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I only direct in self-defense.

Mel Brooks

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Mel Brooks
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: June 28
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Librettist
Lyricist
Screenwriter
Soldier
Songwriter
Stage Actor
Brooklyn
New York
Melvin Brooks
Melvin Kaminsky
Defense
Direct
Comedy
Self

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I don't have a mission. I don't have a torch to burn.
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
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Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
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Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen. So if you have a valuable idea, the only way to protect it is to direct it.
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The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
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Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.
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Be interested in everything. You don't have to adore it. I don't adore hip-hop, I don't think it's great music, but I'm interested, I listen. I watch a lot of new films, I see everything. I still read, I like books, whether they are old books, new books. I'm interested - you gotta stay interested!
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I was adored [as a kid]. I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again. Until I was six, my feet didn't touch the ground. Look at those eyes! That nose! Those lips! That tooth! Get that child away from me, quick! I'll eat him! Giving that up was very difficult later on in life.
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Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
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Comedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help.
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I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.
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Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.
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When you get big special effects pictures, sci-fi and things, there's little or no comedy. Or it's a domestic comedy and there's not one special effect. But very rarely do these things fuse and come out right.
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Cat angels are the reason there are no mice angels.
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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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My God, I'd love to smash into the casket of Dostoyevsky, grab that bony hand and scream at the remains, 'Well done, you god-damn genius.'
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That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.
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As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin those guys mean a lot to me.
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Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.
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I've been taught ever since I was a kid that sex is filthy and forbidden, and that's the way I think it should be. The filthier and more forbidden it is, the more exciting it is.
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