ah fuck i cant believe youve done this backstory

So he took out the jar, he took off the lid, and in the middle of the pickles there was a stick of dynamite. Our top sergeant explained to us: “Don’t open a jar.” Because in the middle of the pickles, there could be dynamite. The scariest and funniest one was a jar of pickles. When the troops cleared out a farmhouse, we’d go right in and clean it up so that they could actually sleep in it, stay in it for a night or two, instead of on the ground. And then every door could have a hinge attached to a bomb. So the first place we’d look was in that water closet, right above the toilet.

So I enlisted in the Army Reserve.Īpatow: They were nice enough to put you in the division that had to defuse mines.īrooks: You’d go to the toilet, and there was a chain that hung down, and if you pulled the chain, you’d blow up the house. Somebody from the Army came to Eastern District High School in Brooklyn and said, “If you join the Reserve, we will send you to the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program for your last year of school, and it will actually be your first year of college.” Sounded good. Sweet little French kid.Īpatow: Were you drafted or did you enlist?īrooks: I enlisted, but not as a hero. And there was a little kid with a bicycle, and he fell in love with me because I gave him chewing gum and chocolate, and he’d go “Private Mel, Private Mel!” He’d just follow me on his tricycle. One good thing was I got my training at a farmhouse in Normandy. But I defused a lot of booby traps, a lot of mines. And you’re going to love it.”īrooks: I got over in February 1945, and the war was over a few months later-March, April, May, and I was home.

We need a lot of combat engineers to build bridges and to defuse mines and booby traps. They said, “You’re in the combat engineers. And when we got to Europe, I was going to be a fast-speed radio operator and forward observer in the artillery. I went overseas as a private in the artillery. When you think about World War II and everybody saying, We have to join together to get this done, do you think, We don’t have that anymore ?īrooks: Oh yeah. I felt like I was swallowing glass.Īpatow: Well, the pandemic has been the biggest calamity in the United States in a long time. I got so sick, I had to go to the hospital.īrooks: Yeah. Judd Apatow: I’m always happy to have an excuse to talk to you. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. I wanted to understand what made Mel Brooks who he is, and I attempted to steer him toward the philosophical and the spiritual, so that we might all benefit from what he has learned in almost a century on this Earth. Recently I visited him at his house in Los Angeles, not just so I could bask once more in the comic genius of a true master (although also that), but because I hoped to glean some of his wisdom. He is way sharper than I am, which isn’t saying much, and he is still riotously funny. When we were getting ready to leave, Mel said, “Come and visit again, but not soon! Wait a few months.” As we walked to our car, he screamed from the far distance, “Get the fuck out of here!” He regaled us with stories for several hours. Fifteen minutes into the reading, he stopped and shouted, “Why did I make this thing so damned long?! This is going to take forever!” Then there was the time that I took my friend and fellow comedian Bill Hader to Mel’s office just to chat. After I wrote the foreword to his book about the making of Young Frankenstein, I got to watch him record the audio version of it. Once, I interviewed Mel at an event where he was so funny that I locked up completely and didn’t dare attempt a single joke. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Ah fuck i cant believe youve done this backstory