Funny Man

by Patrick McGilligan

  Aging actresses struggle for substantial roles in an industry that prizes youth and beauty, and Bancroft herself said she stopped going to dailies after Point of No Return. By the 1990s, she was already a two-time Tony winner, an Oscar winner for The Miracle Worker, and a five-time Academy Award nominee. She’d been nominated multiple times for a television Emmy, finally winning in 1999 for her supporting role as the once-raped mother who gives up her child for adoption in Deep in My Heart. Arguably one of the most honored actresses of her generation, perhaps Bancroft did play “decreasingly important parts” in motion pictures as time passed, as playwright William Gibson was quoted as saying after her death, and too often as “somebody’s drunken mother-in-law.” But that point of view is unnecessarily harsh. Even when the roles were fleeting, when the pictures lacked prestige or significance, Bancroft gave distinctive performances and the critics, so hard on her husband (in his opinion), often saved up their praise for her.

  Funny no longer made as much money for Brooks, and “Exec was (more than ever) dreck”—the second half of Dave Caesar’s pronouncement. The producing was as much hard work as the comedy. Brooks’s meteoric filmmaking career was winding down, although Hollywood and the public—and probably Brooks himself—did not realize it yet.

  With US studio support increasingly problematic, Brooks forged a pact between Brooksfilms and Le Studio Canal+, a subsidiary of a French cable network, which agreed to put up 40 percent of the budgets of three to five inexpensive productions in return for percentages of their foreign exhibition, broadcast, and video monies. MGM-Pathé (it was one of Alan Ladd’s last acts) was the partner for US rights and distribution. Out of that agreement emerged The Vagrant, the last official Brooksfilms production—that is, the last film the company made without Brooks writing, directing, or starring. The director in this case was special effects maestro Chris Walas, who had also directed The Fly II.

  The Richard Jefferies script concerned a nebbishy business analyst (played by Bill Paxton) who tries to evict a creepy derelict (Marshall Bell) from a property he has acquired. Their psychological warfare escalates into grisly violence.

  Roughly half of the Brooksfilms productions boasted a horror component, but The Vagrant was an offbeat horror-comedy. Brooks’s hand in the script is suggested by the wacky names of characters (Mrs. Howler and Lieutenant Barfuss) and the manifest potty humor (penis and urination jokes aplenty). The only credit he took was executive producer.

  Whether The Vagrant was “not remotely funny . . . gruesomely violent . . . [and] routine” at best (Chicago Tribune) or “the perfect mix of horror and comedy” (according to Fangoria, a genre fanzine) depended on taste—and catching up with the cheaply made quickie. It was shown in precious few US theaters. That had always been the plan: to send The Vagrant overseas and focus on the video market Brooks prided himself on maximizing.

  Writers had a harder life than actors, Brooks constantly reminded his wife. Writers began the day with a blank page and had to face many blank pages before they finished a novel, a stage play, or a motion picture script. Surprisingly often in his career, what was written on that first blank page—the original story for a Mel Brooks comedy—came from elsewhere. Frequently as well, the story idea was supremely obvious as spoof material, could easily have come from him, and therefore struck an immediate chord with him.

  Robin Hood: Men in Tights was déjà vu all over again. When Norman Steinberg read in Variety, in January 1993, that Robin Hood and his merry men were going to be the subject of the next Mel Brooks comedy, he instantly viewed the project as overlapping with When Things Were Rotten, the short-lived television series Steinberg and Brooks had developed in the mid-1970s. He and Brooks had brainstormed bits, scenes, and characters that had fallen by the wayside, some of it stripped out by the network—including Brooks’s customary “fag” humor about the merry men prancing around in tights.

  Steinberg, who had also cowritten Blazing Saddles and My Favorite Year, phoned his friend. “Mel,” he asked good-naturedly, “when do you want me to sue you—now or after the film comes out?” Brooks was outraged: “How dare you? How dare you?!” They argued. The new project was bound to borrow stuff from When Things Were Rotten, Steinberg insisted. They mined the same comic territory and sensibility. The furious Brooks didn’t budge. One Robin Hood comedy was not the same as another, he said.

  Steinberg backed down and hung up. “I was just kidding about suing Mel,” he reflected. “I would never sue Mel. I just wanted him to know that it was not right.”

