It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  Reviewers found occasional moments of Brooksian delirium in Life Stinks, such as the extended slapping scene between the “hero” and a delusional bum (played smartly by Rudy DeLuca) or the dance interlude (to Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love”) between Brooks and Warren. However, many agreed with Jack Matthews (of the Los Angeles Times), who asked rhetorically, “Is there anyone out there in Ronald Reagan’s mortgaged America who wants to spend two laugh-filled hours on Los Angeles’ Skid Row?” (Matthews did acknowledge of the new release, “It is a remarkably effective blend of slapstick and pathos, a story about a morally stunted industrialist forced to live among the homeless and to learn from them. Combining laughter and pain is never easy, but Brooks—fighting his own bad instincts, as well as the gag-huckster image he now calls ‘the bane of my existence’—managed to inhabit this world without a note of condescension.”)

  Hal Hinton (of the Washington Post) was far less charitable toward Brooks’s modest new showcase: “Once upon a time he was hilarious. And can still be, in interview, which is his true art form. But for some time now, his movies have not even cruised near the neighborhood of funny. And this one is the bottom of the barrel.”

  In contrast, Roger Ebert (of the Chicago Sun-Times) championed Mel’s latest picture as “warm and poignant.” He judged, “Brooks, as usual, is his own best asset. As an actor, he brings a certain heedless courage to his roles. His characters never seem to pause for thought; they’re cocky, headstrong, confident. They charge ahead into the business at hand. There is a certain tension in Life Stinks between the bull-headed optimism of the Brooks character, and the hopeless reality of the streets, and that’s what the movie is about.”

  However, despite such boosts from Ebert and a few other critics, after a few weeks in domestic distribution, Life Stinks disappeared from view. Made at an estimated cost of $13 million, it only grossed $4.1 million in the United States and Canada. It fared better abroad but not sufficiently well to recoup its costs.

  Brooks was crushed anew by the failure of his pet project and had a hard time coming to grips with its unfavorable reception. In 1993, two years after the fiasco, a still smarting Mel told Larry King on the latter’s cable TV talk show, “I tried to do a story of what was happening in America and blend it with insane physical comedy, and it worked—it worked in Europe. It didn’t work here. I mean, I think I was too close.” A decade later, the filmmaker was still proclaiming the injustice of the picture’s failure. “The best movie I made in a long time was a movie called Life Stinks. I was crucified. ‘Don’t annoy us, please.’ It was that ‘go away’ phenomenon, so Life Stinks quickly went away. It’ll be discovered, I’m probably dead 100 years, they’ll say [it’s] the best movie this little Jew ever made.”

  • • •

  By 1992, Brooks was considering his next option as a moviemaker. With son Max soon old enough to be out on his own and wife Anne Bancroft back at work (on the Los Angeles stage, on TV, and in a rash of character leads in major movies), Mel needed to keep busy with his career, even if he seemed to be spinning his wheels. For one thing, there was Brooksfilms’ latest effort, The Vagrant. However, this low-budget horror thriller starring Bill Paxton got a near nonexistent release (shown in only eight theaters!) by MGM before the very mild offering was relegated to the home entertainment market. Then, out of nowhere, a new movie project fell into Brooks’s lap.

  Evan Chandler, a Beverly Hills dentist, mentioned to a patient (J. David Shapiro), a fledgling scenarist recently arrived in Los Angeles from New Jersey, an idea suggested by Chandler’s 11-year-old son. The concept was based on the boy’s remark that Kevin Costner’s recent box-office hit (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) “sucked.” Thereafter, Chandler and Shapiro collaborated on a screenplay that, eventually, they pitched to Mel Brooks, who already had dealt satirically with the bandit king of Sherwood Forest in his 1975 TV series When Things Were Rotten.

  A deal was made for Brooks to work with the duo to give their screen project the special Brooksian touch and his imprimatur, which would help to position the movie in the marketplace. Giving a typical industry spin to explain his attachment to the project, Mel said, “I think you must have affection for whatever you tease. I love Westerns. I love monster movies. And I love the story of Robin Hood.” That interest went back to when Brooks was a child and “everybody wanted to be Errol Flynn.” The imaginative boy had often warded off the forces of evil in his neighborhood with a wooden stick/sword (and adorned his makeshift hat with a feather taken from the local poultry store). Now he was ready to provide anew his comedic slant to the Robin Hood legend, using Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the “stepping-stone” for his burlesque. As he said, “Once I have something to chin on, I’m all set.”

