SK: Since the release of your first album, it's been just about 33 and a third years.
MB: Yes, we invented that turntable speed, so we thought, hey, let's make a record.
CR: First, we invented 32 RPM. We were just a little off. Could have made a fortune.
MB: At 32, we sounded like this: Gooooood moooooarwning. [THE TWO IN UNISON]: Goooooood moooooarwning. [BROOKS:] People wanted good morning , they didn't want gooooood mooooooarwning.
CR: Actually, he said 33 and a third, and I said, why break it into thirds? It'll confuse the public. Make it 31. So we compromised.
SK: When did the 2000 Year Old Man make his first appearance?
CR: 1950 is when we first discovered this man was alive. Legend has it that it happened at a party, but the emmis [Yiddish for "truth"] is, it started in the office at Your Show of Shows. When we were bored, or even when we weren't bored, and Mel ust wanted to distract us, he would start doing lines. He wasn't asked questions, he'd just do it. One of the characters I remember fondly was the Jewish pirate.
MB: Sailcloth is sixpence a yard. Who can afford to set sail? You know how many yards you need for a sail?
CR: I knew what Mel could do, so one day I came to the office - this wasn't planned - and I was angry bbecause I had seen the TV show We, The People that Dan Seymour did, where he interviewed people about current events and history. And he talked to a guy who said he was in Stalin's toilet and he heard him say they were going to bomb America. I was so incensed that they would put such an inflammatory thing on the air, but it also occurred to me that the guy sounded like Mel doing a Russian. So I came in and down next to Mel on the couch in [producer] Max Liebman's office and said, in Dan Seymour's voice, "I understand you were at the scene of the crucifixion." And Mel said, "Oh, boy!" and we were off. The whole office was laughing for ten minutes. He knew Christ, he said Christ was a thin lad.
MB: Thin lad, always wore sandals. Hung around with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once they asked for water.
CR: I remember you didn't go to the crucifixion because it was a hot day. It was a big hill and such a crowd of people screaming.
MB: I was so upset with what they did to that guy on the cross, I couldn't eat my rice pudding. And you know how much I love rice pudding. I'll eat it anywhere and anytime.
CR: I was just kidding around. I didn't even know I was going to get an answer. After that, I knew that no matter what I asked, I would get a funny answer.
MB: There was another meeting, you had a wire recorder at your house. He came up to me and said, " I understand that you are 2000 years old." And I said, "I'm not yet 2000... October 16th."
SK: So the first time, in the office, the premise was established that you were old enough to have attended the crucifixion, but at the house was the first time the 2000 Year Old Man was actually named?
CR: We never actually called him the 2000 Year Old Man. That came later.
SK: So you were entertaining your friends and coworkers with Q & A before this golden premise was born.
CR: Mainly to entertain people in the office at Your Show Of Shows. Anytime we'd get bored, we'd ask Mel questions. In the beginning, I'd ask him a question, expecting to get the hysterical answer I got two days ago, but he'd give me a completely different hysterical answer.
MB: Ad-libbing is a lot more fun than remembering.
CR: If I asked him about his wives, he'd give me a different number every time, different names and different reasons he loved them. One "carried me nice." If he repeated, it would be acting. Mel likes to create.
MB: We saw how much we tickled a small group of friends. I loved how much Carl laughed, and how much I laughed. We loved how much we got hysterical and they got hysterical. It was like spreading joy. Then it became a challenge, to see whether or not I could field anything Carl could throw at me. A cat-and-mouse game.
CR: But I'm not chasing a mouse, I'm chasing a fox.
MB: It's also in the way I get chased. He sees me as some kind of prey. He knows how to run me into a corner, where the only way out is with an inCRedible lie.
CR: As soon as he starts answering, I've got to starting thinking about the next question. I'm listening with my third ear so I can give him the follow-up, and I'm looking for the moment where it's needed. You never know when Mel is finished with a thought, because he'll get five jokes on teh way to the one that's in his mouth.
MB: I would dig myself into a hole, and Carl would not let me climb out.
CR: And in the answers, he would give himself a new problem. Like when I reffered to the 37 plays that Shakespeare wrote and he'd say "39." He knew that I was gonna ask him about that 38th play. He'd have to invent one.
