Banterweight Champs

Mel Brooks and Joseph Heller are old friends. They’ve known each other since 1962, when they were introduced by Speed Vogel, with whom Heller would later write “No Laughing Matter,” an account of his battle with Guillain- Barre syndrome, an often fatal neurological disease. In the late 1960s, in Manhattan, all three men --along with novelist Mario Puzo and a floating crew of others--were part of a “Chinese gourmet club” that got together every Tuesday evening to eat and talk.

“The great thing about Joe,” Brooks laughs, “was Joe would say, ‘Let me serve.’ We’d say, ‘OK.’ So Joe would take a big ladle and he’d put crab and black beans on his plate, and then he’d put the spoon back and he’d say, ‘Now, you serve.’ ” For his part, Heller remembers Brooks arriving in a rage one night “because shortly before he was going out, his wife, Anne Bancroft, said, ‘Mel, when you die, where do you want me to put you?’ And he said, ‘In the kitchen, under the table. And what makes you think I’m going to die before you?’ ”

This easy camaraderie is very much in evidence as Heller and Brooks sit down in Brooks’ office on the Culver Studios lot in Culver City to discuss Heller’s eighth book, “Now and Then” (Alfred A. Knopf), an impressionistic memoir that moves from the author’s childhood in Coney Island in the 1920s and 1930s, through his experiences in the Army Air Corps during World War II and on to the publication of his iconic novel “Catch-22” in 1961. Now 74, Heller, who lives on Long Island, moves somewhat slowly and bears a residual shakiness that is the legacy of Guillain-Barre. But once the conversation gets going, he and Brooks play off each other like a pair of old vaudevillians, trading witticisms--and criticisms--with spontaneity and grace.

MEL BROOKS: If I were going to make a movie out of your life, I would start with two things from “Now and Then.” First would be you climbing the pole and saying “Hi, Mom,” through the window, and scaring the [expletive]out of your mother. The other thing, which has to do with your mother, too, was when you went to the hospital and visited the wrong mother. It was in “Catch-22.”

JOSEPH HELLER: That’s in this book. In “Catch-22,” Yossarian takes the place of a dead soldier, so the dead soldier’s family will not be disappointed when they come. They’ve traveled so far to see their son before he dies. Yossarian and the mother have a normal conversation. I’m pretty sure the inspiration for that scene came from the mistake I made when my mother was in the hospital.

MB: I want to know, honestly. You thought this other woman was your mother?

JH: Yeah.

MB: And the woman thought you were her son?

JH: No, no. She must have thought I was crazy. She knew she didn’t know me. But she looked up and caught my eye. Seeing her, I felt I mustn’t disappoint my mother by not recognizing her. So I sat down, and I put my arms around her and kissed her, and she kissed me, but she didn’t know my name. I thought, “My God, she’s worse than I thought.”

MB: Your mother is a great running . . .

JH: Don’t say “joke.”

MB: . . . connection with epic events in your life. This is important because your father, like my father, died when you were young.

JH: I was going to get to that. Your father died when you were very young. I think he was pretty young, too.

MB: He was 34. I was 2. My brother Bernie, to this day, has deep resentment for me because my father came home one night with a little yellow duck and went toward Bernie with the duck. And he went past Bernie’s face with the little yellow duck and gave it to me. Bernie never forgave me.

JH: I think a different thing happened. I think he was trying to give it to Bernie, and you, being who you are, reached up and grabbed it out of his hand. It’s a Jacob and Esau story.

MB: Now, let me say that I enjoyed “Now and Then” very much. I wanted more of each episode, though. You gave me a lick and a polish, and then bang, you were off. I didn’t get enough of the war. You talk about Avignon, but you don’t describe what happened on the flight.

JH: A gunner got wounded.

MB: Yes.

JH: That’s all that happens on a mission. A mission takes less than four hours. You’re over the target for less than 60 seconds.

MB: But Joe, you didn’t describe enough missions.

JH: You know why? Because--this will shock you--I’m a very modest person. Not humble, but modest. And I couldn’t find much else that I felt would be worth writing about or that was much different from other people who wrote war stories. My time in the service was not even as interesting, or as funny, as yours. A good thing about you is you tell funny stories.

MB: I lie a lot.

JH: I wrote about your experiences in “Closing Time.” You probably forgot you said this, about getting overseas and going into combat, and the commanding officer saying--what were his first words?--”Men, we’re surrounded.”

MB: Yes. We just got here, how could we be surrounded?

I still think there’s more to say about your feelings, about the Stephen Crane aspects of this. Your fears, your trepidations. You didn’t fly again after doing 60 missions. You wouldn’t go on a civilian airplane.

JH: I wouldn’t for 17 years. Then, one night, I spent 23 hours alone on a train from Miami to New York, and I realized I’d rather be dead than ever be so bored again. So next time I flew. But until my 37th mission, which is described in “Catch-22” and described in this book, it never struck me seriously that I was in danger.

MB: Strangely enough, I agree with you. When I was in combat, I thought I was in a newsreel. I didn’t believe it. Except one time they were firing some 88s, and we were in a command car, and the road blew up around us, and I said, “Why do they hate us? We don’t even know them. Why are they so angry?”

