Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I’m almost constantly reminded how lucky I am as a film geek to lead the life I live. I’d say on a daily basis even. But there are a few moments that stand above the rest, when things happen that really shouldn’t happen. Getting a chance to talk to Mel Brooks, to bullshit about his career and geek out about Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Harvey Korman, High Anxiety and his son’s awesome work for nearly half an hour is one of those moments. The lovely Orna Pickens at Warners said she was going to try to hook me up with Mel Brooks for a GET SMART centered interview. Great, I said. Let’s do it. Then weeks passed and the movie came closer and closer to release and I figured it was one of those things that just wasn’t going to happen. Then I get a call from Shelby at Mel Brooks’ office asking if I’d be ready to talk to Mr. Brooks in half an hour or so. Sure, I said, of course! After I hung up I ran to the computer to do some quick research… no more than two minutes pass and the phone rings again. “I have Mr. Brooks for you. Are you ready?” “Uh… sure…” As I ran back to the speaker phone in the room. First words I hear out of Brooks’ mouth: “Eric Vespe, What the HELL do you want from me!?!” God, I wish I could have gotten that on tape… I fumbled some sort of flattery as I put Mr. Brooks on speaker phone and turned on my Digital Audio Recorder. Below you’ll find our chat. Considering I had no time to try to plan a structure you’ll find that it’s very conversational and a whole lot of fun. I hope you enjoy it. I know I did.
Mel Brooks: What do you want from Mel Brooks?
Quint: What do I want from Brooks? Well, besides the fact that I am a huge fan and have been… My parents introduced me to your work when I was real young, so I guess just to talk to you and pick your brain a little bit.
Mel Brooks: Sure, sure. I know that GET SMART is opening and you probably want… I saw the movie.
Quint: Yeah? Is it good?
Mel Brooks: I liked it. I liked it a lot. I thought he (Steve Carell) was the perfect choice.
Quint: It seems, from what I have seen, that he is not aping Don [Adams].
Mel Brooks: No, he’s not doing Don Adams at all. He is doing Steve Carell. He is kind of somewhere between his movie work on other things and THE OFFICE. He’s Steve Carell! He’s very smart and says a lot with his eyes and with assertive looks. You can read fear very comfortably in his face. He tells you a lot with his facial expressions.
Quint: Now how long have they been trying to make a movie out of this? Is this a fairly recent…?
Mel Brooks: No, they once did one actually with Don Adams himself in the movie. It was called THE NUDE BOMB.
Quint: I remember.
Mel Brooks: And it indeed was. It was a total failure and they never bothered to call Buck Henry or myself to say “What do you think of the script?” We had nothing to do with that one, but they did call us on this one. Peter Segal, the director, kept in constant touch with me with his ideas and his casting and I thought his take on our series and his move out towards today’s movie was damn good. For me it was a great crossover between the GET SMART that we had done and then the JAMES BOND. There are a lot of incredible special effects in it.
Quint: Yeah, I’ve talked to Peter a few times since last year at the San Diego Comic Con, where I first met him, and every bit of footage that I see kind of impressed me that he was making a big action movie, not like something that was just spoofing the series.
Mel Brooks: Yeah exactly. It wasn’t just a 25 cent spoof of GET SMART, he was making a big beautiful bold funny picture and I think it’s going to do well. I was there with about 200 people or so and they all laughed. They were really laughing all over the place and I mean, you can’t make people laugh. It’s just good natural explosions of out of control laughter. It was great.
Quint: How does it compare, because I think that kind of idea harkens back to your stuff, because you look at something like BLAZING SADDLES and its not a direct spoof of any one thing, it’s its own comedy within its own world.
Mel Brooks: It definitely is a western genre spoof, but its story is very different. The engine that runs BLAZING SADDLES is the hatred that the rednecks have for the black sheriff. That’s the explosion behind it.
Quint: Yeah, but the idea that you were not just making… You look at spoof movies today and there’s been something lost, like now a spoof just means…
Mel Brooks: You can’t just do spoofs, you’ve got to have a point of view. Without a point of view, it just does not work and you need a tight story. When we did HIGH ANXIETY, I talked to Alfred Hitchcock every day and he was very kind and very nice and he gave me a lot of help on what he thought; how we should take off from his movies to our comedy and he was very helpful.
