NEW YORK – The 2,000-year-old man is 100 years old. On Sunday, Mel Brooks will celebrate his 100th birthday.
The comedian and director was waiting for this breakthrough.
Earlier this year, Judd Apatow titled his retrospective documentary about him: “Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man!“
“I was born to make people laugh,” Brooks says in the film. “So, I’m doing it.”
Brooks Melvin Kaminsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 28, 1926. After serving in the Army during World War II and performing in The Borscht Belt, Sid Caesar hired him as a writer. On his show “Show Shows” Brooks met Carl Reinerwho would remain a lifelong friend and with whom he created the “2000 Year Old Man” drawings.
Reiner was peppering Brooks’ old man with questions about what Jesus looked like. “Jesus… yes, yes,” Brooks would answer. “A skinny boy. He wore sandals. He was always walking around with 12 other guys.”
Brooks went on to produce classic comedies such as The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and High Anxiety. Brooks told The Associated Press that it all started in 2021, when he was a child in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
“I wanted the party to go on. I wanted to keep the happiness and the joy and the explosions of laughter in the dreary part of our lives, not in our childhood anymore,” Brooks recalls. “I did an interview once, and the guy said to me, ‘What’s the happiest part of your life? Was it winning an Oscar? Was that?’ Marriage to Anne Bancroft“I said, ‘No, not at all. It was my childhood. From about 4 or 5 to 9, it was the most exciting, happy, joyful life anyone could have.’
“The man said: What happened at nine o’clock?” “Homework,” I said.
In April, Brooks sent a video message to Eddie Murphy honoring him with the AFI Life Achievement Award. in May, Announce He was donating thousands of his documents and photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.
“I’ve always been proud to say that I make people laugh for a living,” Brooks said at the time in a statement. “So, knowing that my work will have a place in the National Archives of Comedy and continue to make people laugh leaves me with a deep sense of pride.”
Brooks has sometimes made death a joke, too. In a sketch from the 1980s, he created a coin-operated tombstone for himself that played a videotaped message. “I was Mel Brooks, one of the funniest little Jews who ever walked the Earth,” it began.
When asked in a 2021 AP interview if he thinks about death often, Brooks said no.
“After 60, I gave up thinking about it because if I did, I would think about it all the time,” Brooks said, laughing. “So I don’t think about it much. When and if it happens, it will be a sad day — for everyone but me.”
“I enjoy life,” he added. “I would like to do this for as long as possible.”