  Brooksfilms Ltd. made a deal with Columbia Pictures to produce Mel’s latest genre spoof. (Twentieth Century-Fox handled the domestic distribution while Brooksfilms was in charge of foreign distribution.) The cast was comprised of mostly new faces to the Brooks stock company: Britisher Cary Elwes as a prissy Robin Hood; stand-up comic/TV star Richard Lewis as the evil, leering Prince John; British comedian/TV star Tracey Ullman as the witchy Latrine; comic Dave Chappelle and singer/actor Isaac Hayes as two of Robin’s men; Amy Yasbeck as the saccharine Maid Marian; and Roger Rees as the dastardly Sheriff of Rottingham. Mark Blankfield, who had been in Brooks’s TV series The Nutt House, was given the role of blind Blinkin. Dom DeLuise added his presence in a cameo as a medieval gangster.

  To complement—and bolster—the lineup of talent, Brooks cast himself as Friar Tuckman, a peddler of sorts who is better at distributing sacramental wine than in practicing the art of circumcision. (At one point in the casting process, Sean Connery, who had played King Richard in Kevin Costner’s version of the Robin Hood legend, suggested to Brooks that he would repeat his role of the monarch—but this time in drag. However, as intriguing as this comic prospect was, he wanted a $1 million salary, which he planned to donate to Scottish charities. Connery’s offer was turned down due to budgetary constraints. Instead, Patrick Stewart played the British ruler in a more conventional manner in the climax of Robin Hood: Men in Tights.)

  Robin Hood: Men in Tights was shot on sound stages in Hollywood and on location in Canyon Country, about 30 miles northwest of Tinseltown. The picture boasted new songs by Brooks. With music provided by Hummie Mann (who had taken over for John Morris in scoring Mel’s pictures), Brooks wrote the lyrics to “Marian” and “Sherwood Forest Rap.” On his own, Brooks created the playful title song.

  The PG-13-rated swashbuckling satire debuted in late July 1993. Vincent Canby (of the New York Times) was not impressed with the results. “The movie takes a long time to get off the ground, and then it wobbles. It hits a couple of ecstatically funny high points, only to plummet into a bog of second-rate gags, emerging a long time later to engage the audience by the sheer, unstoppable force of the Brooks chutzpah.” For Canby, “The most damaging thing to be said about Men in Tights is that in spite of the references to Prince of Thieves and other comparatively recent films, it seems embedded in a movie world that’s far more ancient. It’s a shock when Mr. Brooks brings on Dom DeLuise to do his parody of Marlon Brando in his Godfather performance.”

  Rita Kempley (of the Washington Post) bluntly labeled Brooks an “increasingly creaky spoofmeister.” She vivisected the film: “A predictable onslaught of bad taste and worse jokes, it mostly targets not the conventions of action-adventures but the sexual preferences of the merry men, who are variously referred to as ‘pansies,’ ‘fagalas’ and ‘fruits.’ Brooks fills in the spaces with broadsides derogatory to women and the one interest group you can readily afford to offend on film—blind folks.”

  The 104-minute Robin Hood: Men in Tights grossed $35.74 million in domestic distribution, but that was weak given its over $10 million production costs, plus additional marketing/distribution fees. (The source of the spoof, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, had grossed $165.5 million in the United States and Canada.)
Following this release, Brooks severed his last ties with Twentieth Century-Fox, where he had headquartered his Brooksfilms since the late 1970s. He now took offices on a film lot in Culver City.

  • • •

  During 1993, a new Mel Brooks film effort went afoul. It was Les Visiteurs, a French-made fantasy comedy starring Jean Reno. The picture had been a box-office hit abroad, and Miramax Film decided to release the time-travel comedy in the United States in a dubbed version that was to be supervised by Mel Brooks. (Even taking this assignment showed just how anxious Brooks was to get back in the swing of the industry mainstream.) Following test screenings in Los Angeles, Miramax scrapped Mel’s efforts. Instead, they gave Les Visiteurs a limited release in a subtitled version. A chagrined Brooks insisted, “I did the absolute best job I could. I felt the audience was really with it, but the guys at Miramax didn’t see it that way. I don’t know what they expected, but they didn’t seem to understand that the words of the ‘gospel’ are dictated by the movement of the mouth.”

