Harry Stein’s father, Joseph Stein, is most famous for writing Fiddler on the Roof; he also worked in the legendary writers room for Sid Caesar in the 1950s, which included Mel Brooks. In the summer of 1973, Harry found himself in Los Angeles, an assistant editor at New Times magazine, as Brooks got ready to release Blazing Saddles, his first box office hit, and start filming his next feature, Young Frankenstein. The resulting article appeared in the February 22, 1974 of New Times as “Springtime for Mel Brooks” with the dek: “Being the funniest man in the world is harder than it looks.”
Here is Stein’s transcript of his interview with Brooks—unpublished for years before originally appearing online at Planned Man. Both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein were released in 1974, putting Brooks in the rare company of directors—particularly in the post-studio system era—to have two great movies out in the same year. Oddly enough, another one in the club is Francis Ford Coppola. who did it the same year, 1974, with The Conversation and The Godfather Part II.—Alex Belth
Harry Stein: Black Bart sounds pretty daring for a studio film. How did it come about?
Brooks: Well, when David Brown was working here at Warners, he kept sending me scripts, and I kept saying no. In fact, more than just no— absolutely not. Because I really feel you should develop your own ideas, and feels like it’s kind’ve hack work to take someone else’s book or screenplay. But then I got one about a black sheriff. It was called Tex-X by a guy named Andrew Bergman, and I loved the concept. It’s 1870 in the Old West, and this guy is rolling joints while everyone else is rolling Bull Durham. At first I thought well, maybe it’s just a sketch, but the idea haunted me.
HS: What were you working on at the time?
Brooks: I’d just finished a script I couldn’’t sell to anybody—it was based on She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith.
HS: Seriously?
Brooks: It was hysterically funny. These people are so British, in some scenes I have subtitles to explain what they’re saying. And the stuff about class — I have beggars so downtrodden the rich walk on their faces.
Anyway, I talked to Brown about Black Bart, and I agreed to do it if he’d let me hire a couple of other writers to further develop the material—a team, like we had on The Show of Shows. So I got a few other guys I really like, including Richie Pryor, because it was vital to have a black writer. And we kept the original writer, Andrew Bergman, which was unusual, since the company usually says ‘We already got everything we can out’ve him,’ but I thought that would be unseemly. And we all got in a room and let the craziness flow. Because at the beginning, being flat-out meshugah is key. Nothing is too crazy, no idea is too far afield. With great comedy you can’t be too logical at the beginning, you’ve gotta throw every single vagrant insanity into it. Later you can look at it more objectively and see what’s too silly and what works. But on this, as we worked I got more and more excited.
HS: So even then you thought you were doing something special?
Brooks: We’d started out thinking we were making a little low budget picture, which was okay, because we felt free to say disastrous things and not worry about risking Warner Brothers’ money. But as we worked it kept getting bigger and bigger—instead of just telling this one story, we kept finding new ways to satirize the West and the whole western genre. We made up our minds to go after every cliché.
HS: For example?
Brooks: Instead of cowboys just sitting around the campfire, eating beans, we’ll have them eating beans and farting.
HS: Really?
Brooks:
Listen, I’ve watched cowboys eating beans all my life and they should be farting by now. Instead of cattle just moving around in the background and doing whatever cattle do—mooing, or mowing, or lowing; that’s what they do, isn’t it, low a lot?—instead of lowing on the plains, we’d have them walk through some guy’s office. We put in the church scene from High Noon, with all the lily-livered townspeople who want someone else to do the dirty work, and they’re all named Johnson—Gabby Johnson, Howard Johnson, Van Johnson…. (Pauses.) You know Alex Karras?
HS: The football player…
Brooks: I got him playing a heavy. When he parks his steer in the red zone and some officious do-gooder tells him it’s illegal, he slugs the guy’s horse and knocks him out.
HS: The horse?
Brooks: Trained horse. (Beat) The magic of the movies, the razzle dazzle of make believe. Anyway, the more the lunacy ran rampant, the more excited I got. And I decided to cap it off with an ending that’s either spectacularly bold or spectacularly foolish—they’ll suddenly break out of 1874 into 1974.
HS: How has the studio reacted to all this?
