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

More quotes by Mel Brooks

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Coleman Jacoby and Arnie Rosen won an Emmy and Mel Brooks didn't! Niezsche was right! There is no God! There is no God!
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I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Mel Brooks
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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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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!
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We want to get people laughing we don't want to offend anybody.
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I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.
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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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Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
Mel Brooks
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If you're alive, make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death.
Mel Brooks
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That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.
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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I don't think in terms of results at all. I think: what next insanity can I shock the world with?
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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My liveliness is based on an incredible fear of death. In order to keep death at bay, I do a lot of Yah! Yah! Yah! And death says, All right. He's too noisy and busy. I'll wait for someone who's sitting quietly, half asleep.
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If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.
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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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Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together.
Mel Brooks