  No doubt Robin Hood had been “one of my great childhood heroes,” in Brooks’s words. He’d done Sid Caesar skits about Robin Hood, and the 2000 Year Old Man was also acquainted with the outlaw (he had answered Carl Reiner’s question “Did Robin Hood really steal from the rich and give to the poor?” with “No, he didn’t—he stole from everybody and kept everything”). In the early 1980s, when When Things Were Rotten failed, Brooks had even paid for a serious script about Robin Hood and then shelved it.

  Despite all that deep background, the idea for Robin Hood: Men in Tights was launched not on a blank page in Brooks’s hands but in a Beverly Hills dentist’s chair.

  Dr. Evan Chandler, in his late forties, was a “dentist to the stars,” with show business patients who included studio executive Sherry Lansing, actor Christian Slater, and actress Carrie Fisher. Fisher later wrote about Dr. Chandler in her memoir Shockaholic, confessing that she had undergone several nonemergency surgeries by Chandler in exchange for the morphine he supplied her; he had provided similar services for other celebrity patients, she wrote.

  Dr. Chandler nursed ambitions of becoming a movie producer. One day, he had a new patient, a young, aspiring actor-writer from New Jersey named J. David Shapiro. Dr. Chandler befriended Shapiro, took him to dinner, and told him about one of his patients, Emile Buyse, the head of foreign marketing for Brooksfilms. Dr. Chandler had an “in,” he said, through Buyse, with Mel Brooks. All he needed was the right comedy script.

  A huge fan of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Shapiro proposed a comedy called “Robbin’ the Hood,” which would lampoon Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, and all the many other Robin Hoods that had come before. (Prince of Thieves starring Costner was a humorless drama made two years before that critics loved to hate, but it had grossed almost $400 million worldwide.) Dr. Chandler gave Shapiro a little seed money to develop a script over a period of weeks. Shapiro tailored it for Brooks, writing in all the sorts of things he imagined Brooks would love, including a character for Brooks to play: the roving wine seller and cut-rate circumciser (“half off”), Rabbi Tuckman. Shapiro also wrote in a small part for himself: Will Scarlet O’Hara.

  Dr. Chandler corrected the spelling and grammar and made minor suggestions for improvements. Shapiro’s spec script went to Buyse, who knew of Brooks’s fascination with Robin Hood and his constant need for story ideas. Brooks got the script on a weekend, and on Monday morning Buyse phoned Dr. Chandler to send Shapiro in.

  Shapiro had written a perfect imitation of Brooks: the spec script had rap music and silly songs, as well as all the major characters of the eventual film, including Maid Marian with her chastity belt, and most of the minor ones including the “bizarre-looking, witch-like” Latrine and Rabbi Tuckman (“a cute little man with a beard”). Right away Brooks got along splendidly with Shapiro, who knew his films and laughed at all his jokes.

  At first Brooks wanted to take the project to Paramount, where he thought he could get an optimum deal. When Paramount passed, Brooks was taken aback and none too pleased since he thought his name—as guarantor of quality—should have been enough to get the backing. He then offered the project to MGM-Pathé and 20th Century–Fox, putting his name on the title page of the script, first before Shapiro’s. That angered Shapiro, who confronted Brooks. “Look,” Brooks explained defensively, “no one knows who you are. This will help get it set up. Once it is set up, I’ll take my name off the script.”

  MGM
-Pathé and 20th Century–Fox both made offers, but 20th Century–Fox proposed the more advantageous division of spoils, paving the way for Brooks to return to the studio of his heyday, when it had once been good to be king of the lot. 20th Century–Fox agreed to put up half of the estimated $20 million production budget in return for domestic rights, with the rest of the money coming from Sony in the United States and Gaumont in France, another Paris business partner that was eager to invest in a comedy by Brooks, now practically a French national hero. Columbia TriStar was pieced in to handle the foreign sales and distribution.

  Joe Roth had taken over as the head of 20th Century–Fox, but he left the studio shortly after approving the Robin Hood comedy, and executive vice president Tom Jacobson became the in-house shepherd of the project. One thing nobody liked was Shapiro’s title, “Robbin’ the Hood,” which Brooks thought implied a black Robin Hood and which was too close to the Black Bart of Blazing Saddles. Even so, for a while they batted around the idea of Eddie Murphy as Robin Hood. Brooks’s working title was no better: “Robin Hood: The True Story.”

