It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (28 page)

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In late November 1967, Avco Embassy arranged for a test playdate
of The Producers
in Philadelphia at a small suburban theater, as well as one in Washington, D.C.—without giving the movie any real advertising support. (By this point, Levine and Avco Embassy were deeply involved in releasing
The Graduate—
which proved to be a tremendous critical and commercial hit—and had little time, interest, or spare funds to promote the unconventional
The Producers
.) Mel Brooks and his faithful helper, Alfa-Betty Olsen, as well as Joseph E. Levine and a few executives from the film company, attended the “opening” in Philadelphia. When the small contingent entered the huge theater, it was nearly empty. The picture started and the only one of the few attendees to respond with gales of laughter was a bag lady seated way down in front. When the film ended, Levine and his associates glumly marched up the aisle, said nothing to Brooks or Olsen, and departed in their limousine. Mel and Alfa-Betty returned to Manhattan by train convinced that Avco Embassy would now shelve
The Producers.
When he reached home, a grim Mel gave his wife the full account of that evening’s disaster. He and Anne then began reading to each other passages from various books to help them get through what Brooks termed “the worst night of my life.”

Then fate came to the rescue.

Peter Sellers came to Los Angeles in the late fall of 1967 to make a new picture,
I Love You
, A
lice B. Toklas
! Bored by life in Los Angeles, the star formed a weekly film screening club. Each member, in turn, was to suggest an interesting feature to be unspooled. The selected movie would be shown in a private screening room, and food and drink appropriate to the country of origin of that night’s picture would be served. On January 13, 1968, Paul Mazursky, a writer on the
Toklas
film, was hosting for the group a showing of Federico Fellini’s
I Vitelloni.
Paul’s wife prepared a large pot of pasta for the occasion. A good wine, appetizers, and some marijuana-laced brownies completed the menu. When Sellers and the others were seated and ready for the evening’s festivities to commence, it was suddenly discovered that no one had ordered a print of the Italian movie to be shipped to the screening room. Sellers became outraged. In the midst of the actor’s storming, the projectionist inquired if the group might like to see a new picture that was sitting on the shelf. It was called
The Producers.

The film ran and proved to be a big hit with its giddy audience, most of whom were already high from the marijuana-tainted brownies. (If Sellers had any memory that he had once been offered a key role
in The Producers
, he did not say so.) Peter was so enthralled by the comedy that he insisted upon immediately calling Joseph E. Levine in New York. He awoke the executive at home and told him that this Mel Brooks picture was the funniest movie he had ever seen. The next morning Sellers took out ads in the trade papers
Daily Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
in which he extolled the virtues of the forthcoming
The Producers.
(Sellers’s testimonial, which was later reprinted in the
New York Times
, included, “Brilliantly written and directed by Mel Brooks it is the essence of all great comedy combined in a single motion picture. Without any doubt, Mel Brooks displays true genius in weaving together tragedy-comedy, comedy-tragedy, pity, fear, hysteria, schizophrenic-inspired madness and a largess of lunacy of sheer magic.”)

Between this wonderful endorsement by Sellers and continued pressure by producer Sidney Glazier, Joseph E. Levine reluctantly released
The Producers
in New York City at the Fine Arts Theater. Many of the Manhattan-based reviewers did not respond favorably to the unorthodox movie. Renata Adler (of the
New York Times
) judged it “a violently mixed bag” and “shoddy and gross and cruel.” She noted, “I never thought black comedy of this dilute order could be made with the word or idea of Hitler in it anywhere.… I suppose we will have cancer, Hiroshima, and malformity musicals next.” Pauline Kael (of the
The New Yorker
) argued,
“The Producers
isn’t basically unconventional, it only seems so because it’s so amateurishly crude, and because it revels in the kind of show business Jewish humor that used to be considered too specialized for movies.” In contrast, a few critics were enthusiastic about the unconventional entry. Wanda Hale (of the
New York Daily News
) liked the picture’s spirit: “Anyone, from whose head came this fantasy with profound undertones, can be forgiven for occasional looseness in direction.” Gene Shalit (of
Look
magazine) also appreciated this celluloid laugh fest. He noted in his review: “No one will be seated in the last 88 minutes of
The Producers,
they’ll all be rolling around on the floor.”

