Mel Brooks, actor, director, producer, songwriter and his son Max Brooks, screenwriter and author.

Mel Brooks, 77, started his career as a stand-up comic in the 1940s and went on to become one of the only performers to win an Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Grammy. His film hits include Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, Spaceballs and The Producers, which he later turned into a worldwide success as a musical theatre production. He lives in Santa Monica, California, with his second wife, the actress Anne Bancroft, 72.

Max Brooks, 31, is Mel and Anne's only child together (Mel has three children with his first wife, Florence Baum) and he works as a screenwriter and author who recently published The Zombie Survival Guide (Three Rivers Press). He lives in New York with his wife, Michelle Kholis Brooks, 34, a writer.


MAX: I was always an outsider. It wasn't for being the child of someone rich, but for being the child of someone famous. The kids I went to school with were far richer than we were, but ironically I was singled out as the rich kid because everybody knew who my dad was.

I grew up in Beverly Hills but I didn't really know what Beverly Hills meant. We lived in the hills, so for me it meant trees and wild shrubbery and every Sunday walking the dog to the top of the hill with my dad and looking out over LA. Dad didn't like living there though; I think it offended his sense of morality. He came from real poverty and his father died when he was a little kid and his mother had to support four kids during the depression. She sent them all off to war and he was always uncomfortable with being flashy. He used to drive me to school every day and his car was a 1982 Honda Accord, which I thought was the coolest car in the world.

In his mind money is not a status symbol, it's a defence against bad medication. When he was a little kid his four back teeth were rotting, and they said to his immigrant Russian Jewish mother 'we can pull them for 50 cents or we can fill them for a dollar. She thought 'what a bargain - pull them'. So for him, money is something to protect you from the dangers of the world.

I was always aware of what dad did, which meant I was never ordinary. Because of his fame we could never go out to dinner, and if I needed a new pair of shoes I had to go with someone else - dad just couldn't take me. This was the 70s, the height of his popularity, and it made me feel lonely and isolated. You value the things a lot of other kids take for granted, like just being able to have Sunday dinner out with your folks.

In my mind there was never a positive side to the fame, though there was a positive side to who my dad was; a guy who always did what he wanted and was brave enough to be himself. And brave enough to take the slanders and the insults and keep going. That was an inspiration.

You'd think he'd always be funny; but yes and no. Yes, he was definitely funny, and I didn't realise how much until I would go and hang out with other kids and watch their father try and crack jokes at parties. Then I'd go 'wow, my dad's really funny'. But obviously there were times when he was NOT funny: when I was 10 or 11 and discovered the wonders of fire; that was NOT funny.

I don't think there was ever a question I would do anything else but follow him into film and writing. I made movies when I was seven or eight, where I'd blow up model battleships with a firecracker. I always assumed I'd do something, it was just a question of where I would find my place. And I didn't want to ask him for help - I think my dad's sense of earning something got to me.

On reflection I should have - I shot myself in the foot a lot. I was always about making it on my own. It was proving to me that I could do it. That was really important; I think all my life I was aware of who he was and who I was and it was just a thing that hung around my neck. It was part of my identity, being my dad's son was always part of who I was.

I used to study the children of famous or powerful people to see the decisions they made. Even as a little kid I would think 'all right, General MacArthur was the son of a famous general so he became one too, but his son decided he couldn't do that and became a jazz musician. And when I was 12 or 13 my favourite artist was Julian Lennon; he was my idol and my hero. I listened to his albums religiously, and when I got older I saw what the public did to him and that was very influential on the decisions I made.

That included not telling people straight away who my dad was. I'd tell them later on, but still it always changed our relationship. There's always that moment when you see it drop over their faces. You could have known someone for several years and once they find out, something changes. You've just got to deal with it; it's just how it is. It's hard to make friends and trust people as you always suspect that somewhere along the line someone's going to want something. It was very hard dating girls; you always have to wonder what they want. And that's why the core of my friends are still my high school friends.

