3-Plus Questions with Comic Legend Mel Brooks

It must’ve been 1983 or ‘84 when I first snuck a viewing of History of the World, Part 1 on VHS in my parents’ basement. Mel Brooks’ dangling-off-the-cliff humor of the age wasn’t especially appropriate for a 9- or 10-year-old, hence the sneaking, but I loved it even then. Less appropriate, I suppose, for a 5- or 6-year-old, which was how old my younger brother would have been, but I recall his presence at the screening, anyway. The film, like others of Brooks’ oeuvre, has been a favorite for decades and, in my family, we often communicate, bond, remember through dialogue from cinema’s best, stored in the honeycomb of our collective hippocampus. So, when I texted my brother some weeks back to remind him Brooks’ long-ago promised History of the World, Part 2 would be streaming on Hulu in four installments soon, he did not respond with plain-text delight. “Do you know the punishment for a slave who strikes a Roman citizen?” he inquired instead. “They shove a living snake up your ass,” came my reply. “Aaahh. No, but that’s very creative,” he wrote, finishing Brooks’ bit.

Brooks is 96 now, a full 42 flips of the calendar past the year in which he gave the world Part 1. It’s not his most famous work—Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and The Producers get top marks on many all-time-great-comedies lists—or, by any stretch, his most serious. (Would that be The Elephant Man?) But just as well as any of the others, it tosses open a window in the stale-aired house of living and beckons in a welcome draft. And nearly 70 years of work on screens and stages leave an impossibility in denying that Brooks has always had something to say: Humans are cruel, kind, absurd, deep. Our condition is fatal and, so, best to consider it and to laugh as we do. He’s spoken up in ways consistent, unexpected, offensive. A common refrain when discussing the older stuff: “You could never make that movie now.” Probably not. But this is Mel Brooks, and he’s never been here to ensure our comfort.

What does Brooks have to say now? And how does he say it? The answers are, regrettably, over at Hulu, where Part 2 is streaming in four chunks. Because this is not a movie/series review, we’ll leave the interpretations up to you, reader.

Normally, we’d tell you this interview has been edited for clarity and concision. But that ain’t what happened. Brooks noted that he is busy, less than four months shy of his 97th birthday, and said he’d answer some questions via email. Here they are, in full.

What was the reception like—publicly and privately—to History of the World Part 1 or, for that matter, Blazing Saddles or Spaceballs? Obviously there was not a ‘cancel culture,’ whatever that means, in those days, but were people offended by those films and, if so, were you aware of it?

Reviewers don’t often like my movies when they first come out, but when they review my next movie they suddenly think it was not up to the greatness of my previous movie…you know, the one they knocked at the time.

These many years later, what is your opinion of those films?

Very simply, I think they were terrific—but that’s only my opinion.

What made you decide, in your mid-90s, to revisit laughter and thought through the lens of history?

That’s a very good question! COVID and the pandemic put us all on house arrest, and after a while I really began to miss the joy of making people laugh. Laughter gets us through a lot of hard times, and history is a wonderful subject matter for my style of satire. Almost all of my comedies have a kind of serious historical theme running beneath the laughter. For instance in Blazing Saddles it’s racial prejudice, in Silent Movie it’s corporate greed vs. art, and in both The Producers and Life Stinks it’s money vs. love.

What sort of reaction do you expect History of the World Part 2 to garner? Do you care?

Do I care? Actually, I care a lot! I hope everyone who sees the new series loves it. I’ve gotten tons of letters through the years from fans of History of The World Part 1 asking me, ‘Where and when are we gonna get Part 2?!’ So I am finally delivering a Part 2!

Are we getting Hitler on Ice and/or Jews in Space?

I think a lot of people would say it wouldn’t be a Mel Brooks historical comedy without at least one reference to good old Adolf…but you’ll just have to wait and see!