The Making Of ‘Young Frankenstein’

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Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air. I'm David Biancooi.
In 1974, Mel Brooks directed and co-wrote one of the greatest film genre parodies in movie history. Actually, two of them.

Speaker 3 Blazing Saddles, his western parody, came out in February of that year.

Speaker 3 And in December, Young Frankenstein premiered, brilliantly lampooning and celebrating horror movies in general and James Wales' 1930s Frankenstein movies in particular.

Speaker 3 Because until December, it's still technically the 50th anniversary year of that monster movie comedy, and because today is Halloween, We decided it would be a Halloween treat to devote today's show to young Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 Before that film, writer-director Mel Brooks already had cast Gene Wilder in two of his best comedies, The Producers and Blazing Saddles.

Speaker 3 While filming that latter movie with Brooks, Gene Wilder started sketching out an idea for a movie of his own.

Speaker 3 It was a comic version of Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein, conceived to have him play the starring role as the grandson of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 Wilder asked Brooks to co-write and direct it, and they began work on it immediately.

Speaker 3 Young Frankenstein was shot in black and white, and Brooks was so faithful to the pace and look of Wales' original films, he even tracked down and used the original lab equipment from the Frankenstein movies.

Speaker 3 He also assembled an astounding cast in support of Gene Wilder. Two previous Oscar winners, Cloris Leachman and Gene Hackman, eagerly accepted minor roles.

Speaker 3 And also in the cast were Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Terry Garr, and Marty Feldman.

Speaker 3 In an early scene, Wilder, as the scientist's grandson, is met at the Transylvania train station by his future lab assistant, played by Feldman.

Speaker 4 Dr. Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 You're putting me on.

Speaker 4 No, it's pronounced Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 Do you also say Froderik? No.

Speaker 4 Frederick.

Speaker 4 Well, why isn't it Froderik Frankenstein? It isn't, it's Frederick Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 I see.

Speaker 4 You must be Igor. No, it's pronounced Igor.

Speaker 4 But they told me it was Igor. Well, they were wrong then, weren't they?

Speaker 3 On today's show, we'll listen to archive interviews featuring Gene Wilder, Terry Garr, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle, and Mel Brooks himself.

Speaker 3 We'll start with Gene Wilder, who spoke with Terry Gross in 2005. He recalled how he and Mel began collaborating on young Frankenstein.

Speaker 5 I was writing every day, and then Mel would come to the house and read what I'd written, and then he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay. But

Speaker 5 we need a villain, or we need whatever it was. And we'd talk a little bit, and then he'd go away, and I would write all the next day, and he'd come and look at it.
And

Speaker 5 And then one day, when he read

Speaker 5 the pages I had written about

Speaker 5 Dr. Frankenstein and the creature

Speaker 5 sing and dance to Putin on the writs,

Speaker 5 he said, Are you crazy? This is frivolous. You're just being frivolous.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 my temperature rose, and after 20 minutes or so of arguing,

Speaker 5 my color got from went from r r red to, I think, blue or purple.

Speaker 5 I I I was started um screaming. And then all of a sudden he said, Okay, it's in

Speaker 5 and I said,

Speaker 5 Well, why did you put me through this?

Speaker 5 And he said, I wasn't sure if it was right. And I thought, if you didn't argue for it,

Speaker 5 then it was wrong. And if you did, it was right.
So you convinced me.

Speaker 6 Well, this is such a classic scene. I mean, you as Dr.

Speaker 6 Frankenstein are presenting in a theater your creation of you know the the Frankenstein monster played by Peter Boyle and you're in both in top hat and tails you introduce him then you sing a duet of putting on the writs and you know do a little soft shoe and it's it's really it's really such a wonderful scene.

Speaker 6 So how did you come up with a way to with an excuse to do it, you know, with the with the plot point to get in the production number?

Speaker 5 Because we had to convince the scientific members of Transylvania

Speaker 5 that with the procedure I was using on the creature, he could be taught to be a civilized human being.

Speaker 5 what I called a man about town.

Speaker 5 And it was for their sake that I was doing it. And I just thought of the funniest way of doing it, that's all.