  One day, mulling over possible titles, Jacobson said he liked the lyric in a Shapiro ditty in the script that sang of manly men wearing panty hose. Remembering something Kevin Costner had once said in an interview—that Robin and his merry men had never worn tights—Shapiro suggested they change the lyric to “Men in Tights” and use that as the title. Jacobson guffawed. More important, Brooks didn’t say, “That’s funny”; he roared with laughter. Everyone knew that was big, coming from Brooks. They had their title.

  Brooks and Shapiro launched into story conferences to hone the shooting script—just the two of them, the smallest Club Brooks since Young Frankenstein. What could be better than to collaborate with a living genius of comedy? Quickly, however, Shapiro discovered that Brooks was wedded to the kind of reminiscent humor he had popularized in previous films. At a time when Tracey Ullman, Garry Shandling, Jerry Seinfeld, and others were rewriting the boundaries of edgy modern comedy, Brooks was clinging to his traditional ideas and old favorite shtick. He gave Shapiro videos to watch of When Things Were Rotten. He was incorrigible about wanting to recycle familiar stuff: the camera would break a window during Maid Marian’s toilette; Prince John would have a roving face mole, comparable to Marty Feldman’s mobile hunched back in Young Frankenstein; the Sheriff of Rottingham would—Brooks insisted—tell his guards to “Walk this way!” If critics winced, fans lapped up the self-referencing humor.

  Apart from a preoccupation with the character he was going to play, Rabbi Tuckman, Brooks made only a modest contribution to the characters and to a plot that was already established in the spec script. He did not alter the content or sequence of scenes; he mainly injected humor into the names of characters and places in the story, inserted his usual silly puns and wordplay, and mapped out the sight gags he’d toss in here and there.

  Although he and Dr. Chandler did not meet until after the deal was signed, Brooks felt an instant aversion to the dentist, and Chandler sided with Shapiro whenever there was an argument. So did Tom Jacobson on occasion. There was little of the usual Club Brooks camaraderie. The boss could get his way only by shouting, and not always then.

  Shapiro stubbornly resisted Brooks, defending his scenes, characters, and dialogue, many of them originally crafted to please the comedian. Brooks screamed and screamed at the novice, who feared he was going to be witness to Brooks having a heart attack. Brooks usually backed off when Shapiro stood his ground, however. He seemed constantly distracted by other obligations and impatient to launch the filming.

  As much as 75 percent of the spec script remained intact, according to behind-the-scenes sources, and Shapiro wrote close to 25 percent of the new material. He also contributed heavily to the songs, on which, ultimately, only Brooks’s name appeared.

  The situation became more complicated when Dr. Chandler asked Shapiro if they might share the script credit. With Brooks as his enemy, the dentist was not feeling confident about his producer’s credit. He wanted some credit. Shapiro felt grateful to Dr. Chandler and thought the dentist had been fair and good to him. Shapiro said yes.

  Shapiro and Dr. Chandler had long since decided that Brooks had not contributed very much to the final form of the shooting script when, later in time, Brooksfilms submitted its proposed official accreditation to the Writers Guild, which was obligatory for the producer of any movie. According to Brooksfilms, Shapiro and Chandler ought to share the story credit (with an ampersand signaling their partnership), while only Brooks and Shapiro should be listed for the script—with Brooks’s name appearing first.

  Shapiro and Dr. Chandler maintained their alliance, filing for arbitration with the Guild, insisting that Brooks had claimed more credit than he deserved. That was a thorny issue because Brooks was a Guild VIP, admired by many writers and increasingly by the younger membership. Brooks muddied the waters by publicly repeating the fillip, a joke of Shapiro’s, that Dr. Chandler’s teenage son, Jordan, had contributed a few jokes to the script—which Jordan had, by hanging around during meetings at Chandler’s home.

  According to sources, a preliminary Guild committee, after comparing the original draft with the shooting script, sided with Shapiro and Dr. Chandler. The partners were awarded the shared story and script credit. But Brian Walton, the executive director of the Writers Guild, took Shapiro aside. “It would be best if you gave Brooks equal credit on the script,” he cautioned Shapiro. Why? the young writer demanded. Because Brooks was threatening to bring in a big gun, the powerful entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, and sue the Guild if necessary. Walton was afraid of Fields and enamored of Brooks.

