David Bianculli

I spoke with Mel Brooks in 2013 and offered the opinion that you couldn't create a great parody of something unless you both understood and enjoyed the thing you were lampooning.

And what about, say, Alfred Hitchcock, whom you lampooned in High Anxiety?

Those would have come a little later for you, but you clearly loved those too.

What was the joke that you couldn't use?

Now, you seem to have a great track record directing and writing for women.

I mean, not only Madeleine Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Terry Garr, getting really wonderful comic performances from these women.

What was your method?

Young Frankenstein came out the same year as Blazing Saddles.

The standout scene has Gene Wilder as the scientist and Peter Boyle as the creature singing, putting on the ritz.

And I know that that was not your idea.

That was co-writer Gene Wilder's.

So how long did it take before you figured out he was right?

And then I have a question about what sort of direction you gave to Peter Boyle for that number, especially his singing.

And what direction did you give to Peter Boyle?

And was putting on the Ritz always the first song choice?

Mel Brooks spoke with me in 2013.

Mel Brooks was born in 1926, and he's still got projects in pre-production, including two planned films, Spaceballs 2 and Very Young Frankenstein.

Happy Halloween, Mel.

In the new movie Begonia, which is now playing in theaters, Emma Stone stars as a high-powered CEO who gets kidnapped by a low-ranking employee, played by Jesse Plemons, who believes she's an alien from outer space.

It's the latest dark comedy from the filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, who previously directed Stone and Plemons in last year's Kinds of Kindness.