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Speaker 1: Mel Brooks makes the world laugh. Watch the Producers Blazing

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Speaker 1: saddles Young Frankenstein, Listen to the two thousand year old Man,

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Speaker 1: or read his autobiography All About Me, and you are

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Speaker 1: guaranteed to find yourself laughing out loud until it hurts.

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Speaker 1: But for me, having known mel for twenty five years,

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Speaker 1: funny is not the first word I would use to

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Speaker 1: describe this amazing man. Hungry, hungry, fiercely proud. Do you

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Speaker 1: think that's your adjective? You get hungry with you? I

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Speaker 1: get hungry when I see you. Well, we love you there, fiercely,

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Speaker 1: proud of his children and his grandchildren, the first one

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Speaker 1: to pick up a phone to a friend in trouble,

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Speaker 1: refusing an award in opposition to the Iraq War and

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Speaker 1: waiting to accept it from President Obama. Vulnerable after the

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Speaker 1: loss of people he loved to mail. Food and wine

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Speaker 1: are crucial. Many of his life's happenings have occurred in restaurants,

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Speaker 1: and as for wine, he will tell you himself.

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Speaker 2: Spill it all over the table.

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to take this seriously. Today it is home.

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Speaker 1: We are together, lucky me. We're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: wine and family and friends. And be prepared to laugh

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Speaker 1: because mel Brooks is funny. So that was a serious introduction.

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Speaker 1: I want to tell you what do you want to

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Speaker 1: tell me that.

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Speaker 2: Before we stopped talking, before I forget, I would like

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Speaker 2: to do my imitation of a cat, because not a

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Speaker 2: lot of people know that I do it. I make

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Speaker 2: the best cats sound in the world. Ready, I just

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Speaker 2: want to just give me.

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Speaker 1: I just need one second to really get myself into this.

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Speaker 2: Here's no Brooks doing the sound of a cat. That

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Speaker 2: is that is a perfect sound. It's hard to do,

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Speaker 2: hard to do. How do it? In young Frankenstein? I

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Speaker 2: think it's it's a dart throwing contest and one of

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Speaker 2: the dots hits a cat and you hear you know, did.

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Speaker 1: You do the sound? I get there every night? Can

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Speaker 1: you do it again?

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Speaker 2: Wow?

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Speaker 1: That's good? So what's the technique?

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Speaker 2: Technique is to is to squash some air between your

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Speaker 2: cheek and the front of your mouth.

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Speaker 1: Let's begin at the beginning. Earliest food memories. What do

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Speaker 1: you remember from you know, your early days. Did your

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Speaker 1: mother cook?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? My mother, okay, it was it was a standard

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Speaker 2: Williamsburg Brooklyn Jewish tenement food. So breakfast in the winter

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Speaker 2: was always a hot cereal, cream of wheat or Rollston

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Speaker 2: which was the kind of Barridge Brown Barridge. And then

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Speaker 2: in the summer corn flakes, rice krispies or wheaties.

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Speaker 1: What year would that have been? How old would you?

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Speaker 2: I would that would be thirty five, I'd be around nine.

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Speaker 2: That's when I went my uncle Joe, shortest jew on earth.

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Speaker 2: Short he was about four to four when when a taxi,

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Speaker 2: a big checker taxi cab rolled down the streets of

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Speaker 2: Brooklyn and there was no driver. That was there was

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Speaker 2: no driver. It was so short it get just about

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Speaker 2: peer over the you know. Anyway, Joe took me because

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Speaker 2: his friend Al was the doorman of the Alvin Theater

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Speaker 2: on fifty second Street, and running at that same theater

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Speaker 2: was Cold Porters Anything Goes. I had never seen a

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Speaker 2: Broadway show. I was nine years old and Uncle Joe

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Speaker 2: took me to see Anything Goes. I was stunned. I was.

