Which brings me back to Fatso, which was not only comedic but was sometimes a serious and heartbreaking story. I loved Anne’s script and I wanted to get it made, but I had to be careful not to put my name on it because I didn’t want to mislead the audience into thinking it was a laugh riot. Or steal undeserved credit for something that belonged solely to Anne. So even though I was the producer of the film, I assiduously kept my name off the screen. Brooksfilms was formed so that I could produce films that were more serious. I didn’t want to be trapped into only making comic fare for the rest of my life. I wanted to help produce any and all movies that touched me, inspired me, and deserved to be made. Fatso was the first.
I have worked with producers all my life. For the most part, I had great relationships with my producers, starting with Sidney Glazier, through Mike Hertzberg, Michael Gruskoff, and of course my great friendship and partnership with Laddie at Twentieth Century Fox. That certainly prepared me to be a producer myself because I knew every single issue and struggle a writer and a director had to go through to make a film. The challenge for me was to find and nurture talented filmmakers. At this point in my life, I knew real talent when I saw it. The second and most important challenge for me was to hold back. I was so used to managing every aspect of production, from the initial idea, the first time a pencil touched a piece of paper, all the way through to the final cut, what the audience got to see on the screen. I had to figure out a balance, how to help and manage the process, without suppressing anyone else’s creative vision. And Brooksfilms was the answer. I helped where help was needed, and was hands off when I realized I might be interfering in the filmmaker’s vision. When I first opened Brooksfilms, my motto, my mission statement, was “Give talented people room to express their vision.”
Unlike many producers, I tried not to micromanage. As a director, I worked hard to keep producers out of the editing room, because they would want to make changes. As a producer, I wanted to create a space where writers and directors could thrive without the producer’s heavy hand. When I directed, my writers were always on the set with me. We wrote something together and rewrote it and I always solicited their opinions. Sometimes I took their advice and sometimes I didn’t. But I always encouraged opinions and I always listened to what was offered.
Brooksfilms was a big undertaking and needed to be staffed with smart people who understood what was needed to make a good picture. Before I go further let me tell you about two people who were unsung heroes in Brooksfilms’s success. The first was Leah Zappy, who started as Anne’s assistant on Fatso. Leah was recommended to me by Stuart Cornfeld, and after Fatso was finished, she quickly became both my and Brooksfilms’s chief cook and bottle washer—managing every aspect of day-to-day production. Who would have dreamed that that would be the beginning of an invaluable twenty-nine-year relationship? Leah later became a post-production supervisor and associate producer on many of my movies and is to this day a wonderful friend.
The other person who came on board around this time was Randy Auerbach, daughter of the famous Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach. （By the way, she turned us all into Celtics fans.） Randy was recommended by Jonathan Sanger and Mark Johnson, who were my first and second assistant directors on High Anxiety. She started as my assistant and later transitioned to developing many successful Brooksfilms pictures—the first of which came to me from the aforementioned Jonathan Sanger.
Hollywood has always worked in mysterious ways. How and why a movie comes to the screen is always a quirk of fate. It seems that Jonathan’s babysitter had a boyfriend who was a screenwriter, and his name was Christopher De Vore. And he and his writing partner, Eric Bergren, had written a screenplay called The Elephant Man. It is the beautiful and true story of Joseph Merrick, an Englishman born with severe deformities in the 1800s, who uses his disfigurement to earn a living as “the Elephant Man,” performing in carnival “freak shows.” A sympathetic doctor, Frederick Treves, takes Joseph in and helps him to fit in and become a member of regular society. When I finished reading the screenplay I was deeply moved by the story and told Jonathan that I wanted Brooksfilms to make it.
I had a clear challenge: How does a guy who has gained a reputation as a top comedy filmmaker garnering some of his biggest laughs with cowboys sitting around a campfire and loudly farting go on to make such a serious, dramatic, and touching film as The Elephant Man? Again, like with Fatso, Brooksfilms was the answer. I knew that if the Mel Brooks name was up there, at the first shot of the Elephant Man, the audience would be ready to laugh, which would’ve been so very wrong for such a poignant story. So once again not to confuse the audience I carefully kept my name off the screen.