Speaker 5 But instead of a monster who's going to kill their children, it was someone who could sing and dance.

Speaker 6 Well, I think we have no choice here but to listen to you and Peter Boyle doing putting on the writs from the soundtrack of young Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 Ladies and gentlemen, up until now, you've seen the creature perform the simple mechanics of motor activity. But for what you are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius.

Speaker 4 Ladies and gentlemen, mes dams, et monsieur, Damon und Heren, from what was once an inarticulate mass of lifeless tissues,

Speaker 4 may I now present a cultured, sophisticated

Speaker 4 man about town.

Speaker 4 Hit it!

Speaker 4 If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits?

Speaker 5 Different types who wear a date coat, pants with stripes, or cut away coat, perfect fits.

Speaker 4 Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper.

Speaker 4 Trying mighty hard to look like Gary Cooper.

Speaker 4 Come, let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or romberellers in their midst.

Speaker 6 Gene Wilder, you came up with a premise for Young Frankenstein. You officially share credits with Millbrook shares credit with you for the screenplay and the screen story.

Speaker 6 What gave you the idea of writing Young Frankenstein? Did you love the Frankenstein movie?

Speaker 2 Well

Speaker 5 at the time I didn't know why, but I know

Speaker 5 now that

Speaker 5 when I was a little boy I was scared to death of the Frankenstein film films actually,

Speaker 5 because there were four of them in particular that influenced me.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 in all these years later, I wanted it to come out with a happy ending. And

Speaker 5 I think it was my fear of the Frankenstein movies when I was eight and nine and ten years old that made me want to write that story, that I was a young doctor or

Speaker 5 dental hygienist and found out that my

Speaker 5 great-grandfather, Beaufort von Frankenstein, left me the whole estate.

Speaker 5 That was all I had in mind at the time.

Speaker 5 And then my agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, before he became a movie mogul,

Speaker 5 called me up and said, How about a movie with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman?

Speaker 5 And I said, Well,

Speaker 5 what makes you think of that? He said, Because I now handle you and Peter and Marty.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I said, Well, as it happens, I do have something.

Speaker 5 Well, send it to me right now. I said, No, I want to work on it a little bit.

Speaker 5 And that night I wrote two more pages.

Speaker 5 The Transylvania station scene, almost verbatim, the way it is in the film. And then I sent it off to him.
And he said, I think I can sell this. And maybe we can get Mel to direct.

Speaker 5 And I said,

Speaker 5 I don't think he's going to direct something he didn't conceive of.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 5 Mel, you have to understand this important point. He had done the producers

Speaker 5 for $50,000 over two two years, and he didn't make a penny from it. Then he did the 12 chairs, $50,000 for two more years, and didn't make a penny from it.
That's four years of work.

Speaker 5 And then they offered him quite a bit of money to direct young Frankenstein. And

Speaker 5 he took it. He called me first.
He said, what are you getting me into? I said, nothing you don't want to get into. He said, I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 I don't know. The next day,

Speaker 5 I got a call saying Mel's going to do it.

Speaker 6 There's quite a few really classic jokes in Young Frankenstein.

Speaker 7 One of them, and

Speaker 6 this seems like it's probably the oldest joke in the world, and I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 Oh, dear.

Speaker 6 I think you know the walk this way joke.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 7 Why don't you describe how it happens in the movie?

Speaker 6 And tell me if it's something that you and Brooks came up with, or whether this joke has a long previous life. Because it seems like,

Speaker 6 I don't know, I ever heard it before the movie, but it seems like it should have been around forever. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 I had never heard of it before. And while we were filming outdoors on location,

Speaker 5 Mel says to Marty Feldman, Marty.

Speaker 6 Who's playing the doctor's assistant?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Igor.

Speaker 8 Your assistant, yeah.

Speaker 2 Or Igor.

Speaker 5 He says, bend over and say to Gene, walk this way and then crouch down and walk away.

Speaker 5 And I said, Mel, what does that mean? He said, I'll tell you later. I'll tell you later.
Just do it for now.

