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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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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
Like
Lived
Writer
Didn
Tolstoy
Ever
Pens
Even
Gifted
Heart
Page
Mind
Stuck
Way
Pages

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In every spoof I make real love to the things I am spoofing.
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I'll accept bad taste in a minute, as long as there's some great comedy minds and performances.
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Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made.
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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.
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Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.
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I have been lucky that some critics joined the mob in loving something I've done, or in appreciating it. I've been lucky. But most of the critics don't like what the people like. I think they have a very strange job, and they are meant to criticize.
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Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.
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He who hesitates is poor.
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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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Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.
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You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.
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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.
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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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One day, God said 'Let there be prey.' And he created pigeons, rabbits, lambs and Gene Wilder.
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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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Humor is just another defense against the universe.
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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.
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Immortality is a by-product of good work.
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We rest our case on the production numbers.
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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'.
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