Brooks: I think the word you’re looking for is interference—or maybe alarm. But, no, because thank God we got John Calley, the head of production at Warner Brothers running interference, and his attitude is the bolder the better. If it was anyone else, I’d get: “You can’t really have fifteen cowboys sitting around the campfire farting—it’s funny in the room, but it’s too vulgar.” But with these people, even though I didn’t get final cut, I trust them not to fool around with it too much. There are some studios that shall be nameless—MGM for one—have a reputation for tampering with films. But Calley is straight and good.
HS: So usually executives don’t get you…
Brooks: In every part of my life, in every phase of activity, the powers that were—and they always were—were very comfortable with the status quo, and trying new things was very dangerous. Sid was our leader on The Show of Shows—it was the only show where someone would say something, and we’d fall off our chairs laughing, and it would actually be on the television set. Every other show, they’d say that’s too crazy, that’s too silly, that’s too dangerous we can’t do that. Or, the big one, people won’t get it, they’re too stupid. That assumption is rampant.
“Listen, I’ve watched cowboys eating beans all my life and they should be farting by now.”
I truly assume that everyone in the audience is as bright as I am. In Black Bart maybe I’m taking a risk when I appear for a minute as an Indian chief. We’ve just massacred everyone, and I come over and see the black family in the wagon, and I turn to my braves and say “Schvartzes!” Then I go on and continue in Yiddish—but what the hell, if he was talking Cheyenne or Sioux you wouldn’t understand him anyway.
HS: Are you worried there might be some problems with some of the racial stuff in the picture? I gather you’re not pulling any punches.
Brooks: Well, I probably wouldn’t have been quite so bold if Richie Pryor hadn’t been in the room. Brave as you are, he’ll always make you be braver.
HS: Presumably the budget kept growing along with the picture…
Brooks: Warner Brothers is—are? Are Warner Brothers singular or plural? Even though the company is, they still are. Anyway, they went along with it. It’ll end up at around two million, and we night even come in under, due to my incredible cinematic dexterity. Because I always say “Action” first, instead of “Cut,” which right there saves a lot of money. All these terms I have down, much better than I did on my first picture, The Producers. Then, if the cameraman said to me “I see the master from this distance shooting with a 50,” I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I’d say “Yes, take a very nice picture.” Now there’s a small chance I might say that to him. Fortunately, on The Producers I had an assistant director who walked me over to the camera, let me feed it, gave it an apple and sugar, and told me not to yell at the grips, because they can drop one of those heavy lights on your head.
HS: Now you’re obviously pretty confident on the set.
Brooks: Well, you’ve got to look that way. You’re the father figure, you can’t be too manic—you’re Big Daddy, everybody comes to you with their problems, they don’t want to see you screaming or sucking your thumb.
There are guys who love that part of it. A lot of people making movies don’t really give much of a shit about what’s up there on the screen. They really believe what’s more important is what’s happening on the set or behind the scenes, the business of Here’s your special chair, and So-and-so is late and would you like to speak to her in her trailer and all that shit. Straightening out the fight between the prop man and the lens puller. They really like that.
Actually, terrible as it is to say, I really don’t like the collaborative process in general, because everyone you bring in has his own idea of how things should be done. The cameraman wants to shoot a scene a certain way because he likes the light that way—I don’t want to compete with his technical brilliance. The costume people have their ideas, and I have to deal with them. I mean, you don’t want robots, but you also don’t really want peers—what you want is very creative and willing underlings.
And of course the biggest compromise is having to give what you’ve written to the actors.
HS: So obviously casting is vital.
Brooks: After the script, the most critical thing. Because in the movies you don’t get to walk out to the mound in the third inning, kick the dirt and get a new pitcher. If the pitcher stinks, you’ve gotta sit him down in the dugout and work with him, and work with him, cause you’ve already got two cans of film with that pitcher.
