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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.
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
Funny
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Jokes
Must
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Serious
Trying
Comedy
Never
Situation
Deadly
Help
Joke
Actors
Absurd
More quotes by Mel Brooks
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
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Immortality is a by-product of good work.
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Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'
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If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.
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I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.
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I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business.
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He who hesitates is poor.
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Creative people should always be striving, they should always be hungry, they should be looking for the next place to go.
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Do you have a dollar on you? I hate to answer questions for nothing.
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We want to get people laughing we don't want to offend anybody.
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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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I only direct in self-defense.
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Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
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Not only should we laugh about Hitler. We must laugh about him. Especially in Berlin.
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I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.
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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.
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Directing is a terrible, anxious process. It's all collaboration, and if you have a dream, it's diluted very quickly by the slightest ineptness in any of your collaborators. They're supposed to help you, but too often they help you into your grave.
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The audience. They see the name Mel Brooks, they want something really funny. They don't want to be moved they don't want to be taught any lessons. [...] I get more letters for Twelve Chairs and Life Stinks than I get from any other movies, because people actually agree with the philosophy, or were moved, or they love the movie.
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When we got to our hotel rooms, mosquitoes as big as George Foreman were waiting for us. They were sitting in armchairs with their legs crossed.
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