Sunday, November 15, 2009

2000 Year Old Secrets Revealed by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks

New York Times reporter Ari Karpel visited Carl Reiner's Beverly Hills home last month for an interview with the 87-year-old writer, producer, and director, and his guest, 83-year-old partner-in-humor Mel Brooks. The interview was held in anticipation of the release on November 24 of a remastered box set of The 2000-Year-Old Man, which will include three CDs and one DVD. The interview appears in today's New York Times, and you can read it here.

The pair, friends for almost 60 years after meeting on Sid Caesar's TV show, Your Show of Shows, are responsible for a long list of movies and TV shows. Brooks wrote, directed and starred in movies like High Anxiety, Blazing Saddles and Silent Movie, created the TV series Get Smart and turned two of his movies, The Producers and Young Frankenstein, into Broadway musicals. Reiner created The Dick Van Dyke Show, directed the movies Oh, God, The Jerk and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and has published eight books.

The 2000-Year-Old-Man skit has been one of the classic examples of Jewish humor that has found its way into the mainstream of American humor. Here is a six minute clip from the original recording.

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