And on this film I had to be especially careful. Because with this kind of comedy the most minor mis-reading, a wrong emphasis or nuance here or there, and your dream flies out the window. And you need to get it right the first time, since in the screening room it’s too late. You gotta recognize that that’s the take to print. You’ve also gotta have a good smeller for the actor’s personal chemistry that day—is he up, down, and if he’s way up, maybe give him some bigger things to do. We just shot a scene with Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman—just a small scene, but we came up with some great business for Slim to do on the spot. It was all talk, with Harvey giving Slim instructions, so I gave Slim a problem. I said, “When he tells you ‘Take this down,’ you can’t find a pencil, so keep looking through the whole scene—and you won’t find it til right at the end and ask him ‘Will you repeat that?’ and he’ll go bananas.” So we did it, and it worked. I think it worked—we’ll know better when we see the rushes. Sometimes you fool yourself—because there was no noise on the set, no one coughed or tripped and everything was nicely in the frame, and you think it’s good, but you’re wrong, there’s no magic.
HS: Isn’t this Harvey Korman’s first movie? I’ve only seen him on TV.
Brooks: That’s a good thing, because people will be surprised he’s so much more than anyone’s seen on The Carol Burnett Show. It was the opposite in casting the black sheriff. I could have had Flip Wilson, but we went with Cleavon Little because Flip already has such a well defined persona from TV—you’d expect him to do Geraldine and be disappointed. And we have Madeleine Kahn—she’s better than sensational, she’s really good. And of course Gene Wilder—if Fellini had his Mastroianni, I want my Wilder. You need these vehicles for your passion. If Black Bart is what I want it to be, which is an event, they’ll be a big part of it. I don’t want people to walk out saying what a terrific movie. I’m not in the movie business to make movies, I want it to be an experience, I want it to be did-you-see-that?
HS: Were you surprised The Producers became such a cult film?
Brooks: I’m always surprised. I was surprised when Carl and I made a record and people loved it, I’m always surprised when anything is a hit. Because I always feel it’s a very personal thing and maybe three Jews on a bus somewhere in Brooklyn are gonna enjoy it. I’m amazed the world likes what I’m doing, because it’s like private letters I write to myself. Robert Louis Stevenson said he wrote his books for himself and a few close friends and isn’t it marvelous that the public defrays the cost of postage. I’m the same way—I never think anything I do has any value outside of the room.
HS: The Producers was such a bizarre concept—Springtime for Hitler as the greatest flop ever. How did you come up with that?
Brooks: Well, it’s strange, I was doing a show on Broadway called All American, and we got a call from The New York Times called wanting to know what we were doing next, and the guy I was with called over, “Give me a title, give me a title!” So I said “How about Springtime for Hitler” It just flashed in my brain. It was nothing, just a title. But it stayed with me, and maybe a month later, I started thinking about this producer I once worked for when I was a kid. I was his production supervisor, that was my title, which meant I ran around with cards putting them in the barbershop window. Anyway, this guy used to sleep on a torn leather couch—literally, springs out—with his wash strung on a little clothes line strung in one corner, and he would make incredible love to these dying creatures that would wander in on the way to the grave. He’d throw them a hump and they’d give him money for plays that would never happen.
“Gene Wilder is the world’s greatest victim. Any hunter would smell him and immediately go after him, the way dogs suddenly attack the weaker dog. He was the cocker spaniel with the ears down and the pleading eyes—‘I hope nobody bites me today.’”
HS: The real Max Bialystock!
Brooks: So it occurred to me Springtime For Hitler was the kind’ve show that dopey producer would do. He’d say “What the hell, you don’t have to only look at the negative aspects of Hitler, he was a good dancer, a good dresser”—that’s how this guy talked. So first I thought about this guy only in connection with putting on this show. Then, when I got the idea of the flop, I figured it wouldn’t originate in his mind, but with someone who was completely naïve who realized “My God, if you just raised too much money, it could make more money with a disaster than with a success.” So the characters and story really came together at the same time.
HS: How did you get to direct it, never having directed before?
Brooks: Well, actually, my original thought was to write it as a novel. So I was writing and writing, and it was ending up all dialogue and almost no narrative description. So since it was already all talk, I started to rework it as a play. But then there were just too many scenes and locales. So I wrote it as a movie, not knowing even if I could sell it. But when I took it around to the studios, I insisted on directing it because I loved it so much and I had to protect it. And I stuck to my guns, and Sidney Glazer, God bless him, raised half a million dollars, and then we got Joe Levine and Embassy Picture involved. I love Joe for giving me the break—though I’m not crazy about him for, I suspect, not reporting all the money that came in from that picture that I’ve never seen.
