Quote Of The Day By Mel Brooks: ‘Tragedy Is When I Cut My Finger…’ – SlashFilm

Mel Brooks was born Melvin James Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was only two years old when his father, Max Kaminsky, died of tuberculosis, and he believes his sense of humor is rooted in anger over this.

He got his start in showbiz working resorts in the Catskills, but after trying his hand at drumming under the tutelage of Buddy Rich, he found his calling in comedy at the age of 16. He changed his name to Mel Brooks around this time (to avoid being confused with jazz trumpeter Max Kaminsky), and, after seeing death up close while serving in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II, he returned to New York and joined the writing staff of “Your Show of Shows” alongside Sid Caesar, Neil Simon, and Carl Reiner.

Brooks and Reiner became on-camera comedy stars in 1959 with their “The 2,000 Year Old Man,” but Brooks’ didn’t truly skyrocket until he made his feature debut by writing and directing “The Producers” in 1967. The showbiz satire earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, at which point he was a comedy brand. “The Twelve Chairs,” “Blazing Saddles,” and “Young Frankenstein” established him as a comedy maestro, and while Brooks never reached those heights again, films like “High Anxiety,” “History of the World, Part I” and “Spaceballs” have endured. (Here’s our complete ranking of his directorial efforts.)

Still, if you’re looking for the secret to Brooks’ comedic genius, it’s less to do with anger than self-love.

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

Brooks has shared this quote and reworded it many times over, but I don’t think he’s ever given a clearer explanation of it than he did while being interviewed for PBS’ American Masters. Per Brooks:

“What I think I’m trying to illustrate is the innate, incredible selfishness, the love for ourselves and every human being. We like other people, we do, but if we look in a mirror or we think about ourselves, it’s a deep love. I’m head over heels in love with myself! I gotta tell you that. Every night before I go to bed I try to kiss myself. It’s hard. I’m gonna stop and do it for a minute. [Kisses the back of his hand] ‘The best. Who could be better? No one, you’re so cute. You’re adorable. I love you.'”

This is a funny elaboration, but I’ve always taken something different from the quote.

As someone who tends to be ambivalent about themselves, self-love does not factor into my delight at other people’s comedic misfortune. It’s all about intent and execution. Take for instance the moment Zero Mostel douses a “hysterical” Gene Wilder with water in “The Producers,” prompting the panicked character to exclaim, “I’m wet! I’m hysterical … and I’m wet!” As a human being, I should feel great sympathy for Wilder. But the situation is so silly, and, most importantly, isn’t happening to me, so all I can do is howl.

Or in “Blazing Saddles,” when Alex Karras’s Mongo punches the horse. I love animals, and, obviously, abhor animal cruelty! But establishing Mongo as an unfeeling brute in this manner is a hoot.

This extends to black comedy, where you laugh at cold-blooded murder if the tone is correctly set (or, hell, even armageddon if we’re talking “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”). “Step Brothers” features a scene where Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly beat the crap out of a bunch of kids. And going back to “Blazing Saddles,” what about the sight of two outlaws tuning up an elderly woman (“Have you ever seen such cruelty?”).

Life is rough, and sometimes it’s funny when the rough stuff is happening to someone else.

Mel Brooks is a quote machine. It’s hard to single out his best remarks, but these are some of my favorites.

“My movies rise below vulgarity.”
“Look at Jewish history: Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breast, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.”
“Farts are a repressed minority. The mouth gets to say all kinds of things, but the other place is supposed to keep quiet. But maybe our lower colons have something interesting to say. Maybe we should listen to them. Farts are human, more human than a lot of people I know.”
“I’m the only Jew who ever made a buck off Hitler.”
“I like people with big talents and small neuroses — not always an easy combination to find. I’ve discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get. I reserve the right to be the only psychotic on the set.”
“I got nothing against cheap jokes — if they work. Funny is money.”
“I think every human being has hundreds of separate people living inside his skin. And the talent of a writer is directly related to his ability to give them separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living within him.”
“Gene [Wilder] acts like a bird flies. Learns all his technique and then leaves the earth and flies around the set like a crazy Jewish bird. And his instincts are always right.”