I called my trusty writing sidekicks Ronny Graham and Tom Meehan, who had served me so well on To Be or Not to Be. They agreed with me that we could have a ball writing our space spoof Spaceballs—a title I came up with that immediately clicked with both of them.
The first thing that popped into my mind was the familiar opening crawl of every Star Wars movie in which they tell their galactic story. If I was going to do a satire of space movies, I would definitely need to have some fun with that opening crawl. We copied their visual format of a receding scroll of information, but put our own twist on it:
Once upon a time warp…
In a galaxy very, very, very, very far away there lived a ruthless race of beings known as…Spaceballs.
Chapter Eleven.
The evil leaders of planet Spaceball, having foolishly squandered their precious atmosphere, have devised a secret plan to take every breath of air from their peace-loving neighbor, Planet Druidia.
Today is Princess Vespa’s wedding day. Unbeknownst to the princess but knownst to us, danger lurks in the stars above…
And then in smaller print we wrote:
If you can read this, you don’t need glasses.
We cut from the crawl to our needlessly enormous, outsized spaceship. The Spaceballs’ super galactic ship is so big it takes nearly two minutes to make its way across the screen （which is almost an eternity in movie time!）。 Finally, at the tail end we see its bumper sticker, it reads: WE BRAKE FOR NOBODY.
The plot of Spaceballs was inspired by Frank Capra’s 1934 classic It Happened One Night. Frank Capra was a groundbreaking pioneer in filmmaking. He was the first director to get his name above the title of a picture, and together with sharp and witty screenwriter Robert Riskin, they made a formidable creative team. It Happened One Night was the first film to sweep the Oscars, winning all five top categories—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It is the story of a runaway heiress （Claudette Colbert） who escapes her marriage by fleeing on her wedding day from a very, very rich but very, very dull groom and then she subsequently falls in love with an attractive wise-guy commoner （Clark Gable）。
We took that same basic plot and shoved it into space! Instead of a Princess Leia we had a Princess Vespa of Planet Druidia. She flees from her wedding to the aptly named Prince Valium and instead she falls for Lone Starr, a good-looking vagabond space bum in the vein of Han Solo. For Princess Vespa we got Daphne Zuniga, who had recently starred in Rob Reiner’s film The Sure Thing.
When I first offered her the role she said, “I don’t know. I haven’t done much comedy.”
I said, “That could be a plus!” And I explained to her that part of good comedy is playing it very seriously.
For Lone Starr, I found another newcomer, Bill Pullman. He had only done one picture before. I had seen him in an Off Broadway play, and he had charm, presence, and I knew he was the right guy for the part. He proved me right and he delivered Lone Starr lock, stock, and barrel.
In place of Han Solo’s co-pilot, Chewbacca, we created a half-man, half-dog character named Barf, who would play Lone Starr’s furry sidekick. He was played by the big, warm, lovable John Candy. We outfitted him with doggy ears and a swishing tail that sometimes had a mind of its own. Twisting an old cliché, we wrote a great line for Barf, “I’m a ‘mawg’—I’m half-man, half-dog…I’m my own best friend.”
Instead of a futuristic spacecraft, we decided to put our heroes in a Winnebago RV. Of course, it was decked out with ramjet engines and some space bells and whistles, but in the end, it was a strange but wonderful salute to what you’d see on any highway in America. A good old-fashioned Winnebago!
When the Winnebago crash-lands in the desert, John Candy ad-libbed one of the big laughs in the movie. As he undoes his seatbelt after the crash he quips: “Well, that’s going to leave a mark.”
Lone Starr and Barf had the task of rescuing the runaway princess from the clutches of the Spaceballs, whose monster ship was quickly catching up to her. They reach her in the nick of time and get her aboard their Winnebago.
She imperiously announces herself when she enters their ship:
Princess Vespa: I am Princess Vespa, daughter of Roland, King of the Druids.
Lone Starr: Oh great. That’s all we needed. A Druish princess.
Barf: Funny, she doesn’t look Druish.
Another brilliant casting choice, who happened to be a former co-star of John Candy’s from the great Second City TV series, was the uniquely gifted and hilarious Rick Moranis. Rick played our comic take on the villainous, evil Darth Vader. We called him Dark Helmet, and because Rick was short, we decided to literally encase him in a huge black helmet. The giant helmet is a sight gag that works every time. It was a big, dumb, funny idea. It was the kind of cartoonish joke that worked for adults as well as kids. Rick was hysterically funny in the role. He cost me a lot of money because I ruined so many takes he was in by helplessly breaking into loud laughter. He brilliantly improvised one of his most famous scenes in the movie, the one in which he gets caught playing with little action-figure versions of Lone Starr, Princess Vespa, and himself.