Carl Reiner

Speaker Such characters do. Oh, good. We’re good. We’re good. OK. So.

Speaker I was saying it during you’ve said during your show of shows that Mel was basically using sin as a vehicle. Because Mel wanted to perform, but Sid, Sid was his.

Speaker Sid, Sid was a big flame that a lot and all the moths came to that flame and one of the moths that came was Mel Brooks, who actually knew Sid. Actually, Mel worked for Sid. Not from Max Liebman or the show of shows. He paid them like 50 dollars a week to hang around. And then when he came on the show of shows he didn’t want to work for anymore. Want this Max to pay him. So he Max paid him out of petty cash, which he thought was abominable. He finally got a salary, but he was really he did all the things that Sid could do, not as well as some of the things said that Mel couldn’t do.

Speaker But as far as a funny brain, Mel had the funniest brain in the room. No question.

Speaker Everyone in all the archival interviews of all the writers, the first thing they usually talk about is Mel showing up late. But you said, which is gay, is Mel showing up late? Was worth more than some schmuck showing up at nine?

Speaker Well, you know, I’ve written a book called I Remember Me and about five chapters devoted to Mel Brooks. And one of the chapters his is showing up late and the chapters entitled The.

Speaker Oh, show me the IV.

Speaker Oh, he ate so many calories that. Mel, he suffered from low sugar, high sugar, whatever it was. So he never came. And we all arrived at 10 o’clock. He arrived at 12:00 and we were always waiting for Mel. We knew Mel was coming because his bagel and coffee would proceed him from the stage delicatessen. It would come and I would pay for it. It would be 25 cents for this for the coffee, 25 cents or 25 cents for the coffee and bagel and a quarter tip, 50 cents in this day. Everybody was really upset. We were stewing in shares. We were looking for a punch line. Couldn’t get it. And we said Mel would probably come up with this one. He didn’t show up. And everybody was really angry with him. Really angry that day. So to show how displeased we were when the guy came for the coffee and bagel, I gave him his 50 cents and 25 cents and a twenty five dollar tip. And when Mel came in, he gave me the Kahir for dollars. No, no, it’s no, it’s it’s 50 dollars. And he was and he paid it, he knew he was. He could see the anger or he paid without anything, drank his coffee, and then he said, all right, you show me the brilliance. What do you. What do you mean? He knew exactly that he was wanted for something. And I’ll never forget the joke. It was a joke was he ate so many carrots that, you know, he didn’t have a punch line for it. And Mel Brooks at all. Oh, the old carrot joke. Yeah. They’ve said the million carrot, you know, that’s all new. And he he acted as if he were being crucified. He painted himself against the wall and he came up with the carriage. Yet so many carrots that he couldn’t sleep. Why couldn’t he sleep? He saw right through his eyelids the whole idea, we all knew the clarity of sight. He found a new way to do it. Now, never forget that because there were six writers, No. Five writers, and Romo came up with it. That’s an indication of how his brain works a little differently than anybody else’s.

Speaker Tell us about where the people speak, hosted by Dan Seymour.

Speaker Oh, that’s the genesis of the 2000 year old man. I came in one morning. I was allowed into the writers room. I was kept out of for the first three or four weeks of my career as a second banana. I was waiting in a hall for them to call me and to tell me here’s the stuff. And I was upset by that. The writers work either Max Liebman’s office or in the men’s room. Lucio Kalanchoe compliments and they split up. Some walked down the stairwell. I mean there was not enough room. And I came off the idea for the silent movie. Foreign movies. I knew I can do double talk. Not like I said. I came up with that and then I was allowed into the writers room. But in the writers strike while I was there, I said, gee, I saw a program.

Speaker It was called We the People Speak with Dan Seymour. He used to recreate the news and say this happened yesterday.

Speaker And Kremlin man was in Plummer was in Stalin’s toilet and heard Stalin say, going to blow the world Thursday.

Speaker And I said, hey, that’s a good thing to take off. And they said, oh, it’s OK. It didn’t work. And I was a little frustrated and I knew it’s a good idea, you know, to have somebody.

