“Deal!” I said.
Now I had promised Laddie a script. And it had to be a really good script or there would be no money to make the film. Ron Clark came through again and introduced me to two writers from The Carol Burnett Show that he thought would be perfect for our Silent Movie writing team. They were Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson.
Rudy was downright funny. Everything he did was funny. Even when he was being serious, he didn’t realize he was still being funny. He became a writing fixture in my organization from that point until today, along with performing comedy acting roles in several of my later movies, and he is still a good friend.
Barry was another gift. He had a great movie mind. He had a talent for both character and story and later became an amazingly successful writer/director in his own right. He would tell me wonderfully funny stories about growing up with his friends in Baltimore. I took him to see I Vitelloni (1953), Fellini’s first film, which is about a group of friends who grow up together in Italy. He wrote the script to Diner, his first film, in no time at all and I’m sure I Vitelloni helped inspire some of it.
Ron, Rudy, Barry, and I all sat down together to decide what our silent movie was going to be about. I told them that somehow, we should get an engine that pulled our picture along. Something underneath the fun and frolic that drove our movie forward. We came up with a great engine: Money versus Art.
Big commercial companies that had nothing to do with the art of entertainment but were loaded with money were gobbling up old traditional movie studios just for their financial value. I pointed out that Coca-Cola was buying Columbia Pictures, Transamerica now owned United Artists, and Gulf + Western had “engulfed and devoured” Paramount. The bottom line was they had no regard for what kind of movies they were making as long as they brought in money. That would be our premise. Our film would be about an old-fashioned silent movie studio that was in danger of going bankrupt and being taken over by “Engulf and Devour,” a huge monolithic commercial company and a sly (or not so sly) reference to Gulf + Western.
Our heroes’ mission would be to make a movie that would save their studio, Big Pictures. Their motto was “If it’s a big picture, it was made here.”
So who would be in it? Fortunately for Gene Wilder but unfortunately for me, Gene decided to do what he had learned from me—writing and directing his own movies. He was busy writing and making his directorial debut in a movie called The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975). So I couldn’t use Gene to be my leading man. Who could I get?
Ron, Rudy, and Barry said, “We found who should be playing the lead in Silent Movie.”
“Who’s that?” I said.
“You!” they answered. “It’s about time you used your own god-given gifts as a born comedian.”
“I don’t know, maybe…” I thought about it for a while and then said, “Yes. I’m living with the script every day, and I know just how it should be performed and I know I can do it. But would Laddie buy me as the star who’s gonna carry the movie?”
They said, “You won’t be the only star. We have an idea.”
The idea was to cast the movie with big stars that would guarantee box office by gathering a huge audience. It was a great idea; we could write brilliant comic cameos tailored to their screen profiles.
In addition to that, I would have two really funny comedy buddies along for the ride. I decided on the always hysterically funny Dom DeLuise and the soulful and bizarrely comedic Marty Feldman. They played my sidekicks named Dom Bell and Marty Eggs, who were crammed with me into a tiny convertible yellow Morgan sports car cruising around Hollywood.
Dom, Marty, and me jammed into our little yellow Morgan sports car.
Marty’s eyes and face and his wiry build made him perfect for a silent movie. Marty was a walking sight gag. In the silent era, Ben Turpin’s crossed eyes made him immediately recognizable and put him on the cover of Life magazine. I thought Marty with his big protruding hard-boiled-egg eyes was in a way paying homage to Ben Turpin.
Dom DeLuise had the greatest reaction takes in the world. Any time something crazy happened, I just cut to Dom’s face, and it told you to laugh. It always worked.
* * *
—
The plot was simple: The three of us as a director and his two sidekicks would go on a quest to convince big stars to be in a picture that would save the studio.
We described my character, Mel Funn, on a title card that read:
Mel Funn, once Hollywood’s greatest director, till drinking destroyed his career, is trying to make a comeback. He has a brilliant idea for a new movie.
For my love interest we decided on Bernadette Peters, a multitalented Broadway star. With a brushstroke of serendipity, I had just seen her perform on Broadway as Mabel Normand, the great silent movie star in Mack & Mabel, and she was terrific. What could be more perfect? She hadn’t yet broken into film, so she was in keeping with my talent for discovering new faces. She was a triple threat and was born to be in movies.
With Bernadette Peters in a classic Silent Movie pose.
To play the head of Big Picture Studios I turned to my mentor and still one of the funniest actors in the world—the incomparable Sid Caesar. There was something very fulfilling about having Sid play the studio chief. It was an important part; the actor playing the head of Big Picture Studios had to be as funny or maybe funnier than anybody else in the movie. The role fit Sid like a glove. Not only was I sure he would nail it, but I also felt that I had found a way to pay him back for all he had done for me and his faith in me when I was an unknown kid from Brooklyn who was just starting out.
Our script was kind of a real-life script:
Mel
Don’t worry, Chief, I’ll save the studio!
I’ve got your next hit picture right here!
Chief
What is it?…A Musical? A Love Story? A Western?
Mel
It’s a SILENT MOVIE!
It can’t miss; it’s a silent movie!
* * *
—
Sid’s studio chief was just like Laddie, who nearly collapses with disappointment when he’s told that the movie we’re going to make to save the studio is a silent picture. When our characters tell him they are going to get big stars to ensure an audience, he is dubious (again just like Laddie!) but bravely goes along with it. And just like Laddie, he tells us that if we get the stars, it’s a go picture.
So it’s either art imitating life or life imitating art. I’m not sure which but I knew one thing: We had to get big stars or it was a no go.
The first one was easy: I asked my wife, Anne Bancroft, to play herself.
…At first she frightened me by saying, “Let me think about it.”