The only actor Mel Brooks worked with that he didn’t find funny: “We are cutting that line”
As one of Hollywood’s greatest-ever comedians, an EGOT winner, and the mastermind behind several riotous pictures that are destined to stand the test of time, it would be an understatement to suggest that Mel Brooks knows which actors can be funny and which ones can’t.
His collaborations with Gene Wilder turned the star into one of the industry’s marquee comedic performers, even though he was a classically trained Broadway veteran who’d studied at the Actors Studio. Brooks spotted his talent for making audiences laugh from a mile away, which worked to their individual and shared advantage.
Brooks even guessed that Gene Hackman, who’d made his name playing gruff, stern, and no-nonsense authoritative figures in powerhouse dramas, had a funnyman waiting to break out. Once again, he was completely correct, with the actor’s performance in Young Frankenstein a thing of beauty.
With that in mind, not to mention the rest of his accomplishments on stage and screen, if Brooks didn’t think a performer had it in them to tickle a funny bone, he was probably right. The cult classic sci-fi spoof Spaceballs wasn’t exactly a solemn and serious picture, but Bill Pullman was nonetheless forced into playing the straight man.
The ensemble included Brooks, John Candy, Joan Rivers, Rick Moranis, and Michael Winslow, all of whom were certified comedians. Pullman’s Lone Starr was the substitute for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, which meant his co-stars did the comedic heavy lifting while he kept a lid on his performance.
As Pullman explained to The New York Times, Candy fought hard to get him at least a couple of one-liners. “John was feeling that, as scripted, most of the funny lines were being given to Barf,” he said. “And he suggested I might take one of the wisecracks. A certain silence suddenly dominated the soundstage. Mel paused.”
He made a point of clarifying that Brooks was “as generous as any director that I’ve worked with,” but he had his limits. Candy spoke to the filmmaker and suggested that one of his quips should be given to Pullman instead, to which the co-writer, director, producer, and star begrudgingly acquiesced.
“You think Pullman can make the line funny? Pullman? OK, back to one,” the actor recalled him saying. “We all went back to our start marks and ran through the three-minute sequence, crew and cast making for a lot of moving parts. After a silence following ‘Cut’, we hear Mel say: ‘OK. We are cutting that line. Back to one.'”
Understandably, Pullman felt “shame and frustration” at effectively being told in front of everyone working on Spaceballs that he’d whiffed the line Candy had fought for him to say. In the end, though, Brooks’ decision was final, and he simply didn’t think he was funny.