Speaker 5 And so I took the cane and I followed Marty after the camera started rolling. And I walked this funny walk.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 5 everyone laughed afterwards. And I said, now will you tell me what it means? He says,

Speaker 5 a man has a terrible case of hemorrhoids. He goes into a drugstore and he says,

Speaker 5 have you got some talcum powder for me? I've got terrible hemorrhoids. And the pharmacist says, walk this way.
And he says, If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need the talcum powder.

Speaker 5 And I said, Where did that come from? He says, It's an old vaudeville routine. It's years old.
But I had never heard of it before.

Speaker 2 But it worked.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 another real classic one: when

Speaker 6 you get to the castle,

Speaker 6 there's these large

Speaker 6 large

Speaker 6 brass door knockers

Speaker 6 with knobs on them. And as you're approaching the door, you lift

Speaker 2 Terry Garr.

Speaker 6 Yeah, sorry, you lift Terry Garr out of the wagon that you've arrived in, and your head is kind of buried in her chest as Igor knocks on the door and you say,

Speaker 7 No, you tell it. You tell it.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 he knocks on the door, and just when Terry's breast is brushed up against my face, I look and see the knockers and I say, what knockers? And she says, thank you, Doctor.

Speaker 6 Now, how did you guys come up with that one?

Speaker 2 It also sounds like this is a classic.

Speaker 5 No, that's Mel. That's Mel.
That wasn't written. He just said,

Speaker 5 when you lift her off the wagon like that, look at the knockers and say, what knockers?

Speaker 5 Well, I thought it was very funny at the time.

Speaker 5 But that wasn't written. That was just improvised.
It wasn't improvised. He just said, say what knockers.
And it worked.

Speaker 5 What knockers? Oh,

Speaker 4 thank you, Doctor.

Speaker 6 No, I'm thinking you and Mel Brooks, you're both Jewish, but you're from very different parts of the United States and probably had different experiences growing up because he's very East Coast, very New York, very Borsch Belt.

Speaker 6 And you grew up, was it Milwaukee?

Speaker 5 Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so I mean, didn't have the Borsch Belt.

Speaker 5 No, no, no.

Speaker 6 Probably didn't know vaudeville as well as he did.

Speaker 5 No, and don't say as well. I didn't know it at all.
I'd read about a few things, but that's all.

Speaker 6 So what were some of the points of commonality and difference between the two of you and your sense of theater and show biz?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 5 when I was still in school

Speaker 5 and I saw your show of shows,

Speaker 5 which was my favorite television show with Sid Caesar.

Speaker 5 Mel Brooks was one of the writers. At first he started out as

Speaker 5 low man on the totem pole until he advanced to head writer. But

Speaker 5 I had a feeling for what he had written. I wasn't sure if I was right.
And then when I met him,

Speaker 5 there was a closeness because I loved that kind of humor, his kind of humor.

Speaker 5 It wasn't any part of my life

Speaker 5 in my humor, but I just appreciated it. There was an affinity there somewhere.
And

Speaker 5 in so many ways we're not at all alike, and in some ways we're very much alike.

Speaker 5 When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about

Speaker 5 New York Jewish humor.

Speaker 5 I'd say, I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was, and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.

Speaker 5 And I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor, but I was in three Mel Brooks films, so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

Speaker 5 My humor was quite different. Mine was

Speaker 5 Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and The World's Greatest Lover, and

Speaker 5 Haunted Honeymoon, The Woman in Red,

Speaker 5 See No Evil, Hear No Evil, but his was much broader, and I think much funnier, too.

Speaker 3 Gene Wilder, speaking with Terry Gross in 2005. He died in 2016.

Speaker 3 After a break, another young Frankenstein star and standout, Terry Garr, as the doctor's very smitten and sexy lab assistant. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 Next up in our young Frankenstein appreciation is Terry Garr, who was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting actress work in Tootsie.

Speaker 3 Earlier in her career, she had danced in nine Elvis Presley movies and made her acting screen debut opposite Gene Hackman in the conversation.

Speaker 3 In Young Frankenstein, she played Inga, the assistant and girlfriend to Gene Wilder's mad scientist.

Speaker 3 In this scene from Young Frankenstein, the doctor's fiancée, Elizabeth, has been escorted to the castle by his assistant, Igor, where she meets the doctor's other lab assistant, the beautiful Inga.

