I Remember Me Page 3

  A few weeks ago, my son Lucas, his wife Maud, and Livia’s loving sister Rose, an excellent choral singer and cellist, invited my daughter Annie and I to attend a concert at Livia’s school, and all I kept thinking and saying to Annie was, “Wow, would Pop get a kick out of seeing that lovely girl with the long, red hair playing his violin!”

  After the concert, when Livia emerged, we started to congratulate her, but she held up her hand and said, “Wait, I’ll be right back!”

  When I asked where she was going, she said, “I am going to get Irving.”

  Her family knew what she meant, but it took a second for me to get it. Livia had named the violin “Irving!”

  And I thank her for that. Had my beautiful granddaughter not named her violin Irving, I would not have had the pleasure of writing “Irving Shoots Irving Playing Irving!”

  The automatic timing device Irving invented to photograph himself

  CHAPTER SIX

  Meet Mel Brooks, the Man in the Bay Window

  In 1951, my wife, Estelle, and I and our children took our very first summer vacation on an island in New York’s Great South Bay that was called, for reasons I forget, Fire Island. The island was thirty-eight miles long and about three city blocks wide. We first learned of this quiet resort from Mel Tolkin, the head writer of Your Show of Shows, who, with his wife Edith, had rented a house there for the summer.

  “It’s a great place to vacation,” he suggested, “especially with kids. Beautiful beach—no cars allowed—and people get to walk around barefoot.”

  It sounded heavenly, and a week later, Estelle, our children, and I drove to Bayshore, Long Island, parked our Buick in a lot, and then boarded a ferry for the half-hour trip to Ocean Beach, a small town on Fire Island.

  Lined up at the Ocean Beach dock were half a dozen eager teenagers and their red metal wagons, who, for a dollar tip, were ready to transport the new arrivals’ luggage to their rented homes. We splurged and hired two wagons—one for the baggage and the other for two happy, wide-eyed kids, four-year-old Robbie and two-year-old Annie.

  Walking to our summer home, we passed dozens of friendly-faced, barefooted children and adults. I found this, and the absence of cars, wonderfully quaint and calming.

  The modest house, which the Tolkins had secured for us and we had rented sight unseen, was located about a half block from the ocean. The Realtor, who met us on the porch, informed us that our new home was one of the few on the street whose rooms had “dwarf petitions.” He suggested that in our case, it could turn out to be a plus.

  Not knowing what “dwarf petitions” were, I asked, “Why so?” and he pointed to Robbie and Annie, who were getting out of their wagon.

  “In the middle of the night, if they’re not feeling well or have to ‘go potty’ and call for you,” he explained, “they won’t have to scream their lungs out. The ocean is pretty loud, but with no ceilings on any of the rooms, you’ll hear them right off.”

  After learning what dwarf petitions were, I understood why the rent was only eight hundred dollars for the season.

  Besides the rooms having no ceilings, we found that the mattresses had lumps, the sheets and pillowcases were unironed, and the dishes unmatched.

  One other thing the house lacked was a guest room, but that did not deter Estelle and me from inviting a friend to spend a weekend with us. On that first Saturday, Mel Brooks, twenty-one and single, had been invited by other friends to attend their beach party. His friends’ cottage had no extra room or cot, and neither did we, but we had a living room with an alcove that sported a four-foot, cushioned window seat. We offered our window seat to Mel, and he happily accepted it.

  That night, as we tucked Rob and Annie in, we forewarned them that if they awoke early and happened to wander into the living room, not to be frightened if they saw a man sleeping in the window seat. We showed them the alcove and the window seat and repeated our warning. “Don’t be frightened if you see a man sleeping there.”

  To show us he understood, Robbie repeated, “A man sleeping there,” and little sister Annie nodded and pointed. “A man there?!”

  “Yes,” I said, “and be very quiet so you don’t wake up the man.”

  At two that morning, a party-weary Mel quietly let himself into the house, took off his shoes, and curled up in the window seat. An hour or so later, two curious children found themselves at the alcove, staring at “the man” they were told would be there. So as not to awaken the soundly sleeping “man,” they spoke very softly. Their faces were no more than a foot from Mel’s when their whispered conversation was just loud enough to awaken him. Hoping they might go away, Mel feigned being asleep, but when he heard their charming chatter, he could not resist eavesdropping.

  Here now is the whispered conversation Mel reported Robbie and Annie carried on sixty years ago:

  Annie: “Is dat the man?”

  Robbie: “Dat’s the man.”

  Annie: “He the man?”

  Robbie: “Yes, dat’s the man.”

  Annie: “Dat’s the man?”

  Robbie: “Dat’s the man.”

  Annie: “Man sleep?”

  Robbie: “Yes, the man sleep.”

  Annie: “No, man not sleep.”

  Robbie: “Yes, the man sleeping.”

  Annie: “Man eye open.”

  Robbie: “Where?”

  Annie: “There—li’l bit.”

  Robbie: “No man eye closed.”

  Annie: “No, open, I show.”

  With that, Annie reached out and, with her forefinger, attempted to open one of Mel’s eyelids.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” Mel said with a grin. “Da man is up!”