Quint: That’s fascinating. So, you had Hitchcock’s ear the whole way through?
Mel Brooks: All along and at the end of the movie, when it was over, he saw the first preview of it and walked out, but didn’t say a word. I thought “Oh my God, I’m finished!” I thought he would turn towards me and say “I liked it” or “I don’t like it” or whatever. The next day I got a case of wine, a beautiful case of six Magnums, that’s double bottles, of Chateau Haut Brion 1961, priceless wine with a little note saying “Dear Mel, you should have no anxiety about HIGH ANXIETY, it’s wonderful.” It was just beautiful, made me cry.
Quint: Speaking of, my condolences on Harvey. I grew up with his stuff…
Mel Brooks: There will never anybody that had the charm, the wit, the timing, and the voice… the voices that Harvey used to manufacture… He was amazing.
Quint: Yeah and I guess somewhere in the back of my mind, I would have always hoped that there would have been one more team up between you two.
Mel Brooks: I know. I was thinking maybe HISTORY OF THE WORLD: PART 2 and he could do almost any character. I could make him a pilgrim. He would have been a funny looking pilgrim. I also could have made him a Civil War southern, like a Rhett Butler type with Carroll Burnet. He would have been good. He was larger than life. You could do a lot with Harvey. Oh, I miss him a lot.
Quint: Just speaking as a fan, I never had the chance to meet him, but when you read that and I have talked to a lot of his fans since posting the obituary, there is a feeling of loss, like a true genuine hole now in the community.
Mel Brooks: Our world of comedy has seriously diminished with his absence. He added so much to it.
Quint: That means you need to get together with Gene [Wilder]. We want one more movie with Gene.
Mel Brooks: I know. I keep begging him, but he has become a little reclusive and I’ve got to break him out.
Quint: You need to find that perfect bit.
Mel Brooks: We had a moment together that was absolutely transcendental, on the opening night of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, on the stage of the Hilton Theater on Broadway, I came up to take a bow and the place went crazy. They loved the show and our cast was taking a bow and I came up with Tom Meehan, who wrote the book with me, and Susan Stroman, who staged it. The three of us came up to take a bow and then I said “Wait ladies and gentlemen, the man who started it all, I have a special treat for you waiting in the wings here, right here in this theater. The unforgettable handsome gargoyle, Gene Wilder” and Gene came out from the wings and the place… You never heard a sound like that in your life. It was like a fireworks factory had been detonated. Screaming noise… I had never heard anything like it. They never stopped cheering. What a night that was.
Quint: Well, it’s not just nostalgia for the kids of my generation, but it’s also the fact that there isn’t another like him. You can look at some of the action stars and there are new actions stars and there are new comedians too, comic actors, but there is nobody like Gene. I can’t think of somebody who has the heart and the insanity that he can inject.
Mel Brooks: And like Harvey, Gene Wilder was an artist. He was a comic artist. He understood how comedy met life on a real basis. That’s why he is such a legend.
Quint: It doesn’t surprise me that you got that applause. I would have been right along with everybody if I were there.
Mel Brooks: It was great. I’m hoping to make… I don’t know… They said “You better not make BLAZING SADDLES, because then you’ll just be turning your movies into musicals” and I said “well, I’ll make anything I want. If BLAZING SADDLES can be made and it can be totally hysterically funny, I’ll do it.” My contract is not with critics, it’s with the audience and you know, you can’t worry about pleasing the critics, because you never know what they are going to like, but you always have a sense if you love it, you’re an “audi-i,” you are a singular audience and if you like it, they will probably like it too.
Quint: Definitely and especially speaking of the world, so many people who are in film criticism don’t like movies. I can’t tell you how many people that I have met that just… especially newspaper critics. For some reason, they don’t go for that position, they are given it and you can tell.
Mel Brooks: It’s not up to snuff, right? They’re “pedestrian” or “low-brow,” right.
Quint: Completely and I think we are kind of entering a new age where you are getting more… A lot of the online sites are getting a lot more movie geek and movie knowledgeable friendly.
Mel Brooks: We are turning more towards on line than we are with any other thing. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN just won the broadway.com award for the best musical of the year and that means so much to me.
