2000 Year Old Man

Carl Reiner/Mel Brooks comedy sketch thumb|Rhino Records' 2000 Year Old Man boxed set of albums one through four The 2000 Year Old Man is a comedy sketch created by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks in the 1950s and first publicly performed in the 1960s. Brooks plays a 2000-year-old man, interviewed by Reiner in a series of comedy routines that were turned into a collection of records and also performed on television.Karpel Ari A Shtick With a Thousand Lives https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/arts/television/15karp.html The New York Times 14 July 2019 November 12, 2009Holmes Bill The 2000 Year Old Man: The Complete History https://www.popmatters.com/119312-the-2000-year-old-man-the-complete-history-2496153798.html popmatters.com PopMatters 13 July 2019 February 3, 2010Lee Tom The Musical Fruit https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1974/1/18/the-musical-fruit-pbkbept-alive-by/ 13 July 2019 The Harvard Crimson January 18, 1974 History The foundation for the routine was laid during production of Your Show of Shows, where Reiner was an actor and Brooks was a writer. Reiner describes the first instance: I remember the first question I asked him. It was because I had seen a program called We the People Speak, early television. [He puts on an announcer voice] "We the People Speak. Here’s a man who was in Stalin's toilet, heard Stalin say, 'I’m going to blow up the world.' I came in, I said this is good for a sketch. No one else thought so, but I turned to Mel and I said, "Here's a man who was actually seen at the crucifixion 2,000 years ago," and his first words were, "Oh, boy." We all fell over laughing. I said, "You knew Jesus?" "Yeah," he said, "Thin lad, wore sandals, long hair, walked around with 11 other guys. Always came into the store, never bought anything. Always asked for water." Those were the first words, and then for the next hour or two I kept asking him questions, and he never stopped killing us. It began as a joke between the two that was then shared at parties. Reiner started bringing a tape recorder to the parties as Brooks never said the same thing twice. Numerous people such as George Burns suggested to the two that they put their material on an album, but only Steve Allen managed to coax the two to come record it in his studio.Manilla Ben Strolovitch Devon Mel Brooks and 'The 2000 Year Old Man' https://theworld.org/stories/2018/09/05/mel-brooks-and-2000-year-old-man pri.org Public Radio International 13 July 2019 September 6, 2018Brooks And Reiner's 2,000-Year-Old Man Turns 50 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120909130&t=1563090177542 npr.org NPR 14 July 2019 November 28, 2009 Reiner recalls the moment he and Brooks realized the first album was going to be a hit: When we made the album, the album came out, we weren't sure yet whether everybody was going to like it. And it was Cary Grant, who was my neighbor at Universal Studios, he came over and I gave him a record and I said the new record came out, you may like this. And he came back a week later, said, Can I have two dozen? I said, What are you going to do with them? He said, I'm going to take them to England. I said, You'll take these to England? He said, Yeah, they speak English there. Anyway, he came back and said, She loved it. I said who? The Queen Mother. I said, You played this in Buckingham Palace? He said yes. And then Mel says, Well, if the biggest shiksa in the world loves it, we're home free. In 1973, it was reported that Reiner and Brooks would originally perform the routine at their friend Norman Lear's house in Fire Island, New York. Sketch Reiner was the straight man, asking interview questions of Brooks, who would improvise answers in a Jewish-American accent. The free-wheeling semi-improvised sketches covered a wide variety of topics from marriage ("I have been married several hundred times") and children ("I have over 42,000 children and not one comes to visit me!") to transportation ("What was the means of transportation then? Mostly fear.").June 10, 2009 2008 https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/recording-registry/registry-by-induction-years/2008/ 13 July 2019 loc.gov Library of Congress The quality of the sketch was elevated by the quick improvisational wit of Brooks, who would usually use a question as a springboard to unplanned exposition and tangents that would be as much of a surprise to his partner as it was to the audience. Reiner continued to act as the voice of the audience, providing questions and challenging Brooks' answers. "He was like a district attorney" claims Brooks. Reiner's knowledge of history and momentous events raised the bar on the exchanges. "I knew the questions," quipped Reiner, "but I didn't know the answers." While Reiner deferred the great lines to Brooks, he knew his friend well enough to follow along and cross paths enough to prop him up for more opportunities. Despite their close friendship, it was acknowledged by 1973 that the 2000 Year Old Man sketch also proved to be a source of "nervous tension" for Brooks and Reiner.https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/27/archives/brooks-reiner-revive-2000yearold-man-now-2013-appreciative-audience.html Brooks, Reiner Revive 2000‐Year‐Old Man, Now 2,013 Judith Kinnard New York Times August 27, 1973 January 23, 2026 By the time the sketch underwent a revival in 1973, Brooks and Reiner had not performed the 2000 Year Old Man on albums in over a decade, with the New York Times noting how even by this point in time that "both say that the need to perform is gone." Recordings and performances Their first television appearances performing the sketch were on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1961 and then on The Steve Allen Show eight months later. Reiner and Brooks released five comedy albums. The 2000 Year Old Man character appeared on one track for each of the first three albums and the entirety of the final two. However, one side of the 1973 album would only consist of tapes which were recorded when the sketch was performed at Norman Lear's Fire Island, New York home in the 1950s. 