Speaker So I turned to my was sitting on the couch and here’s a man who was actually at the scene of the crucifixion two thousand years ago. Well, I never get his first words were, oh, boy, I see you there. Yes. Yes. You knew Jesus thin laterite in led. He I always walk around with 12 other guys. It was sandals, nice boys. They used to come into the store, never bought anything. Always asked for water. I gave it to them. Nice. But that was the first words out for the next. That was 1950 from 1950 to 1960. We were the most heirs for people at port. We were invited to all kinds of parties just to get up and do that. Well, every party we ever went to get our fellows do that. They started to become a. A command performances. And the last one we did was Joe Fields in. This is 1952, 1960. We’re doing it at parties. Joe Fields had a what we call a class A party out here. Mo lived in New York. He happened to be out here. So he made a party for us and he invited all his big, big star friends. And this is it. I’ve said this many times and it’s absolutely accurate. After the man killed everybody. One by one, these stars came off, their first one was George Burns with his cigars as no record on this. And we said, no, we should put it record. I’ll steal it. Yeah. He said that Edward G.

Speaker Robinson should make a play out of it, too, that the thousand year old man thousand Omak to play it on Broadway. And we said, it’s two thousand.

Speaker I can play any age on the I’m. And it was Steve Allen, who is one of the dearest men ever in comedy. His whole thrust in life was to find fun and handed to people. He didn’t care if he did. He just wanted fun to get out there. And he said to us, he said, you know, I have a studio that I recorded and he’s wanted to go sit in a studio. And he’s just well, for a couple hours, he said, if you’ll like it, you use it. Otherwise, he cut it, expunged you, whatever you want. And it wasn’t an offer we couldn’t refuse. The world’s Pacific, right. We got 200 people. I don’t know if I maybe 100 friends. And for two and a half hours, we will then cut it out to forty seven minutes. And it became the 2000 year old man.

Speaker You want to start the whole thing. You. What can we pull out? For one thing, it’s up.

Speaker D.C..

Speaker OK. Carl Reiner. You know, in in one of your books, you make a really interesting point in regards to 2000, your man that I’m going to read what you wrote. That one hesitation with one hesitation because you did it for 10 years in recording was Mel had the Yiddish accent, which was a staple in vivo. Fanny Brice with Weber and Fields. But but along comes Hitler ruins everything as we know.

Speaker And and the the act I’m reading from your book, the accents acceptability as you want me. You want me to tell that back? Yeah.

Speaker Oh, yes. During the year when we did the 2000 you were my memoirs was in the middle European Jewish accent. Now remember, there was it was was 1950 for you four or five years after the war ended. And even though the Jewish accent was a prime use in comedy for many years, Weber and Fields, you name it. And Lou Holtz.

Speaker Mr. Ketso on radio on that, the Eddie Cantor Show. And Mrs. Nussbaum on the Fred Allen Show. They all use the for the Jewish accent, too good to good effect. But when Hitler came and Hitler decimated the Jews. And anything that would be deleterious to the Jewish, to the body of Jews was non persona non grata. And everybody stopped doing Jewish action during the war. And I was after the war, it came back slowly with on The Ed Sullivan Show, Myron Cohen, because these wonderful Jewish stories slowly sneak back. And at that point, we said, OK, we but we still didn’t didn’t think it would be for anybody, but for our some are relic friends and non anti-Semitic friends who, you know, we’re not that Semitic Gentiles. And we only did it at parties. And we everybody else has to do a record. We still said no, it’s only for friends. It’s really very special. And for 10 years, we we didn’t do it. We stopped. We stopped thinking about recording. We even. And then when we did record it, we still wasn’t sure and was for it because I wrote about this and Mel had the same thing. I was at Universal and doing my first motion pictures, by the way, at that very first meeting where everybody talks about make a record out of a. Another guy came up with he was Ross Hunter who said, hey, you have a movie and you and I had never written a movie. I said, oh, no, I don’t have an idea for movies. What do you think? Like him? Moviemaker he says you you came up with ideas and I wrote my first movie, Thrill of It All, based on the first day there.

Speaker So many things happened that first that from the 2000 year old man performance.