MB: Queen Alexandra And Murray. Closed in Egypt.
SK: Even if you've heard the records before, you can still feel the improvisation, the tension of waiting to see what you'll come up with.
MB: I never knew what he was going to ask me. For the first three records, there was no such thing as material. I knew if we did an hour, we'd have 30 minutes that was good. If we did two hours, we might get an hour that was good.
SK: But in the beginning, it was just an office diversion and a party treat for friends. You never thought of becoming part of the comedy record boom?
MB: Never. There was never any profit motive. Today, of course, we need the money.
CR: I loved these sessions so much, I wanted to hear them again, and I couldn't remember what he did - it changed so much - so we started to record them. I had this Revere tape recorder...
MB: Like Paul Revere.
SK: That anit-Semite?
CR: We couldn't go to a party without somebody saying "Do that." I started feeling put-upon: they only wanted us for "that." So we recorded them, for our own sake. If we were going to a party, I'd schlep along the Revere. We would work for five people, then people. We never cared how many were in the room. Someone would come into a room and say "submarine captain," and Mel would become a submarine captain. Is it true, sir, that the captain goes down with his ship?
MB: Not in a submarine. The captain goes up with his ship.
CR: He's already down, so he goes up.
MB: If he's a good captain, he's the last man to go up.
CR: This went on for years, so I can't say how many we did, but we got to be know for it. And once, on Fire Island, Joe Fields, the Broadway producer, heard it and went crazy. So he gave us this party.
MB: Central Park West. 1958.
CR: That was our first time in "high society" with this. Alan Jay Lerner was there and Billy Rose, Harold Rome. This was our first party where Mel was considered Mozart. And they went hysterical. They never heard anything like this.
SK: And this led to the big party in Hollywood?
CR: Yes, I was there doing The Dinah Shore Show, and Mel was in town. Joe Fields invited the biggest A-list you ever saw to hear these two New York fools do the 2000 Year Old Man. We were a little nervous, but now it was much easier. We'd been doing this for ten years.
SK: Carl, you were working as an actor and becoming a writer, but, Mel, you were in a terrible slump.
MB: It was a really bad point for me, financially, in my marriage, and career-wise. The Caesar shows were over, and I was not steadily employed.
SK: So this party turned out to be a real pivot pont for both of you.
CR: They laughed more than anybody ever laughed. George Burns said, " You better put it on tape, because I'm gonna steal it." Edward G. Robinson said, deadly serious, "Why don't you guys write a Broadway play based on this. I want to play the 2000 Year Old Man." He wasn't kidding. And Ross Hunter asked me if I had a screenplay idea. Not this - he was too elegant. He was looking for something with white telephones. And I had the idea for The Thrill Of It All, which became my first screenplay and launched my career in motion pictures. But the most important one who came up to us afterward was Steve Allen, who said this should be on records.
MB: At first, we said no. I really didn't want to do it. This was for friends. I thought some of it would be too inside, and I was afraid some of the stuff might be offensive, to Jews and Catholics and provide some stimulus for anti-Semitism.
CR: Jewish accents were not used, they fell off during the war. Myron Cohen was elegant, he was OK. But we were afraid the Jewish material was too specialized, for our "club" only.
SK: But it was really universible funny.
CR: But we didn't know that then. Slowly but surely, we noticed that non-Jews were laughing.
SK: So eventhough you were at a low point in your career, Mel, you resisted this commercial chance that fell into your laps?
MB: The material was never designed for a commercial audience, so I thought it might be too hip, but Steve convinced us that the Sid Caesar shows had raised the comedy level of the country.
CR: So Steve introduced us to the guy who ran World Pacific Records, Phil Teretsky.
MB: He organized a session, but I was still apprehensive.
CR: Steve Allen was very smart. He conviced Mel and me that we should try it. He said, "I'll pay for the recording session. I'll give you the tape. If you don't like it, burn it. And if you like it, edit it. "He was right. Too many people were laughing. It wasn't just for our friends.
SK: So the 2000 Year Old Man "went public," and the first record was a hit. How did that affect your lives?
MB: Everybody in the business knew I was a funny guy, but only as a writer who was funny after work. The record allowed me to really perform. Almost in the first month of its release, I began getting calls from everybody to be on the television shows.
