When The Shooting Stops Read online

  A Thousand Clowns made Herb one of the hottest new writers in the industry, and the picture itself has gone on to attract new generations of admirers, becoming one of that special class of films that are always playing somewhere. It is still the most popular picture in my New School course in film editing, and I am no longer surprised to find people who say they’ve seen it a dozen or more times.

  For my part, I was still unprepared to believe that the picture was going to be a hit based on the response of one audience. I allowed my optimism to solidify only during the series of private screenings United Artists arranged before Clowns was released in December 1965. I remember one screening in particular because I invited my mother to attend, and because until that moment I still was not convinced that our fancy editorial footwork wouldn’t confuse a traditional viewer. I therefore noted with particular interest that except for some initial grunts of approval upon seeing my name in the credits, my mother gave no sign of amusement, not even a chuckle throughout the entire film. Not until the very end, when Murray has finally agreed to take back his old job with Chuckles the Chipmunk; when, wearing a hat and suit and carrying an attache case, he is frozen on the screen running to catch a bus with the other commuters; when the rest of the audience was wistfully absorbing his moment of surrender, did my mother finally react: “Well” she said triumphantly, “it’s about time!”

  Mel Brooks and producer Sidney Glazier.

  14 ■ The Producers

  Not Just Another Funny Picture

  The myth that the director is the sole creator of his film is a burden on almost everyone in the movie business, including the director, who frequently becomes weighed down by the excess responsibility, incapable of generating a team spirit, afraid to delegate authority, or unable to graciously accept the contributions of the expert collaborators he has summoned to his side.

  With a first-time director the pressure of this myth is magnified, especially if he has no film experience, as is often the case. Ashamed to expose his ignorance, he may resist asking the cameraman to “shoot it the way Altman did in Nashville” and instead insist on numerous and frustrating retakes in which no one understands his dissatisfaction. If he is insecure and defensive about the degree of dependence he feels on all the experienced professionals around him, and if the production manager, the cameraman, the set director, the editor, or one of the stars is inclined to counter his defensive behavior by subtly making an issue of his dependency, the scene is set for flashes of paranoia, or what the industry gingerly refers to as “psychotic episodes.”

  Mel Brooks’s first film, The Producers, is the story of Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), one a seedy, corrupt, over-the-hill Broadway producer who seduces old ladies in order to get them to invest in his awful productions, the other a whimpering, neurotic accountant who falls under his sway. Together they conspire to produce “the worst play ever written,” overfinance it by 25,000 percent, and then pocket the excess investments when the play closes. The scheme depends on a sure-fire flop that will fold in one night, and after a laborious search the pair settles on a play by a fanatical Nazi called Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden. When the timorous Bloom becomes antsy about the project, Bialystock bellows at him, calls him a “white mouse,” and insists that he has “taken steps to make sure that Springtime for Hitler will be a total disaster” by hiring Roger De Bris, “the worst director that ever lived.”

  De Bris turns out to be a flaming transvestite with a snippish, catty male “private secretary” named Carmen Giya. Bialystock asks De Bris if he’s had a chance to read the play, and De Bris responds “Remarkable! A stunning piece of work. . . . I, for one, never realized that the Third Reich meant Germany! I mean it’s drenched with historical goodies like that!” Disaster is further courted by casting Lorenzo Saint DuBois (L.S.D.), a mind-blown acid-head straight out of Sing-Sing who never stops blathering about love and flower power, to play a hip Hitler who dances his way to oblivion. On opening night Bialystock gleefully drives the “last nail in the coffin” by wrapping a hundred-dollar bill around the complimentary tickets he gives to the outraged critic from The New York Times.

