All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business

by Mel Brooks

At eight years old I could reduce my best friend, Eugene Cohen (who later in life became a theatrical publicist and changed his name to Gene Cogan), to uncontrollable hysterics by singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in the persona of Boris Karloff.

We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

Comedy is a very powerful component of life. It has the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by. You can struggle when things are bad if you have a sense of humor. Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye. It’s a defense against unhappiness and depression.