SK: Carl, you already had a foothold in television but hadn't yet created The Dick Van Dyke Show.
CR: I was a writer on The Dinah Shore Show. My role in life from then was mainly as a straight man, but now I was a straight man on a hit record. And it made Mel known for the first time as a celebrity and a performing entity, to the audience and to the business - and internationally. Nobody knows the writer, but now his face was on the cover of a hit album. When Mel later performed in his movies, it came a shock to a lot of people, but we always knew he was the funniest performer.
SK: So now this CD reissue is going to give you a new generation of listeners hungry for comedy. Why have these records lasted so long?
MB: They're perfectly, perfectly round. Even if you took them into space...
CR: Mel can't say this for himself, but the real reason these albums have endured, and should be preserved on CD, is that Mel Brooks is a wonderful performer and has a way of saying the absolute truth about something that people don''t know until he says it. He hits the nail on the head so hard, it's amazing. There's no better line-reading in the history of comedy than when I ask him, "How did yo feel when Joan of Arc, your former girlfriend, was burned at the stake?" And he says,"Terrible." No one else could read that line that way. I've tried it and I can't do it. Such an offhanded way, as if he were eating something and just swallowed and said it and went on to something else. The records are loaded with that kind of stuff and that's Mel.
MB: That line is disarming because it's simple and very small and truthful.
SK: The sudden, almost callous brevity of that response is so different from everything else on the albums, all the building and explaining and broken field running.
MB: Yes.
CR: "Terrible." It's so sad on these news reports when they put a micrphone in someone's face and say, "How did you feel when your child was burned?" And what are you gonna say? He gave the real answer. What are you supposed to say? "Wonderful"? "I'm fine" ?
MB: "At the moment, not so hot, but well, after a time, I'll feel a little better, and every day better and better until finally I'll be jolly about the whole thing."
SK: There was some Joan of Arc material you left out.
CR: Before he dated her, the 2000 Year Old Man didn't know Joan of Arc was a woman.
MB: She wore armor, she rode a horse, she killed people. I thought she was a guy.
SK: So the success of the first record opened the door to TV. But Mel, you didn't like TV.
MB: Not much. I had done it for ten years with Sid Caesar, and I didn't like what was happening to it. It was becoming sitcom. The variety format was out of style.
SK: But you did a few. What was the first?
MB: Ed Sullivan.
SK: Followed by...
MB: Regret, I said to Carl, "Why do we need this? We're comedy writers. You're an established actor. Let's not take this thing too seriously."
CR: He didn't like performing the 2000 Year Old Man in front of the public for ten minutes.
MB: I hated it.
CR: He hated it.
MB: I found myself working too hard on television. I never worked hard when we made the records. it came naturally. It's a lot more fun to ad-lib than to memorize.
CR: On television, you've got to prepare and pick your jokes. If they give you five minutes, you can't take a chance you're gonna come up with the five great ones. there were one or two successful shows. But most of the time we were frustrated, because the 2000 Year Old Man needs time to get cued, to fail a little, to wander a little. On TV, we didn't have the spontaneity of the records, where I just ask him and he's groping and searching an panicking.
MB: What I'd do is, I'd stall around a little bit, like a politician on Nightline. Well, I'll tell you the truth... the whole truth... half a truth... but the maing thing was... and boom, by then I'd have it.
SK: So you went on to the second album, still with no preparation to speak of.
MB: We lessened the amount of characters on the second one and strengthend the 2000 Year Old Man, made him the featured character.
CR: All of the characters made us laugh. We didn't know the Old Man was gonna take off like tha. When we did the parties, the 2000 Year Old Man would always be like a forshpeis [Yiddish for "appetize"], a beginning, and then we'd do the others.
MB: We knew he was important, but we didn't know that he was the big star.
CR: But we enjoyed the others just as much.
SK: Who is the 2000 Year Old Man?
MB: He's a feisty fellow, a tough guy, a survivor. He's the Eastern European immigrant Jew, pronouncing himself forcefully, struggling to make it in America. He's got all the answers, because he's got to know to survive. He's a no-nonsense, no-bullshit guy. He tells a lot of human truths, the 2000 Year Old Man. He'll tell you the truth whether he knows it or not.