HS: How did you end up casting Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder?
Brooks: Gene had been in a play with my wife—Mother Courage—and I just loved his look—like a frightened animal in the forest. (Laughs) Just the world’s greatest victim. Like any hunter would smell him and immediately go after him, the way dogs suddenly attack the weaker dog. He was the cocker spaniel with the ears down and the pleading eyes—“I hope nobody bites me today.” And I always had Zero in mind as the producer. Actually it was a risk, because he’s really larger than the screen. His palpable presence is incredible, he’s a moving van painted bright orange. But that’s why it worked, because the character was so big.
HS: I‘ve heard you actually wanted to use Springtime for Hitler as the title.
Brooks: I did, and it was, up through the post-production stage and the final mix. But then Joe Levine sprang on me he wanted a new title. Because he’d tried it out with the exhibitors and they were all shocked and wanted no part of it, and he couldn’t book the picture.
HS: Did it hurt to lose that title?
Brooks: It still hurts. I thought it was a sensational title, bold and crazy, and I think the picture would have made a lot more money.
HS: You must have gotten flack over the premise…
Brooks: At the beginning. I got letters from Jewish organizations, and people in restaurants would tell me it was in incredibly bad taste, to say the least. But after a while people began to regard it fondly.
HS: Looking at it now, with the benefit of experience, would you change anything in that picture?
B: Yes, one big thing! I didn’t anticipate the Springtime for Hitler number would be so big. I’d have moved it closer to the end, as the climax, and have had just one more little scene of them fighting, then blowing up the theater and The End.
HS: Were movies always your goal? Were you a film buff?
Brooks: Oh, as a kid I’d see at least two pictures a week—wait, actually four pictures a week—at my local theater in Brooklyn, since it was a double bill and they changed Wednesdays and Saturdays. Then sometimes on Sunday I’d go to a triple bill someplace and see another three pictures. So if some schmuck says to me now “What the hell do you know about the west?” I say “You kidding, I know as much about the West as anyone who ever lived there!”
“I’m always surprised when anything is a hit. Because I always feel it’s a very personal thing and maybe three Jews on a bus somewhere in Brooklyn are gonna enjoy it.”
HS: You cast yourself as the governor in Black Bart…
Brooks: And the Indian chief!
HS:Could you see yourself taking the lead role in a film?
Brooks: Not impossible, if it made sense for the project. Everything is the script—and that stems from an idea or philosophy. Let’s say I want to comment on greed in the motion picture business. Both things I know—greed and motion pictures. So, say, if there was a story about a guy who wanted to make dirty pictures because that’s where the money is, and I needed an actor who was insane and dynamic—where everything was ‘Run, go, tits, run, make the money!’—that might be a good part for me. That’s the kind of guy I know, and also kind’ve like, because there’s so much life in him. I mean, he’d be the guy who’s thought up Pampers instead of cloth diapers. He’s not out to be obscene, but if it’s dirty movies that make a lot of money, then okay, it’s “Sol, that’s what we’re into now!” That’s a character that would’ve sprung for my milieu, I could play that guy.
HS: Growing up, did you think about getting into show business?
Brooks: Early on I wanted to be a pilot. I studied a lot about flying when I was thirteen or fourteen, I belonged to the Balsa Birds and created a song called ‘We Are the Balsa Birds.’ (Sings) “We are the Balsa Birds, the Balsa Birds are we”—used the word ‘yonder’ a lot. Then I went up in a Waco biplane at Floyd Bennett Field, and the guy did a barrel roll and I threw up, and when I got down I kissed the ground and that was it.
The next thing that interested me was drumming, and I stayed with that a while. Buddy Rich was a neighbor in Brighton Beach, Buddy and his brother Mickey—who was a saxophone player—and a friend and I used to go peek in the window and watch them rehearse. I think Buddy was with Artie Shaw then, or maybe it it Tommie Dorsey and Artie Shaw later. We’re talking the early ’40s, just after the start of the war. But I didn’t know about making a living at it. I thought that maybe, since my brother Irving was a chemist, that’s probably what it would be for me also, and drumming would just be an after school or summer thing. Just kicks. So I was prepared to be a chemist, or maybe an electrical engineer, because when I was in my late teens a lot of kids were becoming engineers. Luckily I didn’t, because after the war there was a surfeit of engineers.