  At first aghast at the production—which includes a chorus line of busty blond storm troopers who kick their legs and sing, “Don’t be shtupid, be a shmarty, come and join the Nazi Party!”—the audience gradually begins to chuckle, then to laugh uproariously, as they interpret the whole play as a gigantic farce. Desperate at the prospect of imminent success, Bialystock and Bloom dynamite the theater, but are apprehended in the act, found “incredibly guilty” by an indignant jury, and sent to the state penitentiary, where they launch “Prisoners of Love,” a musical production financed by the investments of the prisoners and the warden—and shamelessly oversubscribed.

  From the first page to the last, Brooks’s script was loaded with enough hilarious material to keep a reader laughing aloud almost continuously. It was an extraordinary screenplay, and two years later it won an Oscar—although the film itself was so crudely shot and edited that, seen today, it looks almost prehistoric.

  Better known as a writer, Brooks was himself a natural performer who would grab almost any opportunity to go into an impromptu act. Those of us who were meeting him for the first time found him a very funny, very eager man, someone we knew by reputation for his work on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” and for his “2000-Year-Old Man” records, who was now full of nervous energy about directing his first script.

  “He came to my office, a small guy who looked very nervous, and started to tell jokes, some of which weren’t too funny, and I was a little uncomfortable,” remembers producer Sidney Glazier. “But finally he told me he had an idea, and I subsequently learned that he had been trying to get it sold for three years and nobody would give him an opportunity to direct. It was called Springtime for Hitler—and if it had remained Springtime for Hitler, it would have made several million dollars—but we had a Jewish distributor by the name of Joseph Levine who insisted that the Jews would be up in arms, so we reluctantly changed the title to a banal thing called The Producers. In any case, Mel stood in front of my desk and did the movie. I was drinking coffee in a paper cup and I began to laugh. I began to choke. He did the movie from beginning to end. He acted every part—he did the fag, everything—and my sides hurt when he finished. You know how Mel is when he’s really on. And I said, I’ll do it. I didn’t know where the hell I was going to get the money, but I said I’ll do it, I’ll do it, and that’s how it began.”

  Cameraman Joe Coffey was invited to Glazier’s office to meet Mel by production manager Jack Grossberg. “I was very impressed by his friendliness and warmth,” says Coffey. “We discussed the possibility of me doing the film and he gave me the script and I went home to read it. He told me he had seen Up the Down Staircase and that he was very impressed with how I had photographed it. I became very enthusiastic, and Mel was very up, asking me all kinds of questions about what I’d done, how I’d done certain things, and so forth. And then there ensued a series of meetings with the design director, Chuck Rosen. Chuck made a series of drawings based on every set from every point of view. He drew in the furniture and the doorways and the windows, and we pondered them and we said, we’ll put the camera here, and we’ll move it over here when Bialystock says this, and we’ll move it here when the old lady kisses him, and Mel was just wildly enthusiastic. He fired my enthusiasm and Chuck’s, and as usual, I fell in love with the director. My wife keeps telling me every time I have a disaster in a relationship with somebody in the film business, you schmuck, you must stop falling in love with these people, they’re all hideous killers! But Mel exhibited such marvelous enthusiasm for my ideas, and he was so receptive to Chuck’s contribution. . . . Well, at any rate, this love feast went on for, I don’t know, five or six weeks. We would meet and talk about how we were going to make the world’s greatest comedy, and I would go home and tell Arlene, ‘Oh, Mel is so ter
rific, he’s so receptive.’ And meanwhile my ego was becoming more and more inflated—more than usual.”

  Production day was one month off when Jack Grossberg summoned me to Glazier’s office for my first meeting with Mel. Mel was very serious. He spoke at length about the contribution I had made to A Thousand Clowns, and he said he wanted a relationship with me similar to the one I had had with Gardner. He touched just the right note when he suggested a collaboration of equals, and like Joe Coffey, I was immediately impressed and optimistic.