SK: Like Professor von Spacebrain, and all the other phony experts on Your Show of Shows, he'll say whatever he has to, to get through the interview. Pragmatism.
MB: Right. It isn't lying, it's press-agentry, self-promotion. Smart guy. He don't give you any bad advice, this guy. A rich lie is better than a poor truth. In his lies, there's always a little truth.
SK: Or maybe a big one. Some of the issues you took shots at, more than three decades ago, are still very much with us. You've also said, Mel, that part of your motive in making the records was to preserve the Yiddish dialect and humor.
MB: That was later, in retrospect.
SK: Who were you doing?
MB: I was doing my grandparents. My father's father and mother and my mother's fater. And their friends. I loved my family. I loved my mother to distraction. It made me feel very safe when I was two or three years old and I heard those accents. I knew I was being watched over.
CR: The American Jews knew who he was doing. They were mainly from the Diaspora, the whole area, so they all had that same accent.
MB: The funniest one were the pretenders, those who pretended to be native Americans. They pronounced themselves forcefully, and they tried to have expertise in their speech. "Where you from?" "Miami Beach, Floringda." They'd add an "ing" in there, for some reason, to make it more classy.
CR: Or they'd pronounce words very clearly, delicately, like "Olive-oot."
MB: For "Hollywood."
SK: So you did the second album for Capitol. How did it do?
MB: Almost as well as the first. I was actually making a living. After that, I became very busy with Get Smart.
SK: How did you get to Get Smart?
MB: The records got me there. David Susskind and Dan Melnick had an idea for a spoof on James Bond, the CIA, I Spy, etc. so they called me in and suggested Buck Henry as a collaborator. They knew the records, they loved them. They quoted lines to me.
SK: And Get Smart led to bigger things.
MB: I segued into writing a novel called Spring Time For Hitler, which then metamorphosed into a play, because I talked too much, and then, because there were too many scenes for a play, someone suggested that it should be a movie, which eventually became The Producers.
SK: Who was that smart person?
MB: Anne Bancroft, whome I had just married.
SK: How did the idea for the third album, The Cannes Film Festival, come about?
CR: It arose out of the ad-libbing. I was asking about movies, and I said, "Here we are at the Cannes Film Festival" with Italian director Frederico Fettucini and the other characters, and pretty soon we had enough to make it the theme of the album.
SK: Why was it so long between the third and fourth albums?
MB: I said to Carl, let's put the character to bed. Enough is enough. But that Carl loves asking those questions. To this day, he wants to do another one.
SK: The world could use a little 2000 Year Old Man these days.
CR: I want to hear what the 2000 Year Old Man would have to say about everything that's happened since, about the people who are around now. And nowadays we could be much bolder.
MB: Easy for you, you just ask the questions. I gotta come up with the answers.
CR: To me, it's entertainment. He's making me laugh. You sweat a little, but I'm always amazed at watching that mind work, how he can reduce great truths to something so simple, so funny. Like your definition of tragedy and comedy - "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open manhole and die." It's been said before, but never so short and so funny.
SK: The catalys for the fourth album was Joe Smith at Warner Bros. Records, who pleaded and prodded you into performing one more time. How did he know you?
CR: Joe's son Jeff and my son Lucas were schoolmates from early on, so I knew Joe socially when he was at Capitol Records. And at Warner, he knew how many people were dying to hear the 2000 Year Old Man again. There hadn't been a record for nine years.
SK: how long did it take him to talk you into it?
MB: He noodged and bothered me. In a couple of weeks, I caved in. You know, it's nice to be loved, and he really loved this stuff, loved the characters.
CR: That is interesting, because Mel wasn't confident that he had it anymore, that he could conjure up the 2000 Year Old Man in his full glory. That happens, you get scared. Now he was a successful moviemaker and writer, with The Producers and Get Smart under his belt and and Oscar for The CRitic. But we conned him into it. We used to do it in living rooms. Mel said, I don't know if I can still do that in a formal setting. So Joe said, "We'll have a studio with a bunch of couches." They got every couch that was on the Warner lot. There must have been 200 couches in a big sound stage. It looked like some bizarre living room, because the couches didn't match. An interior decorator's nightmare.
