Poking A Dead Frog Part 27

And yet a joke takes place in Blazing Saddles that I'd imagine only a very small percentage of audience members would understand. It's in the scene when the Indian chief, played by you, comes across a group of black settlers. The character shouts to the heavens, in Yiddish, "Shvarzers, loyzem gayne!" Translated: "Blacks. Just let them go."

Right. Meaning that these blacks were no harm to the Indians. That this was a group even more downtrodden and poorly treated by whites than the Indians. Now that's an example of a joke that I think is high. You have jokes that maybe not many would understand but that serve a higher point. And the point is that there's an underlying sense of right versus wrong. The audience knew where I stood on racism and other issues. You can be silly, but you still have to hew to the underlying truth. If my heart's in the right place, I can go anywhere.

That sense of right versus wrong is consistent throughout your movies.

It is, and I think it helps when writing. I was lucky with Blazing Saddles because the black sheriff gave us a great little engine that chugged its way through the whole movie. We had lines like, "Kill the n.i.g.g.e.r! Kill him!" A lot of people, especially movie executives, mistook that for racism. But the point was understood by the audience. There would be no way for me to have written that type of a script if it didn't have that underlying sense of goodness. I wouldn't have written it otherwise. And if I did, none of the jokes would have worked. Audiences never would have liked the characters.

Were there any scenes that you had to cut out of Blazing Saddles?

The executives didn't want the farting scene kept in the movie. They wanted that out. I told them I would get rid of it, but I never touched it. Obviously, that scene, as well as others the executives didn't like, were kept.

The scenes that were eventually cut had to do with racial issues. There was an interracial love scene between Cleavon Little [who played Sheriff Bart] and Madeline Kahn [who played Lili von Shtupp] that had to be cut short. What you see in the movie is the lights go out and Madeline says, "Oh, it's true, it's true!" The joke we had written was for Cleavon to then say, "Excuse me, ma'am. I hate to disillusion you, but you're sucking on my arm." We had to tone down the racial aspect of that scene. It was too much for its time.

Blazing Saddles is now considered a comedy cla.s.sic, but at the time it wasn't loved by critics. What do you think they missed when the movie was released in 1974?

I think they missed the irony. They missed the satire. They missed the greater message. As a writer, you can appeal to the critics. It can be done. But you'd lose half the audience.

It was also the subject matter. In The Producers, which the critics also despised, the main problem was that we were dealing with a subject-n.a.z.is-that up to that point had never been dealt with. Even now it's hard to deal with. You see a film like Life Is Beautiful; it can fail miserably. You've got to know how to do it. It's tricky. You have to have the perfect vehicle, the perfect Trojan horse. For me, that vehicle was the worst musical in the world. And by using that vehicle, I could get across more serious topics. The musical became an o.r.g.a.s.m of insanity that allowed everything else.

You've had your issues over the years with those critics who never understood your work. Have your feelings toward critics mellowed?

No. I can learn from my failures when it comes to an audience. I can learn from questions like, "What didn't they like about it? Who didn't like it?" Instead of abandoning it, instead of being angry, instead of getting on my high horse and being arrogant and becoming unapproachable, I can look at why something didn't work.

But I'll never do that with a critic. Critics seem to have some personal axe to grind. They all like to be protagonists, and they all like to be in the ring with you, except they have no right to be in the ring with a creator. You should never take on a critic, ever. They may be dead right, but it's still only one person, one opinion. It is kind of a parallel universe. The critic is in show business, but at the same time, he isn't.

You once described your comedy as midnight blue, not black. What's the difference for you between those two hues?

I've never been hopeless, I've never been despondent, but sometimes I will hit tremendous lows. And I feel that I've got to show that in comedy. I need to show that characters can be despairing but not suicidal. They can be agonizingly despondent, but they will always go on to the next step; they will always get back up the ladder. Midnight blue is that thin brushstroke. It's not pitch black. It's the color just before darkness comes at sunset. Or just after the lightness arrives after sunrise.

What comes first in your creation process? Is it the idea or the characters?

The characters are everything. If you're talented, you'll find a good idea to put these characters in. You'll find a good story. But the characters are what you start with. Everything I've ever done, I've started with characters. I learn what they want, what they need. Where they need to go and how they have to go about achieving that. I listen to them. You can't just have pure action.

Before you began writing the script to The Producers, what characters were your inspiration?