Now I live in New York, and ironically I think we're the closest we've ever been. We had a great bonding moment the other week: there was a newspaper article that just hinted that I wasn't as talented as my dad, and I've been waiting for that my whole life. And as I told my dad he said 'boy, that's ironic because thats the same paper that thinks I'm not really talented, so what does that make you?

We bonded over that.



MEL: There's a point with parents - fathers especially - where they really enjoy their children. It's when they're little infants, incapable of getting into trouble, literally swathed in blankets. Then you like them when they go to college. In between it's very rough.

I don't think I was a very good father. Max came at a point when I thought being number one in the movie business was important. He was born in '72 and I was working on Blazing Saddles. I was writing it when he was born, editing it when he was an infant and when he was two years old I delivered it.

I had shallow and trivial and very poor values, I think, looking back on it. I was just out to be successful, and then I was and I realised 'so what?'. I mean, you miss the real stuff. The real stuff is a child's first tooth, a child's first word, a first step; stuff like that. Good stuff; very important.

Max was such a terrific kid. He was like one of those science fiction children who knows more than their parents. He was very bright and very good-natured. When he was only about nine we were travelling around Europe with friends and we ended up in Venice. There were these rows of cabanas on the beach and we were next to a French couple. The woman was saying 'you are paying for the sun, why isn't your child on the beach?' So I decided to find out, and had a look in the changing area in the back, and there he was at a little desk with a legal pad and a pencil. I always take a legal pad and pencil with me in case I have some thoughts, but there he was writing his first story.

I never encouraged it, though, never, - I don't know where he got it from. I guess life was hard living with his mother and me and he liked make-believe a lot better. He couldn't understand why a stranger would come over to our table in a restaurant and tell us how much they adored us and wanted a picture or an autograph. He knew that when he went out to dinner with his friends and family they weren't inundated with strangers, so he must have thought 'what's going on here, why can't I have their attention?' I think I was a bad father in that way too; I was always kind to fans at his expense. Not spending enough precious moments with him.

I was afraid to go to a lot of places. I never took him to a lot of baseball games because I was afraid; you can get surrounded by a lot of crazy people. There's a brush stroke of paranoia there, which kept me from a normal father and son thing.

On the plus side, I may have encouraged his then bizarre, now commercially accepted behaviour. For instance, when he was 14 we were having a dinner party and he came down in a Nazi uniform. Another father would have sent him to bed without his dinner, but a father in the arts would encourage bizarre behaviour rather than slap him down for it.

I didn't know whether he would follow my line of work, though I never dissuaded him or said I was always thinking of you as a doctor or lawyer, normal father aspirations for his son. I was very happy that he loved writing. And I would read everything; he's written a thousand stories.

He doesn't show me everything now, but he did show me his Zombie Survival Guide book. We were in the Virgin Islands and it was just like when he was in the cabana in Venice; he was in the shade writing, not getting enough sun. I read the first 50 pages and chuckled and admired the detail and the absurdity of this invention.

If I taught him anything it's that you shouldn't work just for money. I saw him as a student in Georgetown and he was living like a rat in the basement with no room to turn around. My wife was like 'we've got to rescue him, get him out of here', and I said no, this is good. This kid has never put any value on worldly goods, never. He reserves his mind, his passion and his time for real things; his wife, his dog and mostly his writing.

I'm happy with his character, he seems to be blessed with a terrific sense of value, what's important in life, and a genuine respect for people. He's always had this noble sense of justice, about what's right, what's good and what's bad. I certainly didn't give it to him; I was an artful dodger. I cleverly avoided a sense of values in case they got in my way and held me back. I'm not that morally gifted. I may even be slightly morally challenged. However, if I get to live again I don't want to come back as a butterfly or a seagull or an owl or a whale; I want to come back as Max Brooks.

That's the life I want.