David Begelman, once my agent and still a good friend, had now risen to the rank of studio chief and he was the president of MGM at the time, which was financing My Favorite Year.
“No, no!” I exclaimed to Richard. “Bad move. Any time you go to a studio executive’s office and ask for money they’ll invariably say no.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Once they sit behind that big desk in their grand office they are puffed up and feel like kings. And kings are wont to say no. What we have to do is run into him in the hallway either going to or coming back from lunch or even better—catch him in the men’s room.”
（Where nobody feels like a king.）
We didn’t catch him in the men’s room, but we slyly followed him back from lunch and caught him in the hallway. I casually said, “David! I’m so glad I ran into you. We’re gonna need another couple of hundred thousand to finish the picture. Can I count on you?”
And being my old agent, dear friend, and caught off guard, he said, “No problem. You got it.”
Richard Benjamin, jumping for joy said, “I can’t believe it. You’re a goddamn magician.”
Studio executives are funny people. If you need something from them it’s always good to find out what kind of a mood they’re in first. Check with their secretary or fellow filmmakers who’ve recently dealt with them. They can be wonderful, friendly, and supportive like Laddie, or they can behave like downright tyrants. It depends on their personality and their mood.
Rumor has it that Frank Yablans, who together with Robert Evans was running Paramount during the Godfather movies period, was not an easy executive to deal with. When he left Paramount and moved his production company to Fox, he had a big office on the third floor—not far from mine. So occasionally, I would see him in the hallway, and we’d exchange greetings. One day when I was pulling up to my parking space in the executive building’s parking area, Yablans, who had an adjoining space, pulled up next to me. At the time I was driving a beat-up silver metallic Honda Civic. Yablans pulled up in a big black shiny Rolls-Royce, replete with a lush red leather interior. He got out of his car and looked at my car, which next to his looked like a dented tin can with wheels.
He said, “Mel…I’ll never be big enough to drive a car like that.”
Surprisingly funny line from an exec with a reputation for being a tough guy.
Chapter 19
To Be or Not to Be
By 1983, I had made a lot of movies but, except for her brief cameo in Silent Movie, I had never made one where I co-starred with my beautiful and talented wife, Anne Bancroft. And then it hit me—a wonderful movie that could be a perfect picture for Anne and me to co-star in would be a remake of To Be or Not to Be （1942）。 It was a favorite of both of ours, one of the best films made by the great director Ernst Lubitsch. And it would also reconnect me with one of my tried-and-true sources of dangerous comedy: Adolf Hitler.
Lubitsch was a cinematic hero of mine. He made what I always aimed for—a serious comedy. A lot of laughs, but always driven by something important underneath it. One of his best films was Ninotchka （1939） starring Greta Garbo, co-written by Billy Wilder. I never met Lubitsch, but I got to know Billy Wilder. My Young Frankenstein and My Favorite Year producer Mike Gruskoff and I would often take Billy to lunch.
Billy would always tell us wonderful stories, including the following: One day his secretary brought him some papers to sign and caught him staring out his office window. Her body language and facial expression told him she thought he was goofing off instead of writing.
He quickly corrected her with, “Listen, I want you to know something: When I’m looking out the window—I’m working.”
Another thing Billy told us was that at Lubitsch’s funeral he was talking with William Wyler （another great director） and Billy said, “Oh my. How sad, no more Lubitsch.”
Wyler added, “Worse than that, no more Lubitsch pictures.”
Maybe it was Wilder’s stories of Lubitsch that made me think about doing To Be or Not to Be. In the original, Carole Lombard and Jack Benny played Maria and Joseph Tura, the heads of an acting troupe during the Nazi occupation of Poland who outwit the Nazis. The bravery of Lubitsch was that he made this movie in 1941 and it was very dangerous because Hitler had actually invaded Poland. We had the benefit of hindsight. We could talk about the war and what happened. And Poland! We knew about the Polish resistance, and we knew about the underground. We knew things that Lubitsch had no idea about at the time. We had the template, the blueprint, and also the hindsight.