Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art

by Gene Wilder

  That evening I called Mel Brooks in New York and told him my little Frankenstein scenario. “Cute,” he said. “That’s cute.” But that was all he said.

  When summer came, I rented a small house on the bay in Westhampton Beach. On our first Saturday night, Jo and Katie and I watched a summer replacement television show called The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine. After seeing it I felt like saying, “Who was that masked rider?” but instead I said, “Who is that funny man with the strange eyes?”

  A week later, I received a call from my California agent, Mike Medavoy (this was before he became a famous mogul). He said, “How about a film with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman?”

  “How did you come up with that idea?” I asked.

  “Because I now represent you and Peter and Marty. Have you got anything?”

  “Well, that’s a wonderful, artistic reason to make a movie, but, as it happens, I think I do have something.”

  “What?”

  “No, I want to work on it for another day. I’ll send it to you.”

  That night—inspired by having just seen Marty Feldman on television—I wrote a scene that takes place at Transylvania Station, where Igor and Frederick meet for the first time, almost verbatim the way it was later filmed. I sent off my four typewritten pages to Medavoy. He called two days later.

  “I think I can sell this. How about Mel Brooks directing?”

  I told Mike that I didn’t think Mel would direct anything that he hadn’t conceived. The next day, I got a call from Mel.

  “What are you getting me into?”

  “Nothing you don’t want to get into.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know—I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

  The next day, Mike called.

  “Mel said yes. I made the deal. You’re supposed to write and then send Mel every twenty pages. Congratulations!”

  Mel had spent two years working on The Producers, for which he received the total sum of fifty thousand dollars. Then he spent two years working on The Twelve Chairs, for which he also received a total sum of fifty thousand dollars. Both films failed at the box office. If either one of those films had been a commercial success, I don’t believe Mel would have said yes to Young Frankenstein. Lucky me! Lucky Mel!

  Medavoy was the one who got me into writing. On my day off, when I was filming with Woody, Medavoy and I literally bumped into each other on a street corner in Beverly Hills—in front of a clothing store called Carrol and Co.—and he asked me if I’d like to have tea with him someday.

  “Is that your way of saying ‘I’d like to steal you away from whoever’s representing you in California and have you sign with me’?”

  “. . . Yeah,” he said. “You should be writing your own stuff.”

  Because of that accidental bump on the street corner, Mike Medavoy became my California agent. A few months later, after Woody’s film, Mike called me in Westhampton Beach and said, “How about a film with you, Peter Boyle, and Marty Feldman?” That’s Hollywood.

  Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex came out in 1973 and was a big success. Again I thought of Gary Cooper’s quote: “I need one movie out of three.”

  Mel was in California doing preproduction on a film he had lined up before Young Frankenstein; it was called Black Bart. The title was later changed to Blazing Saddles. He sent me a copy of the script.

  When Mel had a week off, he came to New York and wanted to have one working session on Young Frank, as he always called it. He came to my place, and we spent forty-five minutes making coffee and discussing the merits of different brands while we ate little rugelachs. This was a ritual with Mel before anything serious could be discussed. (He preferred Kentucky Blue Mountain coffee, and I preferred Columbian White Star.)

  While we were having our coffee and rugelachs, Mel asked me to play the part of Hedley Lamar in Black Bart. I said, “Oh Mel, I’m all wrong for that part—but how about Jim, the Waco Kid?”

  “No, no, that’s Anne’s favorite part, too. No, I need an older guy—someone who could look like an over-the-hill alcoholic. I’m trying to get Dan Dailey.”

  “Mel, there are so many wonderful comics who would be much funnier than I could ever be playing Hedley Lamar.”

  And that was the end of my being in Blazing Saddles. (Or so I thought.)

  When coffee matters were finished, we went into my study and talked for about an hour about Frankenstein. The next day Mel took off for Los Angeles to start filming Blazing Saddles, and I started writing Young Frankenstein.

  DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN MEETS LILY VON SHTUP.

