The Elephant Man went on to capture eight Academy Award nominations: Patricia Norris for Best Costume Design; Stuart Craig, Robert Cartwright, and Hugh Scaife for Best Art Direction; John Morris for Best Original Score; Anne V. Coates for Best Film Editing; Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren, and David Lynch for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; John Hurt for Best Actor in a Leading Role; David Lynch for Best Director, and producers Brooksfilms and Jonathan Sanger for Best Picture. Of course, I was very disappointed that we didn’t win any, but my spirits soared at the BAFTAs (the British Academy Awards) when The Elephant Man took home the prized award for the best film of the year and they also recognized John Hurt as the Best Actor in a Leading Role.
I was so successful at keeping my name off of The Elephant Man credits that to this day people are astonished to learn that my eponymous film company produced it—but I am happy to tell them all about it because I am still so very proud of it.
Chapter 17
History of the World, Part I
Let me tell you how History of the World, Part I, the seventh movie that I wrote and directed, came to be. Because of the sheer genius of Albert Whitlock’s skill at painting cinematic backdrops (which I had just used in High Anxiety), I began to think I could go anywhere in the world with my movies, all while I stayed right at home. I could tell stories that took place anywhere, in any time period, without ever leaving Hollywood.
Hence, History of the World, Part I was born.
I had always wanted to make a grand movie, a spectacle. I thought that the history of the world would be the perfect vehicle and the most colorful backdrop for this particular endeavor. D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille have always been movie-making giants to me. Griffith’s credits go back to 1908. He was a filmmaking pioneer who made great films like Orphans of the Storm (1921), Way Down East (1920), and of course the classic The Birth of a Nation (1915). DeMille made big sprawling historical epics like Cleopatra (1934), The Crusades (1935), The Plainsman (1936), Union Pacific (1939), and The Ten Commandments (1956). I think I learned more about the events that shaped the world from watching those movies than I ever did in history classes at school. So somewhere in my mind, History of the World, Part I was a tribute to their cinematic art.
That said, my first loyalty was always to comedy. Nothing can burst the balloon of pomposity and dictatorial rhetoric better than comedy. Comedy brings religious persecutors, dictators, and tyrants to their knees faster than any other weapon. Since my comedy is serious, I’ve always needed a serious background to play against. There was nothing more serious than the Spanish Inquisition. Poking fun at the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, is a wonderful counterpoint to the horrors he committed. The Roman Empire was an example of “might makes right,” wonderful stuff for my twisted mind to play with. And the French Revolution showed better than any other period the incredible difference between the haves and the have-nots.
We’ve all been taught history in school by well-meaning teachers using well-meaning textbooks, but we all know a lot more about human nature than history books tell us. So I embellished a little more about these famous people and these famous events and maybe all their untold secrets. I wanted to expose their foibles and to show that they were not really such historical big shots.
At the beginning of my career as a comedy writer, I usually worked with other writers. But with The Producers I found my own feet and wrote it all by myself. The Twelve Chairs was based on a book, so I didn’t need any other writers. But it’s very lonely, sitting and writing for months all by yourself. I never got used to that. I was used to Your Show of Shows, at least five guys and gals in a room, pitching, running, screaming, fighting, and laughing. So Blazing Saddles was like going back to the writers’ room on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour.
But now once again, I trusted myself to write the screenplay without engaging any other writers. I decided to do the job all by myself. Instead of one long plot, History of the World would be a series of different scenes from different periods of history. I decided I would start with the dawn of man and go from cavemen to the Bible, to the Roman Empire, to the Inquisition, and end with the French Revolution.
History of the World, Part I begins with the beginning of mankind. I decided to have fun with the caveman. And who could be funnier as a primitive caveman than Sid Caesar? I made him the first caveman to discover art. I thought it was appropriate to have my artistic mentor be the first person to create the first cave painting on a cave wall.
The script reads:
Even in most primitive man, the need to create was part of his nature. This need, this talent, clearly separated early man from animals who would never know this gift.
So Sid shows his amazing painting to the first caveman critic, who promptly urinates all over it. Sid’s expression tells us what the creative artist has suffered to this very day.
Rudy De Luca also played one of the cavemen. Sid tries out a new weapon called “the spear.” He hurls it through the air, and it finds its way into Rudy De Luca. It works! Sid celebrates; the whole cave celebrates! Everybody is so happy about the invention of the spear…everybody, that is, except Rudy De Luca.
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From the caveman period I entered the biblical era. I decided I would play Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. My take on it was that there were originally Fifteen Commandments housed in three huge stone tablets.
I start the scene by saying, “The Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given you these Fifteen…”
BAM! At that point I drop one of the stone tablets and it comes crashing to the ground at my feet. I quickly cover by saying, “…Ten! Ten Commandments!”
It always gets a huge roar of laughter.
Another of my favorites from the biblical period was my re-creation of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper. I asked John Hurt, who was so wonderful as the Elephant Man, to play Jesus, and without hesitation he flew over to do the part.
I cast myself to play a waiter at the last supper. I gave myself some funny lines like addressing the disciples with, “Are you all together, or is it separate checks?”
Me as Moses, going from the original fifteen commandments down to the now popular ten.
John Hurt and I developed a wonderful bit together. When things went wrong and I didn’t get the order straight, in frustration I would utter, “Jesus!”
And John Hurt as Jesus would respond with, “Yes?”
And I’d say, “Yes? What yes?”
And he’d say, “What?”