Carl Reiner and Brooks teamed up as a comedy duo in 1960, creating such now-legendary skits as “The 2,000-Year-Old Man.” “Carl’s still my best friend in the world,” says Brooks.

You do not have to be a fan of his many genres of creativity to appreciate the fact that this man knows how to thank the people who have helped him be funny and successful.  The most famous of those collaborations is with his best friend of 60+ years, but in this Fresh Air interview he demonstrates the grace of gratitude for this and many other collaborations:

On Hitchcock and ‘High Anxiety’

“I wrote a letter saying, basically, ‘Dear Mr. Hitchcock, I do genre parodies and in my estimation you are a genre. I don’t mean that you’re overweight. I mean that you’ve done every style and type of movie, and that you’re just amazing, and I would like to do a movie dedicated to you based on your style and your work.’ And … he called me and he said, ‘I loved Blazing Saddles. I think you’re a very talented guy, and come to my office.’

“I came to his office at Universal, and he told me to come back every Friday at a quarter to 12, because at 12:30 we would eat. So 45 minutes of work. And he would work on my script — on High Anxiety— with me. And he said, ‘Well, don’t leave out this and don’t leave out that.’ And he said, ‘What are you going to do about The Birds?‘ I said, ‘Well, gee, at the moment I haven’t included it.’ And he said, ‘Well, why don’t you have them attack you with … their doody? If they all sh-t all over you, I mean, it’s going to be funny.’ I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock.’ ”

On thanking Gene Wilder three times when he won an Oscar for The Producers

“Gene brought a certain something that was never before, that was kind of creative comedy. And he worked tirelessly to play Leo Bloom. He’s really the nucleus, the brilliant key to the emotion of the whole piece — and Gene worked for almost scale, for nothing, day and night. And … I couldn’t thank him enough. When I finally put the movie together, I said, ‘It would have been a good movie with just Zero Mostel and anybody, but with Gene Wilder it’s a wondrous movie.”

On Madeline Kahn

“I’m in tears thinking about Madeline. What an incredibly gifted gift from God, Madeline Kahn. The funniest and most talented comedienne I think, including people like Carol Burnett, who are great, you know, and Gilda Radner who was magnificent. But nobody — listen to me, David Bianculli — nobody could approach the magnificence and wonder of Madeline Kahn.

“She was really a great gift to us all. … I saw art [in her], not just funny. But I saw a person who was gifted with art. She’s the only one who actually could have worked in opera as an opera singer, as a coloratura. She was that talented. Or I think she could have worked as a longshoreman in New Jersey. I don’t think there’s anything that Madeline Kahn couldn’t do.”…

To download the Fresh Air podcast (or find it on iTunes), which includes a transcript summary and description of the podcast interview, click here.