Speaker And so now it’s it’s off the record is out and universal. Next door to me was Carey Grant, who came by one day to say hello. And I said I said he has a record you might like. He came. He came. He came back. He says, Funny, funny. He asked me for a dozen. I said, You, I’m going. And I said, You’re going to take this. Yeah. They speak English. And he came back and he said she loved it. I said, Oh, he’s the queen. I said, you two. So I took it to Buckingham Palace and played it. And I said, Well, you know something? The biggest shocks in the world, undistorted laughter as a rock. By that time, we were sort of getting the idea that people were going to like it.

Speaker The. The mother was talking about playing the drums and the sort of freedom of that, but also in a way, what you guys did together, this improvisation is not unlike its improvisation, jazz.

Speaker You know, it’s well, Melle Mel is Mellors as he it’s very apparent that Mel is very, very musical. And we didn’t know how musically he was at that time, except that he was a great drama. He wouldn’t Romany’s. I mean, he felt the need to. But today, I mean, at 80 something, he wrote some of the best lyrics ever for Young Frankenstein lyrics and music. And he’s really an extraordinary musician. But he has rhythms in his head and all of his jokes are great. They’re great structures of rhythm. They’re you’ll laugh at the rhythm of the jokes sometime. But Mel has, as I said, I a genius brain. And panic is the best thing in comedy genius comic brain course. And I try to throw Mel curves in a bigger of the curve the farther he swatted it out. I really try to find things I could couldn’t possibly answer. And he found ways to answer it in panic. When you get some panic, there’s nothing like it. By the way, I was just thinking that Mel is truly a man who wants to get laughs. There’s a thing in my book I wrote about Mel and I am nose to nose that I did. I describe that. Can I describe it here, please? Mel and I are alone in the house, this is an indication of who Mauer’s and how important it is for him to be fighting to get laughs. We’re alone in the house.

Speaker There’s only two of us there. A couple weeks before I had been to Vevey, France, Charlie Chaplin Junior invited me to speak to to to do a charity event there. And so at the event, I do speak French. I learned at Georgetown University during the war and I have an interview in French on the on the air. And I couldn’t understand the questions because he would say talking French so fast. I said, can somebody feed me the questions in English? And I’ll answer in French. And I was doing that. And at one point the questions were getting more and more deep. Like, how do you what do you think about the Nouvelle blog? And I could answer start to answer it in French. And then I realized I needed the words that I have to look up in the dictionary. So rather than not speak French, I says the Louvre parvati’s onto her Sansing to Neuville and document Tulu to the ways that of the new mores of the time, the mores of the time reflect what is in the institutions of the day. So I spoke broken French and whoever was laughing, you know, and when I just addressed the people in the square, I talk French and then I use broken French and explain. I wanted to only speak French, but if I can’t speak French, I said this in French. I will talk like v.c, which is how French accent but you see similar and called relu you a more fancy. I will use Ziebell anyway. That’s right. So I was saying to Mel, you know, it is very important to learn French, to learn our language, because when you’re in a foreign place, if you say to somebody and in broken English, you say, want to eat something, food, you know, place to go see, come eat food. They’ll always be nice to you if you try to speak in their language. So I said, I’m here to teach. We’re alone in the house. I’m going to teach you to speak for any French Bartee. You will speak good like I took no say after me.

Speaker The teen I lost nose. I see he says the chin. No, not the sheen. The chin, say after our how I say zietz in the almost thing the tick the tick say is off dummy is a tick the cheat. No they take the almost the nose.

Speaker Say after me is in nose, nose and nose.

Speaker Oh right now this is the I don’t say after me this is the eye. And Mel says that’s not the eye. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is the eye.

Speaker And he said, no, no, that’s not the eye that’s below the eye. This is the eye. And he took his finger and actually touched his eyeball for the sake of a laugh. He actually touched his eyeball. And as I was tearing, it was red. And there are two of us in a room. And I got hysterical.

Speaker I said, therefore, a joke that nobody is going to allow except that I write in the book that luckily he he did that joke for a guy who was a you know, who who wrote a semi semi important book, a book that 90 people might read so that other people will know about this joke. But there I couldn’t believe it. And nobody I don’t think I ever told anybody that until I wrote about it. There it is. He thought desirable.

Speaker You talk about him swinging in the park for you.

Speaker But but the thing is, is that we should also it’s an important point to make that you knocked it right back. So in a way. So I’m saying it’s almost well, it’s almost like you two were dancing because.

