He has been out of the public eye and ill for a long time. I'd heard interviews with Mel Brooks lately as he went on the publicity trail for his box set last year where it was said that he (and Carl Reiner) regularly went up to Sid's house to visit him but that he was in bad shape.
I'm going to be going down a YouTube rabbit hole when I get home from work, I imagine. R.I.P.
Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore…I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.