  When the partners refused to budge, the issue was sent back to a special hearing for another review. Dr. Chandler’s claim as a writer had taken Brooks by surprise, and Shapiro’s explanation of Chandler’s input was garbled. The ultimate ruling gave Shapiro and Chandler shared story and script credit and listed Shapiro first on the story because of his primacy. Yet the ruling also gave Brooks a script credit with first position, supposedly because of alphabetical order. (Spaceballs, by comparison, had listed, nonalphabetically, Brooks’s name first, followed by Thomas Meehan’s and Ronny Graham’s.) Chandler was given the sop of associate producer, a credit that demeaned his ambitions.

  The whole imbroglio especially irked Brooks because he had enjoyed Shapiro’s company and gone out of his way to include the young writer in all phases of the production, right down to the major casting decisions. He recognized Shapiro as the “voice” of the project, and Shapiro made him laugh. But Shapiro did not return Brooks’s affection. Writers were usually welcome on the sets of Brooks comedies, but this time the main writer was scarce. Shapiro walked off angrily after Brooks reneged on his promise to let him play Will Scarlet O’Hara, and he refused all invitations to the filming—renewed almost daily by phone calls from Brooks or members of his staff.*

  Because J. David Shapiro’s deft script had come in over the transom, the filming was able to begin shortly after the project was unveiled in early 1993. Brooks cast as Robin Hood an actor whose handsome looks evoked Errol Flynn: the charming British Cary Elwes from Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride. “Unlike some other Robin Hoods,” Elwes declares in the film, a dig at Kevin Costner, “I can speak with an English accent.”

  The other performers in the potpourri ensemble included Amy Yasbeck, briefly a member of the Nutt House cast and now sexy Maid Marian; the stage veteran and Tony winner Roger Rees as the tongue-twisted Sheriff of Rottingham; the neurotic comedian Richard Lewis as the neurotic Prince John; Dom DeLuise as Don Giovanni, sending up a cotton-mouthed Don Corleone; Patrick Stewart as King Richard doing the same with Sean Connery, another former Robin Hood (Robin and Marian in 1976); plus the veteran funnyman Avery Schreiber, the old reliable Dick Van Patten, the soul singer Isaac Hayes, and the up-and-comer Dave Chappelle.

  Madeline Kahn’s biographer reported that Brooks tried to inveigle her into playing the role of fi
lthy Latrine, Prince John’s cook and soothsayer, but Kahn demurred and the short part went instead to Tracey Ullman as payback for Brooks’s guest appearance on her TV show.

  Brooks had a new director of photography, Michael D. O’Shea, who would stick around for Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and a new editor, Stephen E. Rivkin. Missing for the first time, however, was his longtime confrere John Morris. Morris had grown weary of Brooks’s sudden late-night appearances at his house for protracted discussions about music, and he had said nevermore. Brooks filled in, now and later for Dracula, with Hummie Mann, a Canadian-born composer for Emmy telecasts. With the help of one of those classic tunes that was expected in a Mel Brooks score (the Billy Rose–Irving Kahal “The Night Is Young and You’re So Beautiful”), the music was sprightly and the song credits were shared except for the title tune, which was credited to Brooks alone.

  Brooks never worked more efficiently to get his shots and angles and later his final cut, sound effects, and musical scoring. Announced in January and shot in the early months of 1993, Robin Hood: Men in Tights was ready for theaters by the end of July.

  The heavy advance television advertising, with a clever 20th Century–Fox trailer that broke people up (an arrow mimicking Kevin Costner’s supersolemn Robin Hood, missing and splitting a tree), heightened anticipation. The studio laid on a lavish media junket, flying a hundred journalists into Los Angeles from all around the nation—mainly interviewers, not reviewers—for a stay at the Four Seasons and a day with the stars and Brooks.

  The comedian shamelessly insisted that, like Life Stinks, there was a socially conscious subtext to his new version of the Robin Hood legend. “I’m always questioning the current socio-economic values,” Brooks told the press. “I’m always pointing the finger.”

  Only a small number of critics saw the latest Brooks comedy as Variety did, however, as heralding a return to form: “a primer of all the familiar and visual jokes in his bag of tricks . . . a paean to the obvious that is more delight than retread.” Gene Siskel, cohost of the Siskel and Ebert program Sneak Previews on PBS, ranked the film among the worst comedies of the year. Rita Kempley in the Washington Post described Robin Hood: Men in Tights as “about as funny as a buttload of boils,” its humor suffering from too many mentions of “pansies, fabalas and fruits” and other “broadsides derogatory to women and the one interest group you can readily afford to offend on film—blind folks.”