It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (42 page)

Brooks discussed this brewing project with his old pal and coworker Ronny Graham, who, among his many talents, was also a songwriter. The duo were soon joined by another friend and screen collaborator, Thomas Meehan. Since the latter was a Tony Award-winning writer of librettos for Broadway musicals, he seemed the perfect match for Mel. For a great many months he and Meehan worked on the book of
The Producers
at Brooks’s Culver Studio offices. In retrospect, Meehan wondered to himself about the audacity of their task: “‘My God, you’ve taken this perfectly classic movie and destroyed it. Where’s Zero? Where’s Gene Wilder?’… People suggest ideas for musicals all the time and most of them just don’t, ahem, sing.” (In July 1999, Graham passed away, leaving Mel and Tom to go it alone.)

At one point, David Geffen, who had agreed to back and supervise bringing
The Producers
to Broadway, suggested that Mel meet with Jerry Herman. Geffen believed that the composer/lyricist of such Broadway shows as
Hello
,
Dolly
! and
Mame
might be the right one to write the songs for
The Producers.
When Brooks visited with Herman at his Beverly Hills home, Herman sat down at the piano and announced, “I’ll play you a couple of songs from the guy who I think should write the music for this.” The songs were by Mel Brooks from his movies. Herman said “You’re a very good songwriter.… What’s more, you’d be crazy to do a Broadway musical of
The Producers
without including ‘Springtime for Hitler’ and ‘Prisoners of Love.’ So you’ve already got two major songs written. All you have to do is write a dozen or so more and you’ve got yourself a Broadway score. Go with my blessings, do it!”

Sparked by Herman’s encouragement, Mel set about composing the necessary complement of songs for the show. As in years past, he continued his routine of writing down lyrics on a pad of paper and envisioning a melody in his mind. When he had the germ of an idea, he hummed it/ sang it into a tape recorder, knowing that he would use a music arranger to score the song. (Eventually, it was Glen Kelly who served as Brooks’s musical amanuensis.)

Anne Bancroft was witness to Brooks’s long and often painful struggle with the song numbers. She recalled, “I admired his courage. He was putting his heart and soul into it. Sometimes, I’d come home from a very tiring day and say, ‘Acting is so hard.’ Then he’d put a blank piece of paper in front of me and say, ‘That’s how hard writing is!’” Finally, however, the score began to fall into place, and a pleased Mel was saying, “Only God knows why it took me so long to return to music. I’ve always wanted to write a musical. Music draws the dust off my soul.”

As the book for
The Producers
took shape, Mel and Tom worked on one of the major flaws in the screenplay of the movie original: the plot letdown following the “Springtime for Hitler” showstopper. The collaborators fleshed out a new finale (which included having Leo Bloom run off to Rio de Janeiro with Ulla, but then return to New York to be a character witness at the trial of his friend Max Bialystock). Meanwhile, the writers dropped one of Mel’s favorite characters from the Broadway original—L.S.D.—as being too quaint a figure for contemporary audiences. They added in the twist of director Roger De Bris stepping in at the last minute to play der Führer in the musical within the story. (Said Brooks: “A gay Hitler! Let us thank God.”) In the process of punching up the original concept of spoofing Adolf Hitler, Brooks and Meehan expanded the lampooning of the story’s outrageous gay characters.

Throughout this lengthy creative process, Brooks kept one goal firmly in mind: “If things are politically correct, it usually makes for a wonderfully dull show. When you try to hit home runs, you’re gonna strike out a lot. So when you want to do a great, daring… musical, you’re going to offend a lot of people. Otherwise, you’re going to do something safe and nice, and you’re going to have a banana on the stage instead of a devastatingly funny comedy.”

It was Tom Meehan who suggested that London-born Mike Ockrent (the director of such Broadway hits as
Me and My Gal
and
Crazy for You
) would be ideal to helm
The Producers.
Moreover, Ockrent’s American wife, Susan Stroman, was a much-in-demand choreographer with a string of important credits. Mel agreed to meet with Ockrent and Stroman and see if they all saw eye to eye on the show. Mel arrived at the couple’s Manhattan apartment and rang the front doorbell. In a typical Brooksian moment when they opened the door, there was Brooks already singing one of the show’s projected numbers. As Mel belted out the lyrics, he scampered and slid down a long hallway, veered off into the living room, and ended his number perched on the Ockrents’ sofa with a smile on his face and his uplifted arms spread apart. Then, and only then, did he say, “Hello, I’m Mel Brooks!”