Quint: That’s great.
Mel Brooks: With broadway.com, millions of true theater enthusiasts who love musical comedies, rather than a dozen critics who quarrel with each other and what is on stage, so that is an award for me that is real.
Quint: I would love to see it. I don’t get to New York too often, but…
Mel Brooks: Well we should be going out, I don’t know if it’s August or next July, August, or September, but we will be out and there will be a wonderful tour of the Broadway show and it will go everywhere and I’m sure that… We are thinking of Houston actually.
Quint: Oh yeah?
Mel Brooks: Well, Houston has a great theater audience.
Quint: My best friend’s mother in law works at the big Houston Opera house.
Mel Brooks: It’s a great theater. It’s a really terrific theater and Houston has a good theatrical base, so we will probably go to Houston. It might even open there, I’d love to.
Quint: Well as big a fan of yours as I am, I’m also becoming just as big a fan of your son.
Mel Brooks: Oh you’re kidding.
Quint: No joke.
Mel Brooks: You know Max Brook’s work?
Quint: I know it and I’ve read it. I have both of his books.
Mel Brooks: You have WORLD WAR Z, too huh?
Quint: And ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, yeah.
Mel Brooks: Well Brad Pitt bought that book.
Quint: I know. I’ve heard the script is actually really incredible.
Mel Brooks: It’s supposed to be a very good script, (J. Michael) Straczynski and Paramount is just waiting for the right director. I think it’s like CLOVERFIELD or I AM LEGEND. It’s big stuff. The zombies take the world and the world takes the earth back from the zombies. It’s big stuff. In the middle of it, Max is making some very sharp comments about who gets to run countries and why. I think it’s brilliant.
Quint: It’s really smart and it’s really fascinating. People have always used zombie stories… If you go back to Romero, they have used that for commentary.
Mel Brooks: They are metaphors for presidents. Zombies are metaphors!
Quint: It’s great. I actually got a chance to talk to him when I interviewed him for the book. It was great.
Mel Brooks: At the end of the ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, there are a bunch of stories going on, like 19 or 20 stories and that is going to be a graphic novel, the zombie incursion and I saw some of the drawing that he was showing me from some artist from Argentina or something and it was incredible. I said “When does this come out? Hurry! Hurry!” and he says “No Dad, you can’t rush the artist. The art has to be good.” Max, my son, is very, very specific and detailed and disciplined, unlike his father.
Quint: You lucked out.
Mel Brooks: I do cowboys scraping beans off plates and drinking black coffee and making noise. I’m very proud of him and I’m glad you mentioned that.
Quint: Of course, he is quickly becoming a big voice within the horror community.
Mel Brooks: In the world of horror and the world of metaphoric horror.
Quint: What’s great is he keeps a level of… with ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, there’s a little kitch to it, but when you get to WORLD WAR Z, it’s like it’s written like a historical document.
Mel Brooks: What is great about it is he dropped SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. He worked on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE for a couple of years and there was a little bit of that in ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, but when he got to WORLD WAR Z, he really decided to do something big and different and he really devoted himself to talking about what we are and who runs us and what our values are. It’s just amazing that he… It’s kind of philosophical and psychological entertainment with the Zombies leading the way, so that you are always interested. It’s always scary and exciting.
Quint: It’s great and I can’t wait to see what he has left. It feels like he has just started showing us what he has got.
Mel Brooks: He is just beginning. He’s got a lot of ideas, I know that. Anyways, it’s a pleasure to talk to you.
Quint: Thank you so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it.
Mel Brooks: I just want to help do everything I can. I like Segal and I like the movie very much and I think Carell and Hathaway… She’s wonderful and she’s beautiful and she’s a karate expert and Alan Arkin is deadpan and beautiful. The movie is really a handsome, big handsome,funny gorgeous movie. I think it’s going to do very well.
Quint: It looks like they got all of the right combinations. Like you said, Hathaway is jaw dropping in everything I have seen. She is just absolutely gorgeous and Arkin is about as perfect casting as I think they can do.
Mel Brooks: You can’t do better than Alan Arkin. And Terence Stamp, I think was some kind of creative insanity to make as Siegfried and he’s just great.
Quint: He’s a great heavy.
