Where Did I Go Right? The History of Mel Brooks: Part 1

On those rainy Sunday afternoons, in between the roar of football announcers and evangelical pleadings and NASCAR screechings and infomercial sales pitches, suddenly the endless clicks from the channel changer cease and, faintly, from another room, you can hear them start to lose it. It starts softly, with a gasp of surprised elation, and then a giggle, perhaps, or maybe even a quick, one-off snicker. You listen closely, catching a familiar quip from the television speakers: “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.” Your mind backflips and you drop your basket of laundry or geometry textbook or can of Coors and race downstairs, bounding into the living room just in time to join your entire family in rolling on the Oriental rug, wiping tears from their eyes, slapping the floor and unapologetically echoing zingers like “Excuse me while I whip this out,” “Candygram for Mongo!” and, of course, “Where the white women at?” You lose your breath. Your dad is breathing into a paper bag. You forget your own name, you’re laughing so hard.

Mel Brooks has struck again.

A legendary comedian, director, writer, actor, composer, producer, mogul— whatever you want to call him—Brooks is one of the most beloved and decorated entertainers in history. One of only 10 people to ever receive a competitive Oscar, Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award; three of his films—Blazing Saddles, The Producers and Young Frankenstein—are ranked in the top 20 of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 comedy films of all-time. He has created television landmarks (Get Smart); recorded comedy record gold (the 2000 Year Old Man series); penned hit musicals as well as hit rap songs (The Producers, Young Frankenstein; “It’s Good to be the King,” “The Hitler Rap”); produced Academy Award-winning films with his company, Brooksfilms (The Elephant Man, The Fly); written, directed and starred in some of the funniest movies ever made; and, in the process, worked alongside nearly every name in show business from the last 60 years worth working alongside—from Welles to Wilder, Reiner to Reiser, Caesar to DeLuise, Kahn to Korman, Feldman to Ferrell, Pryor to Pickens, Boyle to Broderick, Newman to Leachman, Lane to Lynch, Mostel to Moranis, Candy to Cronenberg, Hines to Chapelle to, yes, even Cary Elwes. “Pretty strange for a short Jew from Brooklyn,” as Brooks says.

As we speak on the telephone a few months before he is to receive a 2009 Kennedy Center Honor and before he sees a whole new collection of his films to be released on Blu-ray, Brooks, at the age of 83, sings, tells jokes and blasts off into Ludicrous Speed without even the slightest nudge. “Whaddya need, whaddya need?” he asks, without waiting for an answer. “This is a box set of Mel Brooks movies in Blu-ray that is sensational—or, anyway, it’s clear.”

At the opposite end of this hi-tech benchmark, Brooks got his start in showbusiness on the Borscht Belt circuit of upstate New York during the heyday of Catskills comedians like Buddy Hackett, Shelley Berman and Milton Berle. After a stint in the Army and then at television writing, Brooks began work on his first screenplay, what would become The Producers. He married twice; his second wife, the actress Anne Bancroft, would be his partner for over 40 years, until her death in 2005. After a slew of spoof films, including High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula, Dead and Loving It, Brooks found new acclaim when his musical stage adaptation of that aforementioned debut screenplay became one of the biggest smashes in the history of Broadway. Add another borscht—er, notch, on the belt.
   
But no matter the awards, no matter the distinctions, the records, earnings, ace reviews or remarkably sparse company at the top, Mel Brooks doesn’t need no stinking badges, either. After all these years, he still seeks only that most genuinely sacred reward: to have ’em rolling in the aisles with gut-busting, screaming, hyperventilating laughter. As Max Bialystock laments at the end of The Producers: “Have you seen the reviews? Have you seen the lines at the box office? It’s a torrent, it’s an avalanche, it’s the biggest hit on Broadway! How could this happen…Where did I go right?” To hear Brooks tell it, his own giant leap into the comedy black dates back to a fake beard, a puddle of water and a mesmerizing first glint of that precious audible trophy.

