In case you haven’t heard, yesterday was comic legend Mel Brooks’ one-hundred birthday. I’ve been honored to know Mel for the past dozen years and shared a number of delightful Chinese dinners with him and a group of other friends usually at ‘The Manderette’, a now defunct West Hollywood joint. When I was doing my ‘Movies Til Dawn’ podcast–roughly 2016-2019–I asked Mel if he’d appear on it. Knowing how much he’s been interviewed over the years and how tiresome it must be to tell the same anecdotes, I told him that I wanted to specifically focus on his 1970 movie ‘The Twelve Chairs’. He loved the idea–he’s very proud of that movie and its his least well known (actually that ‘Dracula–Dead and Loving It’ flick at the end of his filmmaking career probably is less known–but ‘Twelve Chairs’ is certainly much better). Anyway, Mel agreed–specifying that he’d give me a half-hour of his time. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be strictly adhered to so I readily agreed. Of course we wound up talking about many other things and for a good deal longer than half an hour. He would’t agree to a Zoom, which would have provided better audio quality, insisting that we just get on the phone. Actually I rather like the old-school phone-in style interview sound. Mel was a young 94 when the interview was recorded. Click here for part one. And click here for part two.