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1960)This album was originally released in 1960 as World-Pacific #1401. It was reissued as Capitol #1529 in 1961. See, Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks The Complete 2000 Year Old Man (Los Angeles, CA: Rhino Records), 1994, p. 32.mw0002640965 2000 Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks 2000 and One Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1961)mw0002640964 2000 and One Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks at the Cannes Film Festival, Capitol W 1815, (1962)https://www.grammy.com/artists/carl-reiner/5712 Carl Reiner Grammys.com May 27, 2020mw0002640966 Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks at the Cannes Film Festival 2000 and Thirteen with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (Warner Bros. Records, 1973)Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks - 2000 And Thirteen https://www.discogs.com/Carl-Reiner-Mel-Brooks-2000-And-Thirteen/master/414256 2020-07-02 Discogs.com 1973 enmw0000691072 2000 and Thirteen The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 (1997)mw0000028687 The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 was released concurrently with a companion book of the same name.Parish James Robert https://books.google.com/books?id=WM8ZEm2KRZoC&dq=Mel+Brooks+Carl+Reiner+1997+Year+2000+companion&pg=PA122 It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks 2008-02-26 John Wiley & Sons 978-0-470-22526-4 en It also won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album.41st Annual Grammy Awards 1998 Grammys grammy.com https://www.grammy.com/awards/41st-annual-grammy-awards National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences February 26, 2021 There have also been numerous compilation albums such as Best of the 2000 Year Old Man (1968)http://www.cvinyl.com/item.php?s=98817 CVINYL.COM Vinyl Price Guide: Reiner, Carl & Mel Brooks - Best Of The Two Thousand Year Old Man (Capitol ST 2981) www.cvinyl.com and Excerpts from The Complete 2000 Year Old Man (Rhino Records, 1994).Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks - Excerpts From The Complete 2000 Year Old Man https://www.discogs.com/Carl-Reiner-Mel-Brooks-Excerpts-From-The-Complete-2000-Year-Old-Man/release/6024562 2020-07-02 Discogs.com 1994 en Animated special Animated television special Mel Brooks Carl Reiner Leo Salkin Mel Brooks Carl Reiner Mort Garson United States English Leo Salkin 30 min Crossbow Productions Acre Enterprises Leo Salkin Films CBS 1975 1 11 A half-hour animated television special, The 2000 Year Old Man, premiered January 11, 1975.https://www.allmovie.com/movie/v168 2000 Year Old Man (1975) - Leo Salkin Hal Erickson AllMovie February 26, 2021 The dialogue for the special was taken from the live recordings of Reiner and Brooks.Lenburg Jeff The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons 1999 Checkmark Books 0-8160-3831-7 June 6, 2020 https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780816038312/page/339/mode/2up 339–340 This special has since been released on home video. The musical introduction was Bach's Sinfonia to Cantata #29 performed on a Moog synthesizer by Mort Garson.September 2010https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005348/?ref_=tt_rv_t0 IMDb entry for program Most of the jokes were previously heard routines and/or eventually brought to the screen in Brooks' film History of the World, Part I (especially the caveman jokes). Legacy Home media All five comedy albums were compiled and newly remastered on a 3-CD / 1-DVD box set by Shout! Factory for the 50th anniversary. The 2000 Year Old Man: The Complete History DVD was released November 24, 2009, and features an interview with Reiner and Brooks; the 1975 animated 2000 Year Old Man television special, and clips of the two appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show and The New Steve Allen Show.September 2010 The album 2000 Years With Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry as part of its 2008 selections. Appearances in other media Mel Brooks appeared as the 2000 Year Old Man to help celebrate the 2000th episode of the original Jeopardy! hosted by Art Fleming (February 21, 1972), in which the three highest-scoring undefeated champions at that point returned to play an abbreviated game for charities. During his pre-game appearance he recounted how the show was done 2,000 years earlier—"It wasn't this hippy-happy-dappy game you've got here ... the moment you walked out of your cave—Jeopardy!"https://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=3901 J! Archive - Burns Cameron www.j-archive.com On the March 17, 2014 (S30E131) airing of the current Jeopardy! hosted by Alex Trebek, Reiner and Brooks read an entire category of clues as their characters. Brooks adapted the character to create the 2500 Year Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s. Interviewed by Dick Cavett in a series of ads, the Brewmaster (in a German accent, as opposed to the 2000 Year Old Man's Jewish voice) said he was inside the original Trojan horse and "could've used a six-pack of fresh air."Brooks Mel Mel Brooks Larry Siegel http://ysos.sammigirl.com/interviews/playboy1966.html Playboy 1966 October 1966 Playboy ysos.sammigirl.com usurped https://web.archive.org/web/20130512095922/http://ysos.sammigirl.com/interviews/playboy1966.html May 12, 2013 In the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer vs. Patty and Selma", Brooks appears as himself, riding in a limo being driven by Homer. After Homer incorrectly identifies the act as "The 2000-pound man thing," he and Brooks engage in a brief sketch, with Homer playing the part of Carl Reiner. When Homer is pulled over by the police, Chief Wiggum offers to give Brooks a ride and says they can do "the $2000-Man thing." Brooks agrees, but asks that he not play Reiner's part—"I hate Carl Reiner!", he says. In an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip entitled "The Option Period", comedy writer Rick Tahoe uses The 2000 Year Old Man as an example of an ideal comedy sketch. References External links UCfdKgwfPhoMKU5yLpsdKCLg Topic: Mel Brooks (2000 Year Old Man) 3118795-Carl-Reiner-Mel-Brooks Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks 0388667 mn0000342833 discography Mel Brooks mn0000817640 discography Carl Reiner Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1960 Category:1961 in radio Category:1961 in American television Category:Comedy radio characters Category:Comedy theatre characters Category:Male characters in theatre Category:Male characters in radio Category:Theatre characters introduced in 1961 Category:Radio characters introduced in 1961 Category:American comedy sketches Category:Works by Mel Brooks Category:Works by Carl Reiner Category:Works about old age Category:1960s in comedy