Mel Brooks developing "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein" for the musical theater, saying of an early meeting with her: "From that day, until her death…we were glued together." Regarding religion, Brooks stated, "I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all. I think it's the relationship with the people and the pride I have. The tribe surviving so many misfortunes, and being so brave and contributing so much knowledge to the world and showing courage." Brooks' great-nephew from his brother Lenny, Todd Kaminsky, is a New York state senator for state senate
Mel Brooks Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson and was the first movie produced by Brooks himself. It starred Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, and Dick Van Patten. The film satirizes such Hitchcock classic films as "Vertigo", "Spellbound", "Psycho", "The Birds", "North by Northwest", "Dial M for Murder", and "Suspicion". Brooks stars as Professor Richard H. (for Harpo) Thorndyke, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who also happens to suffer from "high anxiety". By 1980 "Siskel and Ebert" called Mel Brooks and Woody Allen "the two most successful comedy directors in the world today ...