  • • •

  In late November 1993, Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor opened on Broadway. It was Simon’s nostalgic recounting of life working for Sid Caesar on Caesar’s Hour. Nathan Lane played the manic Sid-like central figure, Max Prince, with Ron Orbach as Ira Stone (a counterpart to the actual Mel Brooks). The comedy was a sizable hit and drew attention to the real-life alumni of Caesar’s TV variety show. Brooks, Carl Reiner, and the other originals were the subject of many media interviews about the good old Caesar days and what each participant had been up to since then. (In 2001, the Showtime cable network aired a revised version of the stage hit, with Lane re-creating his part of Max Prince and with Saul Rubinek now cast as Ira Stone).

  There were many tributes to the talented Sid Caesar in the 1990s, all of which brought the star’s legendary writing squad (back) into the limelight. Perhaps the most high-profile occasion was a conclave held at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills in January 1996. Hosted by Billy Crystal, the evening was a free-for-all of wisecracking kibitzers (including Brooks, Larry Gelbert, Neil Simon, Mel Tolkin, and Carl Reiner) paying homage to the great Sid. The classic outing of veteran jokesters was videotaped and aired on PBS in August of that year. Mel proved to be one of the most enthusiastic and vocal participants in the event, relishing the opportunity to reminisce and wisecrack about the golden old days, when his best creative years still lay ahead.

  • • •

  In 1994, Anne Bancroft announced, “I have the perfect dream—to live four months in LA, four in New York, and four in the Caribbean or Miami. I’d like my husband to come along, so I’ll wait until he decides what he’s going to do with his life. Actually, I don’t think he’ll decide. Life will decide for him. It always takes care of itself.”

  By then, the irrepressible if not always so indefatigable Mel, age 69, was at work on yet another feature film. (That Brooks found backing for a new screen venture after the less than stellar box-office and critical results of his recent offerings was a testament to the residue of industry esteem remaining from his early screen triumphs.) Dracula: Dead and Loving It, harkened back to Young Frankenstein and the golden age of Brooks’s film fare. The new project was set up at Castle Rock Entertainment (a production company cofounded by Carl Reiner’s director/actor son Rob) for distribution by Columbia Pictures. (Ironically, Columbia was the same movie lot that had refused to make Young Frankenstein two decades earlier because Brooks had insisted it be filmed in black and white. Dracula: Dead and Loving It was to be shot in color.) Brooks collaborated on the screenplay with Rudy DeLuca and Steve Haberman.

  Mel proclaimed that he was excited at returning to a horror spoof, a genre that was enjoying a new vogue with such recent releases and upcoming products as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Peter Fonda’s Nadja, and Eddie Murphy’s Vampire in Brooklyn. Brooks pointed out, “Terror and comedy work very well together. There is a need to exorcise these devils, these demons, from our system, so that we don’t have these nightmares.” He noted, “In a way Dracula is even more insidious. Especially for women. They have this weird—I don’t know if it’s sexual ... I think it is sexual—reaction to the whole legend. Frankenstein scares little boys, while Dracula scares and magnetizes grown women.” It was Mel’s intent to spoof the 1931 Bela Lugosi (camp) classic, not such celluloid riffs as George Hamilton’s 1979 Love at First Bite.

  More anxious than ever to seem hip and up-to-date, Brooks agreed that filmmaking techniques certainly had changed in recent times. “Everything has become quicker and more violent, even comedy. We’re in the Ace Ventura school of funny. Trip, fall, scream, jump, bang—some of it very funny, some of it just noisy. And the young kids, 15 down to 9, are programmed to laugh on rhythm, on sounds. Dink! Dink! Dink! Bonk! They’ll give you a laugh. It’s like Beethoven, we’d get a laugh on his fifth—Bump-bump-bump-bah! It’s perfect for the kids today.… It makes it more difficult to weave in information. It’s all pay-offs. And I work a long time on these lush, green verdant valleys of information before I try for a peak of comedy. But I still do that, because it still works. And because I have to see the movie later, after we open and get our first week’s grosses. Yesterday, after a good preview, they said, ‘You could take this out, you could take that out…’ And I said, ‘Those are for me. Those are for after we open, so I can smile when I watch it!’ And hopefully, there’s a little triangle of people somewhere that’ll like those jokes too.”

