He said, “Only you know that!” Then he said, “Believe me, it’s the last thing any new administration of a movie studio wants to see in the financial section of the newspapers.”
So scrupulously listening to Emile, I made the call. I invited the new heads of the studio to this mythical press conference with The Wall Street Journal. When they asked why and I explained my reasons, the shit hit the fan. In no time, they were all up in my office—the new studio chief, the new head of business affairs, the new head of distribution, and a whole herd of lawyers.
They screamed, “We can sue you for blackmail!”
I countered with, “Sue me! Sue me! Shoot bullets through me!” from Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser’s Guys & Dolls. （It was wasted on them.）
Anyway, to make a long story short, they argued amongst themselves for a few minutes and came to the realization that publicity like that would doom not only the studio’s stock price, but also their own personal career reputations. So like Emile Buyse wisely predicted, they caved in and honored the contract. And thanks to Emile, Brooksfilms won the foreign distribution rights to History of the World, Part I.
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Let me tell you a little bonus story vis-à-vis History of the World, Part I. I was in Europe with Emile Buyse doing publicity for the now Brooksfilms-owned foreign release of the film. When we came to Italy, I was scheduled to appear on a very popular TV show hosted by the Italian Johnny Carson, Ezio Greggio, who hosts the now-long-running program Striscia la Notizia which in English means something like “The Snakey News.” I loved working with Ezio from the first moment that I met him. I spoke a little Italian, he spoke a lot of heavily Italian-accented English, and we hit it off immediately. That was quite a while ago, and we’ve remained great friends to this day.
On that show, I did a comedy bit about the sound of various languages. Ezio would give me a word in English and ask me how it was pronounced in Italian, Spanish, French, and finally in German. Whatever the word was, it always sounded lovely in Italian, Spanish, and French. But when it came to German, I went crazy. For instance, Ezio would give me the word “handkerchief.” It sounded beautiful in Italian, fazzoletto, in Spanish, pa?uelo, and in French, mouchoir. But when it came to German, I left reality behind and went into a Hitlerian rage punctuated with a torrent of guttural explosions. My fake German translation of “handkerchief,” complete with gobs of spittle flying from my mouth sounded something like: “ARRANGA SCHUTZEN PLOTZIN KNOCK FLUGEN SCHNITTZZEL-BLOGENBOMB!” The audience roared with laughter! It brought down the house.
Chapter 18
Brooksfilms, Part II
In 1982 Eric Bergren and Christopher De Vore, the gifted screenwriters of The Elephant Man, came to me with an idea for another film. They wanted to do the life story of Frances Farmer, the beautiful actress who rose to fame in the 1930s and then suffered a nervous collapse and was in serious emotional distress. She was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution against her will, which only worsened her condition. It’s a tragic story that once again Christopher and Eric captured in a moving and unforgettable screenplay. Aiding Christopher and Eric in fashioning the script was the son of famed director Elia Kazan, Nicholas Kazan. I really loved their script and wanted Brooksfilms to make it.
Jonathan Sanger came on as producer for Brooksfilms and Randy Auerbach acted as his assistant. For the director of the film, Jonathan found Graeme Clifford, an accomplished film editor who would be directing his first feature film. So once again Brooksfilms was rolling the dice with a relatively unknown filmmaker.
But we weren’t taking chances with who would play the lead role. We got one of the best actresses ever to walk in front of a camera: the beautiful and gifted Jessica Lange. Her performance as Frances Farmer was absolutely unforgettable. It earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Sadly, she didn’t win. But strangely enough, Jessica still won an Oscar that year. She was also nominated and won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the movie Tootsie, starring my old pal Dustin Hoffman. （I think unconsciously the members of the Academy were giving it to her for Frances, but that’s my own private opinion.） Anyway, I am very proud that Frances is one of the special films in our Brooksfilms library.
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One of the few comedies that Brooksfilms made was also released in 1982. My Favorite Year is a movie that recalls my early days as a comedy writer in television. A screenwriter named Dennis Palumbo wrote an early draft of the movie for Mike Gruskoff, my producer from Young Frankenstein. Mike thought it needed a lot more work before it was up to snuff. He told me it had real potential, and of course I was interested because of my fond memories of working with Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows. We both decided to hire Norman Steinberg, who had worked with me on Blazing Saddles, and he took Dennis’s first draft of the script and did a truly wonderful job rewriting it into the movie that we hoped to make. It was my love letter to Sid Caesar and the early days of television, and it was also a damn good story.