it a difficult adjustment to come back to the U.S. after the war?

No, not at all. I was so happy to get back. I said, “From the war to show business, they’re both noisy, but I prefer the latter.” I was very happy to go back to show business.

Growing up Jewish, a lot of my first exposure to Hitler and antisemitism was through you.

Very few people had the nerve to take on Hitler. I was always making fun of Hitler.

So what was the thinking there?

I was just getting even with him. “You kill Jews, I’m going to make fun of the Nazis.” Payback.

You’ve been around for many presidencies now. Who was the funniest president?

Well, I wanted him to be president. Fiorello La Guardia. He walked funny. He talked funny. He didn’t know he was funny. But he was hysterically funny. And then finally they did make a musical about him — Fiorello! It was great. But what a waste of a great comic.

How long have you lived in L.A.?

I fully settled here in my late 30s. Two-thirds of my life has been here in L.A. I don’t want to go back to New York. It’s cold and there’s no space to look at. If you look one way, you see a building. If you look the other way, you see another building.

When I was a little kid, I was sent to Camp Sussex in New Jersey. A cantor put up the money for poor Jewish kids. I was 6 years old. There was nothing there but trees, grass and these wooden huts. I kept asking the counselor, “Where’s the drug store? Where’s the candy store? Where are the trolleys?”

I liked Blazing Saddles because it was set in wide open spaces. The craziest thing I did in Blazing Saddles was to take the Count Basie band and put it in the desert to trumpet the fact that the sheriff was coming to town. That arrangement of “April in Paris” was fabulous. Sorry, I talk too much.

No, you talk just the right amount. They say now it’s harder than ever to get a movie made. Do you remember a particularly difficult pitch?

I had one with the foreign department at Fox. I wanted to do my version of She Stoops to Conquer. It’s an English comedy you may have heard of. And they said no. I’d never had a no in my life. I said, “Are you people crazy? This is Mel Brooks. I’m talking to you. I’m offering you a movie. Just say, ‘Yes! God bless you! Thank you! We can’t thank you enough!’ Those are your lines.” And they said, “No, it’s too weird.”

What’s something that you once thought was very important that you now realize was a big waste of time?

I once thought if I could be in one of the big baseball teams in Williamsburg, it would be critical to my happiness. I wanted to pitch, but my brother Bernie was a great pitcher, so I was happy that at least we had one of the family on an important team.

I once had a crush on Glenda Rosenthal in high school. I said, “I’m going to kill myself if I don’t marry her or if I don’t make her my gal, my wife.” Two months later, I was madly in love with Shirley Eblewicz. I finally ended up with the right girl.

Anne Bancroft. The best.

She made me do things that I didn’t think I could do. She said, “You can do them, and you can do them as well as anybody ever did them.” Like composing songs. I had finished the script for The 12 Chairs. I said to Anne, “I need a title song.” She gave me a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen and sent me up to the attic. She said, “Think of the movie, think of the feelings, and write that big song.” And I did. Four hours later, I came down with (singing), “Hope for the best, expect the worst/You could be Tolstoy or Fannie Hurst/No way of knowing which way it’s going/Hope for the best, expect the worst!”

Your life was a series of love affairs. Some were romantic, like with your wife. Some were brotherly, like with Carl Reiner and Gene Wilder. But in watching the doc, it struck me that love was the driving engine of much of your comedy and your life.

I would say that’s true. Emotionally, the feeling of love is very important.

Is there a connection between comedy and love?

There is. Comedy is hard, and you really have to love it to stick with it. I used to think love was the response I’d get when I’d do something funny. I’d get a big laugh, and it would run through my body and cheer me up. I really felt great about getting laughter from my work.

I’m very excited about the Spaceballs sequel. Were you the one who got Rick Moranis to come out of retirement?

I did.

How?

I said, “Look, do you want to go to your grave without ever coming back to show business again in any way?” Then I said, “This is the way. This is the only way. Spaceballs, Dark Helmet — that’s your re-entrance.” I got him to do it. He’s never been better. He’s even better than in the first edition. He’s so good. He’s a strange, wonderful, lovely guy and a very talented comic.

What’s the secret to happiness?

Maybe a plate of chicken chow mein. Billy Crystal called me recently and said, “Is there anything you need?” And I said, “I have always been fond of rice pudding.” Two hours later, a ring at the door. A quart of rice pudding.

This story appeared in the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.