  At the top of the first page of Young Frankenstein, I wrote, “In black & white.” I didn’t know if I had a chance in hell of seeing that dream realized—since most studios insisted that films be made in color—but I thought that if Mel fought for it hard enough, we might have a chance.

  While I was writing, I realized that we needed a really frightening woman to open the huge door of the Frankenstein castle. I tried to think of someone from real life, or film, to use as a model. The woman who scared me the most from all the movies I had seen in my youth was Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers was played by Judith Anderson—the woman who also scared me when I was fifteen and went to see her in Medea.

  Now I needed a good name for my Mrs. Danvers, so I took out a book of letters written to and from Sigmund Freud and found that someone named BLUCHER had written to Freud. After Young Frankenstein opened and was such a big success, people asked me if I knew that the word blucher in German means “glue.” But the truth is, I never dreamed that the name had any meaning—I just liked the sound of it . . . a name that might frighten the horses when they heard it. (The horses knew what I didn’t.)

  After I finished about half of the script, I left for Los Angeles to do the film Rhinoceros, with Zero Mostel. I showed Mel the fifty-eight pages. He just said, “Okay. Now let’s talk about what happens next.” I assumed he liked the pages, but I wasn’t sure. For about an hour we discussed what might happen next. Then we said good-bye.

  When I got back to New York, I started writing the second half of Young Frankenstein. Shortly after I finished the first draft, I got a call from Stanley Donen, who asked me to please come to his office and meet Alan Jay Lerner. When I got there, Stanley asked me to do the part of the Fox in the movie of Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, The Little Prince. He said, “You can play any part you want, but I think the Fox is the best part.” I read the script, adapted by Alan Jay Lerner. The Fox was certainly the best part for me, and I said I would be happy to do it.

  I had met Stanley Donen a year earlier, when we were both boarding a plane to New York. My agent, Mike Medavoy, had sent him the first script I’d ever written, called Hesitation Waltz, to see if he was interested in directing it. He wasn’t, but when we were getting onto the plane, he introduced himself and suggested that we sit together for the ride to New York.

  “You should direct that script yourself.”

  “But I don’t know how to direct.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” he said as we were getting into our seats and fastening our seat belts. “Let’s watch whichever movie they’re showing today—but don’t put on your headphones.”

  When the film came on (it was a Don Knotts comedy), Stanley started asking me questions.

  “What do you think of the lighting in this shot?”

  “No good.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . it looks flat. There doesn’t seem to be any mood to it, or any focus.”

  During the next scene he said, “Tell me about the shadows.”

  “Well, there’s something wrong—but I can’t tell you what.”

  “Do you see that one shadow is coming from the left and the other is coming from the right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It could never happen that way in life—only in the movies. The cameraman didn’t decide where his light source was coming from.”

  And so o
n, for the rest of the movie. During that plane ride, Stanley gave me my first lesson in directing. From that time on, if I was supposed to approve or reject a director for some film I was going to do, and I didn’t know the director’s work, I would watch a video of a previous film the director had made, and I would watch it without sound so that I wouldn’t be led astray by how beautiful the music was or by how good or bad the dialogue was.

  After I finished writing the first draft of Young Frankenstein and just as I was about to leave for a little vacation with Jo, before going to London to do The Little Prince, Mel called from a soundstage at Warner Bros.

  “I need you right now!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Dan Dailey begged off doing the Waco Kid because he was too tired, so I got Gig Young. But Gig started foaming at the mouth on the way to his first scene in the jail cell. I thought he was just doing some preparation for the part—I said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing’—I didn’t know he had just gone on the wagon. We had to send for an ambulance to carry him out. I yelled, ‘IT’S A SIGN FROM GOD!’ I’m calling you from a pay phone next to the set—can you come right away?”

  “Mel, I have to be in London in two weeks to do The Little Prince for Stanley Donen.”

  “Call him up! Ask if you can come later!”

