The A.V. Club

There was too much laughter; I couldn’t shoot. So I went out and bought 100 white handkerchiefs and said, “Stick this in your mouth.” And then, with Young Frankenstein, I bought 200—it was a bigger crew, a lot of people. I said, “If you’re not in the scene, take this handkerchief, and when you feel you’re going to laugh, shove this in your mouth.” And every once in a while, I’d be shooting a scene and I would turn, and I could see a sea of white handkerchiefs. So I said, “Okay, this is going to be funny. This is good.”

Mel Brooks does us the incredible honor of talking about his entire career and how he almost died making Spaceballs