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I could go on and on about our wonderful cast for Robin Hood: Men in Tights. We were so lucky to get Eric Allan Kramer as Little John, Matthew Porretta as Will Scarlet O’Hara, the great soul singer Isaac Hayes as Asneeze, and Robert Ridgely, who reprised his role in Blazing Saddles as the hangman once again. For my friend the ever-hilarious Dom DeLuise, we invented a Mafia-type don who employs a bow-and-arrow-slinging archer whose job it is to wipe out Robin Hood. At the end of the picture, we got Star Trek’s Patrick Stewart to play our beloved King Richard, who returns from the Crusades. He got a big laugh in his scene with Prince John, his evil brother:
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Switching roles from actor to director on Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
King Richard: Brother, you have surrounded your given name with a foul stench! From this day forth, all the toilets in the kingdom shall be known as…johns!
Prince John: NOOOOO-OOOOO-O!
King Richard: Take him away! Put him in the Tower of London! Make him part of the tour.
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In order to make Robin Hood: Men in Tights not just another Robin Hood story but a Mel Brooks movie, it had to break away a little.
So I had some fun writing a theme song for Robin’s Merry Men.
It went like this:
We’re men, we’re men in tights.
We roam around the forest looking for fights.
We’re men, we’re men in tights.
We rob from the rich and give to the poor, that’s right!
We may look like sissies, but watch what you say or else we’ll put out your lights!
We’re men, we’re men in tights,
Always on guard defending the people’s rights!
I lined up the Merry Men and had them do a cancan-style kick line in the middle of the song. It got a huge laugh.
One of the craziest ideas that I ever had for a film was when an army of knights in suits of armor guard Prince John’s castle. They’re lined up one after the other, barely a foot apart. That’s when we thought, What would happen if you pushed one of those knights? So during the fight at the castle, Robin swings from a chandelier and kicks the last knight in line. One after another, they all come crashing down like a never-ending row of dominoes. It was a spectacular scene. （I keep one of those suits of armor that were made for that scene in my office to this day to remind me of it!）
Among the strange happenstances that occurred while filming Robin Hood: Men in Tights was when we were a little while away from shooting on a castle site we had built in Santa Clarita, California. The surrounding grounds were parched by a drought, all yellow and brown. It looked nothing like a castle and grounds would look in England. I was thinking of actually painting the dry ground green so exterior shots of the castle would look more like it should in Nottingham. But suddenly, it started to rain! And Roy Forge Smith, our gifted production designer, sent a crew out with a ton of grass seed, which they quickly planted all around the castle. It rained nonstop for three or four days, and when we were finally ready to shoot, all the fields around the castle were covered in lush green grass. A minor miracle! Michael O’Shea, our cinematographer, captured it all in brilliant sparkling color.
I had a bunch of great people helping me make the movie behind the scenes. I got some terrific assistance from Peter Schindler, who wore two hats as executive producer and as my second unit director. In another stroke of good fortune our young editor was Stephen E. Rivkin, who later became one of the most sought-after editors in all of Hollywood. （You might have heard of a couple little movies he did called Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar.） He was invaluable in putting the picture together, and still remains to this day one of my dearest friends.
Leah Zappy, who had been with Brooksfilms from its very beginning, was now a production executive and took care of all the complicated aspects of shepherding the film through post-production and delivery. She did such a terrific job that we were both on time and slightly under budget.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights did pretty well at the box office and went on to become quite the cult favorite. Parents often tell me that they introduce Mel Brooks pictures to their kids by starting with Robin Hood.
（I imagine it takes a while longer before they let them see Blazing Saddles.）
Chapter 24
Dracula: Dead and Loving It
To me, the best cinema spoofs are made by directors who love the subject they are satirizing. I’ve never poked fun at any genre that I didn’t absolutely love. Not since Young Frankenstein had I toyed with the idea of doing another horror spoof. There were other famous monsters. Just as Boris Karloff in his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster made Frankenstein unforgettable, so Bela Lugosi did the same for Count Dracula, king of the vampires, in Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal black-and-white film Dracula.