What I've Learned: Mel Brooks

You build a wall of comedy one brick at a time. If something doesn’t work, you’ve got to dismantle the wall and start all over again to make sure the bricks are interfacing and that they architecturally support the idea. The premise has to be solid or the comedy isn’t going to work. When something isn’t working in Act Two, sometimes you have to go back to a reference in Act One that wasn’t developed clearly enough to get the explosion you want later on.

Good comedy is never frivolous. It’s based on human experience, on human adventure, on human feelings. So it has to be profound.

If you take risks, you are going to fail. When you do, my advice is to watch Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fred falls in love with Ginger on the street and follows her to a dance studio. She’s a dance instructor. So he enrolls to learn how to dance. He’s madly in love with her, so he keeps on falling, slipping, you know, to prolong the lesson. He can’t get it, just can’t get it. He’s on the floor after falling for what must be the eighteenth time when Ginger tells him, “Give up, honey. You’ll never learn to dance.” The owner of the dance studio hears this and says to her, “How can you tell this man he can’t dance? You’re fired!” And Fred says, “No, no, she’s taught me a lot. Let me prove it.” And so they get up and start in on this song that goes: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.” You were waiting for that Fred Astaire explosion, and when you get it, it leaps over your expectations. You’ll never see a more thrilling dance in your life. That’s the kind of stuff that I love. Give them what they expect and then try to top it.

— Mel Brooks

What I've Learned: Mel Brooks / BY CAL FUSSMAN / Esquire Magazine / December 17, 2007