Speaker Oh, it’s it’s it’s an improvised version. No.

Speaker I have the ability to to build a building blocks. I do her. I’m never at a loss for to start something. I don’t think I haven’t got the punch lines all the time, but I do. I write. I have that ability. As a matter of fact I use that once had nothing to do with Mel.

Speaker I wrote a book called The Novel Beginnings. I wrote a 26 novel Beginnings, and I invited people. I was going to some of the colleges so that they they can finish the novel that I began and I said Novel Beginnings written by Carl Reiner. And your name here. And I was you gonna send that out? I didn’t ever sent that ABAC or somebody is. It’s a great idea. But the the the financial and the financial though legal questions will come out as too big to, to, to contemplate. So I never did, but I have no problem starting starting things. So but I’m having Melville to throw things at him as just one of the great pleasures in life for us to come back at. What comes back at me is great laughter.

Speaker Would you think of the habit if we just keep. If you push Carl back a little, then we’ll avoid that. OK. Here we go. There you go.

Speaker OK.

Speaker And believe it or not, those little cooking’s nobody is going to matter. They’ll know what it is. Yeah. And I’m going to say it right now, OK? During the course of this interview, there’s a lot of faces around here. There are shaking their head and looking very sad because, see, this has happened.

Speaker So any time you hear that, it’s not you said do not adjust your set. It’s me and my buttons. Okay, perfect.

Speaker The camera. All right. So would you say that you made him feel. Would you. You made him. It’s a it’s contrary. It’s a contradictory idea. But at the same time that you were putting him in panic mode, you are also making him feel safe.

Speaker Well, you know, this it’s interesting. I Mel was always a there was one very good story I write about in my book. I remember me and this is absolutely true. We were offered a lot of money to go to San Francisco and do two performances, one after another and nine, eight o’clock and o’clock, just adlib. And we did all adlib. I, you know, was what I was going to ask and Lockheed and I didn’t know what I was gonna ask, but he was hysterical. I mean, the plates came apart. A scream. They laugh. We didn’t know we could duplicate. We did duplicate it. And we went to the top and we duplicated it. That’s exactly what the second one and all the way up there on the way up there. He was so mad at me. He says, I’m the one that let you talk me into this. He was so mad that we took this gig and his system. I said, look at the money. Screw the money. Screw the money. I mean, he was really upset with me. He was grousing all the way up to San Francisco on the plane. So I don’t have to let you talk me into this again. And I know exactly what it was. I have no problem asking him questions. I know he’s gonna be funny. I he has never failed me, even when he’s floundering. He’s funny. And then when he’s floundering like a trapeze artist on business three times the third time, he hits even better. So I have no if he doesn’t know what’s in his brain. I know he’s going to be funny, but he knows that he’s going to be have to come up with something. And he’s never sure that it’s there. It’s always there. But that doesn’t. It’s no solace to him. Anyway, we kill them. We kill them. This is exactly who he is. And I call him a real artist because of that. Mel is very good with money. He’s a very good negotiator. He he negotiates the best deals for himself and has all those wonderful movies that he’s made. He really knows how to negotiate. So it’s not there’s no no lack there. We come back from this and we’re riding in a car in the back of a limo and he’s very silent, very quiet.

Speaker And we did get a lot of a lot of money. We call a hell of a lot of money for that. Those two days. And I said to Mel, I said, Mel, tell me the truth. How much would you have taken knowing that you would have gotten the reaction that we got? How much were you take? How much money would you required? And he said. Fourteen dollars. Any method he would have done for nothing, in other words, it was that that good money. He feared the whole time that he was going to fail because even though it’s in there, he didn’t trust. I did.

Speaker Okay. We’re gonna be late. Okay.

Speaker Carl Reiner, take five.

Speaker I want to get back, ask you a couple questions. To place stuff in a bit of historical context. One question is, after all the various incarnations of Caesar shows that are Mels, it is a bit of loose ends. You’re doing The Dick Van Dyke Show, right? Was there ever any talk of come write an episode, come in while I was doing my Dick Van Dyke Show.

