LORELAI: What do you mean, why? The 2000 Year Old Man, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie – you don’t think Mel has earned the right to have his face on my butt?

Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky in 1926), actor, comedian, and film-maker, with a career spanning over seven decades. He is known as the creator of broad farces and parodies, considered some of the greatest comedy films ever made, and was one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s. As well as winning an Emmy, a Grammy, and an Oscar, in 2001 he won a Tony Award for The Producers, previously discussed. He has been awarded a Kennedy Center Honor, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, a British Film Institute Fellowship, a National Medal of Arts, and a BAFTA Fellowship.

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.

Young Frankenstein, 1974 comedy horror film directed by Mel Brooks, and co-written by he and Gene Wilder, who stars in the title role. It’s a parody of the various classic horror film adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, in particular, the 1931 film version. Young Frankenstein was the #3 film of 1974 and received critical acclaim. It is considered one of the funniest comedies ever made, and was later made into a stage musical. Mel Brooks considers it his best, but not his funniest, movie.

Silent Movie, 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed, and starring Mel Brooks as a Hollywood director down on his luck. He and his sidekicks, played by Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman, come up with a plan to make the first silent movie in forty years. The film itself is silent, with intertitles instead of spoken dialogue. The film received positive reviews, and remains highly-regarded.