  Mel then sat up and hugged his young inquisitors.

  That morning at breakfast, with the children playing outside, Mel recreated for Estelle and me a verbal transcript of the conversation he had eavesdropped a few hours earlier. Once again, it proves that “out of the mouth of babes” come words that are worth remembering and sometimes, transcribing.

  As I think about this event, I can’t help but marvel at what those three participants have done since that memorable day in a dwarf-partitioned rental on Fire Island. Here now, for my distinct pleasure, I proudly offer a partial list of their individual accomplishments.

  Rob Reiner

  On Television:

  Portrayed Meathead in Norman Lear’s groundbreaking and air-breaking comedy, All in the Family.

  Feature Films:

  Directed:

  Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, This Is Spinal Tap, The American President, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Misery, The Bucket List, Flipped, The Beauty of Belle Isle.

  Social and Political Activism:

  Leadership Role in Preschool Education

  Health Care for Children

  Federal Court Challenge to Give Gays the Right to Marry.

  In Life:

  Husband to lovely wife, Michele and father to three fine children, Romy, Jake and Nick.

  Romy, Michele, Jake, Rob and Nick

  Annie Reiner

  Member International Psychoanalytic Association.

  Degrees: PhD, PsyD, and Sr. Faculty Psychoanalytic Center of CA

  Published Books:

  Psychoanalytic:

  The Search for Conscience and the Birth of the Mind

  Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind

  Children’s Books:

  The Potty Chronicles

  A Visit to the Art Galaxy

  The History of Christmas

  The Journey of the Little Seed

  Poetry:

  Presents of Mind, Beyond Rhyme And Reason

  The Naked I

  Mind Your Heart

  Annie R
einer

  Mel Brooks

  Albums, CDs:

  The 2000 Year Old Man

  I am sorry, but I don’t think I am going to continue the formal configuration I used to catalogue Rob’s and Annie’s achievements. Typing-wise, it is just too wearying. I will simply note that before Mel wrote the screen and stage versions of The Producers and the Broadway musical, Young Frankenstein, for which he also supplied the music and lyrics, he had earlier Broadway credits and successes, which included sketches and librettos for the following musicals: New Faces of 1952, Shinbone Alley, and All American.

  As a writer-producer-director, his theatrical films include: The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Life Stinks, Silent Movie, Robin Hood—Men In Tights, and Dracula—Dead and Loving It.

  I hope Mel will not be angry that I excluded some of his films. He might be inclined to temper his anger when I add that all of Mel’s films are available on DVD and can be purchased or rented at Amazon.com, DirecTV, Hulu, and Netflix. If that doesn’t soothe him, then perhaps my including in the appendix an eight-by-ten photo of him sent to me by my former secretary, Sybil Adelman will. She actually asked, “Is the man in this photo Paul Newman or your friend, Mel?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Truth about the 2000-Year-Old Man

  The truth about this old man is that he does what many old people do: he lies about his age. It was in 1960 when the world first heard this wizened old gent, who resides in the body of Mel Brooks, proudly state on an album entitled The 2000-Year-Old Man that he was two millennia old. Now, those of us who can add know that between 1960 and this year, 2012, fifty-two years have elapsed, which would make him two thousand fifty-two years old, or as he continues to insist, “I am two thousand years young!”

  I contacted Mr. Brooks and told him that I was going to publish his alter ego’s real age, two thousand fifty-two! Well, bless him, he laughed and said, “Hold it, buster! Don’t make me older than I am. I won’t be two thousand and fifty-two until next Thursday.”

  Actually, I am misquoting him. He did not say “next Thursday.” He actually said, “Next Thoisday,” which he knew would get a bigger smile from me than if he had pronounced it correctly. It did.

  I have already covered the genesis of the old gent in the 2003 memoir, My Anecdotal Life, but here now are some memories of Mel that only recently popped into my head. They might tickle your fancy, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing Mel’s humor tickling as many fancies as possible.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  St. Joan of Arc Is Censored by Sir Mel of Brooks

  In 1960, ten years after amusing our coworkers on Your Show of Shows and our friends at dinner parties, Steve Allen arranged with World Pacific Jazz to record the wisdom of the 2000 Year Old Man for their label. It was during the process of editing that first album that Mel and I found ourselves doing something uncharacteristic—having a serious argument. Our disagreement centered on the final mix and which jokes should be included or excluded.

  As you probably know—or if you don’t, I want you to know—during our recording sessions, Mel was never aware of what questions would be asked of him. I found that his being unaware of the questions only heightened his powers, and the more difficult the questions, the more brilliant were his responses. Our first session, which was performed for an audience of a hundred friends and family, went on for over two hours—and from it we culled about forty-seven solid minutes. We heartily agreed about those minutes, but there were two extra minutes about which we had different opinions.

  If you heard the original release, you might remember the very brief exchange we had about Joan of Arc that ended with my asking: “Sir, did you know Joan of Arc?”

  “Know her? I went with her, dummy!”

  “How did you feel about her being burned at the stake?”

  “Terrible.”