JH: I did not feel myself in danger until I actually saw blood coming from the gunner on my plane. After that, I was not only terrified on every mission, but as I confess here, and I’m embarrassed now to say it, I said a little prayer going up and coming down. I crossed my fingers, and I said a little prayer.

MB: You know what I missed in “Now and Then”? I missed many things--no, I didn’t miss anything, I wanted more. I thought the book could have been another 500 pages, really. Are you going to write another? If this really sells and there’s a demand for further reminiscences?

JH: I would do it only if I had no idea at all for a work of fiction.

MB: Wait a minute. You just did a brush stroke of Guillain-Barre. You don’t even talk about what you went through.

JH: I wrote about that in “No Laughing Matter.”

MB: But “No Laughing Matter” may not be read as well as this book. We need the information. I’ll tell you what I need for book two. I think you’ve covered your youth. But you never covered your marriage.

JH: No.

MB: Or your divorce.

JH: No.

MB: And you didn’t cover the near-death experience deeply enough. Just because you wrote “No Laughing Matter,” you think you covered it. But you’re wrong. I’m telling you you’re wrong.

JH: All right, all right. You’re right, I’m wrong.

MB: If we never read that other book, we didn’t get enough information in this. So in the next one, which you think is going to be a slimmer volume, but which is actually going to be fatter than this book, you’re going to get into things where you know there was more to say.

JH: I think that if this book were as few as 50 pages longer, you would not be as enthusiastic about it. I feel that one of the appealing things about it is that it’s very easy reading, and it’s quickly done with, with very few digressions that might, for many, teeter on the border of boredom.

MB: Never mind. I’m the guy who reads Nikolai Gogol, and I read Thomas Hardy. There’s nobody who reads as much as I do and understands as much. I’m the smartest guy you know.

JH: I don’t doubt it. That’s why I’ve been following you around. Maybe I’ll give you another autobiography, if I can’t think of a better idea. That’s why I did this one in the first place. I had no better idea for a book, and certain things coalesced. Christopher Buckley, who’s the son of William Buckley, edits a magazine called F.Y.I. that goes out three, four times a year to subscribers of Forbes. And he gave me an offer even you wouldn’t refuse. He sent me to Rome to eat in several restaurants and write a piece comparing my experiences there with eating in Rome when I was overseas in the war. So I went, and I ate, and I wrote a piece. Since I’m not a food writer, the piece was more about me, Joseph Heller now and Joseph Heller then. It ends with my coming back on a troop ship, where I ate very well as an officer, and knowing that I would get a furlough and be back in Coney Island, eating the Eastern European Jewish food that I really loved.

Now, he said 9,000 words, but he only had room for 3,000. So we condensed it, and there I was with something like 6,000 words left over, about a subject I love very much, which is me. It seemed very easy to begin where that ended, and really I had no more exciting idea than that. “Closing Time” had been kind of pessimistic, about Yossarian at my age, and realizing that there might never be enough time for another long book. So I thought it would be a good idea to write this book.

MB: It’s interesting to hear you talk about this, because I often tell myself, “Mel, if you did nothing but be one of the writers on ‘The Sid Caesar Show,’ nothing but that and ‘The Producers,’ and maybe ‘The 2000 Year Old Man,’ that’s enough.”

JH: Right. Dayenu. It would have been enough for all your contemporaries and for posterity. It would not have been enough for you.

MB: And you didn’t have to do anything after “Catch-22,” except that “Something Happened” is a masterpiece. I think it’s your greatest book.

JH: If asked to pick which I cherish more, it would probably be “Something Happened.” As a literary work, it’s devoid of so much of the energy that “Catch-22” has. Even the humor. The subject matter is ennui, boredom, anomie, a man who doesn’t know what to do with himself and doesn’t know why he is the way he is. The title is somewhat ironic because nothing happens until the very end. I can’t think of another novel like “Something Happened,” and I can’t think of one like “Catch-22.” The works after that fall into conventional structure.

MB: We’re both the same. You became Joseph Heller, and I became Mel Brooks. Before you became Joseph Heller, you were free to do barrel loops and insanities. You were stuck after “Catch-22” because you had a hit. Once you have a hit, you’re chained to capitalism. You’re inextricably linked to supply and demand. I did “The Producers,” I was free. I did “The Twelve Chairs,” I was still free. I did “Blazing Saddles,” I was captured.

JH: You were a prisoner.

MB: I was OK for a while. “Blazing Saddles,” great movie. “Young Frankenstein,” top of my game as a director-writer. After that, capitalism. Artists shouldn’t work because they can sell; they should work because they’re inspired.

JH: A sad truth I discovered, and you discovered, and many others discovered it, that comes with success is that, in certain areas, you’re not much different from the average middle-class businessman.

MB: I still think there’s so much you skipped, and you have to go back into psychoanalysis to find out why.

JH: I have to go back into psychoanalysis to find out why my psychoanalysis ran up against a stone wall. I have to go back into psychoanalysis to find out why I cannot get past anything having to do with my father. I’m 5 1/2 when he dies. There’s a lot of wailing in the house. They sit shiva. I was either there, in which case I heard it all, or they sent me away, in which case I was terrified at another separation. I have not the slightest idea. I cannot get anything.

MB: You can. You will. There are reasons for blocks.

JH: I don’t know if I have the time. I have to go ahead and write the sequel, the sequel you want me to write.