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Caesar's Writers Now Available

posted 12 years ago by CaesarsWriters
2 replies | jump to latest

On January 24, 1996 at the Writers Guild Theater in Los Angeles, CA, legendary comic Sid Caesar was reunited with nine of his writers from Your Show of Shows and Caesars Hour. The event was taped, and later broadcast on PBS in the United States, and the BBC in the UK as a 1 hour special, with only select portions of the full two-hour event. The full event was previously available only as a VHS, offered as a pledge premium by local PBS stations. Now, the full two-hour special CAESARS WRITERS (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0321570/) is available on DVD for the first time! Be prepared to laugh non-stop as the panel, made up of head writer Mel Tolkin, Caesar, Carl Reiner, Aaron Ruben, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Sheldon Keller, and Gary Belkin share stories about their time working on Caesars shows and offer their insights about writing comedy.

The DVD is available from our website: http://caesarswriters.com

There are also a number of clips from the show available on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/CaesarsWriters

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The Caesar's Writers Team

[–] CaesarsWriters 12 years ago

http://youtu.be/91RKgxUUGvw

Mel Brooks talks about always being late to the writing room, and one time that Sid Caesar tried to teach him a lesson.

Caesar's Writers was a two hour reunion of writers from Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, that took place on January 24, 1996 at the Writer's Guild theater in Los Angeles.

http://caesarswriters.com

[–] stevenackerman69 12 years ago

Yeah, Mel didn't want to be a part of the initial writing, he just wanted to punch up the gags. What happened was he would always call ahead to this bagel place (sort of like a Dunkin Donuts) and order a coffee and bagel to precede him so they'd know he was coming. Since he wasn't there to pay for the thing, someone else would pay the 50 cents for it and Mel would reimburse that person when he came in. After some people complained to Sid about it, Sid took care of it by giving the kid 20 bucks one morning. Mel comes in and asked for the coffee and bagel and was holding out 50 cents and Sid gives him the bag and says it'll be 20 dollars. Mel asks why and Sid told him he had paid for the coffee and bagel and he's a big tipper. When Mel said he didn't have to do that Sid told him that if he didn't like it he should come on time and it will cost him 20 dollars a day and maybe even 50 if he likes the delivery guy. Well, since that was a negative cash flow, that caught Mel's attention. So from then on, he never came in so late. He still did, but only up to 20 minutes to a half hour, instead of an hour.