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Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it, even though we were in the

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Speaker 2: second balcony, was far away from the stage as you

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Speaker 2: can get ethel Merman was too loud, No MIC's she

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Speaker 2: was just jish. Anything Goes. At the end, I nearly

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Speaker 2: clapped my hands over. I just couldn't stop clapping and

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Speaker 2: screaming and shouting. And then I got back in uncle

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Speaker 2: Joe's cap. I said to him, Uncle Joe, I'm not

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Speaker 2: going in the garment center. Everybody at three sixty five

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Speaker 2: South third Street between on Hooper and Use, everybody in

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Speaker 2: that building worked in the garment center. They were shipping clerks,

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Speaker 2: they were cutters, these tenements. Everybody in the garment center.

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Speaker 2: And I screamed at my uncle Joe, Uncle Joe, I'm

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Speaker 2: not I'm not going into the garments at I'm not

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna go into show business. I loved it. I

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Speaker 2: loved it, you know. And it changed, but it did

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Speaker 2: and I did.

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Speaker 1: And because he take you to food, but do you

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Speaker 1: take you out to eat? I always went to the

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Speaker 1: theater as a kid. And then there was the meal afterwards,

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Speaker 1: lunch before it was a day.

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Speaker 2: We had some favorites that Uncle Joe would take us to.

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Speaker 2: One was called Gallagher Steakhous. They had like half a

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Speaker 2: cow in the window. I always had these half cows

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Speaker 2: in the window, you know, raw hanging gallaghers, and the

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Speaker 2: and the steak was incredible. Some a lot of Jewish

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Speaker 2: restaurants were called dairy restaurants, and they serve stuff like

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Speaker 2: blinches with sour cream and old dairy. You ever mixed

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Speaker 2: meat and dairy with something some religious nonsense?

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Speaker 1: Did your grandmother cook for you?

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Speaker 2: My grandmother cook?

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Speaker 1: What did she cooks? Which grandmother? Your mother's mother? I

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Speaker 1: never knew, you never knew your father's.

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Speaker 2: No, No, my father his grandmother. I didn't know. She

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Speaker 2: did save her meals, best olden meals in Bensonhurst where

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Speaker 2: they lived in a big one family.

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Speaker 1: Did they come with their first generation?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 1: They were European, Yeah, born born and so do you

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Speaker 1: think your grandparents brought their food with them, the food culture.

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Speaker 2: They cooked the same stuff. Mostly it was chicken, chicken

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Speaker 2: and chicken soup.

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Speaker 1: And uh briscuit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they made brisket. Absolutely, they made brisket and brown potatoes.

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Speaker 1: Do you know my grandparents came they were They came

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Speaker 1: from Hungary and Russia. And my father remembers my grandmother

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Speaker 1: having in the Lower East Side a carp swimming in

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Speaker 1: the bathtub that they would make a filter fish out of.

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Speaker 1: So can you imagine having a look, they would bring

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Speaker 1: it a live fish.

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Speaker 2: Live fish.

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Speaker 1: We would get a live fish.

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Speaker 2: My brother Bernie and I were usually one week. We

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Speaker 2: loved and we called him already and we fed them

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Speaker 2: bread crumbs and we chased them around the bathtub. And

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Speaker 2: then it was unspeakable. I can't even describe it. Irving,

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Speaker 2: my old oldest brothers Irving and Lenny held us back.

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Speaker 2: We were screaming, don't kill him. And my mother would say,

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Speaker 2: we gotta eat, we gotta eat supper. And she'd kill

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Speaker 2: Audie and serve them and we would cry and we

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Speaker 2: ate them.

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Speaker 1: And then would you get another carp and kill that?

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Speaker 1: We got another carp It's so interesting that they had

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Speaker 1: live fish swimming in the back.