A Conversation with Mel Brooks

Was it always comedy for you?
I think so. Let me tell you the story of how I became a comic: I was 14 and there was a fellow in our neighborhood called Don Appell who was on Broadway in a show called Native Son. Don thought I was talented, that I had quick wit, so he sent me to the Borscht Belt, the Catskills, to this place called the Butler Lodge in Hurleyville, New York, to be a busboy and take care of the row boats and maybe be part of the social standing, part of the dramatic stand. They were doing a play called Uncle Harry, about a killer, and they didn’t have anyone to play the district attorney—who was supposed to be in his 70s. This guy, Joe Dolphin, was the social director and he put me in it. So, I’m supposed to pour Harry a glass of water onstage and say, “There, there, Harry. Tell us all. Tell it right from the beginning.” So I said it, and I pour a glass of water and it slips out of my hand and breaks on the table and there’s water all over the place. It was a shock; everybody froze. I walked out to the footlights. I took off my beard. I took off my wig. I said, “I’m not really an actor. I’m 14 years old, folks, what do you want?” And I got the biggest laughs ever heard in the hills of Hurleyville. Joe Dolphin chased me to kill me. I just ran. I really spoiled his play. But I knew then that serious drama was really not my forte and I should be a comic.

Did you continue to bring down the houses during the summers?
One night a comic got sick; I knew his stuff, so I got up and started: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I met a girl that was so skinny, I’m talking about a thin girl, I brought her to a restaurant and the waiter said, ‘Check your umbrella.’” “You can’t keep Jews in jail, they eat lox.” I did 20 bad jokes in a row. But I was successful and I worked my way up through the mountains. I was what, 17? That was pretty good. I began writing my own jokes. I didn’t like that standard stuff. I loved music. If you were a comic, the only song that you had to write was an identification song. I wrote, [sings] “Here I am/I’m Melvin Brooks/I’ve come to stop the show/Just a ham who’s minus looks/But in your hearts I’ll grow/I’ll tell you gags, I’ll sing you songs/Just happy little snappy songs that roll along/Out of my mind/Won’t you be kind?/And please love… Melvinnn Brooooooks!” That was my first song. I’d get a smattering of applause.

Only a smattering? That must be why you joined the Army.
Nobody knows this, but I’m going to tell you. I went to only one college—in Lexington, Virginia—called VMI [Virginia Military Institute]. I was there for close to a year and I got a college credit. I loved it there. Pretty strange for a short Jew from Brooklyn to have that in his background. They taught me how to ride; they taught me you take care of your horse first and then you take care of yourself. They taught me marksmanship and how to wield the saber. When I got into the regular Army right after it, I wasn’t just a regular private; I made corporal.
In the Army I began writing songs; parodies. After four months of nearly being killed by the Germans, I got out of the combat engineers and got into what I should have been doing: singing and dancing, instead of ducking bullets and .88 shells. I had the right material, so I began writing songs, like, [sings] “When we begin to clean the latrine/It brings back a smell…” I would do parodies. But I fell in love with writing songs. I wrote two for The Producers, and then I did The Twelve Chairs and I wrote, [sings] “Hope for the best/Expect the worst…” Pretty sharp lyrics; pretty nice tunes. Then, 50 years later, I finally ended up on Broadway writing full scores. But I never gave up jokes, of course.

How did you come to make your first movie?
I loved making my movies. Gene Wilder had a lot to do with my success. I met Gene in ’63 through Anne Bancroft, my wife. She was in a Broadway production of a Bertolt Brecht play called Mother Courage; Gene was in it, playing the chaplain, a character that was somewhat serious, but Gene was getting big laughs. I was writing a rough version of a thing that became The Producers; it was then called Springtime for Hitler. Anne said, “You gotta see this guy. He’s the essence of innocence. He’s the naïve, beautiful character that you wrote—he’s Leo Bloom.” I watched the play and she was right. He was very naïve and powerful at the same time. I met him and we had coffee. Gene said, “Why are they laughing at me? I’m being honest.” I said, “Because you’re a natural. You were cursed or blessed with the ability to be seriously funny—you can’t help it. Your smile, your face; something sets us off.” So, we became friends. I talked about Springtime for Hitler and he was very excited about it. I said, “It’s not nearly finished. I don’t know if they’ll ever do it.” Eventually, Joseph E. Levine, the distributor, said, “If you want to make this movie, you’ve got to change the title. We can’t put ‘Hitler’ on the marquee.” I said, “OK.” About a year and a half later, Gene was in Luv, Murray Schisgal’s play, and one day I came backstage and I threw the script of The Producers on his dressing room table and said, “You are Leo Bloom.” And he burst into tears. That’s basically how it all began.

