THE 2000 YEAR OLD MAN IN THE YEAR 2000

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

While working on Your Show of Shows, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks came up with the improv sketch "The 2000 Year Old Man." After performing it at parties, Steve Allen convinced them to release the routine as an album, which became a hit and led to three follow up albums released between 1960 and 1973. In 1975, portions of those albums were animated and released as a half hour television special. As the years ticked toward the millennium, Reiner and Brooks revisited the characters and released an album and book entitled The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, released in 1997.

The book The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 places the interview questions that drive most of the 200 Year Old Man skits into a more narrative format. There are short chapters, but rather than the question and answer format that had Brooks thinking on his feet to answer the questions posed by Carl Reiner, the chapters simply present the responses as a sort of stream of consciousness autobiography written by the titular character. The material they use is not just from the album that was released concurrently with the book, but also includes a sort of "greatest hits" from the four previous albums. In as much as it can, therefore, it provides a single coherent history of the character whose story is a lightweight conglomeration of improvised comedic bits without a plan or purpose beside entertaining an audience (and the creators).

Humor is not just a matter of funny writing, it is also a matter of timing and presentation and the book suffers from not only lacking Brooks and Reiner's timing, but also the accent that Brooks uses for the 2000 Year Old Man. However, there are some bits that work better in the book than in the recording. In the recording, the 2000 Year Old Man describes the first book he ever read, Zechum Mochum Roochum. In the book, he is able to reproduce the simple picture book over the course of nine pages, which gives and added dimension to the joke. Similarly, the diet provided to help a person live 2,000 years comes with illustrations to drive home the ingredients. Similarly the disagreements between the "author" and "editor" that play out in footnotes throughout the book add an extra dimension of humor to the book.

The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000: The Book is not a replacement for the recording or the routines that preceded the album, but it does offer a diverting addition to them and a companion piece to the last album, giving it a little more depth, not that depth is necessary, and a place where Reiner and Brooks were able to incorporate jokes which were not included in any of the actual recordings. It does lead to the question of how much of the book was actually written by Brooks or Reiner or if it was a transcription the two men worked from to smooth into the narrative that appears. The book should not be read in lieu of listening to the records, but it is amusing in its own right.

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