6 June 2013, Dolby Theater, Hollywood, California, USA
Lavishing praise on people does not come easy to me.
In fact I find it quite distasteful.
Let’s just say it's not my cup of tea.
Usually I have to wait for somebody to die to do it, and even then I have to give it a couple of years.
But not so tonight. When I first heard The 2000 Year Old Man, I was laughing so hard my father came into the room and turned off the record player. ‘What the hell is going on in here, Larry?’
See, my parents didn’t mind me chuckling at a comedy album, or a TV show. A little chuckle was fine.
But this was something else entirely.
This was disturbing.
So out of the ordinary. I never knew a person could be that funny.
And from the very first moment I heard that album, from that moment on, I said to myself, I can never, ever, be a comedian.
What is the point?
So Mel Brooks didn’t get me into comedy. He kept me away from it.
I wasted years doing nothing because of him.
No job, living at home, lying on the couch watching ‘Shindig’.
My parents were beside themselves. They cried themselves to sleep every night.
He killed them.
He killed my parents that little Jew bastard.
Working with Mel on my show was one of the great thrills of my life. And that season was inspired by what was possibly the greatest comedic premise that anyone has ever dreamed up. The Producers.