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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.

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
Way
Protect
Writer
Proprietor
Vision
Screen
Happen
Screens
Alone
Eventually
Idea
Basically
Happens
Valuable
Ideas
Direct

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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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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No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.
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I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.
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In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.
Mel Brooks
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An egg cream can do anything. An egg cream to a Brooklyn Jew is like water to an Arab. A Jew will kill for an egg cream. It's the Jewish malmsey.
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When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.
Mel Brooks
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The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated.
Mel Brooks
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If Ivan the Terrible had been kissed and loved between zero and three, he probably would have become Ivan Not So Terrible. If you're Jewish, you have a small smile on your face. Because you know the rest are wrong and you don't want to hurt their feelings.
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You want me to admit I'm a four-foot, six-inch freckle-faced person of Jewish extraction? I admit it. All but the extraction. But being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.
Mel Brooks
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Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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When I was a little boy, I thought when I grew up I would talk Yiddish. I thought little kids talked English, but when they became adults, they would talk Yiddish like the adults did. There would be no reason to talk English anymore, because we would have made it.
Mel Brooks
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That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.
Mel Brooks
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Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.
Mel Brooks
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THE 2,000-YEAR-OLD MAN'S SECRETS OF LONGEVITY 1. Don't run for a bus - there'll always be another. 2. Never, ever touch fried food. 3. Stay out of a Ferrari or any other small Italian car. 4. Eat fruit - a nectarine - even a rotten plum is good.
Mel Brooks
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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!
Mel Brooks
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Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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My brothers went to work at 12 and put themselves through school and brought the family out of ruin into food and clothing.
Mel Brooks
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We want to get people laughing we don't want to offend anybody.
Mel Brooks