Comedy legend Mel Brooks is still making ’em laugh at almost 99

The comedy legend turns 99 next month and is still serious about making people laugh. Looking back, there is one production he is most proud of.

Mel Brooks in Beverly Hills, California, on September 9, 2014. Picture: Robyn Beck / AFP.

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Mel Brooks is a comedy legend. As a writer, actor, director and producer of movies, television shows, stage productions and comedy albums, few people have had such cultural impact, pushing the limits of comedy and going where few others would dare to poke fun.

Whether it is satire, parody, farce, slapstick or gallows humour, nothing is off limits when subverting the genre. It helps explain why Brooks is in the storied category of being an EGOT – winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony – a rare achievement that is shared with only 20 other people.

Think about films such as The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974) or History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

Or the iconic secret agent television parody, Get Smart (1965-70), and The 2000-Year-Old Man comedy records with Carl Reiner.

Brooks turns 99 next month and is still serious about making people laugh.

He answered Review’s questions about his long career and reflected on those he worked closely with on stage, in film and television, including Hollywood legends Sid Caesar, Reiner and Gene Wilder.

The biggest success of Brooks’ career has been The Producers which was adapted into a musical for the stage, originally starring Nathan Lane and Mathew Broderick in 2001, and later into another film in 2005.

Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock, left, and Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom reprising their roles from Mel Brooks' Broadway hit, The Producers. in the movie musical version. Picture: Andrew Schwartz.

It has a life of its own. After a sellout season at Hayes Theatre Co in Potts Point, Sydney, it opens at Riverside Theatres in Parramatta this week.

As a young boy born to Jewish immigrants from Europe growing up in New York in the 1930s, Brooks knew that show business was what he wanted to do with his life. He took small gigs entertaining hotel guests, playing music and hosting events, where he could try out his comedy chops. He was drafted into the army and served in Europe during World War II. After the war, Brooks’s big break was reconnecting with actor and comedian Caesar, whom he had met years earlier, and pitching him jokes.

In 1950, Brooks was hired as a writer on Caesar’s television variety series, Your Show of Shows (1950-54) and Caesar’s Hour (1954-57), followed by several variety specials. It kick­started his ­career.

Who is the funniest person you have met or worked with?

It would have to be Sid Caesar. He was a natural. He made every joke and situation I ever wrote for him go better than it was on paper.

By 1960, after almost 10 years on television, Caesar’s comedic reign came to an end and Brooks was looking for a new project. He had met Reiner when he walked into the writers’ room on Caesar’s Hour and began extemporising, holding out a microphone interviewing Brooks’s 2000-Year-Old Man.

Reiner: Here next to me is a man who was actually at the scene of the crucifixion two thousand years ago! You were there! Did you know Jesus?

Brooks: Thin lad, right? Wore sandals? Hung around with 12 other guys? They always came into my store. Never bought anything. They just asked for water.

In that moment, they captured lightning in a bottle, and would go on to perform it on late night television shows, on stage and record several comedy albums. They became friends. In later years, Brooks would drive to Reiner’s home almost every night where they would eat a takeaway meal and watch Jeopardy together.

What movie, TV show, stage production or album are you most proud of?

Maybe for my career it was The Producers, but for sheer comedy it was playing the 2000-Year-Old Man opposite Carl Reiner’s brilliant straight man on our Grammy-winning albums together.

In 1964, Brooks teamed up with Buck Henry to write Get Smart with Don Adams as the bumbling and stupid but well-meaning and ultimately heroic secret agent, Maxwell Smart.

It was a mash-up of Sean Connery’s James Bond and Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau. It was a huge success and remains in syndication around the world. Would you believe it ran for five seasons?

Not having to worry about a steady income, Brooks could finally do what he wanted to do: write a play on Broadway about a play on Broadway. The Producers began as a play that became a movie that became a musical that became a movie and continues on stage.

Barbara Feldon, left, played 99 to Don Adams’s Maxwell Smart in the TV series Get Smart.

What explains its longevity?

It just has a great idea! Like Bloom says, “You can make more money with a flop than you can with a hit”. That premise is as ­irresistible today as it was in 1967.

Producer Max Bialystock persuades accountant Leo Bloom to embezzle investor funds by overselling a play that was so bad it closed on opening night. They decide to stage a musical called Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. Expecting audiences to flee in disgust, they instead love the parody of the Nazis and it becomes a hit, meaning they cannot pay the returns expected.

Some critics and moviegoers didn’t get the irony of Springtime for Hitler. Are there no limits to satire?

Well for me there are not. Because Hitler was so evil, my job was always to bring him down with laughter.

What is it about the story that lends itself to an all-singing, all-dancing ­version?

Very simply it is a story about the theatre, and that takes place in the theatre – so it was a natural for a musical adaptation. And the theatre really comes to life when you add comedy to singing and dancing!

Wilder was perfect as Bloom. Brooks and Wilder collaborated on Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. The latter film really pushed the boundaries of black comedy.

What made Gene such a comedic genius?

Gene was in a serious Bertolt Brecht play called Mother Courage and Her Children, with my wife Anne Bancroft. When he asked me backstage one night why he was playing the role seriously but still getting so many laughs from the audience, I said, “It’s not your fault. You were just born to make the world laugh.”

The late actor Anne Bancroft and her director husband Mel Brooks in New York in 2004. Picture: AFP/Getty.

Looking back on his life, Brooks recalls starting out making jokes on street corners in New York in 1938 and says it has been a joy to be able to make people laugh ever since.

What have you learned about comedy over the past 75-plus years that you wish you knew when you were starting out in showbusiness?

That the audience comes to the theatre not to be lectured, but to have a good time. Once I realised that, I always tried to deliver first and foremost a funny evening.

Comedy, no matter how silly or crazy, is about the human condition. If you can laugh, you can survive anything. So, just make ‘em laugh.

Whether it is The Producers or Blazing Saddles, Get Smart or The 2000-Year-Old Man, is there a unifying theme throughout your career?

I knew that from a very early age my job beyond everything else was just to somehow make the audience laugh their heads off. And for the most part, I actually did it!

The Producers is at Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres from May 15 to 19.