I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.

I love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism.

When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about New York Jewish humor, I'd say I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.

My humor is - was quite different. Mine was "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother" and "The World's Greatest Lover" and "Haunted Honeymoon," "The Woman In Red," things - "See No Evil, Hear No Evil." But his was much broader, and I think much funnier, too.

If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?

With Mel [Brooks], only one time and that was later on during "Young Frankenstein" - never with Zero [Mostel] and never with Mel except I was writing every day, and then Mel would come to the house and read what I'd written. And then he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, yeah, OK. But we need a villain or we need whatever it was.