  I called Stanley in London and told him the situation. He said, “Do you really want to do Mel’s film?” I said, “I really want to help Mel if I can.” Stanley said, “All right—I’ll shoot your scenes at the end of the schedule instead of at the beginning.” I left for Los Angeles the next day.

  The following day I was looking at Cleavon Little, who appeared to be upside down, since I was hanging upside down in a jail cell.

  “Are we black?” I asked.

  The greatest thrill I had in Blazing Saddles was watching Made-line Kahn, as Lily von Shtup, singing “I’m Tired.” During the filming, I suggested to Mel that Madeline would be wonderful in Young Frankenstein.

  Of course, if Stanley Donen couldn’t rearrange his filming schedule, I wouldn’t have been in Blazing Saddles, and I wouldn’t have met Madeline Kahn, who, a little later, played my fiancée in Young Frankenstein and my love interest in Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.

  chapter 20

  LE PETIT PRINCE

  Before I left for London to do The Little Prince, I went to Milwaukee to visit my father, who was seriously ill. I tried to make him laugh, telling him about Mel Brooks and Blazing Saddles and Dom DeLuise singing, “Stick out your tush”—but when I kissed him good-bye, I knew I was seeing him for the last time. A week later I was told that my father had died. I was filming in an enormous artificial wheat field on a huge soundstage, delivering the most memorable lines in the script:

  “It’s only with the heart that one can see clearly; what’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

  A week later, I sang and danced in the English countryside with a six-year-old boy. Stanley Donen had choreographed a beautiful tango for this little prince and me.

  * * *

  When I got back to New York, the anger in Katie was showing itself in more hurtful ways, which she usually took out on her mother. I was caught in the middle so often that I felt like a referee in a boxing match—a match where only one boxer was trying to hurt the other, because Jo never wanted to hurt Katie, no matter how much she was being hurt herself.

  Young Frankenstein was sold to Columbia Pictures. I was thrilled. I flew to Los Angeles to work with Mel. When I saw him, he said, “Think you’re pretty good, huh?”

  I tried to hold back a smile as I said, “Yeah.”

  “Well, I got news for you, Jew boy—now the work begins.”

  We would meet each evening, and—after the coffee ritual—we would discuss what I should work on the following day. “YOU DON’T HAVE A VILLAIN! You understand what I’m saying? WE’VE GOT TO HAVE A VILLAIN! Otherwise there’s no story tension.”

  The next morning I would start writing. By late afternoon—if I thought I’d written anything worthwhile—I’d type up the pages. Mel would come over after dinner each evening and look at the pages.

  “Okay. NOW! We’ve got to change the structure. YOU CAN’T GO TO TRANSYLVANIA JUST BECAUSE YOU GOT A LETTER TELLING YOU ABOUT THE WILL. . . . SOMEBODY’S GOT TO COME TO YOU FROM TRANSYLVANIA—WHILE YOU’RE GIVING A LECTURE—AND HE HANDS YOU THE WILL.”

  In all the time we spent together, we had only one argument. I can’t even remember what it was about; I just remember that he yelled at me. Ten minutes after he left, he called me on the phone from his house: “WHO WAS THAT MADMAN YOU HAD IN YOUR HOUSE? I COULD HEAR THE YELLING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE. YOU SHOULD NEVER LET CRAZY PEOPLE INTO YOUR HOUSE—DON’T YOU KNOW THAT? THEY COULD BE DANGEROUS.”

  That was Mel’s way of apologizing. We’ve never had another argument since that time. Disagreements occasionally, but not arguments. The only other time I thought we were having an argument was when I showed him a scene I had just written in which Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster sing and dance to “Puttin’ On the Ritz.” After he read it, he said, “ARE YOU CRAZY? You can’t just suddenly burst into Irving Berlin. It’s frivolous!”

  I argued logic, from Dr. Frankenstein’s point of view: his need to win over this stuffy audience of scientists and their wives with incontrovertible proof that the Monster could be taught to do anything. This was apart from the logic of giving the movie audience a burst of dazzling entertainment. I argued until my face started to turn from red to blue. After about twenty-five minutes of this, Mel suddenly said, “Okay—it’s in!”