Despite the mostly unfavorable critiques, positive word of mouth caught on, and
The Producers
ran for nearly a year in New York. In Los Angeles and Chicago the film enjoyed a similar long run. However, in smaller cities and especially in the hinterlands, the picture met with a mild response from perplexed and/or disinterested moviegoers. As a result, the movie was considered a box-office failure. (It required several years of reissues before the film registered a profit.)

Then, on February 24, 1969, the Academy Award nominations were announced. To most people’s great amazement,
The Producers
received two Oscar bids: one for Mel Brooks’s original screenplay and one for Gene Wilder as Best Supporting Actor. At the April 14, 1969, Oscar ceremonies, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Wilder lost out to Jack Albertson (in
The Subject Was Roses
). Later in the evening’s proceedings, Frank Sinatra came to the podium to present the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. (The other nominees included, among others, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick for
2001: A Space Odyssey
and John Cassavetes for
Faces.
) When the envelope was opened, it was Mel who had won the coveted prize. Appearing both astonished and extremely pleased, a suave-looking Brooks (garbed in a tuxedo) raced up on stage to accept his award. Rendered nearly speechless by his unexpected win, he thanked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and then added, “I’ll just say what’s in my heart: ‘Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.’” Wearing a big grin, he then walked off the stage amid applause and laughter.

Later that momentous evening, Brooks and Anne Bancroft attended the Governor’s Ball, the official post-award show party. During the evening, many celebrities came over to congratulate Mel, among them Buddy Rich, the famous drummer who had once given young Melvin Kaminsky free drum lessons. Brooks described their reunion: “He hugs me, he says, ‘Mel Brooks!’ He puts on a big sad face, almost tearful. ‘You know, you got an Academy Award, you’re launched in films, it’s so sad. You coulda been a really good drummer.’” According to Mel, “It was the greatest tribute I ever got about anything.”

23
Jumping in Front of the Cameras

Ninety percent of the reviews on
The Producers
called it disgusting, horrible, stupid, inept, etc. And if I took those reviews to heart, I never would have made another movie. So a good lesson is, when the critics sit you on their shoulders and say you’re the greatest thing since cranberry juice, take it with a grain of salt; and when they crush you, go somewhere, suffer your pain in your little dark emotional cave, come out, and work again.

–Mel Brooks, 1983

While
The Producers
was struggling to find its audience outside of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Mel Brooks was already mapping his next career step, hoping to strike his next deal while his name still had currency within the industry. He claimed that “from a few critics and respected friends, I got the message, ‘Make more movies/” As a result, he had two films in development, plus he was working on a stage play. The latter was
Have You Heard
,
Bronsky Is Dying
. It dealt with a New York City garment industry businessman who hoped to build a pyramid to himself in the suburbs. Brooks tailored the part for Zero Mostel, but the theater project never came to fruition.

In July 1968, Brooks elaborated grandly on his moviemaking plans to the
Los Angeles Times
: “I’m a wild amalgam of chutzpah (guts) and mazel (luck).… Fll do films for a couple of years and then, when I grow up, I’ll decide what I want. That they should give me money for this make-believe is beyond me. I feel at the end of the day I should carry something or say ‘Yes sir’ for all the money I get.”

In that statement he was being more than a little facetious. As director/writer of
The Producers
he had received a relatively modest $35,000 for all his toil. For his second picture, his salary improved. He was handed $50,000 to write, direct, coproduce (through his Crossbow Productions), and even take on an acting role in the new project. However, if this amount was amortized over the three years it took to make, and one deducted taxes on such proceeds, Brooks’s income was actually around only $8,000 per annum.

One of Mel’s planned cinema undertakings had been an untitled venture that concerned movie style and technique. That soon moved to the back burner in favor of the other more promising project,
The Twelve Chairs
. The new production was set up in the coming months by the loyal Sidney Glazier, Mel’s benefactor on
The Producers.
Despite Brooks’s latest Oscar (for Best Original Screenplay), the major Hollywood studios still did not consider this zany maverick a very bankable commodity. Thus, as a last resort, Glazier turned to UMC (Universal Marion Corporation) for a modest distribution deal.

