There are moments when it hits you: Mel Brooks means more to American comedy now than ever. Whenever a character in a movie audibly passes gas, for instance. Or when you're on a long flight to Los Angeles, watching "Young Frankenstein" on a laptop in Seat 8C, chuckling at the monster tap-dancing his way through "Puttin' on the Ritz," at which point you notice that the woman in 8B is also chuckling, as is the man back in 9D, as is a flight attendant delivering coffee to 9C. Amid all this high-altitude merriment, who could blame you for revealing to 9D that you happen to be flying to Los Angeles to interview the film's director in advance of a little award he's getting?

"Tell him, thanks for the laughs. It couldn't happen to a better guy," says the man.

The guy whom no one's better than occupies a simple office off a nondescript corridor on the second floor of Building B at Culver Studios in Culver City. The old lot has seen happier days, as has Culver City itself, whose brownish lawns and empty storefronts are a sobering counterpoint to Southern California's cloudless November days and palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights. But Culver Studios' white-pillared main building still gleams as brightly as the day it doubled for Tara in the credits for "Gone With the Wind." And still it was no match for the 83-year-old Brooks -- a vision in white polo, chinos and Velcro-fastened tennis shoes -- who greeted his visitor excitedly before immediately settling down to the business of selling himself, something he's done since before he can remember.

"I agree 100 percent," said Brooks of the decision to include him among those receiving the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors. At that point, a noise was heard in another room -- the photographer arriving -- and Brooks sprang to life again, quickly pulling on a navy blazer with a red pocket square. "I am a national treasure, I SHOULD be celebrated. And I hope against hope that you won't find my award on eBay, because you never know," he said, adjusting the pocket square. "You run out of cash and wherewithal ..."

With that, Brooks' voice trailed off. The no doubt very wealthy writer-director-actor was apparently seriously concerned that he might still lose it all. The "national treasure" stuff was vintage Brooks chutzpah, of course, but the fear of the abyss was, in its own way, vintage Brooks, too.

Like Max Bialystock, the washed-up impresario at the heart of "The Producers," Brooks is intimately acquainted with the bottomless depths of showbiz hell. Like the Cleavon Little character in "Blazing Saddles," a black sheriff in an all-white town, he knows what it's like to have all the cards stacked against you. And like his recession-battered country in its prolonged season of pain, he can't help but laugh at the epic ridiculousness of our present predicament.

Which, of course, is the biggest reason Mel Brooks means more to American comedy now than ever.

The chaos of the writers room is where Brooks always felt most at home; after all, that crucible of mugging and cigar smoking and can-you-top-this?-ing gave birth to television comedy almost single-handedly, which is one reason he created his own writers room of sorts when working on "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein" and his other '70s comedies. Now Brooks is surrounded by Emmys and Tonys and framed posters of his films, as well as a keyboard on which he's been plinking out songs for a possible "Blazing Saddles" musical. But no people.

"It's lonely," he said. "You have to create characters and they talk to you and you live with THEM."

The loneliness only deepened after the loss of Bancroft, to whom he was married for 40 years. Without her, not even Brooks would have had the chutzpah to adapt "The Producers" into a Broadway musical. True, the 1968 film already possessed a jaw-dropping production number, "Springtime for Hitler," in which the Fuhrer is depicted as a Broadway baby, singing and dancing his way into the audience's heart ("We're marching to a faster pace. Look out, here comes the master race!"). But although it had brought him an Oscar for Best Screenplay, "The Producers" had remained largely a cult sensation.

But his wife, Brooks says, always believed that he was "the best lyricist she knew," as well as "a wonderful songwriter," and she finally demanded that he go up to the attic and write. "That day, I came down with almost a whole song."

The "Producers" musical, which Brooks completed in his 75th year, opened at New York's St. James Theatre in 2001, quickly becoming a blockbuster beyond even the grandiose imaginings of Max Bialystock. To date, the show has grossed more than $1 billion, playing to packed houses from London to Tel Aviv to Seoul to, last spring, Berlin's Admiralspalast theater, where Hitler himself once enjoyed taking in the occasional operetta. The original Broadway production, which starred Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, won more Tony Awards than any other musical before or since, including one for Lane.

"I think God said, 'You know what? Mel Brooks has had his ups and downs, but now I'm going to give him the perfect experience,' " Lane said. "It was a miraculous thing, and people went crazy."

To hear Lane tell it, Brooks "has literally shaped our entire comic viewpoint at different times, for different generations. And then he's just an adorable Jewish man that I love very much. It couldn't happen to a better guy."

The guy whom no one's better than is an octogenarian tennis player ("I just dink it"), a World War II vet ("Most of the time I was ducking so they wouldn't get a clear shot of me"), the author of a second musical ("Young Frankenstein"), and a devoted grandfather whose spot-on impressions of Hitler leave Max Brooks' 4-year-old son, Henry, in stitches.

"He's taking the comb, putting it under his nose, saying 'Heil Hitler.' And Henry thinks it's hysterical," said Max, admitting that his wife eventually put a stop to Mel's shtick after Henry saw the real Hitler on the History Channel, ran to the TV and screamed "Grandpa!"

These days, Mel likes to stop by son Max's place in Venice on the way home to Santa Monica. Brooks' latest passion is teaching little Henry ancient tunes from the American Songbook, with the consequence that Henry may be the only preschooler alive who knows all the lyrics to "Swanee" ("I changed 'Mammy' to 'Mommy' ") and "Shine On, Harvest Moon."

TV columnist Rob Owen's Tuned In+ is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.