Quote

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
Never
Situation
Deadly
Help
Joke
Actors
Absurd
Funny
Performing
Helping
Jokes
Must
Amount
Writing
Serious
Trying
Comedy

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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Hope for the Best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
Mel Brooks
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I make people laugh for a living. I believe I can say objectively that what I do I do as well as anybody. Just say I'm one of the best broken field runners that ever lived. For 35 years I was a cult hero, an underground funny.
Mel Brooks
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Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.
Mel Brooks
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We want to get people laughing we don't want to offend anybody.
Mel Brooks
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I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
Mel Brooks
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That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.
Mel Brooks
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Do you have a dollar on you? I hate to answer questions for nothing.
Mel Brooks
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Being brave is being scared and worried and still doing it [what you do]. Because if you're just a wacko, a mashugana, a crazy guy, then you're not brave, your nuts!
Mel Brooks
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I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.
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.
Mel Brooks
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These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.
Mel Brooks
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Well, you know, 'Spaceballs' is a weird combination, because it's a simple, sweet little fairytale, and it's crazy and out-there and making fun of and taking apart sci-fi, 'Star Wars', and 'Star Trek'.
Mel Brooks
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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!'
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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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.
Mel Brooks
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It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.
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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Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.
Mel Brooks
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American sex is generally straight. It happens at 11 o'clock Saturday night. In the rural areas, it happens at nine and it happens pretty fast. Got to get up the next morning, especially if there're kids. Can't make noise, either, wake the kids.
Mel Brooks
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Immortality is a by-product of good work.
Mel Brooks