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The 2000 Year Old Man sprang to life one afternoon in the writers' offices at Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. …OK… maybe I shouldn't say sprang to life, with our dear old friend the 2000 Year Old Man, it was probably more of a jaunty, jolly, sauntering to life… one has to be careful at the age of 2000, you know. For those of you who are too young to know of Your Show of ShowsÉ it was early television's premiere variety show. From inside the walls of this show's comedy writers' offices' came such comic legends as Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin and of course Mr. 2000 himself, Mel Brooks. Mel formed a close friendship with Carl Reiner who played second banana on the show to comic legend Sid Caesar. Reiner was a performer who longed to also be taken seriously as a writer. While Mel, on the other hand, was frustrated at merely writing for the show and longed for the chance to perform. From this mutual frustration, and their love for comedy in general, came a bond that would forge a friendship that is still going strong to this very day.
“ There are certain moments I'll always remember -- my first baseball game in Yankee Stadium, my first kiss, and the first time I listened to The 2000 Year Old Man. It changed my life.”
“ I was 12 years old the first time I heard it and I thought… Ohhhh, this is hysterical. The next day I'm on the school bus talking like an old Jewish man. The 2000 Year Old Man is comedy's Sergeant Pepper.”
“ The 2000 Year Old Man albums, arguably the funniest comedy recordings ever, served as my own personal adolescent shield to get me through bouts of low self-esteem and depression. More important… they enabled me to shamelessly lift jokes from this astonishing collection to impress heerleaders in front of neo-Nazi bullies. Mel and Carl complement each other in genius fashion. This is truly humor for the ages.”
“ To say that Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks are brilliant and geniuses is to vastly downplay their enormous talents. I consider myself the luckiest son on the face of the earth… for having Carl Reiner as a father, for having Mel Brooks as his best friend, and for not having Lou Gehrig's disease.”
“ My big epiphany occurred the first time I heard Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner's 2000 Year Old Man routine. It didn't make me say I have to do this, but it was like staring into the sun. I couldn't look away, I kept playing it over and over.”
“ The first time I heard it I laughed my butt off. I like the crafting of the words and the set up and punch aspect. There was very little ambivalent dialog. It was very much set up…punch, set up…punch, set up…punch. That's really great to watch them do that. And I did learn one important thing from it… I always avoid fried foods.”
Reiner has claimed he was just kidding around, that he didn't know he was going to get an answer. But after that first reply he realized no matter what he asked, Brooks would somehow come up with a funny response. Carl laughed, Mel laughed and the whole office laughed. "Working with Carl and Mel was a treat," Your Show of Shows' star Imogene Coca has recalled. "We laughed all the time at rehearsals. They were funny in (producer) Max Liebman's office, they kept us laughing as we moved from room to room." When they first started doing the now famous characters Carl Reiner would ask the same question again a couple of days later expecting to hear the same hilarious answer… instead Mel would come up with a different hysterical reply. Brooks has always felt that ad-libbing is a lot more fun than remembering. Over time other characters were born but what always remained was the interview premise. "I'd pick a character for him to play," Reiner explained, "I never told him what it was going to be, but I always tried for something that would force him to go into panic, because a brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to see." These improvisational interactions between Brooks and Reiner soon became a challenge to Brooks; a test to see if Brooks could field anything and everything Reiner could throw at him. Brooks sees it all as a sort of cat-and-mouse game. Whereas Reiner says that when they're creating their impromptu comedy he's not chasing a mouse he's chasing a fox.
In time, the popular routine began getting requested, not just in Your Show of Shows' offices, but at parties as well. But even though everyone laughed, Brooks never felt the material was right for mainstream America so for a decade the 2000 Year Old Man only came out in writing rooms and at small party gatherings.
Carl Reiner's film career would benefit from the 2000 Year Old Man routine even before it had a chance to be released. At the same Hollywood party where Steve Allen had seen them perform, Reiner was approached by movie producer Ross Hunter with an offer to create his first motion picture. From this offer came Reiner's first script, the Doris Day /James Garner comedy The Thrill Of It All.
In the next two years two more 2000 Year Old Man albums would be released: 2000 and One Years with Reiner and Brooks and Reiner & Brooks At The Cannes Film Festival. With each album more minutes of time was devoted to the 2000 Year Old Man sketch. "All of the characters made us laugh," Reiner has recalled. "When we did the parties, the 2000 Year Old Man would always be like a forshpeis (Yiddish for appetizer), a beginning, and then we'd do the others." But by 1973, after a long rest from records, the two returned to the studio at the request of Joe Smith at Warner Bros. Records. The 2000 Year Old Man would become the main course of the album that resulted – this time it was 2000 Year Old Man and only 2000 Year Old Man.
