Then George Burns came over and asked, “Is there an album?” And when we said no, he said, “Well, you better put it on an album otherwise I’m gonna steal it.”
At that same party was Steve Allen, the first host of The Tonight Show. He said to us, “Fellas, you’ve got to put this on a record.”
And we said, “No, no. This is just for us, for our own amusement. Not for the public.”
And he said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll get a studio. You go in, do your thing, and in the end if you don’t like it you can throw it in the garbage and get rid of it.”
Needless to say, we didn’t throw it in the garbage.
At first, we said no. I didn’t want to. This was for friends. I thought some of it may be too inside, and I was afraid some of the pieces might be offensive to Jews and Catholics and provide some stimulus for anti-Semitism. The material was never designed for a national audience. I thought it might be too hip, but Steve convinced us that the Sid Caesar shows had elevated the comedy consciousness of the country.
Steve didn’t want to be a partner; he just wanted to get it out there. He was the kind of guy who liked everybody to hear fun. He loved to present fun for people, laughter. He gave us free recording time at a studio that he co-owned, World Pacific. We recorded for over two hours. It was all ad-libbed. I didn’t know what Carl was going to ask.
In fact, when we made the album, I said to Carl: “Don’t tell me anything, nothing in advance, just hit me with questions and when I can’t come up with a good answer, cut it. When I come up with a great answer, keep it in.”
And that’s the way we did it. We cut that first album down to forty-seven minutes and it became 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, released in 1961.
Carl and me performing the 2000 Year Old Man sketch on The Andy Williams Show.
Steve Allen was kind enough to write the liner notes for the album, and this is how he introduced me:
But who, you ask, is Mel Brooks? He probably often wonders, himself. Whoever he is he is very funny. And like Carl, he spent ten years with Sid Caesar. But not on camera. Mel is basically a writer; if this album becomes a stepping-stone to a performing career no one, I am sure, will be more surprised than Mr. Brooks.
…And thereby hangs an interesting psychological tale. My wife has a theory that there is often a similarity in either appearance, personality, or philosophy between the comedian and the person who works for him. Her hypothesis is certainly confirmed in the case of Brooks and Caesar. Their styles, as you will discover in listening to this collection of ad-libbed routines, are remarkably similar. The two men, it seems, have had a pronounced effect on each other. Their approaches to humor are similar. But to hell with analysis. Let’s just enjoy. Bear in mind when listening to these routines that they are ad-libbed and that they are never the same twice.
The record was a big hit and we were asked to appear on some important variety shows on TV like The Ed Sullivan Show, Steve Allen’s show, and The Hollywood Palace. We started out just sitting next to each other on stools, almost as if we were performing for radio. Later my character began wearing a kind of 2000 Year Old Man costume replete with a cape and walking stick.
But making the records was so much better. When we were asked to do television show appearances together even though we got big laughs it was never the same. It wasn’t as much fun because we already knew what jokes we were going to do. I was not surprised by Carl’s questions and he was not surprised by my answers. It was simply not the same joy as doing the 2000 Year Old Man all ad-libbed. The free-form nature of the longer performance pieces allowed a creative exchange that generated far more spontaneous magic.
Part of my motive for doing the 2000 Year Old Man was to preserve the Yiddish dialect and the sounds that I grew up with. I was doing my grandparents. My father’s father and mother, and my mother’s father, and their friends. I loved them. Hearing those voices always made me feel safe. The 2000 Year Old Man is a feisty fellow, a tough guy, and a survivor. He’s the Eastern European immigrant Jew, pronouncing himself forcefully, struggling to make it in America. He’s got to know all the answers, because it’s about survival. He’s a no-nonsense, no-bullshit guy. He tells a lot of human truths, whether he knows them or not. Like the German Professor from the Sid Caesar shows, it’s not lying…it’s self-promotion! He doesn’t give you any bad advice. In his exaggeration and fabrication there’s always a little truth.
I always thought a rich lie is better than a poor truth: