The one movie Mel Brooks was banned from starring in: “If you’re not in it, I’ll do it”
If a writer, director, and producer also happens to be an actor, then it stands to reason that they’ll cast themselves in their own movies. Mel Brooks was used to being a multi-hyphenate, but there was one occasion when he was expressly forbidden from appearing on-camera.
Considering he was the undisputed creative driving force behind his projects as the person who devised the idea, cracked the screenplay, wielded the megaphone, and funded them through his own production company, it’s a little unusual for someone with Brooks’ power and influence to so willingly back down.
After all, he helmed 11 features between 1968 and 1995 and was almost always part of the ensemble. Following an uncredited role in his Academy Award-winning debut feature, The Producers, Brooks seemingly decided that he wanted to get in on the action, bumping up his onscreen contributions.
He played three characters and voiced two others in Blazing Saddles, took top billing in Silent Night, High Anxiety, and Life Stinks, he was listed first in the credits of History of the World, Part I, took on dual roles in Spaceballs, lent support as Rabbi Tuckman in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and played the second lead behind Leslie Nielsen’s title character in Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
Of Brooks’ ten post-Producers pictures, there was only one in which he didn’t appear in the flesh. While that could have been down to his commitment to the filmmaking process and ensuring he didn’t stretch himself too thin, the only reason he didn’t cast himself in Young Frankenstein was because Gene Wilder told him he wouldn’t make the movie if he did.
“I wasn’t allowed to be in it,” he confessed to AV Club. “That was the deal Gene Wilder had. He says, ‘If you’re not in it, I’ll do it.’ He says, ‘You have a way of breaking the fourth wall, whether you want to or not. I just want to keep it. I don’t want to much to be, you know, a wink at the audience. I love the script.’ He wrote the script with me. That was the deal. So I wasn’t in it, and he did it.”
Brooks and Wilder had initially stumbled upon the idea for what would become Young Frankenstein when spitballing during their downtime on Blazing Saddles, and they’d regularly get together to refine the script, with tensions occasionally flaring as the two frequent collaborators ended up at each other’s throats.
Still, Brooks wasn’t vain enough or egotistical enough to rule Wilder out of Young Frankenstein for the sake of having his face projected 20 feet high on the silver screen, and the latter’s performance as Frederick Frankenstein became the former’s all-time favourite of his close friend’s filmography.
Ever the showman, though, Brooks still managed to sneak himself into the film. While he remained true to his word and didn’t play any characters that audiences could see, he provided three voices: Victor Frankenstein, a werewolf, and a cat being hit by a dart.