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Speaker 2: And let me tell you that my mother used to

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Speaker 2: make every once in a while on a Sunday night,

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Speaker 2: she would make spaghetti. She would buy a box of

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Speaker 2: Mullers noodles. They were flat, flat noodles, and she cooked

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Speaker 2: them until they were dead. They were really soft, and

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Speaker 2: then she put them in a baking pan and she

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Speaker 2: would empty a bottle of Heinz ketchup over there, this

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Speaker 2: is spaghetti. And then she'd bake it for thirty or

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Speaker 2: forty minutes until the pan was dead, till everything was dead,

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Speaker 2: and then She cut them into squares and served it

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Speaker 2: to us and he said spaghetti. And I was from

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Speaker 2: eight years old to about thirteen or fourteen. That was

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Speaker 2: spaghetti and it was okay, Yeah, it was really okay.

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Speaker 2: Then I had joined a club called the Baltzer Bugs.

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Speaker 2: We made model airplanes. I think we enjoyed smelling the glue.

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Speaker 2: Why do we like baking the planes? But we made

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Speaker 2: so one of the Baltzer Bugs it was Bernie Steinberger,

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Speaker 2: was Flappy Rothman, and there was Tony Galliani and Italian

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Speaker 2: an Italian. And Tony said I'm going home. It was

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Speaker 2: Sunday and I said. He said, I'm going home to

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Speaker 2: have spaghetti. I said, we have spaghetti on Sunday too.

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Speaker 2: He said, well try, you know, come on and have

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Speaker 2: bar spaghetti. So I went home. I walked into his apartment,

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Speaker 2: which was in green Point at on the edge of Williamsburg.

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Speaker 2: As I walked in, I was assaulted by these incredible smells,

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Speaker 2: just as the aromas of of of garlic, and I

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Speaker 2: mean it was just incredible. Then I sat down. They

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Speaker 2: served this warm, squiggly spaghetti, real spaghetti, squiggly but not dead.

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Speaker 2: My fotback and saw this red thick red, beautiful sauce

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Speaker 2: with meatballs in it, and and sprinkled on top of

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Speaker 2: it was this white stuffed snow. I think it was

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Speaker 2: parmesan cheese. And I took I took one bite, and

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Speaker 2: I started to cried. I wept. I wept, and I said, Tony,

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Speaker 2: this is spaghetti. This is spaghetti. I was about fourteen,

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Speaker 2: and I just wept and I went. When I came home,

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Speaker 2: I said, Mom, you're not making spaghetti. I don't know

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Speaker 2: what that stuff is, that cardpoint, but it's not spaghetti.

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Speaker 2: One of the most delicious things was very simple. We

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Speaker 2: lived at five stories up in this tenement. I was

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Speaker 2: not going to come up for lunch. I was not

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Speaker 2: why because there was five stories and I didn't want

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Speaker 2: to leave the game. So we took a break in

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Speaker 2: the game and we all had lunch. They all brought

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Speaker 2: bags and stuff with them, sat on the curve of

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Speaker 2: my friends and my mother would throw in it, throw

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Speaker 2: down in a brown paper bag, kaiser roll smeared with

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Speaker 2: a lot of butter, fresh butter, and almost a whole

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Speaker 2: tomato sliced and salted and put that and it was

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Speaker 2: the most delicious thing. You'd catch it and I'd always

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Speaker 2: catch it, but one time I missed it.

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Speaker 1: I was going to say five stories up.

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Speaker 2: As one time I missed it and splashed black. You

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Speaker 2: heard the sound and the bag was crammed with wet

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Speaker 2: So I very carefully peeled what used to be the

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Speaker 2: bag away from the sandwich, and I began eating the sandwich,

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Speaker 2: and I once again cried. It was so great. It

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Speaker 2: was the closest thing to pizza.

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Speaker 1: When did you have your first pizza?