MB: It was like a Passover dinner. Everybody was reclining, watching us and reclining and laughing.
SK: It had been nine years, so did you have to prepare for this one?
CR: This is the only one we ever perpared for. This time we said we gotta, with all those people coming. So we worked at my house...
MB: We didn't work long.
CR: About an hour. All I did was ask questions, and I made notes on cards, to get some questions we could vollet. As soon as he said something, I knew he had it. Even if he didn't hit pay dirt, I could see he was going in that direction. We collected a big bunch of cards, and then I had a bunch of questions for which he couldn't come up with answers.
SK: And it wasn "an event."
CR: As soon as Mel walked out on the stage and I said "Here's the Two Thou...," it was like the return of Pavarotti. It was a standing ovation of all these people who were dying to hear him and hadn't been able to for so many years. It was wonderful.
MB: You know, it's hard to fall off a chair, but it's easy to slip off a couch. I remember seeing a lot of empty couches and thinking that people had left. But I heard the screams of laughter. They had actually fallen off the couches and onto the floor. They obviously liked the character.
CR: We had been on for about two and a half hours, and the audience was still screaming.
MB: I said, go back to those other questions, the cards we tossed.
CR: Luckily, I had kept them, and they became part of the record.
SK: The history of the 2000 Year Old Man is also the story of a 44-year-old friendship. How did you two first meet?
MB: I saw Carl on a television show called The Fifty-Fourth Street Revue. It was late '49, because we were already making, without Carl, a show called The Admiral Broadway Revue. We had a kind of boy dancer/singer who would also interview Sid. We were economical, we took somebody from the chorus, Tom Avera. He was wonderful. But I invented a sequence called "The Airport Interview." So we needed a great interviewer.
SK: So this was the seed of the historical interview format you and Carl later perfected?
MB: Yes, but we had not struck the right note. So I called Sid to my house. I said, "Watch this show." There was Carl on the The Fifty-Fourth Street Revue. I said, "Sid, this guy's great. We can't just keep taking people from the chorus to work with you."
SK: What was Carl doing on that show?
MB: Revue comedy, sketch monologues, he did everything.
SK: And what did you spot in him?
MB: I saw a charming guy with great timing, a great knack for comedy. A great foil, a great second banana, a great Abbott to Sid's Costello. He was a straight man, but when he had to be funny, he could play a character, like in the French movie skits. He possessed great physical and mental dexterity.
CR: Max Liebman had also seen me in a Broadway show called Alive and Kicking. So I came on board as the interviewer.
SK: Mel has described your reporter character as a perfect blend of earnest and skeptical. You're genuinely interested in interviewing this scientific phenomenon, but you're also suspicious of some of his more amazing powers.
CR: Like any good newsman, I tried to never inject myself, but, being a comedian, you raise your eyebrow once in a while to get an extra laugh.
SK: There are moments when Mel's ad-libs are so startling, we can hear you losing your distance and taken aback.
CR: And more you don't hear, because I turned away from the mic.
SK: Once Carl joined the show, did you two become friends immediately?
MB: Almost immediately.
CR: The 2000 Year Old Man brought us together all the time.
SK: Your collaboration is the journey of a writer who wants to perform and an actor who wants to write. When they gave you a typewriter on Your Show of Show, Carl, it was big step forward. But when they tried to give you one, Mel, you didn't want it.
MB: No, 'cause I wanted to be an actor, I didn't want to be a writer. I was forced into writing, because I didn't like what I was saying. So I begain making it up myself. When I met Sid Caesar I had learned already, after three or four years in the mountains, how to make it up. I would have made my way into entertaining, but I didn't have to. Sid did everything I wanted to with the characters I created.
SK: But inside you were still burning to get up there and do it.
MB: That's why I never wanted a typewriter. I thought I'd be chained to it, it would be a terrible burden. I wanted to be a performer. The onlly thing I liked about a typewriter was that I knew Ogden Nash typed late at night in bed with his typewriter on hi lap, sitting against the headboard. And once he wrote a squib in The New Yorker. "Every night in bed I hop/And pound my little qwertyuiop." "Qwertyuiop" is the first line of letters on the typewriter.
CR: Mel is what we call a talking writer.
MB: I don't mind writing, but as I write I still talk. I play all the characters. Easier to do with a Ticonderoga than an IBM.