Mel Brooks: And classy heavy, you know? He’s kind of an elegant heavy and has some depth.
Quint: Yeah and he doesn’t get a chance very often to flex his comedy muscle either, so.
Mel Brooks: He’s good. He was in a fabulous movie... There was a movie in Australia about a trailer that he lived in… a very heartbreaking story of female impersonators. It was incredible.
Quint: Was it The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert?
Mel Brooks: Yeah, Priscilla. Fabulous movie and you know it’s a small little movie like “What the hell is this?” I found it somewhere and somebody said “You have got to see this.” There are some movies that nobody ever tells you about, and you’re lucky to find them. There was one with Vin Diesel. Who would have figured Vin Diesel would be in such a great movie, it was called FIND ME GUILTY.
Quint: About the trial.
Mel Brooks: It’s a great movie! You just have to get lucky and find these little gems scattered around, like Mel Brooks’ LIFE STINKS. You got to be lucky, since there are wonderful little movies all around. Somebody has to tell you “You need to see that.” You have to be the guy!
Quint: We try out best, sir.
Mel Brooks: You have to find these crazy little off the beaten track movies and you’ve got to say, “Watch this one” or you’ve got to say to your younger audiences “There are a series of black and white movies and they are written by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin and they are called Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies and some of the titles are TOP HAT and SWINGTIME and see these before you die!”
Quint: I love TOP HAT. TOP HAT is one of my all…
Mel Brooks: You have to tell them, because a lot of young kids have never heard of it.
Quint: I’m running a series on the site right now called “A MOVIE A DAY” where I’m looking at a lot of noirs right now, but every day is just a discussion about an older movie. I think the newest one that I’ve talked about right now has bee n1975, and most of them go into the thirties and forties.
Mel Brooks: That is great. Good for you! Tell them to see Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS.
Quint: That’s such a great performance with him and Gene in that movie.
Mel Brooks: Gene Wilder and… You know on the 18th, at the Los Angeles Theater, an old old movie palace in downtown LA they are going to show the black and white original Gerald Hirschfeld film, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and I’m going to be there and I’m going to thank all of those geeks and nerds and people that love YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
Quint: I would be there. I was lucky enough to have a friend attend a festival with Peter Boyle a few years back and I have a lobby card that I got signed from that, and if I was in LA, I would be there with bells on and I would force you to sign that card for me.
Mel Brooks: Cloris Leachman is going to be there, too. Frau Bluher! (neighs like a horse)
Quint: (laugh) I love Cloris Leachman. She is so great. So that is on your agenda and you have to make a movie with Gene and Cloris. That’s your task.
Mel Brooks: I’ve got to! Whoever is still alive from that movie. We have got to figure out something else.
Quint: That would be great and I can only tell you how…
Mel Brooks: We have to keep in touch. If you want any other kind of information, call me from time to time and I’ll let you know which car to drive and what black and white movies to see… You should see THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, that should give you one more.
Quint: I literally watched that two days ago.
Mel Brooks: You’re kidding. Well, you have good taste.
Quint: Yeah, ASPHALT JUNGLE, followed by CLASH BY NIGHT. It was tw Marilyn (Monroe) noirs.
Mel Brooks: Don’t forget THE PALM BEACH STORY.
Quint: I will write that one down. That one is not on my list yet.
Mel Brooks: That’s a great film.
Quint: Alright cool, well thank you so much again for taking the time and good luck with the screening. I wish I could be there.
Mel Brooks: You bet and call me any time if you need info, I’m glad to talk to you.
Quint: Alright cool, thank you so much.
Mel Brooks: Take care.
I don’t know if you guys got the same charge I did talking to the man, but listening over the interview again as I put the finishing touches on it really puts a smile on my face. I don't know about you guys, but I'd kill to see him pull Gene out of his house and make one more flick with him. I hope you guys dug the chat. I have 4 more interviews I’ve conducted in as many days with the star and director of THE WACKNESS, one of my favorite flicks from this year’s Sundance film festival that is seeing release in a couple of weeks, as well as a capper to our Stan Winston Tribute, a conversation with a couple of his partners at Stan Winston Studios about his life, legacy and the future of the Studios. Keep an eye out for those. -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