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Speaker 2: Oh, I have my first pizza when I was I

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Speaker 2: don't I was sixteen or seventeen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So you always cared about how food tasted.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And there was one big, another, very big revelation

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Speaker 2: in my food. Jeane Wilder, I could cry. Take him,

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Speaker 2: You're so sweet, sweetest invited Anne and I to dinner

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Speaker 2: it is house and in the village at his house

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Speaker 2: apartment in the village. I forgot what we hate. But

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Speaker 2: he served wine. Up until then, the only wine I

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Speaker 2: had ever really, I never cared for wine. I don't

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Speaker 2: say it tastes a little sour up until then. Mana

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Speaker 2: chevitza carmel is a sweet Jewish wine. And I tasted

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Speaker 2: this wine.

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Speaker 1: Was it a French wine?

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Speaker 2: It was a French wine, Santa stef you know, and

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Speaker 2: I said, what is this? He said, it's wine. I said,

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Speaker 2: so this is wine? And he got me hooked. And

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Speaker 2: from that day I think I was twenty something whatever,

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Speaker 2: twenty four, twenty six, I don't know, to that day

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Speaker 2: to this if I have wine, it's always a good wine.

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Speaker 2: It's either a good Italian wine or a good French

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Speaker 2: wine or a good half of valley wine. But he

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Speaker 2: taught me that wine wine could actually taste, really taste good,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: And so how did you make the kind of voyage

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Speaker 1: from tasting wine to having one of the great sellers?

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Speaker 2: And well, up until Blazing Saddles, I was hanging on

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Speaker 2: the show business with the skin of my teeth, not

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Speaker 2: making any money. The first movie I made was The Producers,

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Speaker 2: good movie. I won the Academy Award for the screenplay,

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Speaker 2: but just about broke even. And then the next one

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Speaker 2: was The Twelve Chairs, which was a foreign movie kind

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Speaker 2: of you know, made It was a good, very one

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Speaker 2: of my best movies, but alas it didn't make a penny.

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Speaker 2: So I was thinking of going back to television, where

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Speaker 2: I was doing all right, I was making money, and

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Speaker 2: then blazing saddles and that was an explosion, busted open

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Speaker 2: the doors and windows and gave me enough money to

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Speaker 2: buy house. And you know, finally pay pay for dinner

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Speaker 2: and didn't have to slip me money under the table.

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Speaker 2: And I was okay.

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Speaker 1: When you were working in film in the studios, what

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Speaker 1: would food be like? There would there be a canteen

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Speaker 1: where you ate? What were they called the commissary?

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Speaker 2: What would they commissary?

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Speaker 1: Commissary?

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Speaker 2: What was that my arm? It's a mess hall. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: in the movie studios, it's a thomassary.

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Speaker 1: And what happened? What was that like?

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Speaker 2: Well? Some some had a Fox? Was very good?

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Speaker 1: Was that a way of kind of meeting people? Who

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Speaker 1: did you meet when you had a commissary? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Well mostly the folks that I met, you know, the

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Speaker 2: stuff that you know, Allan Ladd Jr. Who ran Fox

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Speaker 2: often liked to eat at my table.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And Jay Canter who at one time as an agent

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Speaker 2: for MCA handle Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, I mean, and

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Speaker 2: they all liked him because he was soft and sweet

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Speaker 2: and he was so Jay used to eat with us.

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Speaker 1: Your good friend Alan Up who Alan whenever he was

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Speaker 1: in town. He told me to ask you a story

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Speaker 1: about Carry Grant. Yes, what's the story about Carry gran Oh, it's.

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Speaker 2: A good story. Okay. I was not yet a filmmaker,

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Speaker 2: but I was writing a movie for a guy called

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Speaker 2: Marvin Schwartz on the Universe a lot. So I'm writing

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Speaker 2: this movie and I look across the way and I

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Speaker 2: see Grandhart g r a n Art and I say

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Speaker 2: to Marvin Schwartz, Marvin, what the hell is Grant Grandhart?

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Speaker 2: Who works there? He said, that's Carry Grant. That's Carry Grant.

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Speaker 2: That's about twenty feet away. It's thirty feet away.

