"Number four, I would say is Mel Brooks’ The Producers. It’s a toss up between The Producers and Young Frankenstein. It’s so hard to pick one, but I just feel like the first production of The Producers with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel is like … I feel like that raised me. That’s my daddy. Probably in the womb that was shown to me."

"I can’t help myself. I think Mel Brooks pulled off a magic trick, which was to pull off a parody of a certain style of film, but also make it something absolutely new at the same time. I love The Producers because it has such great characters, but Young Frankenstein is a little broader and it has some of the most brilliant comic moments. It’s hammy without being overtly crass like Blazing Saddles was. Madeleine Kahn — God bless her — it’s one of the best comic performances that I know of. I go back to it and see something new that she’s added to it. Mel Brooks and she must have fed off each other’s madness to get that sort of performance. And Marty Feldman attacking her fox stole and chewing on it; I lose it every time when I see that."

"I’m in no particular order, but I will go Blazing Saddles, which was the first R-Rated movie that I ever saw. We had it on VHS. It was our first VHS new. Me and my brothers — my two brothers — we watched it probably a hundred times and loved it. Mel Brooks is a hero of ours, and Rhett actually ran into him at the grocery store. Like, went up to him."

"I used to tell Mel Brooks stories about the guys I knew hanging around a diner, and he mentioned Fellini’s I vitelloni as something I should see. Back in those days, it was very hard to find a film like that. So I wrote Diner and eventually saw I vitelloni. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t see it before making Diner. If I did, I think it might have made me too intimidated to write about my own friends."

"Number two is The Producers by Mel Brooks, of course. The reason I like this one is that it’s essentially a cartoon with live actors. They’re so over the top and so exaggerated, and of course the Germans, and Hitler and everything. It’s just like a wacky, wacky Warner Bros. cartoon with live actors. And also, the idea is so unique and so fresh and so dark. It’s a very bleak, dark idea, and I love that."

"The Producers is one of my favorite movies, and I don’t mean the musical. I mean the original one that Mel Brooks directed, with Zero Mostel. I saw it when it first came out. I saw it in the movie theaters, back in the ’60s. I just think as a comedy, and also being in the business as I am, and coming from theater, it just had that much more impact for me. That’s a movie I like very much."