Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke & Others Reveal Their Secrets to Longevity

In 2017, the Bronx-born comedy legend Carl Reiner — who was responsible for a lifetime of laughs, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Jerk and, well, his comic-genius son, the late Rob Reiner — spoke with our sister publication about the must-see documentary If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast, where he and his longtime bestie Mel Brooks (among others) were featured. In celebration of Mel’s 100th birthday on June 28, 2026, and in remembrance of Carl’s death on June 29, 2022, we share some of the best pieces of advice learned from the documentary. But first, we share what Carl Reiner told us what kept him going for 98 years.

“The way I keep myself going is writing,” said Reiner, who was also an avid tweeter about politics and the young comic pundits he loved. “Just now [2017], I’m doing a book that I can’t wait to finish. It’s every movie that has influenced me from when I was 6 up to the present. It’s going to be a table-sized book! I’m also putting the finishing touches on one called You Say God Bless You for Sneezing & Farting! Fart books always sell. And by the way, I’m not the first person to write a book on farting. The first was written by Benjamin Franklin, called Fart Proudly. I got it online for 15 bucks!”

Mel Brooks, 90 (now 100)

Best advice: Always find the funny

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Peabody Awards

“We met in 1950. It’s 67 years since, and he still visits me every night,” Reiner said. “One of the reasons that we remained such good friends is not only do we get along, but our wives were very close, too.” The simpatico wits, who met on the set of Your Show of Shows, soon created 2000 Year Old Man, bits of which serve as Obit‘s spine. Brooks hangs out with Reiner and Lear throughout Obit, each cracking the others up.

Brooks and Reiner recall the Reiner kids’ reaction to finding Brooks asleep in their home (there was poking involved). Brooks bursts into song to prove one note in the 1931 Arthur Schwartz/Howard Dietz standard “Dancing in the Dark” is a literal killer. “You can’t laugh that hard without it adding time,” Lear says of their friendship. “I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

Dick Van Dyke, 91 (now 100)

Best advice: Never lose the Wonder

Courtesy of HBO

Between endearing scenes of Van Dyke interacting with young Mary Poppins fans and crooning with his 40-something wife Arlene, the smiling star explains his motto, which he also titled his 2015 tome on staying youthful: Keep Moving. “New experiences are the only thing you can collect in life that end up being worth it,” Van Dyke muses. “I love having somewhere to go.” But his best advice? Indulge your inner child. “‘When you grow up, set aside the things of childhood,’” Van Dyke recites. “Well, it doesn’t mean imagination and creativity and dreaming. In my business, imagination is everything.”

For Reiner, Van Dyke was everything, too. “Fans often ask what I’m most proud of,” he said. “I wrote The Dick Van Dyke Show for myself originally. When it didn’t sell, somebody said, ‘Let [sitcom producer] Sheldon Leonard read it.’ I didn’t want to fail twice with the same material, and he said, ‘You won’t fail. We’ll just get a better actor to play you.’ [Laughs] He was Dick Van Dyke — and the rest was history.”

Norman Lear, 94 (died in 2023 at 101)

Best Advice: Live in the moment

Courtesy of HBO

The sitcom guru’s secret to vitality: “I like living in the moment. There are two words we don’t understand the importance of — ‘over’ and ‘next.’ If there was a hammock in the middle of over and next, that’s what they’d mean by living in the moment.” Not to mention blooming where you’re planted. “In a way, I’m the peer of whomever I’m talking to,” he said. “If I’m talking to a 50-year-old, I’m 50. When I talk to a 12-year-old, I’m 12.”

For Reiner, Lear will always be King of Yenemvelt. “Norman Lear did something that gave five couples the best times of their lives,” he says. “He was given free rein of a house that had five bedrooms, and he invited us all for the weekend. We laughed from the moment we stepped into that place, through lunch, dinner, nighttime soirees, singalongs. Games we played, like ‘pass the orange’ and ‘celebrity grapefruit.’ There wasn’t a moment that wasn’t full of laughs.”

Betty White, 95 (died in 2021, 17 days before her 100th birthday)

Best advice: Keep a twinkle in your eye

Courtesy of HBO

Reiner met White when he played her suitor on Hot in Cleveland. As the pair discussed the perks of pressure-free work and lifelong good health, Reiner told her how much he valued his singing strolls. White’s response was pure gold: “If you couldn’t walk, you’d be a burden to people. I don’t want to be a burden to anybody … except possibly Robert Redford.” “Betty White is a force of nature,” Reiner shared with us. “The Guinness Book of Records put her down as having television’s longest-running career. She had a show on the West Coast that played every day [1952’s Life With Elizabeth]; she produced it and everything. What’s funny is I call her my captain-in-law, because during the war, I was in the entertainment section and the captain in charge of the day’s work was Capt. Allen Ludden — the fellow Betty married.”

Kirk Douglas, 100 (died in 2020 at age 103)

Best Advice: Don’t let bad days win

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Reiner visited the screen legend at his home, where the pair discussed the impact of Douglas’ 1996 stroke, and how love and creativity saw him through. “I did the show to prove I could still function,” Douglas told Reiner of 2009’s Kirk Douglas: Before I Forget (“What does an actor do who can’t talk? Wait for silent pictures to come back!” he cracked in a snippet).

“I met Kirk on his 99th birthday and he’s an amazing man,” Reiner told. “He just wrote a book with his wife [Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood] and he has wonderful thoughts about life. Besides being a great actor, Douglas was a great activist at the time when left-wingers were considered social outcasts.” “You’re not Kirk Douglas to me,” Reiner tells Douglas. “You’re Spartacus. You are Van Gogh!”

6 Acclaimed Movies You May Not Know Mel Brooks Produced

While he is known for his comedies, Brooks has been a part of plenty of serious films as well.

Remind

Want More?

Pioneers of Television

May 2026

They were the innovators, the pioneers, the rebels. They dared to try something new and to push television to new limits.

Buy This Issue