  By the end of the first morning on the set, Mel was already becoming jittery. His only previous production experience had been in live television where everything proceeded at a much faster, more hectic pace. Each installment started on Tuesday; the writers, directors, producers, and stars polished, rehearsed, rewrote, and rearranged as they went along; and the whole thing climaxed on Saturday with a dress rehearsal and then The Air. Was Mel prepared for the differences between TV and film? Did he know that in movies you can only shoot about five minutes of usable film a day? That most of the time on the set is spent waiting and preparing? That, as the director, he would be faced with an avalanche of demands from subordinates responsible for all the intricate aspects of production?

  The film director is like a general advancing an army along a broad front. There are ten to fifteen people working on a scene that will be shot tomorrow, or perhaps next Thursday, when production will move outside for location work. The director has to approve their plans so they can proceed. The set director comes in with a sample of wallpaper or a piece of drapery for Friday’s scene. The production manager has a money problem that needs immediate attention. Someone else has a logistical question of some kind, perhaps regarding a city regulation on shooting at a certain location. Whatever his expectations, these time-consuming demands weighed heavily on Mel. He couldn’t stand the pestering and he couldn’t stand the waiting. And because he resisted delegating authority, the demands increased and the delays lengthened.

  His inclination was to spend most of his time working with the actors. He would rehearse Mostel and Wilder to the point where he had them doing exactly what he wanted, and then he would turn around, ready to shoot. Joe Coffey, who’d been standing by doing nothing all this time, would say, “Mel, where do you want the camera?” Suddenly Mel realized that he should have conferred with Coffey an hour and a half ago, before he began rehearsing. Now he will have to watch the clock while the electricians slowly arrange all the lights, his actors get cold, and an inner voice whispers that he’s falling rapidly behind schedule, that people are resisting him, and that Levine is going to take away his “points” in the picture, or maybe even the picture itself.

  “On the second day of shooting, right after lunch, Mel came up to me and said, ‘Joe, I’m very worried.’ I said, ‘What are you worried about?’ He said, ‘Well, everything seems to be taking so much time.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Well, you put the camera here, and then it takes time, you put it over here, and then you’re turning lights on, and then you’re having the guys turn lights off, and they’re putting those sticks up and those little black flags—and this is taking so much time. I’m really worried, we’re a half a day behind already.’ This was the middle of the second day. Of a ten-week schedule. We’re a half a day behind! So I said, ‘Well, Mel, you know it takes time to make movies. You got to move furniture, you got to move walls.’ ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re pulling these walls out and you’re putting those walls back again—what is all that about? Why don’t you do it like we do it in television? When you’re shooting in that direction, you just turn on all the lights that are going that way. Then when you’re shooting in this direction, you turn those off and you turn on the lights that’re going in this direction?’ What could I say? I said, Til go as fast as I can.’ But early on in the making of the film I realized that there was a sudden abrupt change from the receptive, outgoing, fun-and-loving kind of experience that we’d had in the preparation stage.”

  Mel’s impatience quickly extended to the cast, and he soon found himself in a head-on conflict with the mountainous Mostel. The first time Zero couldn’t perform with just the inflection Mel wanted, Mel saw the entire project slipping from his grasp. After several faulty takes, he started to shout, “Goddam it, why can’t you . . .” but Mostel turned his head like a roving artillery gun and barked, “One more tone like that and I’m leaving.”

  By the end of the first week, Brooks and Mostel headed two enemy camps. On one side was the enormous booming actor with a presence, a range, and an inclination to go overboard with semicomic ad-lib insult that could wither an innocent recipient to his ankles. On the other, a short, sinewy, panther-eyed director whose operating temperature was each day rising closer and closer to his flash point. “Is that fat pig ready yet?” Mel would sputter. “The director?” said Zero. “What director? There’s a director here? That’s a director?”