What kind of work ethic did you have as a young man? Did you write with collaborators?
I was used to writing with other guys because I had written the Sid Caesar show, Your Show of Shows. I liked collaboration, although every once in a while, like when I wrote The Producers and The Twelve Chairs, I didn’t collaborate with anybody. And then I said, “I’m going to have more fun.” So, on Blazing Saddles I got the gang together; I hired Richard Pryor, Alan Uger, Norman Steinberg—who also wrote My Favorite Year for Brooksfilms—and Andy Bergman, who came up with the original idea for a black sheriff in the West. It was fun writing that way. We attacked each other with bad jokes.

Were you afraid that the world wasn’t ready for Blazing Saddles?
When we were done, I said, “This will never be seen anywhere. They won’t accept this script. There’s too much of the N-word; we’re telling too many terrible truths here about human behavior. They’d be crazy to make this movie.” But then sure enough, John Kelly at Warner Brothers said, “Yes.” I said, “John, can we punch the shit out of an old lady—can I actually do that?” That was one joke I was really afraid of; everything in that movie is in such bad taste, but I didn’t know about a bunch of big cowboys beating the shit out of a sweet little old lady. John said, “If you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it.” I’ve never forgotten that. Anyway, that was a collaboration, and then I went back to writing with Gene, just the two of us. That writing experience was a little more exquisite and superb. That was Young Frankenstein.

Gene has said Young Frankenstein was the happiest he’s ever been.
We used to drink Earl Grey tea and eat digestives, these English biscuits, at the Bel Air Hotel and write from 8 to 11 every night. We got it done. And he was happy. I didn’t want to do “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” I said, “Gene, this is kind of exquisite and eloquent and I think if we do ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz,’ we might be making too much fun of it. It might tear it.”

You said this?
I said this! He fought for it constantly and I finally said, “OK, if you fought for it that hard, there’s got to be something in it.” And when we did it, I knew we had gold. I knew it was the jewel in the crown of Young Frankenstein. He was right. I never doubted him again. Unfortunately, he became a writer-director and loves to do his own stuff. I haven’t had a chance to work with him again.

Did you share in Gene’s happiness while making that film?
When I directed movies and the A.D. would say “lunch,” I’d run to my trailer, grab a piece of pineapple, put a sleep mask over my head and take a nap—I never ate with the cast. But on Young Frankenstein, I hungrily waited for the great Peter Boyle, Gene, Cloris, Madeline, Marty and Teri Garr. I insisted on us all having lunch together. It was the best directed movie I’ve ever made because I wasn’t in it; I didn’t have to worry about myself—“Am I shorter today? Am I handsome? Is my nose bigger?” I just concentrated on Jerry Hirschfeld doing his incredible camera work.

How often have you given up on an idea? Can you recognize a futile writing effort?
I’ve shot down many ideas that I didn’t think had a third act. If something has a great beginning and it’s upwardly mobile, but then there’s no conclusion…this is no good. I’m not one of those Neoclassicist writers who says endings are not important. I think endings are critical. In a lot of the sketches on Saturday Night Live, they didn’t care; they just had premises without endings. I don’t start anything unless I can end it. I try to start with the end then work back to the beginning. The middle is the toughest part for me. You have to have character or story goals.