  I loved Mel’s casual delivery of the word “terrible.” That exchange got a huge laugh, as did the few lines that preceded it. This comprised the entire Joan of Arc spot. What our loyal public never knew was that there was a longer exchange. We both agreed that the material in question was very funny, but one of us thought that some of it was somehow inappropriate. The following are the bones of contention that caused the contretemps.

  After Mel had said, “I went with her, dummy,” I said, “Nowhere did I ever see it written that Joan of Arc ever ‘went’ with anybody.”

  “Well,” Mel said, “Nobody put it in a column—we didn’t have newspapers yet.”

  “How did you happen to meet her?”

  “First of all, I didn’t know Joan was a ‘her.’ I thought she was a he—a guy.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Well, he had a sword, he wore a helmet and heavy armor—and he rode a big horse. I was like his valet. He was my general.”

  “Joan of Arc was your general?”

  “Not Joan—John! We called him John.”

  “Oh, I see. You thought it was John because, in French her name was Jeanne d’Arc, and Jeanne is pronounced ‘John.’”

  “Right, John Dark, but I called him Johnny. All I know—in one second, Johnny was on the horse—then off the horse—then on again…He was some great horseman and a great swordsman.”

  “When and how did you find out that Joan was a girl?”

  “It was after a big battle; he was so dirty and pooped. I said to him, ‘Hey, Johnny, let’s go find a place where you can take a shower and maybe catch a nap.’”

  “And you found such a place?”

  “Yeah, an inn, not a fancy one, but as soon as we got to our room, I said, ‘Johnny, you’re dirtier than me; you take a shower first.’ He didn’t argue, he just took off his helmet, but when he took off his armor and his pants, I looked at him and said, ‘Hey, Johnny, what happened to you?’

  You know something, I always liked Johnny, but from that moment on, I loved him!”

  It was at this point in the routine that I asked Mel how he felt about Joan being burned at the stake, and he said, “Terrible.”

  We agreed that the material was funny enough, but Mel was uncomfortable that we were treading on sacred ground. It didn’t sit well with him that we were making jokes about a revered Catholic saint. Although we never discussed it, I suspected that Mel’s thinking was tempered by the fact that his wife, Anne, was of the Catholic faith. I daresay that excluding the material I cited has in no way hurt the album’s success. All five 2000 Year Old Man CDs are alive and selling.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mel Brooks Ate So Many Carrots That…

  During the early days of Mel Brooks’s television career as a writer on Your Show of Shows, he found it almost impossible to get to work on time. “On time” for his fellow writers was ten o’clock in the morning, but most days, Mel walked in at least an hour or two late—a bagel and a container of coffee from the Stage Delicatessen heralded his arrival. He ordered this before he left his house, knowing I would pay the delivery boy the fifty cents, a quarter for the food and a quarter for the tip. One morning, Mel’s tardiness angered everyone more than usual. To make him aware how upset we all were and possibly help him mend his ways, I handed the delivery boy not the usual fifty cents but twenty-five cents and a twenty-five-dollar tip!

  Mel breezed in ten minutes later, blithely dropped a half dollar on the table, and grabbed for the bag in my hand. I held on to it and informed him that I had given the delivery boy a twenty-five-dollar tip. Without missing a beat, Mel calmly dropped two tens and a five on the desk and snatched the bag from me.

  Mel said nary a word about the exorbitant tip he had shelled out but berated the staff for being unable to come up with a punch line for a joke he assumed they had been working on.

  “All right, what do you need?” Mel challenged while chomping on his bagel. “Give me the strai
ght line!”

  The writers had been working on a joke where a doctor is trying to diagnose why his insomniac patient is having trouble falling asleep.

  “So, you can’t fall asleep, the doctor asked the man,” Mel offered immediately. “Tell me, have you by any chance been eating carrots?”

  Groans and hoots escaped from every writer in the room.

  “Oh, come on, Mel,” our head writer, Mel Tolkin, sneered, “not another old joke about carrots being good for your eyesight.”

  “No,” Mel shot back, “a new one!”

  “There hasn’t been a new carrot joke since vaudeville,” Lucille Kallen offered.

  “Because I haven’t tried,” Mel shot back.

  “Okay, try!” Sid Caesar challenged. “Tell me, Doctor, how could eating too many carrots keep someone from falling asleep?”

  Mel, acting as if he had been trapped, mumbled, “How could eating too many carrots keep someone from falling asleep?” He then placed his back against a wall, spread his arms as if being crucified, and shouted, “The poor man couldn’t fall asleep because carrots make his vision sooo strong that he could see through his eyelids!”

  Mel Brooks had taken the old cliché, twisted it gently, and came up with the best new carrot joke of the decade. Needless to say, the room erupted with laughter and I am happy to report that he is still capable of causing eruptions.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Why Did I Let You Guys Talk Me into This?

  Mel Brooks uttered that rhetorical question while riding in the back of a stretch limo on his way to perform at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Mel had mumbled that question many times on the plane ride from Los Angeles. The three guys who did not answer his query were our intrepid literary agent, Dan Strone; my manager and beloved nephew-in-law, George Shapiro; and one of Mel’s oldest and dearest friends, me.