PEL Presents PMP#217: Mel Brooks' Old Comedy
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In light of Judd Apatow's HBO documentary The 99-Year-Old Man, we discuss the films of Mel Brooks, which were to varying degrees formative on us (i.e. Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is sponsored by Claude A.I. |
| 0:02.4 | For Minds That Don't Stop at Good Enough. |
| 0:12.5 | This is pretty much Pop, a culture podcast, coalescing the vapor of humid experience into a viable and logical comprehension. |
| 0:19.5 | Today we're discussing Mel Brooks' oeuvre in light of the Judd Apatow documentary, |
| 0:25.0 | the 99-year-old man. |
| 0:27.0 | This is Mark Linson-Myer, and when it comes to my little podcast empire, |
| 0:31.2 | it's good to be the king. |
| 0:33.4 | This is Al Baker, and I've been crunching the numbers, |
| 0:36.1 | and I think we can make more money from this podcast if nobody listened to it. |
| 0:40.6 | I'm Sarah Lynn Brooke, and I'm wearing a cardboard belt. |
| 0:44.0 | I'm Lawrence Ware, and I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are just missing. |
| 0:48.1 | So this, we could have probably done it at any point, maybe when he passed away, whatever that had. |
| 0:53.7 | But maybe that'll be for another decade. I need, I know. That's dark, man. That is really dark. Although by the time this comes out, he could be dead. Interestingly, in the process of this, I also ran into a 2013 documentary, which was quite similar. Oh, really? Which was shorter. But, like, quite a lot of the stories. I feel like he tells these same stories. Yeah, he does. Again and again in the same way. They show a clip of him on Carson telling part of the story, and then he's telling it during the present day. Yeah. Yeah. I listened to an old interview with him on Terry Gross's show, and it was kind of the same stuff. Like from 1991, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I just heard this in the documentary. I mean, I think he might just be an old man. And you know how old people are. They just kind of keep saying the same stuff over and over and over again. Yeah, this documentary felt very much like the self-interested ramblings of an old man. |
| 1:44.7 | I mean, we love this particular old man very much. |
| 1:47.4 | Definitely. |
| 1:47.9 | Exactly. |
| 1:49.0 | Exactly. |
| 1:49.7 | So, yeah, Sarah, tell the folks what you're showing us. |
| 1:52.2 | This is Josh's book. |
| 1:53.3 | I think my mom gave this to Josh for Hanukkah one year. |
| 1:56.5 | But it's the Mel Brooks all about me autobiography. |
| 2:00.7 | I flipped through it, but the stories in here all |
... |
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