So this five-million-dollar, low-budget quickie was going to cost twelve or thirteen million dollars after all was said and done. I was in financial quicksand, and the sand was approaching my mouth and my nose. I needed more money. What to do, what to do?
So I went to my dear old friend Laddie and told him my tale of woe. Laddie, who was now running MGM, came up with a great idea. He said to me, “The executives running UPM are coming for their annual visit to L.A.”
UPM was a foreign distribution company, and they distributed the films of Universal, Paramount, and MGM abroad. Laddie thought if I could come up with an exciting trailer for Solarbabies and show it to them, together with my promise that I would personally visit every country in the world and sell it, they might give me the monies that I needed to finish the film in exchange for the foreign distribution rights.
So I took all the footage, put it in the hopper, and came up with a trailer for Solarbabies that looked and sounded like another Star Wars. Miracle of miracles—Laddie was right. It worked. When I showed the trailer to the UPM executives they loved it. Together with my promise to personally go out and sell it they thought it was a good bet and gave me all the money I needed. They gave me enough money to finish post-production, pay back the bank, and make me whole once again. Thank god for Laddie!
* * *
—
Somewhere around 1985, my wife, Anne, had read a book by Helene Hanff called 84, Charing Cross Road. It’s about the long correspondence between an author in New York and the owner of a bookstore in London, who both adored great works of literature. Anne thought it might make a wonderful film and brought it to the aforementioned Randy Auerbach, who was still busy working in development for Brooksfilms. Randy had also read the book and agreed with Anne that it would make a lovely movie. They sought out the rights, but they weren’t available. But Anne and Randy didn’t give up. A year later when the rights did become available, they grabbed them for Brooksfilms. And so, a wonderful journey to make 84 Charing Cross Road was begun.
Anne of course took on the author’s role of Helene Hanff, the New York writer, and Anthony Hopkins, whom she had shared the screen with in Young Winston (1972) and The Elephant Man, was secured to play Frank P. Doel, the owner of the London bookstore at 84, Charing Cross Road. Interestingly enough, the two leading players of the film, Anne and Anthony, never actually are onscreen together. Because of the story’s geographical structure, all of Anne Bancroft’s scenes were shot in New York and all of Anthony Hopkins’s scenes were shot in London.
The film suffered one near tragic setback. Just before shooting was to begin, the line producer suffered a heart attack. The production had to be put on hold, and it was touch-and-go whether it would be canceled altogether. But luck was with us, the producer thankfully recovered, and a few months later production finally began. It was a true salute to everybody connected with the film that they were able to adjust their schedules so that they could make the movie.
And make the movie they did! The talented director David Jones shot the entire film in only six weeks of filming—three in New York and three in London. And after about six months of post-production, he delivered an eloquent salute to those special devotees of enduring literature. As a bonus, for Anne’s warm and moving performance in the movie she won the prestigious BAFTA award for Best Leading Actress.
* * *
—
The Brooksfilms library of special and unique movies that I have produced over the years is something that I am very proud of. Yes, even the ones that caused me great headaches were worth it in the end. Strangely enough, many years later even though Solarbabies hadn’t made much of a splash when it was originally released in 1986, that wayward orphan of a movie eventually not only got even but went into profit! Which sounds like a modest achievement but is a minor miracle because actually getting your money back in the movie business is a great victory.
I learned my lesson about investing my own money in my projects, and the experience inspired me to write these words in my musical version of The Producers, which together with Tom Meehan I would write a few years later. Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock and Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom have the following exchange:
MAX: …now that we’ve got our surefire flop, it’s gonna be our job to fill that safe with two million dollars.
LEO: Two million. Gee. How much do we put in?
MAX: How much do we put in? Bloom, the two cardinal rules of being a Broadway producer are, one, never put your own money in the show.
LEO: And two?
MAX: [up close in Leo’s face, shouting] NEVER PUT YOUR OWN MONEY IN THE SHOW! Get it?
LEO: Got it.
MAX: Good.
Chapter 21
Spaceballs
My son Max loved the Star Wars movies. I would take him to various showings of them. And for his tenth birthday, he had a Star Wars–themed birthday party. And boy, did those kids love it! So I thought, Science fiction! Now there’s a genre I haven’t wrecked yet….
I destroyed the Western in Blazing Saddles. I savaged classic horror films in Young Frankenstein. I sent up silent films in Silent Movie, and I had fun with Hitchcock in High Anxiety. Of course, even though I poked fun at all of these genres, in truth I dearly loved them. Cowboy pictures and horror films made my childhood so much more enjoyable. But there were not many genres left for me to satirize, so I eagerly attacked science fiction. There was Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and, reaching back for more fun, the unique and campy director Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. It was a genre rich with opportunities for devastating satire.
I called my trusty writing sidekicks Ronny Graham and Tom Meehan, who had served me so well on To Be or Not to Be. They agreed with me that we could have a ball writing our space spoof Spaceballs—a title I came up with that immediately clicked with both of them.
The first thing that popped into my mind was the familiar opening crawl of every Star Wars movie in which they tell their galactic story. If I was going to do a satire of space movies, I would definitely need to have some fun with that opening crawl. We copied their visual format of a receding scroll of information, but put our own twist on it:
Once upon a time warp…
In a galaxy very, very, very, very far away there lived a ruthless race of beings known as…Spaceballs.
Chapter Eleven.
The evil leaders of planet Spaceball, having foolishly squandered their precious atmosphere, have devised a secret plan to take every breath of air from their peace-loving neighbor, Planet Druidia.
Today is Princess Vespa’s wedding day. Unbeknownst to the princess but knownst to us, danger lurks in the stars above…
And then in smaller print we wrote:
If you can read this, you don’t need glasses.