Mel Brooks In Reverse Some Time
By Irv Kupcinet
Chicago Sun-Times
How did Mel Brooks get the brilliant idea of making a Silent Movie, which may be his most hilarious effort to date? "If you notice, I've been going backward for some time," he explained. "Remember Springtime for Hitler and Frankenstein? With my mentality for probing what has gone before, I naturally came upon silent movies and it just seemed timely to revive another old idea. Silent Movie is based on an idea whose time has come and gone."
Brooks finished the movie with a new appreciation for such silent stars as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy. "You have no dialogue," he continued. "So what do you have -- only visual scenes. The writers (Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca, and Barry Levinson) and myself sat down and wrote the most outrageously funny situations we could think of. We kept only those scenes that made all of us fall off our chairs. The others were eliminated. And that's basically how we put the film together. Making a silent, believe me, is more difficult than a talkie. That's why my respect for the old silent stars has grown."
Mel is especially elated over Sid Caesar's performance in Silent Movie. . . . "I owed Sid something," he added. "He have me my first break by hiring me as a writer for his Show of Shows, which was a TV classic. And so 25 years later I had a chance to repay Sid by casting him as the studio chief in Silent Movie."
Brooks also revealed that his wife, Anne Bancroft, has signed to co-star with Shirley MacLaine in a film, The Turning Point, in which they portray two ballet dancers.
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