Casting the new To Be or Not to Be proved to be something of a family affair. When Bancroft was asked how she came to join the project, she said, “I didn’t decide. My husband said, ‘You’re going to do this part.’ I said, ‘All right, darling.’” When asked if she had wanted to work with her spouse before, Anne responded, “Not particularly. When we’d go to parties, we’d sometimes sing a couple of songs together, but that’s it.” Also hired (for a small role as Rifka’s boy) was the Brookses’ son, Max. Anne described what brought that about: “He has been begging us for a part, so we gave him one line in this movie, because I thought he should know what it’s like. After about three days, he decided that he would wait until he was older to be an actor. I don’t blame him. I mean, there was so much work to it that he didn’t expect, like just being there. When you’re needed, you have to be there. You can’t be off reading a book or playing. So he was very disenchanted by the whole thing, which made me very happy.”
Others signed for the picture were Tim Matheson as the handsome young Polish pilot who has a mad crush on Anne’s flirtatious character, the queen of the Warsaw stage. The villainous Nazi undercover agent was played by Jose Ferrer, with Charles Durning and Christopher Lloyd as two bungling German officers. Ronny Graham was cast as Sondheim, a backstage worker at the theater, and James Saake played Bancroft’s gay dressing room helper/confidant.
Almost from the start of packaging this project, Mel had decided against directing or writing this film. (Brooks’s decision might have been influenced by the critical roasting he had received for his scripting/ helming of History of the World: Part I.) For the record, Mel reasoned, “I was making a little bit of a move toward a more complicated character, the most complicated I’ve ever played. I wanted a director’s eye on me, watching my excesses as an actor, helping me to strive for the more subtle moments so that I didn’t play everything ‘over the top.’” Alan Johnson, who had choreographed several of Mel’s past movies, made his feature film directorial debut with To Be or Not to Be, which was a Brooksfilms production.
Later, Brooks acknowledged that both he and Anne had great concerns about working together in such a major capacity. He said, “We wondered if we’d get on each other’s nerves. But we became closer. You know, when I’m working on a movie, I eat lunch with nobody. I go to my trailer. I learn my lines. I eat a little cottage cheese. I rest. I have to be alone. But during this film, at lunchtime, I found myself knocking on Anne’s door and saying, ‘What are you doing, dear?”’ He also admitted of his spouse: “My wife is more than a good friend. She’s my ultimate [film-making consultant].… If she says, ‘I’m not moved’—a movie has to be moving, no matter how brilliant it may be intellectually—I don’t do the movie. I trust her judgment about emotions more than anybody else’s on earth.”
During the filming of this black comedy at Twentieth Century-Fox, veteran character actor Charles Durning had an opportunity to see all sides of Mel the star/producer at work. Durning said, “He’s a brutally honest man, Mel. After I’d done one scene, he said, right in front of everyone, ‘Garbage you give me.’ That absolutely rocked me.” Later, an apologetic Durning spelled out what he had “really” meant by his remarks concerning the filmmaker’s directional methods on the sound stage. The actor said, “I would like to stress that the words do not reflect the zany, set-side atmosphere of the film. Mel and I are the best of friends. Sometimes his outrageous humor, when used to break the tension that exists on some sets, might be misconstrued.”
In the revamp of Lubitsch’s version of To Be or Not to Be for Brooks’s edition, only 50 to 75 lines of dialogue from the original were retained for the new picture. (This worked out to be about one key line per film scene.) When the picture was completed and screened, industry sources noted that the original film received no mention in the opening title cards. (Only in the closing titles were the source materials and its creators identified.) This led to a controversy with the Writers Guild. Brooks remembered, “We spent three months trying to get the Writers Guild to let us give credit [to the original].… We wanted a card in the main title saying, ‘Based on the Ernst Lubitsch film written by Edwin Mayer from a story by Melchior Lengyel.’” According to Mel, the guild refused this suggestion because its rules were geared to provide its members with full credit for their work. In contrast, guild officials said the problem was that Mel Brooks wanted to use a single title card to acknowledge both Lubitsch and the film’s writer. Always seeking to put a humorous spin on even the most ticklish situation, Brooks noted that he was even prohibited from using a gag credit title card on the film that would have read, “Additional Dialogue by William Shakespeare”—this was a reference to a performance within the film of “Highlights from Hamlet” by Mel Brooks’s character.
