The “piece of sh*t” movie that almost ruined Mel Brooks: “I’ve got a disaster on my hands”
Whenever somebody becomes famous for doing one thing, the easiest way to maintain that success is by continuing to do that same thing for as long as possible. For the most part, that’s what Mel Brooks has done, albeit only as a writer or director.
The veteran has scripted, helmed, and/or produced 11 features, from 1968’s The Producers to 1995’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and every single one of them was a comedy. There’s a reason why ‘stick to what you know’ is such a cliched turn of phrase, but as an EGOT-winning legend, it’s certainly paid off.
That said, Brooks has been known to stretch his wings and venture outside of his wheelhouse to dip his toes into unfamiliar genre waters, but only if his name is kept out of the marketing. He backed David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and Ken Russell’s The Doctor and the Devils as a silent partner, operating under the assumption that ‘A Mel Brooks Film’ might mislead the public.
When he tackled sci-fi for the first time in 1987’s Spaceballs, the end result was one of his career’s most beloved films, one that’s proven so popular across so many generations that it’s getting a sequel four decades later. That wasn’t the first time he’d gone beyond the stars, though, and when he made his intergalactic debut on the previous year’s Solarbabies, it very nearly ruined him.
What was originally intended to be an inexpensive attempt to piggyback the success of Star Wars evolved into a monster that went massively over-budget, tanked at the box office after failing to recoup even 10% of its production costs, cycled through several screenwriters, and was directed by a filmmaker who only had one picture under their belt, which not-so-coincidentally was the Brooks-led To Be or Not to Be, with Alan Johnson having served as the choreographer on several of the comedy icon’s movies.
As co-writer Douglas Anthony Metrov explained to Slash Film, it was doomed from the start. “I was called in and Mel explained to me that the script was a piece of shit,” he said. “He was ready to drop the project. So, in the hopes of keeping Solarbabies alive, I suggested that he give me a chance to write the next draft. Mel looked at me, and, in a very soft voice, he said, ‘OK, go ahead and write it’. And then, screaming at the top of his lungs, he said, ‘I guarantee it’ll end up in the goddamn confetti machine in five minutes!'”
Metrov diplomatically explained that “they made something very different than my original vision,” and Brooks knew he was on a hiding to nothing. “Mel actually called me, and they screened it for him for the first time,” he explained. “‘Metrov’, he said, ‘I’ve got a disaster on my hands.'” He was right, and he was still selling it very short.
The cost of Solarbabies spiralled so far out of control that Brooks left him on the brink of bankruptcy after he’d funnelled millions of his own dollars into a doomed endeavour, which left him contemplating a leap from the top of the Empire State Building to rid him of the cursed film forever. Thankfully, that didn’t come to pass, and he even maintains that the awful, awful picture eventually turned a profit.