HS: Were you funny as a kid?
Brooks: I think so. I was the baby of the family, with three big brothers, so everyone threw me up in the air, pinched my feet and told me I was terrific, and I assumed I was adorable. It was a big shock when I was in the army and the first sergeant didn’t pinch my feet. And then, to add insult to injury, the Germans started shooting at me. And of course in school, always being shorter, I became the comic, the jester—I over compensated by dominating the athletes. So thank God for their early rejection. If there hadn’t been the emotional need for it, I’d probably now be a crackerjack salesman in the garment center. And I’d probably be very good at it. (As salesman) “Lenny, what’re you talkin’? Chanton silk, I got it, I’m givin’ it to you, what’re ya talkin’ about?! It’s here, it’s on the table., grab it now, you know I don’t lie to you!”
HS: Were you a good student?
Brooks: In and out. Some things I was fairly good in—science, and some of the more creative aspects of English. Geometry and Algebra and calculus, those things baffled me. I didn’t know why we had to learn them, all I knew was that the Chinaman at the laundry had an abacus and would go faster than Einstein on his buttons, so why don’t we all get the buttons? Also the Jew in the grocery store with the stubby pencil was faster than any computer I could think of, and would always come to a total that would please him. And he’d write it on the brown paper shopping bag and that was it.
I did like anything in school that had to do with showing off. Like in English, when you stood up to read a composition, or give a little oratory.
I think I would have gone for sports if I were taller. But when you’re short, that’s it—no basketball, no football, maybe baseball. I was a very good second baseman—fast, could throw well, but I could never hit the long ball. That was a big problem. Then there was roller hockey, and I was a little too light for that—I’d get bounced all over the place. My brother Lenny still has my hockey stick down in Florida. For some reason my mother gave it to Lenny, who moved it down there, and once a month I get a call “What should we do with the hockey stick?”
HS: So how did you end up in the business?
Brooks: Well, one summer, I was sixteen and a half, I was working as a drummer at a place called the Butler Lodge, just a summer job, and the comic got sick. Since I kind’ve clowned around in the band, the boss knew I was funny. And he said “Melbnn”—M-E-L-B-N-N—“Melbnn, Jackie”—was Jackie somebody, Jackie Jakey, Jackie Jerky, Jackie Jackie—“Melbnn, Jackie hoit himself, he got poison sumac and a broken leg and he can’t be here, so do the junk he does.” So I got up and did his junk. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I just flew in from Chicago and boy are my arms tired; I met a girl in Chicago who’s so skinny, I took her to a restaurant, the waiter said ‘Check your umbrella?’ I got a room in Chicago so small the mice were hunchback, you close the door, they get into bed with you.” I got my laughs, but I was very glad to get it over with. I didn’t enjoy being a comic. But the next night he was still sick and I had to do another show. I told the boss I didn’t like doing that stuff, he said “Do what you want, what do I care?” So I did indigenous material.
That day a maid had locked herself in the linen closet, and kept screaming in Yiddish “LOZN MIR AIYS!” (Let me out!) No one knew what it was or where it was coming from, and they finally had to break down the door with an ax. It was a big trauma, the whole hotel went crazy. So that night I go out and start “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, LOZN MIR AIYS!” They went bananas. Next I imitated the boss over the loud speaker system shouting over twenty-five miles of Jew country, (clears throat) “Sylvia, is it on? For God’s sakes.you should see the sheets, the dirt they made! Is it ON, for God’s sakes!” So that was the next joke. All local humor. And they loved it.
“To me, Harry Ritz was the funniest man who ever lived.”