  I was flabbergasted. “Mel, how can you argue with me for twenty-five minutes and then just casually say, ‘Okay—it’s in!’?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure—do you understand? I wanted to see how hard you’d fight for it. If you gave up right away, I’d know it was wrong. But when you turned blue—I knew it must be right.”

  WALK THIS WAY.

  Columbia Pictures insisted that the budget for Young Frankenstein not exceed $1,750,000. The budget we had arrived at came to $2,200,000. Mel and I, along with our producer, Michael Gruskoff, thought of things we could cut—things that we didn’t want to cut, but that might get the budget down. (“Puttin’ On the Ritz” might have been one of the sacrificial lambs.)

  On the morning of our meeting with Columbia Pictures, the three of us were waiting in a small reception room, talking about what else we could possibly cut from the script, when Mel suddenly slapped his head and cried out, “WE’RE NUTS! We should just go in there and say, ‘You guys are crackerjacks. Your budget is right on the nose. So I’ll tell you what—you come up $200,000, we’ll come down $200,000, and we’ll meet in the middle. Two million!’ ”

  We walked into the office of John Veitch, who was the executive in charge of this meeting. He was also a smart man and a gentleman. After listening to Mel he said, “That’s fair. Let’s do it.”

  But the man at the head of Columbia Pictures said NO! He gave us two days to find another studio that might do our picture with our budget, but if we couldn’t find one, we had to cut our budget down to their demand—and not one penny more. Michael Gruskoff gave the script to his friend Alan Ladd, Jr., at 20th Century-Fox, where we made the film for $3,000,000.

  We never improvised dialogue on the set. Physical actions, yes, but not dialogue. One day we were filming the scene of Madeline Kahn’s arrival at the Frankenstein castle. She was wearing a fox stole and a big turban on her head. The scene seemed flat to all of us. After we tried several things, Mel suddenly said, “Marty! When Gene says, ‘Eyegore, help me with these bags,’ you say, ‘Soitanly—you take da blonde, I’ll take da one in da toiben.’ ”

  We all laughed and started the scene again, on film. I said my line, Marty said his, and then Marty—in one of his impulsive inspirations—took a huge bite out of the tail of the fox fur that Madeline was wearing around her neck, but the tail came off in his mouth. We all had to go on playing the rest of the sc
ene while we looked at Marty with a tail in his mouth. Out of such lunacy great comedy is born.

  When we were filming the Transylvania Station scene, in which “Eyegore” leads me off of the platform to the hay wagon, Mel suddenly said, “Marty, bend over as you walk away with your little cane and tell Gene, ‘Walk this way.’ ”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  We did the scene. Everyone laughed, but I still didn’t know what it meant. After we finished the scene, Mel said, “Man walks into a drugstore and says to the pharmacist, ‘I got terrible hemorrhoids—have you got some talcum powder?’ Pharmacist says, ‘Yes sir—walk this way.’ Man says, ‘If I could walk that way, I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.’ ”

  I hate to think what might have happened if we had been forced to make the film at Columbia. As it turned out, Alan Ladd, Jr., asked Mel and me to sign five-year contracts at Fox.

  Making Young Frankenstein was the happiest I’d ever been on a film. Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Kenny Mars . . . and Mel directing. It was like taking a small breath of Heaven each day.

  I’m always lonely when I’m on my own—a leftover I think from the Demon, who always struck when I was alone—but towards the end of filming I realized that I was going to be lonelier when I returned to my home and family. On the last day of filming, during our lunch hour, I was sitting in the Frankenstein bedroom set, staring at the fake fireplace. Mel wandered in and saw me.

  “What’s the matter? Why so sad?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to leave Transylvania.”

  “AND IF THAT HORSE AND CART FALL DOWN . . .”

  When I got back to New York, I made an appointment with Margie.