It was soon settled that Ockrent and Stroman would come aboard the venture. This led to many creative sessions with the Ockrents over the coming months. Then Mike suffered a relapse of his leukemia and died in December 1999. His devastated wife insisted that she would have to drop out of
The Producers.
Because Mel believed that work would be the best medicine for Stroman—and he had come to believe in her talents greatly—he begged her not to abandon their project. Eventually, she agreed to go on with the show, not only as choreographer, but also as director. (Brooks later said of Susan’s participation in
The Producers
, “She took out all the vulgar stuff, cleaned me up and made me look pretty.”)

Throughout this long gestation period, David Geffen had become increasingly busy with his duties at DreamWorks, a film production company he had cofounded, and with his music industry responsibilities. Geffen finally realized he would not have the necessary time to devote to
The Producers
as it headed to Broadway and dropped out of the project. This led to a crucial backers’ audition held on April 9, 2000, at the Nola Rehearsal Studio on West 54th Street. To Brooks’s great relief, the invited money people were enthralled with the pending show and the backing fell quickly in place. (Mel traded his underlying rights in
The Producers
for a percentage share as one of the producers. Later, after the show became a gigantic hit, he sighed, “I wish I would have put a million bucks into it. I mean, I would have gone to a bank and borrowed it and I would have been [really] rich today. But I’m OK, you know? Who’s complaining?”

To play the pivotal role of Max Bialystock, Mel had one person in mind: Nathan Lane, who had excelled in a variety of Broadway shows over the last several years (including a revival of the musical A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
). One day in 1998 Lane was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and decided to take a swim in the hotel pool. He recalled, “I got excited seeing the pool empty. And then up from the water pop the heads of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks. That was the first day he ever mentioned my playing Bialystock.” Nathan was flattered by Mel’s offer but was unconvinced that he could erase people’s memories of Zero Mostel in the film original. Brooks remained tenacious in pursuing Lane to take on the key role.

On March 2, 2000, when Nathan was guest host on TV’s
Late Show with David Letterman
, Brooks was a guest. During his segment, Mel whipped a piece of paper out of his pants, slapped it down the desk and said it was a contract for Lane to star in
The Producers.
Brooks demanded that the actor sign it on the spot. Lane said, “That’s what I like about you. The soft sell.” (Nathan didn’t sign it because it wasn’t a real contract. But the deal was already in the works.)

Matthew Broderick first won Brooks’s attention after the actor did a Broadway revival of
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
in the mid-1990s. Mel decided that he wanted Matthew to take on the Leo Bloom role in
The Producers.
After hearing the music and reading the script, Broderick said yes. Others to join the cast were Cady Huffman as the Swedish bombshell (Ulla), Brad Oscar as unhinged playwright Franz Liebkind, Gary Beach as bizarre stage director Roger De Bris, and Roger Bart as Carmen Ghia (Roger’s prissy subordinate/lover).

After a sellout pre-Broadway engagement in Detroit,
The Producers
bowed on Broadway at the St. James Theater on April 19, 2001. Daniel Okrent (of
Entertainment Weekly
) cautioned, “If you’re a Brooks fan who’s been disappointed with his films recently (and not so recently; he hasn’t made a good one in 20 years), you can rejoice in this cascade of bad taste, overripe satire, and inspired nuttiness. If you’re not a Brooks fan, stay away. This show is too funny, over-the-top, and skillfully staged to waste on the likes of you.” John Lahr (of
The New Yorker
) enthused, “What’s first-rate about this particular seduction is not the lyrics or the music or the choreography but Brooks’s antic imagination and the atmosphere of audacious liberty with which he whips up both the audience and his collaborators.”