Fox chose to release this still very dark comedy during the Christmas season of 1983, a marketing decision that seemed ill advised. Most reviewers found little to cheer about in this holiday entry. Harry Haun (of the New York Daily News) argued that Brooks’s film “slavishly reproduced” the original, which only pointed up the flaws of the remake. Kevin Thomas (of the Los Angeles Times) gave a cogent assessment of why Mel’s new film so badly missed the mark: “This reworking of a classic was probably doomed from the start on two formidable counts. First, Brooks and his associates could never be accused of having anything remotely resembling a Lubitsch touch: that celebrated, indefinable combination of wit, subtlety and sophistication that allowed the legendary Berlin-born director to get away with implying just about anything, although even he was accused of bad taste in making his To Be or Not to Be.” Thomas continued, “Second, we know far more than was known in 1942 of the full extent of the Nazi evil, especially in regard to the fate of the Jews. In The Producers Brooks carried off his ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number … Somehow an entire movie that depicts Nazis as the buffoons of fantasy, while we know full well that the peril of Brooks’ largely Jewish acting company is all too real, isn’t very funny but instead is merely crass. (Ironically, for all its sparkle, the original actually took the Nazis far more seriously than this remake does.)” As to the coleads, Thomas judged that they “can’t be said to rise above their material, despite occasional winning moments.”
To Be or Not to Be suffered an unremarkable reception at the box office. It grossed only $13 million in domestic distribution. Brooks made known his distress at the lack of filmgoer enthusiasm for his new showcase. He lay part of the blame on the studio for opening it during the Christmas period, when family-oriented fluff was the traditional fare. He added, “It was also mismarketed. It was billed as a Mel Brooks romp when it wasn’t. It was a very different cup of tea. It’s an exquisite, subtle, very compelling, very touching movie.” (However justified Mel’s complaints may have been, the bottom line was that To Be or Not to Be had widely missed its mark in judging audience tastes. It was another indicator to industry observers that Brooks was losing his Midas touch with picturemaking.)
• • •
While Brooks and Bancroft were abroad promoting To Be or Not to Be, Mel hosted An Evening with Mel Brooks in London, which aired in the United Kingdom. Here, Mel was truly in his element. He told jokes, chatted amiably with the studio audience, sang a few numbers, and even submitted to a humorous competition with the British actor Jonathan Pryce as to who could provide a better rendition of Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy. (Pryce did his performance live, while Brooks’s was a film clip from the new picture.) Anne was in the audience that evening and came up on stage to re-create with Mel one of the (few) highlights from To Be or Not to Be: their duet—in Polish—of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” This delightful TV special documented just how varied an entertainer Brooks could be when given the proper forum.
Also while he was publicizing To Be or Not to Be in Europe, Mel’s musical video (“The Hitler Rap”) was released, and this novelty song, derived from the stage burlesque within the movie, became a popular item on the music industry charts.
> In the wake of To Be or Not to Be, Brooks was asked if he and Bancroft would consider working again together. He quipped, “We’re not the Lunts. If we find something that we really want to do together, maybe we will.” (At one point in the late 1980s, there were plans for the couple to reunite for I Love You to Death, with Mel directing his wife and Kevin Kline. However, when that black comedy was made in 1990, it was Lawrence Kasdan who helmed the movie, and Tracey Ullman was Kline’s costar.)
The media also inquired whether Brooks had any interest in starring in a full version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He said definitely, “No!” According to Mel, “I think I can use all the forms of comedy to say what I want to say about the human condition. If you can make ‘em laugh, it’s your duty to do so.”
29
Next Stop, Outer Space
The image of a wacko is important to me, even though it’s not really me. It’s a comforting image for people who want to see a happy, wacko movie. And the real me takes refuge in it. If people think I’m a wacko, I don’t have to reveal anything. I can keep whatever is truly me private. Every celebrity fights for anonymity. My anonymity is the serious Mel Brooks.