The film was to be based on a 1928 satire by Russian journalists Ilya Faynzilberg and Yevgeny Katayev, who used the pen names of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov to disguise their true identities. Among the duo’s several popular collaborations was a short novel called, in its English translation,
Diamonds to Sit On.
It was set in 1927 Russia and related the misfortunes of a trio of avaricious men seeking valuables secreted in one of a set of 12 dining room chairs. Brooks had heard the picaresque story as a child and remembered it fondly. In the 1950s, when Mel was reading a great deal of Russian literature—thanks to the influence of his TV comedy writer mentor, Mel Tolkin—Brooks had read the piece. Over the years,
Diamonds to Sit On
had been picturized on a few occasions, including as the 1937 British comedy
Keep Your Seats Please
and the 1945 Hollywood entry
It’s in the Bag
, costarring Fred Allen and Jack Benny.

Mel was convinced that the Russian tale boasted strong universal themes: “It’s the story of a quest for all that you’re told you can have—luck, diamonds, riches. Not fame. I mean I wanted to be famous. But I’m talking about what I think every poor young boy thinks about—winning the sweepstakes, having somebody you never heard of die and leave you a lot of money.”

With a budget of only $1.5 million, it would have been near impossible to re-create 1920s Russia on a Hollywood sound stage. However, shooting the story in the Soviet Union was also out of the question, due to the strained cold war relations at the time between Russia and the United States. Then, it was discovered that a deal could be made to lens the movie in Yugoslavia, in and around Belgrade. Production was set to start on August 25, 1969.

As Brooks lovingly polished the screenplay for his second feature, he analyzed the several production lessons he’d learned from making
The Producers.
Using multiple cameras to shoot each scene was beneficial because it provided sufficient coverage for the editing process and often avoided the necessity of reshooting sequences later on. Having survived the many challenges of his first directing assignment, Mel was now more confident in his filmmaking abilities, and, in turn, more flexible about heeding the advice of experienced coworkers. He had also learned that by choosing his cast carefully, he would need to spend far less valuable time on the set coaching particular actors and thus could focus more of his attention on the overall scenes.

In retrospect, Mel realized he had been wise on
The Producers
to have had his screenplay so carefully worked out before the start of filming and to ensure that the story line always focused on “What do the characters want?” While Brooks had given Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and other cast members the freedom to improvise bits of action (always subject to Mel’s final approval) he had avoided a lot of potential production problems by insisting that everyone stick to the written dialogue. (An exception had been in the courtroom, in which Brooks allowed Wilder to provide much of Leo’s touching speech concerning Bloom’s friendship with Max Bialystock.)

In reexamining his feature film directorial debut as a guidepost for his future helming, Brooks wished he had had the wisdom at the time to make more severe edits in
The Producers.
(Belatedly, Mel felt the film “should end about four minutes after the ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number; all that stuff that comes after the number in the film should have come before.”)

•     •     •

In casting
The Twelve Chairs
, Mel originally wanted three actors from the United Kingdom for his leads: Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, and Peter Sellers. Unfortunately, these choices all fell out. At this juncture, Anne Bancroft made a few casting suggestions. She had performed with Frank Langella in William Gibson’s A
Cry of Players
, a drama that had closed after a relatively short Broadway run in February 1969. Bancroft thought the lanky Langella, then in his late 20s and yet to have made his movie debut, would be a perfect Ostap Bender, the slick con artist. It was also Anne who proposed that Dom DeLuise, whom she had seen on TV, would be appropriate to play Father Fyodor, the clergyman corrupted by grief. It was Langella who took Brooks to see the movie musical
Oliver!
and told Mel of the screen actor playing Fagin, “There’s your Vorobyaninov.” That player was Ron Moody, who had once been a top contender for the Broadway musical
All American
, for which Mel had provided the book adaptation. Moody was soon signed to play the aging nobleman who had been reduced to poverty and a near friendless existence in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Wanting to test his acting skills beyond his 2000 Year Old Man appearances and the brief bit he did as “Mr. Forget It” in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 feature film,
Putney Swope
, Brooks cast himself as Tikon, the often drunk janitor. Tikon was the nonsensical former servant to Vorobyaninov, who misses the good old bad days under the czar. He is continuously pining for those bygone times, when masters thoughtfully beat their domestics into proper submission.