In 2009, revisiting the routine’s glory days, Reiner told The New York Times that when the duo first came up with it, they agreed, “we can’t do it for anybody but Jews and non-antisemitic friends.”
“The Eastern European Jewish accent Mel did was persona non grata in 1950,” he said. “The war had been over for five years, the Jews had been maligned enough.”
By the time the television special came out, the Cold War was at its height; the Vietnam War had killed thousands of American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese civilians; and Watergate was remaking American politics. The specific traumas had changed; the fact that the world is traumatizing had not.
And yet there was Brooks, in that special, solemnly informing Reiner that he credited his longevity to one simple habit: “I never, ever touch fried food.” The 2000-year-old man exists, stubbornly, in a world in which no problem is so gigantic that it cannot be overcome by a healthful diet. (And, he later adds, a determination to never run for a bus.) He survives not because of his wits or his strength, but because he watches his waistline and lets history gently glide right by him.
Of course, this may be only partially reasonable advice for how to actually, practically live. But it’s reassuring to encounter someone so radically free from the burdens that characterize the lives of those afraid of what the world has in store. It’s a reminder that no matter how much we worry about it, history is going to pass us by, too, and eventually leave us behind, with our concerns making little if any mark on its progress.
In the TV special, Brooks patiently explains to Reiner that pretty much every joyful human behavior is rooted in fear — including singing, dancing, and falling in love. He doesn't put it quite this way, but it's clear that one thing his long life has taught him is that things never work out quite the way you might predict. You check a foe for weapons, and then, boom, you’re dancing the Charleston together. You ask one woman to watch your back for a while, to see if there’s an animal behind you, and suddenly, you’ve invented marriage.
Most of us won’t have multiple millennia through which to develop such matter-of-fact sagacity. But it’s a joy that Brooks and Reiner gave us a sense of what it might be like if we did. As the former turns 99 — about 4.95% of the 2000-year-old man’s lifespan, for reference — it’s worth revisiting, and enjoying, the fruits of their labor. After all: “Fruit is good,” the 2000-year-old man once wisely said. “Fruit kept me going for 140 years.”