For The Producers, I started with that little caterpillar who grew into a beautiful b.u.t.terfly, the little accountant with dreams, dreams, oh, such dreams of glory!, showgirls, and footlights and curtains going up and down, and an orchestra in the pit playing trills! Could little Leo Bloom [played by Gene Wilder] ever really live this life of glory and thrill? That's what I thought of. So I painted this character, this accountant, as loving theater. From there, I knew I needed a producer, a reprehensible producer, a guy s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g little old ladies on a casting couch just to raise enough money so he could have a little extra to stay in show business. Zero Mostel played that character beautifully.

For me, Zero's character, Max Bialystock, is the Id. He's the animal. Gene Wilder, playing Leo Bloom, was soulful. He was the Ego. There's a more poignant aspect to him. In the end, both characters come to realize that they need each other more than they need the money. They needed the joy of working together.

It almost sounds like the combination of high and low we were discussing earlier.

That's exactly what it is, I guess. It's that combination that I've always been fascinated with.

Is it true that you based Zero Mostel's character in The Producers on a real-life character that you knew?

I did. I worked for that guy. He was a producer; he put on shows. For one show, I worked everything: I was the stage manager, I was the a.s.sistant producer, I was even one of the actors. This was in the early forties. The play was called Separate Rooms, and it was about a theatrical event. I played a character named Scoop Davis, and I had one line, the opening line. I ran out on the stage and screamed, "We made it! It's a hit! It's the greatest thing since pay toilets!" That was my opening.

I'd put up advertising cards in barbershops for this producer. I can't tell you his name because he has grandchildren and I don't want them to know he screwed a lot of little old ladies. But that character was based on a real person. There's a line in the movie that comes from real life; it's absolutely true, I heard this guy say it. In the movie, Zero Mostel says to a little old woman, "Make out the check to Cash." And she says, "Cash? That's a funny name for a play." And he says, "Well, so is The Iceman Cometh." That comes from real life.

So you were an actor for this production?

Oh, yeah. I had worked as a performer for years as a tummler in the Catskills. A tummler is a performer who does everything. He tells jokes, he sings, he runs around like a crazy person. He'll do anything to get the audience on his side. I started working in the Catskills when I was seventeen. We did a few shows, six nights a week. And when we weren't onstage, we were busy trying to round up the guests to come to another show.

What did all that performing teach you later as a comedy writer?

That every second counts. And that's a very streetwise thing to know. Danny [Simon] and Neil [Simon] were like that. They were street guys. They took advantage of every second and every joke at their disposal. Neil Simon, he never forgot a joke. Neil once said that he never forgot anything that he ever heard that had made somebody laugh, whether he wrote it or not. That's just the type of memory he had. He didn't need to steal jokes; he was so d.a.m.n talented. But he never forgot, and that's the way you have to be.

Another thing I learned from my time spent at the Catskills is not to be afraid to take chances. To jump off into the unknown, not knowing where you'll land. To take terrifying leaps that can easily leave me bloodied.

Most of all, I knew that I did not want to push a rack of blouses in the garment center all my life. My uncle Jack was a big shot in the railway mail department in Penn Station, and he got me a job to work for a few hours a day around Christmas. I hated it. What I learned from the Catskills was that I had choices. I didn't have to end up in a job in the garment district. It's honest work, but the place reeked of stale coffee. I always hated coffee because of that. I couldn't do it. I had to get out.

You once said that in your writing you had to always get to the "ultimate punch line, the cosmic joke that all the other jokes came out of."

Why do anything else? Why not go as far as you can go, as deep as you can go? Why stop on the surface? It's so difficult to come up with a punch line to a scene or a sketch. It's so hard. The real struggle is to take a premise, the center of it, and blossom it into a punch line. I learned that at Your Show of Shows. We managed to do it because it was life or death. We fought like beasts in that room. Our backs were against the wall. And we had great guides and great leaders, like [the show's producer] Max Liebman, to tell us if a joke worked. We were told if an ending to a sketch wasn't great, and we'd have to rewrite it.

But it's almost impossible to create a great ending to a sketch. I would say we pulled it off on Your Show of Shows 50 percent of the time.

Your son Max is also a writer. He's the author of two books, The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, but for two years he was a writer on Sat.u.r.day Night Live. From what you've seen and heard, how different was the creative process for a writer on SNL versus Your Show of Shows?

You know, Sat.u.r.day Night Live is really fun, but Max was one of eighteen writers on the show. That's a lot. He slept under his desk in a sleeping bag. He got very few jokes onto the show, very few. I think he got one or two sketches in the two or three years he was there. For some of them, he'd say to me, "Why did they turn that down?" I'd answer, "I would have used that." He wrote a commercial parody for a medication that had side effects like nausea, headache, abdominal pain. Max added "sudden bouts of anti-Semitism." I think that's great. The things that could happen if you ever took this medicine . . .