  The tense mood soon enveloped every aspect of the production. The actors found the overwrought director repeatedly dissatisfied with their performances. He began to insult and batter them, and sometimes his impatience became merciless. He seemed to feel that the crew, who inevitably had many idle moments, were malingering, and this aroused their resentment. He nearly blew an interview with a reporter from the Times: “What the fuck do you want!” he asked the astonished woman, as Sidney Glazier, eager for the publicity, sank into despair. At lunch time when the gofer wrote down the orders, Mel rushed over to supervise: the roast beef gets the Russian dressing, don’t forget the mustard on the side, make sure they’re the new pickles, not the old, the half-sour pickles, two sugars for every coffee, remember Glazier gets the lean brisket. . . .

  In a Viennese-style cafe called the Blue Gypsy Max Bialystock charms one of the love-starved old ladies who invest in his productions. He whispers in her ear and she draws back giggling: “You’re incorrigible, Bialy!” They raise their champagne glasses. She: “Here’s to the success of your new play.” Bialystock: “Our play, my love.” They entwine their arms in a disastrously executed toast that ends with her spilling the champagne down his vest. She: “Oh, Bialy, I’m so sorry. Did I wet you?” Bialystock: “Think nothing of it, my dear. A mere trifle, a mere trifle. Did you bring the checkee?” She: “Oh, yes. I have it right here in my purse, and I made it out just as you told me—to ’Cash.’ That’s a funny name for a play,” she adds as she takes out the check.

  Suddenly Mel bursts in making gestures as if to pull his hair out. Fourteen times they’ve gone this far and fourteen times he’s cut the action. It’s something about the way she says “Cash” or the way she clutches the check to her bosom after kissing it. Involuntary flickers of desperation are twitching on her face now, but Mel can only see the dollar signs floating by. Every day costs twenty thousand dollars. That’s twenty-five hundred an hour. How many delays can he endure before the investors muscle in? A fifteenth take and the actress is in tears.

  “Oh, yes. I have it right here in my purse, and I made it out just as you told me—to ‘Cash.’ That’s a funny name for a play.” “Think nothing of it, my dear,” says the implacable Mostel, but before he can get the check from her, the roving violinist reaches their table and serenades the old buzzard. Angered by the intrusion, Bialystock refills his glass with champagne and dispenses the rest of the bottle’s contents by pouring it down the violinist’s trousers. Carried away by his own performance, the minstrel is slow to realize his predicament, but when he does, his rapt expression sours and he slinks away from the table. As the victorious Bialystock seizes the check from the old lady’s breast, Mel again rushes in boiling with disapproval. For the umpteenth time the violinist failed to achieve the perfect reaction of anguish and surprise when he realized his pants were wet. The initial amusement of the observers on the set had by now turned to dismay and embarrassment, for none of us could understand the director’s displeasure. Zero had to empty some twenty bottles down the poor man’s groin before Br
ooks relented.

  “I think Mel probably suffered more than anyone else in the making of that movie,” says producer Glazier, who spent many hours with Brooks after work, sometimes till early in the morning because Mel had difficulty sleeping. “At the end of the day his face would turn gray from fatigue.”

  In the mornings at eight-thirty we viewed the dailies from the day before, and Glazier, himself a hothead and the one person in a position to criticize Mel and remind him of the financial imperative to keep moving, learned during the first week to refrain from mentioning any flaws he saw in the material. “There were certain things you just couldn’t say to him,” says Glazier, who survived the film with an affection for Brooks that lasts to this day. “Mike Hertzberg”—the assistant director—“said more to him than anybody, because Mike worked for him. Mike was his boy, his assistant, and more often than not Mel would listen to him. But everybody else was a threat. Everybody else was the enemy. There was always a moment when you felt he would kill you. His face would turn white, his jaw would come out—and it was not so much a question of physical fear; how could you fear him? He was a little guy. But he terrified me, because I always felt he was going to do something that would blow the picture.”

  One day as Mel was about to launch yet another of his tormented takes, he walked over to Sidney, who was biting his lip on the sidelines, and told him he could not endure his presence on the set. Glazier’s first reaction was to say, “I’m the producer, I’m staying.” But he thought better of antagonizing Mel, and left the set for good.