Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

But the acting process - create a human being - was real, not only to the audience, but real to me.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in "Bonnie And Clyde." And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory..."

At the time, I didn't know why, but I know now that when I was a little boy, I was scared to death of the Frankenstein films ... and in all these years later, I wanted it to come out with a happy ending, and I think it was my fear of the Frankenstein movies when I was 8 and 9 and 10 years old that made me want to write that story [Young Frankenstein].

Woody makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic, or political.

And Mel [Brooks] - you have to understand this important point - he had done "The Producers" for $50,000 over two years, and he didn't make a penny from it. And then he did "The Twelve Chairs" - $50,000 for two more years and didn't make a penny from it. That's four years of work. And then they offered him quite a bit of money to direct "Young Frankenstein," and he took it.