Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (54 page)

How influential was Harry Ritz not only to you, but to other comedians who came of age during his heyday?

You could see it in Danny Kaye, with his voices. You could see it in Milton Berle, with his facial expressions. With Jerry Lewis, you could see it with his crazy walk. But especially Sid Caesar. Sid used a lot of Harry Ritz in my
Silent Movie
[1976]. Sid’s in a hospital bed, and he has to swallow a large, white pill. Sid takes a big glass of water. You wait a whole goddamn minute, and Sid swallows and swallows and swallows and then he breaths “Ahhhh,” and there’s the white pill still stuck on his tongue. That’s all Harry Ritz. It’s perfectly Harry Ritz.

Speaking of Sid Caesar, for whom you worked for many years, why do you think his career, which started so brightly, didn’t sustain itself over the years?

Well . . . [Long pause] My brother Lenny was a waist gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress in World War II. He told me that unless you fired your .50-caliber machine gun in short bursts, the bullets would go askew. If you shot in long bursts, parts of the rifle would burn out. And you wouldn’t be able to get a true aim on an enemy fighter. So short bursts, always short. We knew that Sid would be outrageously funny in short bursts. But too much of a good thing didn’t work. You could never have an audience accept Sid in a movie playing a grocery man or candy store owner or a cab driver. There was too much genius. Just too much.

In 1952, I went out to Los Angeles to write screenplays for a thousand dollars a week. Incredible. An incredible amount of money for that period. Nice offices. Secretaries. Palm trees. Real palm trees, not fake and brought in. They were really in the ground! Beautiful. I worked there for two years and then I came back to work for Sid. I said, “Sid, all right. You know, life is temporary, but some aspects of show business don’t have to be as temporary as they are. It’s like light bulbs—they’re designed to be temporary. And in your case, you’re going to burn out. Danny Kaye is a big star, but you’re better! Bob Hope—funniest guy in the world, but you’re better. The smallest movie will last twenty-five or thirty years longer than the best show on television. You make a movie, they put it in a vault, they have Technicolor. It’s there forever! It’s an amazing way of preserving a performance.”

And he said, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’m not doing it just for money. I’m doing it because I’m good at it and I know it and I love it and I want my art to live.” I told him, “Why don’t we go out to LA at the end of the season? Give them plenty of warning. I’ll direct the movies. I’ll write them. We’ll make great, memorable movies.” Sid warned the executives that he was leaving, and they weren’t happy. Then there was a long weekend when I couldn’t reach him. He had been sequestered somewhere on Long Island, somebody’s mansion. At the end of it, on Monday, he called and said to me, “You know, we’ll have to do it some other time. We’ll have to wait three years.” Then he said, “That’s not long. We’ll wait another three years and we’ll go.”

I was heartbroken, of course, but they increased his salary from five thousand dollars a show to twenty-five thousand dollars. Enormous money in 1952. Movies to me were much more lasting. TV happens too quickly, and most is never remembered. I think we could have made good movies.

A lot of your writing seems so improvisational, but I assume a tremendous amount of work goes into your scripts. How important is rewriting to you?

Rewriting is writing. It’s everything. The first draft is really full of . . . you know, you can’t plant seeds with it. It’s full of rocks and pebbles and stones and sand. As you rewrite, you know the characters have a chance of maturing, thriving, and becoming memorable. Rewriting is everything. It’s,
Do I really want to get married to this idea?
It’s vital.

Can you give a specific example of how long it took to rewrite one of your scripts? Say,
Young Frankenstein
, a script you co-wrote with Gene Wilder?

Gene and I never stopped writing
Young Frankenstein
. I don’t know. We wrote, we rewrote, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote. We always went back to a scene until we were more or less satisfied. Someone once said that you never finish anything, you just abandon it. We abandoned
Young Frankenstein
.

Were there any particular scenes that you and Gene didn’t agree on?

We had a big fight over the scene that showed the monster tap-dancing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” I said, “It’s no good. It’s tearing the movie apart. It’s making it too silly.” This was showbizzy stuff. A scene like that only works by just moving an inch or two. With “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” Gene wanted to move the movie a whole yard. So Gene said, “Do me a favor. Film it and we’ll take a look at it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll throw it right out.” And I did. I filmed it, and then I looked up and said, “Gene, not only does it work, but it’s the best thing in the movie.”

The interesting thing about Gene Wilder’s performance in
Young Frankenstein
is that it might very well be the best performance in
any
Frankenstein movie, comedic or not.

Oh, I’m so glad you said that! I think he was Promethean in that role. There was fire in that performance. There was madness in his eyes. Going back to Gogol, you need madness in comedy.

That movie was shot by the great cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld [
Goodbye, Columbus
;
Diary of a Mad Housewife
;
My Favorite Year
]. It looked beautiful. It looked as gorgeous as the early Frankenstein movies, very authentic. And I directed that movie very seriously. I wasn’t trying to be funny in the direction. It was only the situations that were absurd, and that helped with the comedy.

Did you ever have any thoughts over the years of writing a novel? Or short humor fiction for
The New Yorker
, similar to what Woody Allen writes?

Max, my son, has a wonderful narrative skill. His images are beautiful and so perfect, and you always know just where you are and what’s happening. And I don’t have that. I am a dialogue professional. Nobody can write better Ping-Pong than I can, the back and forth. But you need a great deal of narrative skill, like a Tolstoy, to write a novel. Or you got it or you ain’t.

It’s odd that even writers considered at the top of their games, such as yourself, notice weaknesses in their work that others might not see.

You’ll notice that with anyone, in any profession. You’ll see a golfer who looks perfect, but there’s something about his skill that won’t match his expectations. And, you know, it has to be that way. You should never be totally content with yourself.

Are you still affected after all these years in the business when an audience laughs at something you’ve written?

Oh, it’s the best. The best thing in the world is writing a joke, having an audience get it. I will never grow tired of that. It’s magical.

You once said that you were afraid of death, and that humor is your scream and protest against the good-bye. You said this years ago. Do you still believe that?

I kind of do. I kind of do. We’re all afraid of dying. When you’re laughing, it’s hard to think of death. So I think, basically, yeah, that still works.

Do you feel that your work—your writing—is your chance at immortality?

I don’t know. I don’t think there is any immortality, really. But it’s a chance to live a little longer, to be around a little longer, and for your great-great-grandchildren to maybe see something you’ve done. It’s like scratching your name in the bark of a tree. “I was here. I did something. I made my mark. And I will not be completely erased by death.”

I think if there’s anyone in the business who’s earned the right to give advice to a young comedy writer it would be you. What would you tell him or her?

A few things. One, whatever you write has to make you laugh. Not just laugh, but really laugh, from your belly, laugh with your gut. Not just chuckle. If you really laugh, honestly laugh, while you’re writing a joke, and if you say to yourself, Oh, they’ll like this, then stick with that.

Two, rewrite. Keep rewriting until you get what you want, and then write some more. Rewrite! Rewrite! Rewrite! When you laugh yourself, or when you say, “I can’t do better,” you can stop. There is no night, there is no day, there is only rewriting comedy until it’s glorious.

Last, do not be dissuaded. Don’t become brokenhearted. Don’t quit. If you believe you can do it, you can do it. It’s so easy to be hurt. It’s so easy to quit. Don’t quit. Do it again. And then again. Do not stop! Learn from the audience and take their advice.

Other than that, I have no more advice.

Anyway, Mike, it was fun. Thank you. I now have to get on with my life.