Humor, perspective, and selective honesty.
What do you value most in your friends?
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
A fixed Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire item asked across its three-decade archive, with independent variants in friendship and profile interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Taking daily showers and always being there when I need them.
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 14 December 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
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Terry Gross
Radio interviewer
Their willingness to put up with my endless explanations about why I can’t see them because I’m under deadline.
Their willingness to have me as a friend.
Compassion. Wisdom. Wit. The delicate balance of knowing when I need tough love and when I need support. Plus, call me crazy, but I’m also partial to friends who don’t surreptitiously record our calls.
More from Mel Brooks
View profile →Being in a Broadway theater full of people laughing their heads off at one of my shows.
Never picking up the check.
Being too damned self-absorbed.
Probably me, but I don’t think I’m supposed to say that!
A Broadway theater filled with nothing but critics.
Probably during my childhood growing up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
More on relationships
Also answered this
Laurie Metcalf, Jean Smart, Jim Broadbent, Bernadette Peters, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gayle King
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