Michael Phillips (of the
Los Angeles Times
) was more cautious in his reaction to
The Producers.
He noted, “Brooks isn’t above stealing from himself, not to mention anybody else. ‘The King of Broadway’ sounds a great deal like Brooks’ ‘Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst’ from his 1970 film
The Twelve Chairs.
A lot of the
Producers
score glides in one ear and out the other (‘I Wanna Be a Producer,’ ‘’Til Him,’ even Lane’s climactic lament, ‘Betrayed’). But arranger Glen Kelly and orchestrator Doug Besterman have done wonders in terms of fleshing out Brooks’ efforts.” Don Shewey (of
The Advocate
) alerted, “If you’re the kind of person—like me—who has difficulty ignoring the fact that a straight audience is roaring at old-fashioned cliches of ditsy mincing queens, you may find
The Producers
hard to enjoy at times. Everybody else seems to love it.”

Following the highly successful opening night,
The Producers
became
the
hottest show on Broadway—the biggest hit since 1975’s A
Chorus Line.
Prices for the musical were raised to a $100 high (with scalpers selling prime seats at $400 to $500 a shot). In a typical week, the show was grossing $1.1 million. In less than six months, the show, which had cost $10.5 million to mount, made back its initial outlay.

Making Mel Brooks’s miraculous comeback truly complete,
The Producers
won a series of awards, first from the Drama Desk, then at the Tony Awards in early June 2001. Out of 15 nominations, it claimed 12 Tonys, beating the previous record of 10 wins held by
Hello
,
Dolly!
A beaming Mel bounded onto the Radio City Music Hall stage that night to accept three personal awards: Best Book (with Thomas Meehan), Best Score, and Best Musical. Buoyed by the show’s resounding success and his having proven all the doubters wrong about his ability to stage a show business resurgence, Brooks was at his most zany in accepting the trophies. At one point, he said, “I’m going to have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life—act humble.” At another juncture in the limelight, Mel donned a Ftihrer-like moustache and thanked Hitler “for being such a funny guy on stage.” When Brooks called his fellow producers up on stage to join him in accepting the Best Musical prize, he said, “It would be foolish to try to thank them all.” He then looked at the assemblage and said, “You should have worn signs.” (Stroman, a two-time Tony winner that momentous night, said later of Brooks’s chutzpah at the Tonys, “He’s an extraordinary creature, really. No one else could have gotten away with what he did Sunday night.” She also acknowledged his guidance on the musical, “He gave me some great advice. He said to me, ‘Don’t tap the bell—ring the bell!’”)

During the course of his Tony Awards acceptance speeches, Brooks thanked, among others, Sidney Glazier, who had produced the film version of
The Producers
but had no participation in the profits of the Broadway show. By now, Glazier was in his mid-80s and in poor health. When his children called the retired producer and told him about Brooks’s victory and his reference to Sidney, Glazier told his son, “The son of a bitch owes me money.”

•     •     •

As the newly anointed king of Broadway, Mel was constantly in the limelight—and loved most every minute of it. When a PBS documentary was shot to capture the cast recording session of
The Producers
, Mel was the focal point of the footage. (Both the album and the documentary won Grammy Awards.) Brooks and Thomas Meehan coauthored 2001’s
The Producers: The Book
,
Lyrics
,
and Story Behind the Biggest Hit on Broadway!
Later, Mel was on hand to help Susan Stroman pick replacements for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick when they departed the long-running Broadway version of
The Producers
(only to return later for a special encore run). It was Mel who got the lion’s share of attention as various national touring companies of
The Producers
were launched and when he approved Jason Alexander (as Max Bialystock) and Martin Short (as Leo Bloom) for the musical’s high-profile Los Angeles engagement in 2003. There was much ado about Richard Dreyfuss when he was hired to play Max Bialystock in the London production of the megahit. However, amid great controversy, Dreyfuss left the show before its West End bow and Nathan Lane flew to London to take over the demanding part until a replacement could be found.

Amid the avalanche of publicity concerning Brooks’s Broadway success and his tremendous show business comeback, Mel’s only sorrow was that neither his father (who had died back in 1929) nor his mother (who passed away in 1989) could share in his newfound acclaim. However, Brooks must have taken great comfort in knowing how proud they would have been of Melvin Kaminsky, who fought his way out of a Brooklyn ghetto to emerge the unsinkable monarch of comedy. As he told Thomas Meehan one day in Chicago during the tryout of
The Producers
, “This is the happiest I’ve been since I was 9 years old.”