So I was a comic for a while. But comics had never been my gods, Hope and Berle and those guys, I could admire them for their professionalism, but who I really liked were physical comics, guys like Laurel and Hardy and Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers. To me, Harry Ritz was the funniest man who ever lived. There was no intellectualizing. You just hoped there were no pointy objects in the room when he was working, cause you were down on the floor, spitting, out of control, laughing your brains out. Harry Ritz could always put me away, always. I’ll never forget one night in the late ’40s, walking home late at night, I met him on Central Park South. He was very sad, almost crying—one of his brothers was going to the hospital for a bleeding ulcer and he was waiting out there for the ambulance. (Imitating) “Mel, I told him ‘Don’t put that shit in your stomach, what d’ya need that garbage, and now wid da pain, and wid da vomiting!”—and I wanted to laugh more than anything in the world. It was the look on his face and how he said it. Thank God the ambulance arrives and Harry and the brother leave—I run across the street, jump into Central Park and laugh for an hour. Nobody in the world ever made me laugh like that, except maybe Sid.
HS: When did you first connect with Caesar?
Brooks: In the mountains. And he was really funny, the greatest mimic in the world. Only he didn’t do Bogart or Cagney, he did types—Jewish types, 100-percent American types: (Sententious voice) “Arrest that child, I saw him sneak on the merry-go-round, I’ll sign his committal papers.” So one day Sid calls me and says “I’m doing this thing called television,” and I say ‘What the hell is it?” He says “Radio with pictures.” We really didn’t know. At the same time I was doing a little play in Red Bank, New Jersey, so I’d run in to help Sid for fifty bucks a week with this thing called The Admiral Broadway Revue, which was the precursor to Your Show of Shows.
HS:You were saying it was a kind of insecurity that drove your humor – has that insecurity dissipated? If so, what’s the drive then.
Brooks: Good question. First of all, it never entirely dissipates. And you’re always driven by competition. When we did The Show of Shows, because I was a natural performer, I usually scored very heavily in those sessions.
Of course, on Black Bart I went back to that, a bunch of smart guys in a room trying to top each other, and I was off again, riding and running and hearing laughs. Same as then, if even a quarter of it’s good, we’re okay.
HS:And it was on The Show of Shows you met Carl Reiner.
Brooks: From the start, we just had a very special vapor. It’s very immediate and spontaneous, and when we’re you never know which way we’ll go. Even we don’t. Carl is an incredible straight man, just about the best in the world. With the 2000 Year Old Man, he keeps chasing me into corners. I’ll say something absurd, and he’ll say “I find that difficult to believe, sir.” He’s very aggressive, but I like the challenge, I like being trapped, I’m much better under pressure.
“I haven’t fronted a 40-piece orchestra in Vegas in tails, and sung “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” That might be nice.”
HS: You’ve done a lot of TV in that character. Do you get recognized in public?
Brooks: Sometimes. It only bothers me when I’ve got a fork full of peas a millimeter away from my tongue and a lady smashes me in the head and says “You, you beauty!” Or I remember being at LaGuardia and a guy comes up and says “The funniest man in the world!” expecting me to prove it then and there. It’s like being expected to throw up on demand. You might have a headache or be worried about, you know, your life. I really don’t know how the Bob Hopes, the big comic figures, deal with it, being expected to be jolly all the time. But it’s almost never the people who know the albums, just the ones who’ve only seen me on television .
HS: Anything you’d like to do which you haven’t yet?
Brooks: I haven’t fronted a 40-piece orchestra in Vegas in tails, and sung “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” That might be nice. But, no, I just want to make more really good pictures. By that I mean it’s not good enough that people walk out after an hour and a half saying, “That was fun, I had a few laughs.” I think they should stay at my movie at least six weeks, and we’ll provide them with cold cuts and dry rye bread, no white bread with butter, and maybe a nice cold orange drink. That’s the least they should do for me.
HS: So do you know what you’re doing next?
Brooks: My next project’s with Gene Wilder, who told me about this idea he had on the set, and asked if I’d consider directing it. I did and I will, because I immediately loved it. It’s another spoof, set in the ’30s—a monster picture! I’m thinking I’ll do it in black and white—very gothic, and there’ll all kinds of strange scary noises—howls in the night, floorboards creaking, and characters turning very ominously into a key light, wide eyed, and ominously saying portentous things—all the corny schtick they did then.
HS: Do you have a title?
Brooks: We’re calling it Young Frankenstein, at least for now.
[Image Via Friedman-Abeles from the New York Public Library]