Speaker No man was in New York, had no interest in situation comedy. I mean, I didn’t even think of offering no chance. I know he didn’t write that kind of stuff. But that wasn’t his. Miller has Matthews big bruising, bruising musicals. He thought of music. He had done a few things on Broadway, some sketches. And he’d love sketches and things, you know, would never recur to me or from that. But he did come out every once in a while because at that time, Mel still wasn’t the Mel Brooks who had who was going to do some of the great musicals and funny movies of all time. And so he used to come out in need of cash and we would do the Hollywood powers. We would do. There was a couple of shows we did out here. And I remember coming up to he used to come up to my office and we so figure out cause in those days we had to prepare a few jokes. When you go on for ten minutes or 15 minutes, you can’t trust that you’re going to ad lib. Fifteen of the best minutes in the world. So I would not we wouldn’t not rehearse. But I wouldn’t come up with a couple lines that as soon as he I said I throw a line at them and as soon as he starts, I was OK. I know you’re going to answer that. So what happened in the back? And there was only half Adler. But he knew what what was coming. But that was it. But he in those days, he was he was not yet who we were was going to be.

Speaker It’s interesting is he was we talked to him yesterday and he was talking about how you can only learn through trial and error during that period. Who was you know, in theory, it was a good idea to go right for it with Jerry Lewis. Not a good idea, as it turned out. Maybe not such a great idea to be writing for Dinah Shore or so you know, and you don’t know until you get there. But, you know, you have to figure out who you know, if you wrote for Harvey Korman. Yeah. Boom. Cloris Leachman. Yeah. Done. So how do you know until you start doing that? But the question is, what would you say? His comedic mind style.

Speaker He sort of came out fully formed from the womb, essentially, because it doesn’t seem to have. I can’t. What.

Speaker What do you think is influenced or changed his comedy when you thought everybody was influenced by their very early days? And he was the product of this very sad beginning. His father died when he was two. However, he was buoyed up by the fact he had four brothers. One of them, Irving, became his surrogate father. He had a very doting, loving mother. And because he was the youngest, they felt sorry for him. They’ve sort of carried him around like a prince. So he always felt the world was his oyster. And so he he felt special and he was special. And then he was gifted with a really very intelligent brain. And so that that that’s a gift to you. It’s one of those. And what you do with it is something else. But he and the world hold them there. So there was a war that went on and became a member of the armed forces and he fought in the war.

Speaker And so you went to college and I forget where. In Virginia. Virginia, yeah. Virginia Military Academy. All those things honed them, but they were honing a very smart guy, a very smart man and very well read his most well-read man. I know when when we were doing the show of shows, he spent all of his money, not all of his money, a lot of his money on first edition books, famous novels. He really he was avid about it. We didn’t didn’t fit with this crazy man telling all these silly jokes.

Speaker He was Pushkin. And, you know, and and and and he was his favorite one, Nikolai Gogol.

Speaker But you know what you were saying about situational comedy.

Speaker And you’re right. He has said he has had no interest in situational comedy. And it’s interesting because his brand of comedy, he he’s not interested in marriage, children, jobs.

Speaker It’s a whole other vein. He’s mine.

Speaker He’s more into satire. He he really is a satirist. And most of his movies were his early movies, satirize other movies. I mean, he did a lot of that, but. And and if you’re really a good satirist, nobody minds that you’re taking a grapey. Even when he did, he actually did one movie that existed before, like the one with Jack Benny and I was a kid or not to be, to be or not to be, actually did almost a scene by scene. And what we did that he couldn’t satirize because he was already a satire, but all of his other movies, including Blazing Saddles and or every one of them, there was a satire involved. He was satirizing something that existed and he was great at that.

Speaker But in all the years you’ve known him, I mean, has anything like becoming a father, any. Has anything changed?

Speaker I saw Mel in all of his own coronations when he was a I met him. I met him before he was anybody. I wrote my book that it’s called as I said, I remember he was called originally. Is that a man? And I met him when he was 21 years old on Fire Island. He came out for a for a party and he had no place to stay. I knew him because he was was the first year on the show of shows. And I saw Mel and he said he had no place to stay after the party. I said, well, we have a window seat so you could leave the door open. We had an eight hundred, eight hundred dollar season. We paid for that house, two off petition’s. In other words, there were no ceilings on the bedrooms. So it’s very cheap house. And I told the kids, Robbie, who was for an Emmy, who was two, I said, there’s going to be a man sitting and sleeping in the window seat. So if you get up in the middle of night or in the morning and you see a man, don’t be frightened, the man will be sitting there is a friend. So they get up like 6:00 in the morning and they go right over Tom Bell, who’s sleeping in the window seat, curled up. And this is the conversation years.