SK: When Carl became a writer, did that put you in competition with each other?
MB: No, we could fight for each other.
CR: We weren't the adversaries.
MB: And Carl became one of the best writers on the show.
CR: I was considered a writer without a portfolio. Every once in a while, I would get, "You fuckin' actor, what do you know?" Once I got a joke into on of Sid's monologues that was quoted by Bishop Sheen, and after that benediction, they left me alone. And to work with that bunch of great writers was the biggest influence on me. [Note: These writers, spanning Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour, and four Caesar specials, include Mel Tolkin, Tony Webster, Aaron Rubin, Lucille Kallan, Danny Simon, Neil Simon, Joe Stein, Mike Stewart, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin, Selma Diamond, Phil Sharp, Larry Gelbart, and Woody Allen.] I watched Mel creating from the top of his head, all the time, all the time. He used to come in angry, because he was always late (he had insomnia), and he'd try to destory everything that was already written, because he wasn't involved with it, and he'd say, "I'll come up with a better joke" - and he did. The SOB, I wanted to kill him.
MB: That was quite a writers' room we had. Every three days I had a nervous breakdown for one reason or another. I used to puke between parked cars.
CR: Oh, boy.
MB: Remember, before analysis?
SK: Coming from the hurly-burly of the Caesar shows, with the incredible tension of live television and the legendary fierce competition of the writers' room, the advent of the records must have seemd like a godsend. Like going from a soccer match to laying tennis with a friend. Carl serves, you rally awhile, and Mel puts it away.
MB: Yes, it was heaven. Carl's a natural server. He never cared about being the one who scores. He wanted the thing to be good - the show, the event, the record, whatever. He always contributed, he never stole. That's why I thought he'd be perfect for Sid Caesar.
SK: And the record form is so pure and simple. No other collaborators.
MB: No above the line, no below the line, just the lines. It didn't have to go through a crew or a studio. It didn't have to be translated by a lens or shaped by editing. We did edit, of course, but that was for length and to take out the less funny stuff.
SK: You once said that the records took more of your soul than any other project. That they were your most personal work.
MB: Yes, because I could be the most free, the most me. Whatever came out, that was it. No lighting, no makeup. Uncensored and unguarded.
SK: But even with the deep personal satisfaction of working in this form with a close friend, once you passed a certain point, you never wanted to do it again?
MB: Four was enough.
SK: And you were busy making movies.
MB: And I knew that records would stop being around. They would turn into little flat cookies and then some kind of digital birthday cakes. Other than taht, I might have continued.
SK: You could still do it.
MB: Yeah, but you've got to have the appetite. I'm something of a wine connoisseur, and sometimes you can get drunk with a taste. I like listening to them, though, and I do laugh.  I had a couple of cassettes made; I play them in the car. I still enjoy them, including some stuff nobody likes but me.
SK: Carl, if you could interview the 2000 Year Old Man today, what would you ask him?
MB: Oh, no, we're not gonna do a session for you. We're saddled with blazing commitments.
CR: [TO BROOKS] Oh, sir, now that you are older and wiser than ever, why is it that you don't like to be interviewed anymore?
MB: Because I found out other people are being paid for this. You ask me and I don't get paid. It takes the heart out of it... Start again.
CR: Why won't you submit to interviews?
MB: Who the hell are these people to interfere with my life? I have stairs to climb. I have trolleys to catch. I have tangerines to peel. I have people to yell back at.
CR: But why didn't you say that to Charles Kurelt? You said you'd go on with him some Sunday morning.
MB: Because, he's nice. He shows birds at the end of his program.
CR: Tell me, sir, how do you feel now that Rhino Records is putting all your collected wisdom on CD?
MB: What're you talking'? 2000 years ago I was on CD.
CR: Oh, really? They had CDs 2000 years ago?
MB: Certainly. Cave Drawings.

Saul Kahan is a film production publicist whose many credits include Mel Brooks' Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men In Tights, as well as Animal House, Blade Runner, Chinatown, Coming To America, The Muppet Movie, and this year's Greedy. He is also a freelance journalist and an entertainment advertising copywriter whose lines have appeared on everything from Naked Gun to Dangerous Liasons.