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Speaker 1: What here was this smell?

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Speaker 2: This was I can tell you exactly fifty nine. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think fifty nine.

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Speaker 1: So you're watching.

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Speaker 2: I'm watching to see carry Grant. I'm watching, and sure

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Speaker 2: enough a rolls Royce comes. I would know. A guy

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Speaker 2: gets out of chauffeur. He opens the back door, bounding

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Speaker 2: two steps at a time up up the stairs to

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Speaker 2: Grandharts in a gray it has got to be Good's,

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Speaker 2: dark gray with chalk stripes, double breasted Carry Grant. It

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Speaker 2: was him. I said, holy shit, Carry Grant. I can't

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Speaker 2: believe it. So one day soon after that, I'm walking

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Speaker 2: down about twelve thirty two, the commissary at Universal. I

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Speaker 2: hear a little click clack behind me, and I turn

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Speaker 2: around and I hear mel Brookshaw. I don't believe it.

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Speaker 2: It's mel Brooks. I said, oh my god, it's Carry Grant.

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Speaker 2: I said, how do you know me? He said, I

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Speaker 2: got your record. I just bought your record. You cost

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Speaker 2: me one thousand dollars. I bought so many record And

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Speaker 2: then he said, but where are you going? I said

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Speaker 2: to the company. He said, well, let's go together. So wow,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to have lunch. I had lunch with Carry Grant.

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Speaker 2: I called my brother Bernie, Lenny, Irvy. I called everybody Williamsburg.

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Speaker 2: They you wanted to know what he ate? I said

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Speaker 2: he had two poached eggs yon toast, but I had Tunicial. Yeah, okay.

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Speaker 2: Next day, phone rings, it's car Carrie. Yeah, it's mail

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Speaker 2: Carry Mal. They come lunch. Yes, well boom. Together Me

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Speaker 2: and Carry Grant. We walked down the Wednesday was me

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Speaker 2: and carry it. Thursday, Me and we're talking. What's your

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Speaker 2: favorite color? I say blue? He says yellow. What's your

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Speaker 2: favorite car? I said buick? He says the rolls or yeah,

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Speaker 2: comes right. I don't know what, they ask him. I

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Speaker 2: don't you know, I know it's gonna call. I run

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Speaker 2: out of dialogue. So the phone rings, and I said

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Speaker 2: to Marvin, if it's Carry Grant, I'm not in, which

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Speaker 2: is not true, but I mean makes.

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Speaker 1: Great Did you see him ever again all the time?

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Speaker 1: One of the carry Grunt stories.

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Speaker 2: You know, I used it in my stand up stuff

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Speaker 2: and I made it funny, but actually, if I told

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Speaker 2: the truth, it was really very touching because he was

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Speaker 2: really a good actor, and he had made some very beautiful,

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Speaker 2: you know, intelligent soft films about love and people, and

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Speaker 2: they have none of it. I kept saying, why don't

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Speaker 2: that was such a great picture? What did they make?

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Speaker 2: He said, because the money was in the light comedies.

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Speaker 1: So I think that you know life through food and

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Speaker 1: through your family and to your grandparents, and coming here

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Speaker 1: to do this home and memories.

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Speaker 2: Food at the River Cafe still is literally some of

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Speaker 2: the best. And and I've eaten and some really restaurants,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: And when I came here, I told Danny, remember Danny

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Speaker 1: the chef, And I said I was coming to see you,

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Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I once made a risotto

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Speaker 1: for mel and he came up to the past and

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Speaker 1: he said, Danny, you made that risotto. You should be

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Speaker 1: proud of yourself. And it was so something, so meaningful

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Speaker 1: because you didn't say I'm proud of you, and you

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Speaker 1: said you should be proud of yourself. So I'd like

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Speaker 1: to end this by saying, mel Brooks, you should.

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Speaker 2: Be proud of you.

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Speaker 1: I love you, No, thank you,