Speaker He hears it right away because this whispering is that man to me. Dat dat dat dat to me that the man to command sleep. No, not to me. And not sleep yet. Demand sleep. Look man I open an any sort of a little I cracking.

Speaker He was trying to see it and she was about to put a finger inside to help with the Seaforth and he isn’t a man is up the man. I’m the man. I’m the man. I’m up. I’m up anyway. So that was my our introduction to our friendship that he was twenty one years old.

Speaker Twenty two. I guess you’re twenty one.

Speaker So you were saying in all his incarnations you like it. Like for example fatherhood for him didn’t show.

Speaker Yeah. I was talking about his father now then when he was on the show show he’s married, one of the Hamilton trio had two wonderful girls, one girl named Florence Brown, who everybody loves. She was a beautiful girl who had maybe not since centuries the best legs ever. Everybody just couldn’t take it. All right. Well well, Marida, he married and he had two children with her.

Speaker Two, three, three, three children with third man apart started over.

Speaker Yeah, he met this girl from beautiful Florence Brown. He what he did was what did he do? We went up and married and had three children under almost youthfully. And he was they didn’t get out of for some reason, the marriage didn’t work. And when they broke up, I remember this assiduously.

Speaker He visited those kids every night when he got home from work, he visited the kids and spent two or three hours with the kids every night. He never did not spend with those kids. And here’s another indication of who Mellors When Florence got married again, she’d married a guy and there was another kid that came into the family, Peter, and went to hell when Mel took his kids out every day to the dinner, lunch, wherever it was to play. He always took Peter along. And Peter was part of the family and was not his kid. It was a way. So he’s very, very family oriented. When he had his child with Anne Bancroft, Max, he has a grandson. Henry visits him almost every day. He visits German and plays with Max. I mean, Harry erm Henry almost every day.

Speaker But so what I’m asking is, is you’ve seen it and you’ve worked with him professionally. You know, sometimes people’s it’s interesting to me, people’s concerns or people’s of focus sort of shifts in their work because of their home situation. But he seems to be a straight arrow, just doesn’t.

Speaker Mel is is a parent first, really is a parent first. He does everything else. Whatever he does, he is always aware that he’s he has these children. He’s parenting them. He speaks to them every day.

Speaker His daughters, Stephanie and Eddie and I miss Nicky. I mean, he speaks to them almost every day.

Speaker So even as he became a father in the 50s or whatever it is, I guess what I’m saying.

Speaker His brand of comedy didn’t. He didn’t. What can I say professionally? He didn’t become domesticated, right?

Speaker No, he it’s it’s amazing because he he knows family so much. He has been involved, but he’s never done domestic comedy. It’s always this satire. He really does. He sees the big picture. He sees big movies and makes fun of big movies and makes fun of big things.

Speaker Right. It’s not based in the every.

Speaker No, he just can’t make fun of the little things like I used to do on and off. So I didn’t make fun of little things. I just did them. I mean, of the Dick Van Dyke Show was just a reincarnation of my own life.

Speaker If he had a montre, what do you think it would be? Because one thing he said is laughter.

Speaker And you said it is so much is that his doctor would give me laughs and pay me well for making you laugh.

Speaker It’s true. I want the most part for my by my. I was looking for word for jokes that begin with a B Woombye blockbuster humor.

Speaker What do you make of his repeated use of Hitler, of Hitler?

Speaker I love the fact that Mel Brooks is the single the only one in the world who dared to do to Hitler what Hitler did to the Jews. He decimated them by making fun of him. And to this day, when I read that in Germany, his is The Producers, the musical went through the roof. I mean, the fact that he was able to do to Hitler what nobody else could do make so much fun of him. That is, he’s the guts of doing it. It was amazing. Any time I see anything with a swastika guy, I immediately say, Mel, we’ve got to watch this. There’s a swastika. This there’s a Hitler thing at it. No, it’s amazing. What what he did, what he did.

