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Show how content he is with his "Sometimes I meet Jewish I girls late at night, and talk Yiddish to them. That's my thrill. Max Brooks thrills Mel, 'too. Anne and wanted a child around the second he says, when we year of marriage, realized we werent looking around anymore. It took us six years. Now Max is. 11 years old. Hes a very funny kid. He wants to be a writer and maybe an actor. At this point, he wants to be Steve Spielberg. 1 hope hell want to be Mel Brooks when he grows up. A child. Theres no combination like it in the world. Such joy and happiness and trouble and burden. A moviell go away. The lousy kidll never go away. Brooks clearly delights in talking about his family. He seems to enjoy playing Mel Brooks every bit as much as he enjoys playing Hamlet or Hitler, a shrink or a ps c hotic . In fact , in all those roles , he is Mel Brooks. Unlike so many performers, who want to be anybody but themselves. Brooks loves being Mel Brooks. And, he says, he always has. He even loved being Melvin Kaminsky, growing up in Brooklyn. "My father died when 1 was 2Vi," Brooks says, and my three older brothers acted as surrogate fathers. When I was a child, 1 never touched the ground. I was always being thrown up in the air. You hear about the people who become comedians because they had unhappy childhoods, but a lot of us go into it for the opposite reason: We got so much adoration and love and attention that when we left our nests and didn't get it, we started to ask, Where is it, the throwing in the air? Where? Where? Ah, the theater! Thats the place! Lets keep the throwing in the air, the hoorays. Brooks has grown accustomed to hoorays, to hearing cash registers jingle and audiences laugh. He loves both sounds. You know, theres a contract when you make a film, he says. The contract for me, as a filmmaker, is with the audience. It's not with the studio. It's not with the critics. Its with that audience in the dark theater. That is the only contract. 1 know that every time I film a scene, they're with me. Theyre say ing. Please.peareus. Give us something. Give us our moneys worth. And more important than our moneys worth, give us something for our time. Brooks delivers that statement very earnestly and without embarrassment. It is almost impossible to imagine Mel Brooks being embarrassed. Oh, I ve been embarrassed, he says. Once, I was taking a shower, and the door bell began to ring. It was the mailman. He must have rung a thousand times . Finally, I went out and opened the door, and he had left a package. I picked up the package and let go of the door, and it slammed behind me. I was locked out. 1 had nothing on but soap. I held the package over me. It w as a good thing I wasn't a woman. I would have needed three packages. 'T was living on 70th Street, in an apartment on the third floor. Fortunately. ing fun at marriage- 1 " self-servi- PARADE MAGAZINE JANUARY 22, 1984 PAGE 17 Mr. Schultz from the fourth floor came up the stairs. He always thought I was nuts. What now? he said. Please go tell Mr. Rheingold to come up with a key, I said. Mr. Rheingold was the super. It's an emergency.' "Mr. Schultz didnt want to, but he walked down, and Mr. Rheingold came up. I dont want any more of this, Mr. dont Brooks, Mr. Rheingold said, want any more of this nakedness. Mel Brooks gets dressed up now for i Brooksfilms. Tie, jacket, message, drama, the works. The rest of the time, happily, hes still running around naked. He's the Emperor of Comedy, the shortest emperor since Napoleon, and the emIS peror doesn't need new clothes. |