How did you learn these things? Is there a handbook?
Just by doing it and reading a lot. You read Molière, you’ll learn an awful lot. Nikolai Gogol is the best comedy writer that ever lived: Dead Souls, The Government Inspector...I named one of my children after him. I learned from the best. I learned from Mark Twain. I know what a good idea is and how to come to a good conclusion. Writing is really more re-writing, I think. First, you gotta be transported, exploded by a good idea. But then you’ve got to find where it goes and search for the ending; you’ve got to diligently make a trail so that the audience isn’t bored and is always at the edge of their seats, interested in the characters and their quest. The Twelve Chairs is a perfect example; that’s written by two Russians. It’s been called my best movie by a lot of critics.

Do you think every movie you’ve made at some point has been called your best movie?
No, I would say every movie has been called my worst movie—or, the worst movie. I have many critics. But time and audiences always trump the critics. The New York Times obliterated The Producers. I thought I’d have to go back to television. But in the end, audiences loved it. It finally got a good review when I did The Twelve Chairs: “Where is the madcap, crazy artist that we’ve come to love in The Producers? Why are we chasing chairs all over Russia when we could be singing ‘Springtime for Hitler’?” I always got a good review one picture too late. Sometimes they get it, like when Brooksfilms did Elephant Man. I picked David Lynch and worked on the script with those guys. That was the only thing I’ve ever done that got uniformly good reviews.

Were there comedy rules when you started your career, and did you make it a point to break them?
I’ve always been an anarchist when it comes to comedy rules. There’s only really one rule: Make the audience laugh. Have the audience be hysterical with laughter, whether you think it’s funny or not. That’s the job. If you’re a painter, you can do it for yourself. If you write a book, to hell with the audience—write whatever you want. But if you’re going to have people pay money to see your stuff, you better do it for the audience. That’s my only rule.

Do you feel that comedy tends to date quickly?
Good comedy, no. Didn’t we just mention Gogol and Molière and Mark Twain? Good comedy never dates. Just listen to the 2,000 Year Old Man. It’s about human behavior. It always gets big laughs to this day.

Do your accolades—from the Kennedy Center Honors to your very unique Oscar/Grammy/Tony/Emmy superfecta—mean something to you or validate you in a way that your life can’t?
Not like you’d think. It’s better to have these awards than not have them. They mean a lot to those around me: family, friends, you know.

Would you trade in a Tony to get that stubborn, scowling lady in the front row to enjoy herself?
Yes, any day. Any day. I want my awards, my prizes, from the audience. I just want to hear unrelenting, boisterous laughter. That’s the real payment for any comedy artist.

The King and His Court
Mel dishes on his legendary cast of regulars

Gene Wilder
The best scene that Gene ever did was creating the monster in Young Frankenstein. He was very serious. When he was banging on the monster’s chest to bring him to life, he said very quietly and beautifully, “We must be of equal equanimity and feeling with our failures as well as our successes. We must greet our failures with grace and beauty.” He left the ostensibly dead monster on the table and walked away with Marty and Teri. A second later he turns around and screams, “You son of a bitch bastard!” and beats the shit out of this monster, cursing him for having failed. In the first part he can bring you to tears; the second part you’re in the aisles laughing. That’s the genius of Gene Wilder. Also, as the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles—I had hired the famous Gig Young to play that part, but he got sick so I called Gene. He flew right out. That was on Sunday, and on Monday, Gene was fitting his costume and picking out a horse to ride. He stayed up all night learning his lines. He was brilliant. I owe him a lot, I really do.

Madeline Kahn
There have been very funny female actors and comediennes: Joan Davis, Patsy Kelly, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner. But, overshadowing all of them, the best one by far was Madeline. Madeline Kahn was the most gifted comedienne, or actress, whatever you want to call her, that ever lived. When I met her, I said, “Lift up your skirt,” and she nearly slapped me. She said, “How dare you. What are you, one of these casting couch guys? I’m leaving.” I said, “No, no. I’m not making a pass. I’m happily married. I want to see your legs. In Blazing Saddles, you’re going to be playing Marlene Dietrich; she was all legs, and you’re going to be straddling a chair. If your legs don’t work, you can’t do it.” And so she raised her skirt, she straddled a chair and she was absolutely perfect. We became best friends after that. I loved her—I admired her. There weren’t many things she couldn’t do. When she did Dietrich, she did it with that strange accent and she added things, like leaning on a piece of the set and missing it, then recovering. I had them working past midnight. It was one in the morning and I asked her to do that interior number once more, and she said, “You got it, Mister.” It was our best take. She was just so incredibly creative and good-natured. She was beautiful.