Speaker Hitler was faking it, watching stuff. What is the story that you will now watch movies quite a bit. And what is the thing with Secure the Perimeter?

Speaker Oh, yeah. Mel and I would love to watch movies and we love it. We found this in a little while ago.

Speaker We found the Bourne series, The Bourne Supremacy, the Bomb Debris, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bourne Bourne and Matt Damon. We love Matt Damon. I love Matt Damon as an actor and as a person. He’s just a wonderful person and we love pictures. And we said, give us a picture that says there are three three prerequisites to really good, great picture. One is somebody in the picture says secure the perimeter. If somebody says secure the perimeter, we know it’s a good picture. Lock up holds all exits and secure the perimeter. The other one is get some rest. If somebody says get some rest, we know we’re in a good picture. Means they’re working hard to get there. And they and the other thing is come up and we’re all big for comeuppance. The worse the villain. I will. This is my favorite thing. My favorite thing is the Count of Monte Cristo, because that’s the best come up and novel of matter fact. I’m writing a book called Comeuppance because I love comeuppance. The worst the villain. The better the story make. The worst value can be given. The worst ending. That’s my favorite thing in the world. Count of Monte Cristo. Those three guys, they got it at the end.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker Again, when when Caesar went off the air again, this sort of odd period from now. Why didn’t he do a nightclub act or something?

Speaker Well, Mel, never, never. I never heard about wanting to do a nightclub back. He started the mountains and he always did ira his act for us. And it was at the drop of a hat. He was here. I have my Melvern Brooks. I come to start the show here. And he would he would talk about being a total jumping into the into the pool with us. He played Willy Loman and jump the pool with his suitcases and he would do his act. And it would be natural for him to become as his standup, but never did. I think he because I think you want to be a writer mainly.

Speaker And he and he went for that. I mean, luckily he did.

Speaker We were talking to Mel yesterday.

Speaker We touched on this Mel talking, essentially got everybody into individual analysis to go into analysis.

Speaker He Mel Torme was the head writer. And because he was a Russian and always feared that somebody would take him back home to Russia.

Speaker He was from Canada. He worried about his citizenship. He was he was the first person analysis. And I think it was his. By his suggestion, that analysis is good for everybody. Slowly but surely, he got Mel to go through analysis. You got sick to go now. And analysts and even I, who is considered the most normal person in the room. So maybe I’ll try to know. I to this day, I can still use that analysis, do well and good analysts can do it because, you know, Mel was saying he said before and I don’t know if it was.

Speaker I don’t know.

Speaker He has talked about it. I don’t know if it was true for the other writers as much as it was for him. The real anxiety working on that show producer and is talking about puking between parked cars, jogging through the streets in New York. I mean.

Speaker Well, Mel, Mel had anxiety, which we never saw because always knew. But we found out later that he was so anxious. He actually was suicidal at times. He said this to us. So I’m not. He was thinking of, you know, doing them. He was so upset. What upset him? We don’t know. But he’s not upset anymore. Thank goodness. But he was. You know what it is when you when you know, you got something, you don’t know how to pedal it. He knew he had something. He didn’t know how to market it and when. Soon as he had learned how to market what he had, he calm down an awful lot. But I think that was a frustration of not being able to. I got all this. What do I do it? What do I kill myself? That’s what I do.

Speaker It’s just a pent up. Yeah. Pent up.

Speaker Pent up as your word. Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask is how important do you think Anne was in the formation of Mel?

Speaker Because we talked a little yesterday about how she said, watch the Dean Martin show. There’s Don Delawares, you should know him. What’s covering it? There’s Harvey Korman.

Speaker What I think one of the best things that ever happened to Mel, that is you want to watch the Perry Como show once. And he saw this woman onstage and happened to be Anne Bancroft. She looked at him. He looked at her, and history was born. She saw somebody who looked like our father and he saw the love of his life. And very soon after, they became a couple and he found out where she was going the next day. And I accidentally showed up there. And the rest of it is history. And they were the best couple. And all I remember is Mel. Are you going to eat that butter or whatever it is? She was always as cop the copy needed in the places he needed the cop and he accepted it very well. And what’s what is very sad is that both he and I have lost our wives and we talk about it all the time. And they see the lovely, interesting thing is that Mel married somebody who who loved the Stelle and Estelle loved her. Estelle was sort of a mentor to everybody. But Annie would always come to her and have discussions with about everything. They were really good friends in any. And Mel would never miss one of her Snell’s performances of The Gardenia for 20 years. They were there every time she sang and they loved her singing. They told her. And matter of fact, Amy and Mel, I mean, Annie and Estelle. And I think it was Pat Gelbart, Larry Gelbart. They once formed the three or called the The Mother Sisters, and they sang with ice cream scoops and they close harmony just at a party was really funny. But they were really very, very, very close. And to this day, Mel and I said, it’s not fair that they did not hear the gene.

