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

More quotes by 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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My brothers went to work at 12 and put themselves through school and brought the family out of ruin into food and clothing.
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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.
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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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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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My favorite expression is: When you go up to the bell, ring it ? or don't go up to the bell.
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He who hesitates is poor.
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I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.
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Look, I had to take chances or it wasn't fun being funny.
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If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets.
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Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.
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As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
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Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.
Mel Brooks
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Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
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We rest our case on the production numbers.
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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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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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Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
Mel Brooks
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But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.
Mel Brooks
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I only direct in self-defense.
Mel Brooks