Dom DeLuise
In The Twelve Chairs, Dom was playing this renegade priest who uses a dying confession to get information about diamonds in a chair. The crew was all Yugoslavian and didn’t understand English, but as soon as Dom started working they’d roar with laughter. They killed every take. I told the assistant director to go out and buy 100 white handkerchiefs and I gave one to everybody in the crew. I said, “When Dom is working, stick these handkerchiefs in your mouth. You can watch the scene only like that.” We did that on other pictures, too. Dom’s best performance was in a picture called Fatso that my wife wrote and directed. It was really a terrific, towering performance. Dom was a master of the art of comedy.

Harvey Korman
I shoved Harvey into any picture I could because he was made of steel. He could play the funniest stuff so earnestly. Then the minute I said “cut,” he was the first one to hit the ground laughing, and for 10 minutes you couldn’t get him up. He loved to laugh, but he would grin and grit his teeth and do the scene. He invented so much stuff. In Blazing Saddles, I wrote it very carefully: “Recount why you want this black sheriff, why you think he would send the townsfolk away in droves—you’ve got to explain it to the audience.” And he did, but at the end of it he looked at the camera and ad-libbed, “But why am I telling you this?” He thought he was just doing it because the scene was over, but it was so brilliant I kept it in the picture. He had a scene with Madeline, and at the end of it, for no reason at all, he was looking down at her boobs and said, “Gimme a little feel.” He reached down and she smacked his hand, but they both held it together. I’m so proud of them. He was sincerely creative. You could always count on Harvey to deliver an incredibly solid and inspired performance. Nobody could do a double take like Harvey Korman.

Cloris Leachman
Cloris is the rock on which I built my church. She’s Saint Peter. She’d never fail; she knows exactly what to do. She’s the consumate artist. She can be scary, dramatic, or very, very funny. The only trouble with Cloris was that if anybody on the set was smoking, she’d smack them and rip the cigarette out of their mouth, throw it and step on it—she made a lot of trouble for me. Her most memorable moment was the word “Ovaltine” in Young Frankenstein as Frau Blucher [neighs like a horse]. She said, “Can I get you a brandy? Would the doctor care for some varm milk perhaps before retiring?” There was a big pause, then she said, “Ovaltine?” and got the biggest laugh in the picture. What timing. She knew exactly how that bass drum bang would land. She was good in everything. She came up with that faint little mustache when she was Nurse Diesel [in High Anxiety]. I said, “Am I crazy? Are you wearing a little, white mustache?” She said, “Yeah, I thought it would help the character.” I said, “It’s great. And your boobs…they look like pyramids. They’re points.” She said, “Yeah, that’s Nurse Diesel.” She was really creative, except for smacking people who smoked.

Marty Feldman
Marty was a flat out genius. There was Buster Keaton and then there was Marty Feldman. He was very much like Marcel Marceau or Keaton. He had the same kind of eloquent simplicity. He did very stupid things that physically made sense. We did a scene in Silent Movie on a hospital set chasing Paul Newman in wheelchairs; Dom was pretty good with the wheelchair and I was fairly good, but every once in a while we’d be chasing Paul Newman and you’d hear a crash. I’d yell “cut” and just automatically say, “Marty, are you OK?” And you’d hear, “I’m alright, love! I’m alright!” in that English accent. I kept saying, “Marty, you gotta get your eyes fixed.” He’d say, “If I get my eyes fixed, I’m out of show business.” I’d say, “The only way to hide from Marty Feldman is to stand right in front of him.” He was always fun to be with. He was a pretty good musician but played a very bad trumpet. He loved a Hoagy Carmichael song called “Skylark.” He tried to play it; he got near it once and a while. I’ve been very lucky, very fortunate to work with all these people.