Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner at the American Cinematheque

Had a hilarious time the other night at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, where the American Cinemateque is holding a week-long retrospective on the film and TV works of those two comedic geniuses, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. For those of you who are not into comedy as much as I am, Reiner was working in the 1950's on Sid Caesar's immortal early TV classic Your Show Of Shows when he discovered Brooks and brought him aboard as a writer. The rest, as they say, is history...and what a history it has been, including The 2000 Year-Old Man, Get Smart, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Producers, Blazing Saddles, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, The Jerk, History Of The World Part 1, High Anxiety, Oh God!, Young Frankenstein, and soooooooooo much more.


This particular night was devoted to the duo's early TV work, including Your Show Of Shows, which is still as gut-bustingly funny as it was back in 1954. (Thank God parts of it are still available on YouTube, and other outlets open to the truly devoted...hint, hint!) Between the two screenings, Brooks and Reiner came on for a Q&A session with the audience, and proceeded to floor them with stories from that early part of their careers. They even got the crowd salivating with a slow tease that a new installment of The 2000 Year-Old Man just might be in the works. As Brooks said, "We're at the 'mebbe' stage...and if it feels good, we'll go on the the 'maybe' stage...". Needless to say, as a fan and former comedy writer, I was basking in these guys' glory. It really is amazing--even after all the decades they've been doing this, these two are still comedy rock stars. It was fantastic to be able to almost literally sit at their feet and soak up the comedy gold that they served up. Wait, you can't eat gold, maybe comedy caviar is a better term. In any case, I probably won't make much money off of this shoot, but I really don't care...just being there was reward enough. Thank you, Mel and Carl, for all those years and sketches and shows and movies--you two really did change the world. I mean that, you two guys changed the world.