It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (37 page)

Mel’s Brooksfilms had two pictures (My
Favorite Year
and
Frances
) in distribution in 1982, and Brooks hoped to have his production company make a screen version of Toni Morrison’s novel
Tar Baby.
He was also negotiating with South African playwright Athol Fugard to write an epic film about apartheid. Although this project did not happen, it reflected Brooks’s point of view in selecting serious subjects for his firm to undertake. “Any time we see a flag about the human condition that appeals to us, we’re going to see if we can’t surround it with the right help and nourishment.” To Brooks’s way of thinking, “One of the purposes of art is to make things right that are eternally wrong. And the job of the artist is to paint a picture of life as truly and honestly as he sees it and add that extra dimension of hope, and of fantasy, and of dream.”

•     •     •

Back in 1942, Ernst Lubitsch had produced/directed To
Be or Not to Be
, a very dark comedy about Adolf Hitler’s occupation of Poland during World War II and how a troupe of actors in Warsaw join with the underground to outwit the Nazis. The well-mounted feature costarred Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. Weeks before the picture was released, Lombard died in a plane crash while returning to Los Angeles following a hugely successful war bond sale tour. That tragedy dampened moviegoers’ enthusiasm for seeing To
Be or Not to Be.
The lack of audience interest in the “comedy” was heightened by the film’s highly controversial subject matter—lampooning the German dictator and his reign of terror. Most American moviegoers were focused on winning World War II and did not find the picture’s story line anything to laugh about.

Over subsequent decades,
To Be or Not to
Be—through frequent TV showings and art house revivals—became a cult favorite, appreciated for its comedic approach and the famous Lubitsch style. In 1974, the classic film was screened to great success at a Los Angeles film festival. By late the next year, industry publications were reporting that Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft were considering teaming on camera for a remake of To
Be or Not to Be.

With other projects intervening, it took until the fall of 1982 for the new
To Be or Not to Be
to move into actual production. Many months before, Mel had hired Ronny Graham to collaborate with Thomas Meehan on updating the 1942 script. (Meehan was the writer who had worked with Brooks and Bancroft on her 1970 TV special. Since then, he had won a Tony Award for writing the book of the hit Broadway musical
Annie.
) Brooks looked forward to the challenge of taking on the screen role in which Jack Benny, another of Mel’s great show business inspirations, had made such a lasting impression. The project also provided Brooks with yet another opportunity to take creative potshots at Hitler (including portraying the German leader in a comedic song-and-dance number in the play within the movie).

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.’”