  In casting Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Mel recalled having seen some of the Naked Gun film comedies and being impressed by Leslie Nielsen’s tongue-in-cheek performance as the clumsy “hero.” He assigned the Canadian-born actor (who, like Brooks, was born in 1926) the lead role of Count Dracula from Transylvania. Harvey Korman once again returned to Mel’s fold, this time as Dr. Jack Steward, the perplexed medico in charge of a loony bin of mad patients. Amy Yasbeck (from Robin Hood: Men in Tights) was contracted to play the beautiful heroine, while Lysette Anthony was chosen as the tempting ward who falls prey to the vampire. In an inspired piece of casting, the underrated Peter MacNicol (best known for playing the highly eccentric attorney on TV’s Ally McBeal) played an English solicitor who falls under the count’s deadly spell. Steven Weber (costar of TV’s Wings) was made the picture’s courteous but dense hero. Billy Crystal’s daughter Jennifer had a small part as a nurse, while Anne Bancroft did a campy version of a gypsy woman, lampooning the bizarre performance of Russian character actress Maria Ouspenskaya in 1941 ‘s The Wolf Man.

  Not to be left out of the fun, Brooks allotted himself the part of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, the intense, thickly accented vampire hunter. Later, Mel explained how he evolved his distinctive inflection for his interpretation of Van Helsing. “If you want to be a purist, he’s Dutch. But everybody that’s played him, including Edward Van Sloan right from the beginning, plays him with a Germanic haircut and accent. So I patterned myself after Van Sloan, cause I liked his haircut. I did that kind of Prussian crew-cut wig, and then I did this accent, which I love to do. Somebody said, What exactly is your accent, your German accent. And I said, Well, if you’re a student of German actors, I’m about 90 percent [character actor] Albert Bassermann.… so I did 90 percent Albert Bassermann and 10 percent Hitler.”

  Filming began on May 5, 1995, on Los Angeles sound stages. Those who had worked with Brooks before were well acquainted with his concerted efforts to make his sets a center of joviality. But for newcomers to the Brooksian world, it all took getting used to. According to Ben Livingston, cast in the picnic scene, “I didn’t know what to think.” He described Mel being “bombastic and almost playing the part of a 1930s maniacal director.” He remembered everyone laughing a good deal between shots and that “every day on the set was a comedy show.” (Nielsen, a great prankster, got into the act by bringing a battery-operated fart machine to the set and had great fun watching people’s reactions to the sudden barrage of crude noises the gadget made.) Livingston also recalled for th
is author that Brooks worked very quickly (especially on those days when he wanted to finish as early as possible to get to the horse racetrack, as watching the races had become one of his favorite pastimes) and that Mel’s staff seemed to be on top of all production matters.

  By now Brooks was adept at directing himself on camera. He was thankful for such aids as the video equipment used to film alongside the big cameras. Thanks to such technology he could immediately check how a scene had looked on camera. “Right after you do a take, you rush over to the monitor, you take a look, and you say, Let’s do it again. Or you say, Don’t touch it! Move on. Thank you, God!”

  Then too, the veteran filmmaker was an old hand at the postproduction process and how the movie’s final shape was essentially not determined by the director. “As soon as the rough cut is done my take on the movie is gone. From there on in, in a dark movie house, there’s five hundred people who cut my film.” One of the prerelease screenings was held in Pasadena. Brooks recalled, “So this bloodbath screening knocked out about 40 percent of the movie totally—this joke, this concept. And told us, More of this character! Peter MacNicol, they love him, stick more in! Steve Weber, oh they liked him! More Steve Weber! So we took our cue from the first screening, then we went to Burbank, and they [i.e., the marketing department] skewed [the invited guests to be] kind of young.… In a way, it was better, we got more laughs. It wasn’t a very good screening, we got too many laughs. Because 12 year olds are very sweet, they’re very generous. And if they think it should be funny, they laugh. And so it didn’t tell us too much, it wasn’t a good cutting screening. Then we went to Glendale, and we said, no 12 years old, 16 and up. And they were more severe. And yet we got laughs on nuances that we never got with 12 year olds.”