–Mel Brooks, 1987
In the 1980s, Mel Brooks often found himself diverted from preparing new screen vehicles for himself because of his overriding fascination and concerns with supervising Brooksfilms. The project that gave him and his film production company the most problems was their 1986 movie Solarbabies, directed by Alan Johnson.
Brooks had arranged private financing for this sci-fi entry so that he would have more flexibility in choosing a distributor for the finished product. Before Mel had completed the fund-raising process, he was forced to dip into his own bank accounts in order to start filming in Spain before the rainy season hit. “Then, when I was into it for something like $5 million or $6 million, the financing collapsed.” Ideally, Mel would have called off the picture. However, he was advised that he couldn’t exploit such a loss as a tax deduction because “I had no income.” Caught in a pinch, he had to negotiate a bank loan, which proved to be a stressful ordeal. (“It was scary. I couldn’t sleep. I actually had a kind of nervous breakdown.”) Ultimately, Mel sold the picture to MGM, which allowed him to pay back his bank loans and recoup his investment. (The picture itself proved to be an artistic and box-office flop.) After that nightmarish experience, Brooks vowed not to again permit himself to indulge in such risky enterprises.
• • •
Perhaps as early as conceiving the madcap “Jews in Space” sequence for the trailer at the end of 1981’s History of the World: Part I, Mel was toying with the idea of doing a full-length spoof of science-fiction movies. By 1983, the concept was listed on the slate of upcoming projects for Brooksfilms. Soon Mel was chortling to the media, “I have in mind a picture called The Planet Moron. It’ll be the first really rich satire of all the science-fiction movies. ‘Don’t fire your lasers: they may be friendly.’ That sort of dialogue. When they invade, I want to be able to say, ‘We’re surrounded by Morons.’”
Nearly six years had passed since Brooks had directed his last screen entry, History of the World: Part I. He enunciated some of his reasons: “I only direct things I write. I’d rather write the Ninth Symphony than conduct it. And these days, it takes three years to do the script and set up the deal and—well—I just won’t direct a picture I haven’t written.”
The show business veteran, now nearly 60 years old, had mixed feelings about helming a new big-budget movie (and, in turn, the youth-focused film industry was beginning to wonder if Mel had grown seriously out of touch with the new crop of moviegoers). Sometimes, he expressed his concerns in a serious tone: “Frankly, I hate directing. I only direct in self-defense [of protecting my screenplays]. It’s like building a building and having someone else paint it and furnish it. They’re going to get it wrong!” On other occasions, he masked his beliefs on the subject behind a veil of glib amusement. “There’s nothing worse than being on the set. All the excitement and the merriment and celebration. You know, all the sociability—what are we going to eat today? Where are you going for the weekend? … But all I can think about is what happens afterwards. I know that all those people are going to leave me and go on to another picture, while I’m stuck in the editing room for months, slaving over the film.”
As the new Brooks project got under way, Mel and his collaborators (Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham) decided that a primary set of references to be spoofed in The Planet Moron would be George Lucas’s enormously successful Star Wars trilogy (released in 1977, 1980, and 1983). But, rightly so, Brooks questioned whether he was on the right commercial/artistic track. “It’s a paradoxically risky venture; on the one hand, to parody a film genre, the genre has to have been around long enough to become a genre, and yet in the case of the space films, although there certainly is much to parody, interest in the genre seems to be on the wane. Even George Lucas has stopped making them.” (Later, Anne Bancroft would comment on her husbands preproduction concerns: “Mel is always so unsure when he starts out. When he began … [The Planet Moron] he was filled with self-doubt. Anxiety feeds on that, and when he’s not happy, I’m not happy. But that’s when you must do something—be there for each other.”
