Thanks to Dom, it was hilarious.
The Twelve Chairs was my first time working with Dom DeLuise, but from then on whenever I had a character in a movie that could possibly be played by Dom, I always gave him the part. Later, he together with Marty Feldman and myself made a great threesome for Silent Movie （but more about that to come）。
When Anne wrote and directed her first movie, Fatso （1980）， she picked Dom to be her leading man to carry the picture. And boy, did he carry it. In my opinion, it was an Oscar-worthy performance. It’s a terrific film, and Anne was also sensational in it as his sister. Fatso was the first film produced by a new company I created called Brooksfilms. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I’ll tell you all about Brooksfilms later.
Here I am with the one and only Dom DeLuise, who plays Father Fyodor, the villainous Russian priest.
And here is my Russian history lesson in one street sign.
For a small part in The Twelve Chairs I also once again cast as a Russian theatrical company manager the talents of Andreas Voutsinas, who was so wonderful as Carmen Ghia in The Producers. I gave him a great line; it goes like this: “I hate people I don’t like.”
Andreas, who was Greek, would often say things in English that were twisted. Like for example, in talking about how and why you chose people for various roles when you were casting he said, “Or you got it or you ain’t.”
Simple, primitive but absolutely true. When looking for the right person for the right role Andreas’s words would always pop into my head. Those words helped me with every movie I ever made. “Or you got it or you ain’t.”
I wasn’t my first choice for the role of Tikon, who is Vorobyaninov’s loyal and devoted servant. There was a very good British actor from London that I was going to pay a couple of hundred pounds to come to Yugoslavia and play Tikon. But he got sick, so he couldn’t do it.
And I thought, What the hell? Like Anne said, I look like a Russian. My mother was born in Kiev! So, I took the part and saved the couple hundred pounds. Once I knew I was playing Tikon, I made sure that some of his dialogue was really entertaining. “Comrade. Everybody calls me comrade. Everybody in the new Soviet Union is a comrade. People you don’t know, strangers, everybody says comrade…Oh, how I miss Russia!”
And when Ostap asks Tikon, “What goes on in this house?”
I respond, “Mostly dying. It’s an old-age home for very old ladies. They tippy-toe in, they have a little bowl of porridge, and pfft! That’s it!”
I think I was good. I actually got some compliments from Pauline Kael, a well-known critic, for having a wonderful Russian accent. So that was another good bounce for me. It also started me on the road to being an actor in my own films, which I had never thought about before.
* * *
—
Let me honestly say that making a movie in Yugoslavia was both a wonderful and terrible experience. I’d say eighty-twenty. Twenty wonderful…you can figure out the rest.
If you’re going to shoot a movie in Yugoslavia （which by the way is no longer called Yugoslavia, but it’s a lot easier for me to just say Yugoslavia）， here is some advice: Don’t take a horse and wagon with you. They have plenty of those. As a matter of fact, as far as transportation was concerned, we couldn’t really go anywhere on Saturday night because Tito had the car. The one and only car in Yugoslavia at the time, a ’52 green Dodge. （I may be exaggerating, but not by much.）
The first thing they told us was that the water was undrinkable. The only safe thing to drink was a Yugoslavian bottled water “kisela voda,” a mild laxative. So I would suggest if you’re going to make a movie in Yugoslavia, don’t forget to bring a lot of toilet paper and a few hundred-watt bulbs. Because when night fell, I think the entire city was lit by two or three thirty-watt bulbs.
* * *
—
Shooting a film in Yugoslavia, where at that time maybe one out of twenty spoke something resembling English, was not an easy task. Here’s an example, I needed only one line in English from a Yugoslavian actor who would be playing a museum guard.
When I said, “Who can speak English?” One of the Yugoslavian extras stuck his hand in the air. I said, “Can you speak English?”
He said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
“Here.” And I gave him a bell. I said, “Okay, when I say ‘Action!’ you will ring the bell and say, ‘Closing time! Closing time!’ Can you do that?”
Once again, he said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”