Mel Brooks was born Melvin James Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. He is probably best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies but his talents extend into many other spheres.
Mel Brooks has been not only a film director, but also a screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor, and producer.
He actually began his career as a stand-up comic, but in later life he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released.
Some of his best known and most successful films include The Producers,The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles,Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
Brooks is one of the few entertainers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award, and three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time.
These selected quotes of Mel Brooks give a small insight into his thinking:
- If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.
- Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
- Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
- If presidents can’t do it to their wives, they do it to their country.
- If Shaw and Einstein couldn’t beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.
- I wish I was better looking.
- He who hesitates is poor.
- I don’t have a mission. I don’t have a torch to burn.
- As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.
- If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
- All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it’s a sign of security.
- Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Do you appreciate Mel Brooks’ special style of humor?
Which of his films is your favorite – and why?
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