Funny Man by Patrick McGilligan

Author:Patrick McGilligan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

1974

Tops in Taps

Warner Bros. also had no idea of the lightning about to strike, however, or the studio would not have fumbled the next Mel Brooks film. Just days before he answered the phone call offering him the part of the Waco Kid, Gene Wilder had completed “the first draft” of the script for that project: Young Frankenstein.

One day in mid-1972, while on vacation in Westhampton after finishing his role in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Wilder had sat down with a legal pad and written those two words—“Young Frankenstein”—at the top of a page. He contacted Brooks in New York, where the “Black Bart” writers were hard at work, saying he had dashed off the synopsis for a comedy about the great-grandson of Baron Beaufort von Frankenstein, a young scientist who scoffs at the Frankenstein legend until he inherits the Transylvania estate. “Cute,” said Brooks, “that’s cute. Keep at it.” Nothing more.

Wilder’s agent, Mike Medavoy, had encouraged the actor to try his hand at screenwriting, and now he urged Wilder to imagine parts in the embryonic project for Marty Feldman and Peter Boyle, because they were Medavoy’s clients, too.

A Jewish Londoner, Feldman was an eccentric comedian with protruding, misaligned eyes, who had been introduced to US audiences in the 1972 summer replacement TV series The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, produced in England by Larry Gelbart. Wilder conceived of Feldman as Igor, the hunchbacked assistant to Dr. Frankenstein, which was similar to a character in the classic 1931 Frankenstein film, based on Mary Shelley’s novel and starring Boris Karloff. Boyle was a New York actor who was perhaps best known as the pathological hard hat in Joe, a surprise low-budget hit in 1970. Boyle was just hulking enough for Wilder to envision him as the Monster.

Besides a brief synopsis, Wilder wrote an introductory scene, which takes place at Transylvania Station, “where Igor and Frederick [Dr. Frankenstein] meet for the first time, almost verbatim the way it was later filmed,” with “the EEgor and the AYEgor and the Frankenstein and the Fronkensteen.” He sent the synopsis and scene to Medavoy, who phoned him a couple of days later. Knowing of Wilder’s relationship with Brooks, Medavoy said he was going to pitch the comedy with Brooks directing. “You’re chasing the wrong rainbow,” Wilder said, “because he won’t direct anything that he didn’t write.”

A few days later Brooks phoned Wilder, asking “What are you getting me into?”

“Nothing you don’t want to get into.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know—I’m telling you I don’t know.”

Soon after, Medavoy phoned to say that Brooks had climbed on board. He had been seeking a long-term contract with Warner Bros. before the release of his Western comedy, but the deal Brooks wanted was “an expensive one,” as studio officials later told Variety, and Warner’s declined. Brooks then took Young Frankenstein to David Begelman at Columbia.

Medavoy explained that the Columbia deal was contingent on Wilder and Brooks working together on the screenplay. Wilder would write the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.