Speaker 3 Madeleine Kahn plays Elizabeth, Marty Feldman plays Igor, and Terry Garr plays Inga.

Speaker 4 I'd like you to meet my assistants, Inga and Igor. How do you do?

Speaker 4 How do you do? This is my financier, Elizabeth. Oh, I'm so happy to meet you at last.
My financier. Excuse me, darling.
What is it exactly that you do do?

Speaker 4 Well, I assist Dr. Frankenstein in the laboratory.
We have intellectual discussions on the. As a matter of fact, we were just just having fun as you were driving.
Well, I. What?

Speaker 4 What? Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags? Certainly. You take the blonde, and I'll take the run in the Taiwan.

Speaker 3 Terry Gross spoke with Terry Garr in 2005.

Speaker 6 Well, let me ask you about another movie you were in, and that is Young Frankenstein, or Frankenstein.

Speaker 10 Frankenstein, yeah. Yes,

Speaker 6 directed by Mel Brooks. How did you get to work with him?

Speaker 10 Well, there was rumors going around town that there was a big movie being cast, and there was lots of girls going up for this audition, and I got my agent to get me in on it.

Speaker 10 You know, 500 girls. When I went there, Mel Brooks said we're casting for the part of the fiancée, the financier, he called it.

Speaker 10 But I want Madeline Kahn to do it. I just wanted you to know.
But she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't want to do a comedy. But I'm auditioning all these girls.

Speaker 10 So I went in and I got a call back and call back and I was very excited that I even got a call back finally one day I got a call back and he said

Speaker 10 Madeline has decided to do this part but if you can come back tomorrow I'll give you a chance to audition for the part of Inge

Speaker 10 the

Speaker 10 the lab assistant but you have to have a German accent can you come and it's like 24 hours to get a German accent together and I did

Speaker 10 because I copied Cher's wigmaker who had a German accent.

Speaker 6 You were working on the Sonny and Cher show at the time.

Speaker 10 Yes, I was working on on the Sonny and Cher Show at the time, and Sevas Ranata Vestewegs.

Speaker 6 Did you learn things about comic timing working with Mel Brooks on Young Frankenstein?

Speaker 10 Well, I don't think you can learn comic timing. I think I must have innately grown up with, you know, my mother and father from vaudeville and stuff and lots of jokes around the house.
But

Speaker 10 I had been working on Sonny and Cher Show as a dancer and also in these horrible comedy sketches. And I sort of had learned comic timing then.

Speaker 10 Also, I was an incredible fan of Mel Brooks, the 2,000-year-old man. I had listened to those records hundreds of times as a kid and memorized them and did them over and over again.

Speaker 10 So I sort of knew his rhythm. But he is one of God's gifts to this planet.
Mel Brooks is just the funniest man in the world. He is really funny.

Speaker 6 What did he call you, a Shiksa goddess?

Speaker 10 Shiksa goddess,

Speaker 10 my long-waisted shiksagoddess. No, and then he called Peter Boyle and I, come here, Trefe.

Speaker 2 We were both.

Speaker 10 I don't know what it means exactly.

Speaker 7 And then at one point, not kosher.

Speaker 10 I said, well, Mel, you're so wonderful. I wish I was Jewish.
You're Jewish. You are Jewish by injection.

Speaker 2 I don't know what he meant, but okay.

Speaker 8 Can we talk about your parents a little bit?

Speaker 10 Please.

Speaker 6 Your mother, as you mentioned, was a rocket.

Speaker 6 She was...

Speaker 6 You say she had wonderful legs. She did, what, hosiery ads too?

Speaker 2 She showed off her legs.

Speaker 10 Yeah, she called herself Legs Lind.

Speaker 6 And then she also was like a wardrobe person for several T V shows?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think a lot of dancers become go into wardrobe afterwards. I don't know why that happens, but it's true.
And yeah, she became a costumer in LA. And my father died when I was 11.

Speaker 10 And he was in vaudeville. And they met in a Broadway show, my parents.
And then he came out to Hollywood to be in movies and that didn't pan out. And he became very ill.
And he passed away.

