A Quote by Brett Gelman
I think that all the Mel Brooks' company of actors is just tremendous. It was a crazy group of genius people. All of them taught me what kind of actor I should be and what was funny.
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Id like to acknowledge three people who early on knew Mel Brooks was one of the funniest people in the world: Sid Caesar, me, and Mel Brooks.
Comedy, I'm still in awe of. I think you need a comic genius somewhere in the mix. It's got to be the actor or someone. But the 'comic genius' actors are the darkest people on the planet - and that kind of scares me!
The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
I also try to surround myself with people I love - make a family out of the company. So I tend to use the same people over and over. There's a sort of Mel Brooks Repertory Company.
They wanted me to play third like Brooks so I did play like Brooks - Mel Brooks.
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.
I think most of the actors that I know that I think are good are kind of funny people. There's just something about being alive to the truth of a moment that makes a good joke that also makes a good actor.
I also think if you're an actor and you can improvise, when you go on an audition and you can improvise you're just a genius. If you can, you know, take a Tide commercial and you can just say one funny line that's not in the commercial they think you're a genius.
I think that actors are terrible communicators as people by and large. I think our tendency is to kind of be self-centered and tune people out and just kind of get really me-focused, so I think communication for actors is a big challenge actually.
I think I have a finely tuned sense of humor. I think just being around it and growing up in it... my dad and Mel Brooks and Norman Lear. These are the people I grew up around.
I worked with some of the best actors I've ever worked with: Mel Blanc and Don Messick. They could play a scene against themselves. Think of the characters that Mel created, and they're as good or better than any performance anyone has ever given. I mean: Daffy Duck! Think of the specific voice Mel gave Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig... It's just astonishing.
There is something about the vocal quality of the actors who can really do it. Jim Burrows, the great sitcom director who directed Will & Grace and Cheers, when an actor comes in to audition for him, he never looks at them. He just listens. Because funny is funny. You can be fooled by the eye, but if your performance is funny to the ear, it will be funny.
We pay homage to the people who came before, doing satires, like Mel Brooks; we're just carrying the torch.
I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.
What's interesting is, most of the people who are fans of the The Wire who black people or cops... most of the people in the industry are the crew: writers, actors and directors. And so they understand what it is that we do, so they think, "Wow, what a incredible group of amazing actors." It's funny, I think there are a couple of reasons why we have never gotten any nomination for anything except for writing.
People often say that you should never work with child actors. I think that's all wrong. Children have not had the imagination kicked out of them by life experience and adulthood. So, they still are very much alive with that kind of magical thinking which enables an actor to believe they're in these circumstances and make them real to you.
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