Things worked differently on Your Show of Shows. We'd never throw anything out that we could piece together or sharpen.

That's a very Depression Era mentality. Never throw anything out.

Absolutely. "Why are you cutting the ends off the sandwiches just to make sandwiches for high tea? What are you doing?! You could live for years on those crusts!" Yeah, the writers grew up with that mentality, and we never threw away a joke that we thought we could eventually use.

In doing research for this interview, I was surprised to find that a major influence on your writing has been Russian literature, particularly the nineteenth-century book Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. What is it about Gogol's work that speaks to you?

Gogol had two amazing sides to him. One is human, simple, heartfelt. He had tremendous understanding of the human condition. And the other side is absolute f.u.c.king madness. Just madness. Insanity. He would write about a nose that could speak. Gogol is not bound by the rules of reality, and yet he understands how the heart beats, why it beats. What death is. What love is. He is, of all the Russian writers, my favorite. And that includes a couple of good guys like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

When did you come to Gogol?

It was through the Russian Mel Tolkin, head writer for Your Show of Shows. He said to me, "You're an animal from Brooklyn, but I think there is the beginnings of some mind, so I'd like to have you read this book and I know you'll enjoy it." And he gave me a copy of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.

And you think that affected your comedy writing?

My whole life. My whole future. I said, "Gee, creativity could be good. Writing could be good!" And Gogol also affected how I could be if I strove-if I never settled for the first joke that came into my head. In fact, Gogol is what drove Blazing Saddles to end up like it did.

How so?

For not settling for just writing a parody of Westerns. For digging deeper, for writing about subjects such as racism for blacks, racism for Mexicans, the indignity suffered by Asian railroad workers. Gogol affected my whole life.

What other comedic influences have you had over the years?

An early influence was Buster Keaton. His scenes were so crazy, but he played them with absolute reality. He never winked to an audience. Isn't this grand? Isn't this funny? That was a very important comedic lesson to learn. I've tried to do the same thing in my movies.

Another early influence was Harry Ritz and the Ritz Brothers. They were big in the thirties and forties. Harry had a physical insanity and freedom that no other character ever had. He was eyes-goes, nose-goes, mouth-goes, all-goes. He was another Jew originally from Russia. I'm ashamed to say this, but a lot of comedy for the Jews in Russia came from making fun of cripples and unfortunates. Really, they just imitated bad walks, with a hunchback, and they elicited incredible laughs. Harry Ritz was the master of wild walks and facial contortions.

With his brothers, Al and Jimmy, the Ritz Brothers would sing and dance-just perfection. As smooth as silk, every step. They would make movies that were hysterically funny.

Why did the Ritz Brothers never achieve the great fame that the Marx Brothers achieved?

The Marx Brothers were much more intellectual. They had a sense of character and story. The Ritz Brothers had a sense of the meshugenah-craziness. They were unfettered by anything normal.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I have a combination of the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers. The meshugenah and the intellectual.

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 gla.s.s of water. You wait a whole G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 a.s.sume 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 s...o...b..zzy 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. n.o.body 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.

The End: What Laughter Looks Like by EDWARD JESSEN.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

A book is never easy to write in the best of circ.u.mstances, and it's even more difficult when one doesn't have a.s.sistance. Luckily, I had plenty, and I'd like to thank those who contributed and, in the process, made my life easier: To all who sat for endless interviews.

Louise Pomeroy, for her beautiful ill.u.s.trations Eric Spitznagel, for researching and co-writing the interview introductions Lauren Mos...o...b..iley, for the first copyedit.

Lindsey Schwoeri, for the full edit Douglas Clark, for additional editing.

S. P. Nix, for the final edit.

Steve Heisler (UCB LA, Splitsider), for greatly a.s.sisting me with many of the "Pure, Hard-Core Advice" entries Bradford Evans, for additional help with the "Pure, Hard-Core Advice" entries.

Seth Olenick, for spending an afternoon photographing Jon Hamm in his unders.h.i.+rt (must have been rough) Jon Hamm, for spending an afternoon with Seth, posing in your unders.h.i.+rt (must have been rough, no sarcasm intended) Byrd Leavell at Waxman Leavell Literary Agency.

To s.h.i.+mmy, Meir, Alan, Sarah, Brandon, Cindy, Kevin, Bonnie, Howard, Reva, Ken, Jamie, Lauren, Carli, Rafi, Stacey, Bess, Chris, Bob, Marisa, Alex, Christina, Scott, Jen, Stacey Ellie and John.

Ted Travelstead and Julie Wright.

Laura Griffin, Scott Jacobson, Todd Levin, Jason Roeder, Will Tracy Robert Walsh.