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks have both had great success in their solo careers but lovers of comedy will always have a soft spot for their 2000 Year Old Man routines. "I would be really fascinated," says former Talk Soup host Hal Sparks, "to see the two of them make a movie together, not necessarily of the 2000 Year Old Man, but just a really well crafted, old school type comedy. It would seem very possible, what with the success of Grumpy Old Men… and the two of them would be great together." Reiner and Brooks together on the big screen, now there's something we'd probably all like to see. Rhino records' re-release of the classic original 2000 Year Old Man recordings as well as the latest 2000 offering, has assured the 2000 Year Old Man a life that will crossover into this new millennium. But a Brooks and Reiner movie… now there's a way to enter this millennium in grand comedic style… and if it should ever happen, you can be assured we will enter laughing!
Reiner and Brooks' latest recording, The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, as well as the complete boxed set of original albums from the '60s and '70s are available from Rhino Entertainment ( call 1-800-827-4466 or visit www.Rhino.com ).
For other sites of interest try visiting… www.ProducersOnBroadway.com – the web site of Mel Brook's New Broadway Musical …and… www.EstelleReiner.com – the web site of Jazz Singer Estelle Reiner, Carl's wife.
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One day, in 1950, Carl Reiner came in after seeing a TV show called We, The People that had featured an inflammatory interview with someone claiming to have been in Stalin's toilet and to have overheard him saying they were going to bomb America. In his frustration over what he had seen, Carl turned to Mel and mockingly asked… 'I understand you were at the scene of the Crucifixion?' Mel shot back with… 'Oh, bo-o-o-o-oy! I knew Christ. Thin lad, always wore sandals…' And on that day a comedy legend was born.
Then at a Hollywood party in 1960 Steve Allen, the original host of the Tonight Show, heard the routine for the first time. Afterwards Allen remembers saying to Reiner and Brooks something along the lines of… "this must be shared with the world. It's silly to have anything this funny, this marvelous restricted to audiences of fifteen people in a living room." But it took a little convincing on Allen's part. "That night they did not immediately say, 'Oh, yeah what a great idea!' They both sort of shyly resisted and they said in effect… 'Well, thanks a million. We saw you laughing and we know you love it but you're hip and this is a very hip inside bit. All comedy writers love it, but we're not sure it's for the general public.'" Allen contacted Richard Bock, who was at the time the head of World Pacific Records. Although chiefly a Jazz label, they showed interest right away and a recording session was arranged. Carl was willing to make the recordings but Mel still needed some convincing. Steve Allen assured Brooks that if they didn't like what resulted from the session they could burn the tape. If they liked it they could edit and release it. "I just kept insisting because I knew I was right," relates Allen. "And, of course who cares whether I was right. The important thing is my persistence did have the productive result that they eventually agreed to record the thing." Brooks' reluctance finally faded and both he and Reiner showed up for their first recording session. A large audience was gathered for the session and Steve Allen relates that "in front of a larger audience than he was used to, Mel's comic inventiveness flourished."
Reiner and Brooks' first comedy album, 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, would truly propel Mel Brooks' career as a performer. No longer seen as a talented writer alone, Brooks would begin getting offers from everybody in television to do appearances. The first album was also instrumental in getting Mel Brooks the job of co-creator on the Get Smart TV series.
Three of the original four albums have earned Reiner and Brooks Grammy nominations. But it was their latest release, The 2000 Year Old Man In The Year 2000 that garnered them the coveted award. Phil Proctor of the comedy troupe Firesign Theatre, also nominated the same year for their recording Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death, says, "We honestly felt that if we had to loose to anybody… of all the people we were up against, all of whom we respect and admire… we said, If we have to loose, we hope we loose to Mel and to Carl. Because they have been a tremendous influence on us and a lot of other comedians." Proctor takes great joy in Reiner and Brooks' latest 2000 Year Old Man offering, "it's introducing their comedy to a whole new generation and I think that they've managed to crossover beautifully, they deserve it. He humanizes history in a comic way," adds Proctor of the Mel Brooks' character. "By reducing everything to this one little Jewish guy who has somehow survived over this vast period of time he reduces all these grandiose ideas to very simple, funny, personal experiences. It's a riot, it's just hysterical."