Speaker Well, this is a thing interesting also about Mel’s brand of comedy. Did Gene Wilder. Oh, yes, I remember that.

Speaker He never in it. Did you tell me if you think this is true right from the beginning? He never asks. He never asked for the audience’s sympathy.

Speaker He never asked the audience for sympathy. Yeah. He never pandered.

Speaker Yeah. I never thought. I never thought of it. Do you notice that? I never noticed that. So I guess it’s true. He never asked for them. I don’t think I think that’s probably true. Does that mean anything? Oh, yes. With sympathy.

Speaker I don’t like his pandering. Yeah. No, no. No media, no pandering. He did one name. No. But you know what? I’m talk.

Speaker No, it’s an interesting covers of observation that I would not have made, but now I will make it.

Speaker The skits on your show shows it is.

Speaker You said really New York Broadway sensibility going out across the country. Was that a factor in?

Speaker I mean, you made a very good point, which is the one thing you guys did stay away from. And again, to places in historical context, it’s the height of the McCarthy era, you should say that, that you stayed away from political stuff.

Speaker Oh, yeah. We during during the show shows and Caesar’s I was at Caesar’s at the height of the McCarthy era. We didn’t hippolyte it. I think it was a Max Liebman who was in charge of what Maturi went and showed. And politics was out. We did know politics and are very much on like one of those four bears hours. So Saturday Night Live, which is steeped in politics and we love that it is we love that the country allows for it. But in those days, you wouldn’t be on the air very long if you start doing politics. I mean, that show would have been persona non grata and a lot of homes.

Speaker I want to talk to you besides the 2000 year old man. I want to mention we should talk about some of the other skits, particularly the two hour two hour old baby.

Speaker And was it Kerry Grant’s idea?

Speaker The two hour old baby was very interesting in Grant when we gave him this album. The Two Thousand Romandie came back and he says, I loved it. He says, I got an idea for you. Why did she have a two hour old baby talk? And I said to Mel and Mel said, that’s a great idea. And we did two two hour old baby and a baby not knowing whether it’s a boy or a girl. As a matter of fact, we use that. I think, again, for Marlo Thomas, we put it on a to be you and me and just for you.

Speaker You said he he he worries about life and death too much. Who does?

Speaker Mel, don’t we all. Life and death. Yes, we do. Oh, no. And now that now that I’m 90, I’m sure what you’re saying is you’re going to happen, you know, probably fall over. Hit my head and that’ll be it.

Speaker That’s way. That way. People usually break a hip and then go slow. But at 90, I’m very, very aware of where I’m walking. Look at that.

Speaker I took a flop about two years ago. And as I went down and hit my head on the sidewalk in front of my house as I’m in the air, I said, this is it. This is the way I’m going back. I didn’t go so but now I’m watching it so I won’t fall again.

Speaker The vulgarity issue with now in the movies.

Speaker You know, the thing is, is it’s not exactly it’s it’s part of the plot for whether it’s the scene in with the beans in Blazing Saddles.

Speaker Yeah. It’s funny doing it just for shock sake.

Speaker Well, Mel does the truth. The absolute truth. He does. And the absolute truth is that used a lot of beans around a campfire. You’re gonna fart. And when he opened that up and the sound of those goes on and on and it’s hysterical, I heard it use someplace else. Somebody actually took that soundtrack and used it someplace else.

Speaker And we’ll have you in a while. Is a little taken aback at how far things have gone. I says, Bell, don’t ever criticize anybody. You. You’re the one who started or you broke it open. Once you work open Pandora’s box. That’s what happens. You started with the farce and everybody took over. From there you started. So don’t complain.