The only comedy line Mel Brooks refused to cross: “It’s true, there is a limit”
Pushing the boundaries of bad taste has always been one of comedy’s key tenets, with performers across stage and screen discovering, for better or worse, where the line in the sand should be drawn. Mel Brooks was no stranger to writing material that flirted with controversy, but he always maintained a final frontier he refused to cross under any circumstances.
The Producers may have been the movie that launched his big-screen career and won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ before earning a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most beloved comedy films before spawning a stage show and then a movie based on the stage show, but Brooks faced plenty of pushback from within the industry.
It was understandable, considering the first-time feature filmmaker crafted a story about an accountant and a theatre producer on hard times concocting a scheme to intentionally turn a musical celebrating Adolf Hitler into a failure. It was a hard sell, only for Brooks’ instincts to be proven right despite the offence and controversies generated by its mere existence.
The same thing can be said of Blazing Saddles, too. While it was supposed to shine a light on the absurdity of racism and the inherent evil of the human condition, the constant use of epithets and insults meant that Brooks had to lie through his teeth to sneak its button-pushing moments past the studio.
When Men’s Journal asked Brooks how he responded to offending people, he took it on the chin. “Oh, you have to risk it,” he said. To hell with them.” Pointing to The Producers, the filmmaker admitted, “It was literally in bad taste,” but he still accomplished what he wanted.
“I knew Springtime for Hitler was perfect; I knew it was right,” he continued. “I said to my friends; they may have to catch up with me. I may be a little ahead of the curve at this point and have to wait for some of the world to catch up with me.” Still, there’s one thing Brooks would never dream of touching with a ten-foot comedy bargepole.
“It’s true, there is a limit. You got to know the line,” he acknowledged. “For me, it’s concentration camps. You know, the movie Life Is Beautiful can’t be funny. The subject matter is not fertile, you can’t grow anything in that. It’s just ashes. So I have my limits.”
It might sound obvious, but it’s a lesson one of his peers learned the hard way. Brooks and Jerry Lewis were two of their generation’s foremost comic talents, but they didn’t necessarily get along. The former wrote the original screenplay draft for the latter’s 1961 caper The Ladies Man, but after he quit the project following a disagreement, he fought to have his name removed from the credits.
Between the release of Brooks’ The Producers and Blazing Saddles, Lewis made The Day the Clown Cried, the infamous film set in a concentration camp that the writer, director, and star refused to finish and release after being hit by a wave of negative publicity. It’s an unusual coincidence, but one that kind of proved Brooks’ point.
