I'm always looking for a way to get near Mel Brooks. Can you blame me? He has acted in, directed, produced, and written some of the most memorable films in human history-among them The Producers, Blazing Saddles, History of the World, Part I, and Spaceballs. He is the reason I went into comedy. As a young man, I obsessively watched his films and his appearances on late-night television. I would listen to his 2000 Year Old Man albums in which Mel played the character of an ancient man explaining the origins of humanity and dream of having the same job as him. Once, I interviewed Mel at an event where he was so funny that I locked up completely and didn't dare attempt a single joke. After I wrote the foreword to his book about the making of Young Frankenstein, I got to watch him record the audio version of it. Fifteen minutes into the reading, he stopped and shouted, "Why did I make this thing so damned long?! This is going to take forever!" Then there was the time that I took my friend and fellow comedian Bill Hader to Mel's office just to chat. He regaled us with stories for several hours. When we were getting ready to leave, Mel said, "Come and visit again, but not soon! Wait a few months." As we walked to our car, he screamed from the far distance, "Get the fuck out of here!" Mel is turning 97 this summer. He is way sharper than I am, which isn't saying much, and he is still riotously funny. Recently I visited him at his house in Los Angeles, not just so I could bask once more in the comic genius of a true master (although also that), but because I hoped to glean some of his wisdom. I wanted to understand what made Mel Brooks who he is, and I attempted to steer him toward the philosophical and the spiritual, so that we might all benefit from what he has learned in almost a century on this Earth. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. And to make me seem less dumb.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July - August 2023 من The Atlantic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July - August 2023 من The Atlantic.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Catching the Carjackers - On the road with an elite police unit as it combats a crime wave
On August 7, 2022, Shantise Summers arrived home from a night out with friends around 2:40 a.m. As she walked from her car toward her apartment in Oxon Hill, a Maryland neighborhood just southeast of Washington, D.C., she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw two men in ski masks. One put a gun to her face; she could feel the metal pressing against her chin. He demanded her phone, wallet, keys, and Apple Watch. She quickly handed them over, and they drove off in her 2019 Honda Accord.
The Most Remote Place in the World - Point Nemo is Earth's official "middle of nowhere." A lot seems to be going on there.
It’s called the “longest-swim problem”: If you had to drop someone at the place in the ocean farthest from any speck of land—the remotest spot on Earth—where would that place be? The answer, proposed only a few decades ago, is a location in the South Pacific with the coordinates 48 52.5291ᤩS 123 23.5116ᤩW: the “oceanic point of inaccessibility,” to use the formal name. It doesn’t get many visitors. But one morning last year, I met several people who had just come from there.
You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.
"The average human lifespan," Oliver Burkeman begins his 2021 megabest seller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, "is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." In that relatively brief period, he does not want you to maximize your output at work or optimize your leisure activities for supreme enjoyment. He does not want you to wake up at 5 a.m. or block out your schedule in a strictly labeled timeline.
Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.
Last November, during a symposium at Mount Vernon on democracy, John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who served as Donald Trump's second chief of staff, spoke about George Washington's historic accomplishments— his leadership and victory in the Revolutionary War, his vision of what an American president should be. And then Kelly offered a simple, three-word summary of Washington's most important contribution to the nation he liberated.
The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required greatbooks course, since 1988. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading, College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem.
What Zoya Sees
Long a fearless critic of Israeli society, since October 7 Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has made wrenching portraits of her nation's sufferingand become a target of protest.
Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg
The writer’ insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out.
Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England
In his new novel, the present isnt much better than the past—and its a lot less sexy.
Scent of a Man
In a new memoir, Al Pacino promises to reveal the person behind the actor. But is he holding something back?
THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT
In Texas and elsewhere, new laws and policies have encouraged neighbors to report neighbors to the government.