Actually, at the time that Mel put his sci-fi spoof at the top of his production list, he was scripting another movie project, Scared to Death, a satire of the mystery genre. However, he shelved that screenplay because he came to believe that its commercial appeal might be too narrow. By now, the projected The Planet Moron had undergone a name change to Spaceballs. (The title switch was done to avoid confusion with a 1985 scifi comedy from the United Kingdom titled Morons from Outer Space.) As Brooks, Meehan, and Graham began writing, Mel contacted George Lucas—as he had Alfred Hitchcock when making High Anxiety—to gain the filmmaker’s seal of approval on the planned big-screen spoof. Lucass one request to Brooks was that if Mel went ahead with the satire of the Star Wars movies, Brooksfilms would refrain from merchandizing anything from Spaceballs (which could interfere with Lucas’s ongoing Star Wars merchandizing bonanza).
Over many, many months, Brooks and his writing team whittled down their script from 315 pages to, finally, a 126-page version. Meehan acknowledged of the results, “Unlike To Be or Not to Be, we were going for everything. It’s much more of a vulgar picture, full of wild, low comedy.” Ronny Graham commented on the long development period of getting the property to the actual filming stage, “Of course, we have our disagreements. After a while, cabin fever sets in and we start to shout at each other.” He went on, “Mel’s very vehement. If he doesn’t like a line you write, he’ll shout and stomp and holler. He’ll bellow, ‘You’re totally wrong. You don’t know anything about comedy!’… But here’s what really happens. He’ll fight ferociously against something Ezra [Swerdlow, the producer] or I suggest, but all the while he’ll be rolling that idea around in his head. And if the idea has any merit at all, he won’t necessarily admit it. But he’ll find a way to use it in the scene.”
The filming of Spaceballs began on October 28, 1986. A production deal had been set up at MGM, where Brooks’s friend Alan Ladd Jr. was then chairman and chief executive officer. The budget allocated for this genre spoof was a substantial $22.7 million, a good deal of which was devoted to utilizing the latest high-tech special effects and to creating the impressive sets. For the shoot, Brooksfilms took over the giant Stage 30, one of the three biggest stages on the MGM lot. Much of the outdoor filming was accomplished in the desert around Yuma, Arizona, as well as at assorted southern California sites: a church in Pacific Palisades, locales near San Diego, and sections of Imperial County (home of the Salton Sea and the Imperial Sand Dunes).
To play the picture’s hero, Brooks chose Bill Pullman. (Said Brooks, “The studio fought me on that choice. They wanted Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks—anybody named Tom who cost $2 million.… That’s what wrong with this business. If you make it a ‘Tom’ movie, it’s no longer a parody, i
t’s a “Tom’ movie, and you have to build scenes around him.”) The heavy-set comedian John Candy claimed the role of the hero’s half dog, half man sidekick, Barfolemew. Daphne Zuniga was contracted to portray the spoiled princess, comic Rick Moranis was assigned the role of the villainous Dark Helmet, and Joan Rivers was hired to provide the voice of Dot Matrix, Zuniga’s robotic helper. George Wyner, an excellent second banana character actor who had been in To Be or Not to Be, was on tap as Colonel Sandurz, while Dick Van Patten returned to the Mel Brooks camp as the daffy king. In comparison to his several parts in History of the World: Part I, Brooks cut back on the number of roles he assigned to himself in Spaceballs. In this slapstick intergalactic odyssey, Mel cavorts as the dapper, sinister President Skroob (whose motto is “Skroob the People”) and as the pint-sized Yoghurt (the wise old soul whose favorite saying is “May the Schwartz be with you”).
Spaceballs was released in June 1987. Gene Shalit (of TV’s Today show) ranked the picture “eight trillion on the laugh meter” and the Wall Street Journal’s reviewer rated it “extremely funny—buoyantly tasteless.” However, more on target was Richard Schickel (of Time) who wrote, “It’s not that Mel Brooks has lost his cunning, though he does need a freedom of speech not to be found under a PG rating. What’s missing is that zany old gang of his, ranging in size from Zero Mostel to Marty Feldman, in shape from Madeline Kahn to Dom DeLuise (who does deliver the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs). With their living-caricature presences, they could have proved and improved Brooks’ comic points. And when comic invention failed him, they could have earned laughs just by standing there, making faces. There is simply nobody like them on this trip.”
It's Good to Be the King Page 28