Then came David Begelman.
David Begelman and Freddie Fields, two very successful talent agents, had joined forces to create CMA, Creative Management Associates, which at that time represented me.
So one day, when I was back in New York, walking down Fifty-seventh Street right after a rainstorm, and watching the rainwater travel down the gutter to the sewer, and I heard a voice behind me say, “Hiya, Mel. What are you doing, looking for change?”
I turned to see David Begelman, the bright, good-natured bon vivant co-head of the newly formed CMA smiling behind me.
He was a big fan; he loved my movies and knew that I wasn’t in the chips. He said, “Join me for lunch?”
I said, “Absolutely.” I knew he would take me to a good place for lunch because he dressed well, drove a Rolls-Royce, and generally lived in style.
I wasn’t wrong. He took me to the splendid dining room in the Sherry-Netherland hotel. I had eggs Benedict with very good coffee.
Strangely enough he said, “I have a call in to you today that you haven’t returned.”
“I’ll probably get it when I get home tonight. What’s it about?”
“It’s about a rough draft of a movie that I just read. A movie that you were born to make. It’s all over the place, but there’s some wonderful stuff in it and I know that if you put your crazy talented mind to it, it would be sensational.”
I said, “You know, David, I only write and direct my own stuff. I don’t do anybody else’s ideas. Ideas just have to come to me and I have to fashion them in my own way. I’m not really for hire.”
He said, “But, Mel, this could well be a very big commercial film. I think I could get you a hundred thousand dollars to write and direct it.”
“Wait, David,” I said. “Let me rethink my last sentence…given the right circumstances, I might be for hire!”
So he took me back to his office at CMA. David Begelman was a real individual in every way, and you could tell this by one glance around his office. It was decorated in red. Everything was red. Different shades of red. Pink ceiling, maroon walls, and a bright red carpet on the floor. His desk was red. His telephone was red. His coffee table was red.
“David,” I said. “I’m sure I’m not the first to ask this…but why so much red? Why is everything in your office so red?”
He smiled and said, “It’s not my fault. I gave the decorator ‘carte rouge.’？”
What a guy.
He handed me this rough draft of a screenplay called Tex X and said, “Take it to the office next door, read it, come back, and we’ll talk.”
Tex X was written by Andrew Bergman, who was not only a talented writer, but who also went on to become a wonderful director. The script was, in fact, crazy! It was a Western poking fun at Westerns. The dialogue was 1974, and the setting was 1874. It was right up my alley. I loved it. I knew it was the beginning of something that could be very, very good.
I told David, “I think I could do something with this. But it’s gonna be a lot of work. I want to work with Andrew Bergman, the original writer. There are still probably a lot of good ideas that he has in his head.”
Usually a new writer/director would throw out the first writer who had too much to say about it because it was his baby. I never felt that way. I just wanted to work with good people.
I also told David, “I’d like to go back to what I know and use a gang of comedy writers.”
It’s a style of writing comedy that always worked for me and that I was comfortable with, the kind of give-and-take that happened in the writers’ room on the Sid Caesar shows. David agreed and I was hired. I got fifty thousand for writing and fifty thousand for directing. Wow!
* * *
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The first person I asked for besides Andy Bergman was Richard Pryor. Since this story was about a Black sheriff in a white Western town, I knew I needed Richard Pryor to be one of the writers. He was a friend and a brilliant comedian who hadn’t really broken out yet. Richard was not only a gifted writer, but in my opinion there was no better stand-up comic that ever lived. Comics could be either wine or water, and Richard was a fine wine. Nobody could tell stories about family with such vigor, passion, and insanity and comedy like Richard Pryor. His comedy came from the humanity that he had experienced. There was something so profoundly and infinitely soulful, sweet, and moving about Richard. He never lied. His monologues were explanations of his life and his adventures. It was memory-and character-driven comedy. That’s why, like I said, he was the best stand-up comic that ever lived and a perfect writer for this movie.