Here’s the Mel Brooks Oscars Acceptance Speech You Didn’t See on the Academy Awards Broadcast
At tonight’s Oscars ceremony, the film world celebrated comedy legend Mel Brooks by awarding him an Honorary Oscar — without Brooks. The damn thing started at 7 p.m. Brooklyn time, you think a 97-year-old is staying up for that?
Brooks earned his first Academy Award in 1969 for a win in the Best Writing, Story and Screenplay category for The Producers. He’d earn a couple more nominations during his historic career for writing and for Best Original song in Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles respectively, but the genre-defining director would have to wait another 55 years to hoist a second gold statue. At the Governors Awards. Two months before the Oscars.
Yes, Brooks already took home his trophy two weeks before the Academy even announced nominations for tonight’s ceremonies, delivering a stirring speech following an introduction from his friends and collaborators, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Over half a century after he won his first Oscar, the movie world’s most beloved near-centenarian, Brooks promised his honorers, “I won't sell this one, I swear to God!”
“I’m risking COVID for them!” Brooks joked after stealing smooches from Broderick and Lane who both appeared in his 2005 film adaptation of the Producers stage musical. Following the appropriate heaps of praise from his actors as well as a measured amount of masturbation humor, Brooks stepped up to the stage showing the iconic wit that 97 years could not hope to wither. “Thank you so much. This is beautiful. I got to tell you, this means a lot to me. It really means a lot. I feel so bad about the Oscar I got for writing the original screenplay for The Producers. I feel so bad. I miss it so much. I never should have sold it. Hey, listen, times weren’t great,” Brooks joked of his other brush with Oscar gold.
Characteristically, Brooks didn’t allow his obligatory silliness to diminish the importance of the moment, telling a smaller crowd of his contemporaries than those at tonight’s ceremony, “When your peers appreciate your work and they salute you with this golden statue, it means a great deal. It really does because I was the baby of four boys and finally they got to see me and kiss me and it meant a lot to be awarded a place in the family.” He added, “It’s the same thing in show business. If your fellow writers, directors, and actors like you and appreciate your work, it means a lot.”
Apparently, his fellow writers, directors and actors chose to appreciate his work the same way he and his age group appreciate their dinners — early.
