Mel Brooks

You should see it.

we picked another delightful movie, Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's 1974 follow-up to their other 1974 comedy, Blazing Saddles.

This one is a loving parody of the universal classic Frankenstein movies, with Wilder playing the grandson of the mad scientist, drawn back into the family business when he's left the castle and all of its secrets.

With Wilder leading the greatest cast Brooks has ever assembled, Madeline Kahn, Terry Garr, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman, come on, and an affectionate take on the subject matter, Young Frankenstein bookended Brooks and Wilder's year with a totally different type of spoof, and it's one that works just fine if you've never seen the originals.

And when, you know, back in the day, you would have to go back to the theaters and I saw it, uh, nine times on its first release.

Uh, and loved it every single time.

And then tied my record and then felt bad about tying my record with the infinitely, not nearly as good, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother, which was a Gene Wilder follow-up without Mel Brooks, and then went back.

At some point, Young Frankenstein came back, so I saw it a 10th time in a theater.

So it just hit me, I have an idea how I would redo it.

I would take a cue from Mel Brooks, and I would do Young Jason.

And I would do it as a parody of Young Frankenstein, where you capture Jason and bring him to Broadway, and...

You have like Kane Hodder doing, putting on the ritz and yeah, that would be quite amazing.

History of the world.

Mel Brooks on that one? Everybody.

And 46.

So F them.

Man.

Mel Brooks on that list?

Everybody.

And 46, so F them.

He's been called the human encyclopedia of comedy and the king of comedy lore.

He's conducted onstage interviews with everyone from Mel Brooks to Buck Henry to Fred Willard to Triumph the Insult comic dog, to name a few.

He served as the host of a TV series, Funny How, and was a consulting producer on the popular CNN series, The History of Comedy.

He's also the author of the books We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy, Outrageous, A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, and of course, his best-selling, critically acclaimed book, The Comedians, Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy, which was selected as Book of the Year by the LA Weekly and LA Times.

We're

looking forward to that.

And nice to see you in the Mel Brooks doc.

Oh, yeah, that was a big honor.

You have to find a way to acknowledge that she was so selfless that she produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer and didn't even put her name on it because she was worried about upstaging, you know, like bits.

Basically, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to her as Elephant Man is to Mel Brooks.

Yeah,

exactly.

And you wouldn't pay tribute to Mel Brooks without acknowledging Elephant Man.

So why would you pay tribute to Dolly Parton and not say, oh, by the way, this show that had its 30th anniversary that we paid tribute to earlier, she produced it.

Her production company made that possible.

It's in one of the classic movies of all time, Mrs. Robinson.

from The Graduate, whose, the actress's husband was Mel Brooks.

Come on, you can't get no better than that, Tom.

All right, very good.

And, and the idea is that it's something bad happening, but not to you or to somebody you love.

Um, Mel Brooks puts it in somewhat sharper terms, distinguishing between comedy and tragedy.

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger.

Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."