Speaker 10 So my mother had to support three kids, you know, by her wits. And it was so she went and got a job as in the studios as a costumer.

Speaker 10 In fact, she was a costumer on Young Frankenstein before I even got the job. And she told, don't tell anyone on your mother.
What is this about? It's so weird. Anyway, I learned.

Speaker 7 Why didn't she want anyone to tell me?

Speaker 10 I do not know to this day.

Speaker 2 Was it for her sake or your sake?

Speaker 10 I don't know. But finally, I told Mel, I said, you know that lady over there? That's my mom.
He was so great because he's just a great guy.

Speaker 5 And he will bring her over here.

Speaker 10 He was wonderful.

Speaker 3 Terry Garr speaking to Terry Gross in 2005. Terry Garr died last year.

Speaker 3 After a break, we'll hear from three more young Frankenstein alumni, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, and Mel Brooks. And Justin Chang reviews the new film, Bogonia.

Speaker 3 I'm David Biancoule, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 On today's Halloween show, we're saluting Young Frankenstein, the Mel Brooks Gene Wilder monster movie comedy that is celebrating its golden anniversary.

Speaker 2 Next up is Peter Boyle.

Speaker 3 Today, Boyle is best known known for his comedy work on television as Ray's grumbling father on the long-running sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.

Speaker 3 But by the time he agreed to play the creature in Young Frankenstein, Boyle was a dramatic character actor with roles in Taxi Driver, The Candidate, and Joe.

Speaker 3 Terry Gross spoke with Peter Boyle in 1988.

Speaker 6 How did you get the part of The Monster?

Speaker 12 Gee, I forget how I got it.

Speaker 12 I knew Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman, and I I knew Mel and there was a conversation, and

Speaker 12 they wanted to do

Speaker 12 a spoof on Frankenstein, and it was decided, you know,

Speaker 12 I was best for the monster. Marty was best for Igor, and blah, blah, blah, like that.
And Gene Wilder, you know,

Speaker 12 wrote the original script, and then he and Mel rewrote it, and it became a movie. It just happened.

Speaker 6 So did you go back and watch the original study Boris Carlos?

Speaker 12 I didn't have to, to because I had seen the original when I was about 12 years old

Speaker 12 in the era before television where there was a movie

Speaker 12 in downtown Philadelphia that used to show old movies. And a friend of mine went down to, and I went down to see the original Frankenstein, and it scared me.

Speaker 12 And it made such a strong impression on me that I really didn't have to go back and do research because I patterned my performance on Karloff

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 12 did it a certain way and I wanted to make it like there was somebody inside the monster.

Speaker 6 Did you remember the monster's grunts, which of course you had to do?

Speaker 12 Yes, of course, yes.

Speaker 6 The makeup is actually very funny for the film because you could see where the makeup is.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 Young Frankenstein really sort of spoofed the early Frankenstein movies, which were actually

Speaker 12 among the first sound movies ever made. They were made in 1931.
And the lighting and the makeup was very much in the style of the silent movies. It hadn't gotten that sophisticated.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 some of the makeup was, you were aware that it was makeup. That that was somewhat intentional.

Speaker 6 One of the highlights, I think, of Young Frankenstein is

Speaker 6 when Gene Wilder, who plays Dr. Frankenstein, the scientist, is showing off you, his monster, his creation, to a big audience of scientists.

Speaker 6 And then you, as he's showing you off, you do a duet with him of putting on the writs.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 In full top hat, white tie, and tails. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12 And seven, you know, and shoes that are elevated eight, have soles that are eight inches thick.

Speaker 12 You know, because you know, that's the part I remember. And I had to tap dance in those.

Speaker 4 If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits?

Speaker 4 Different types of...

Speaker 3 Terry Gross spoke with Peter Boyle in 1988. He died in 2006.

Speaker 3 And now, another of that film's scene-stealing supporting players, Cloris Leachman, who had won an Oscar years earlier for her supporting dramatic work on The Last Picture Show.

Speaker 3 She played Frau Blucher, a longtime resident of the Transylvania Castle, castle, a woman so scary, horses would react in fear whenever they heard her name.

Speaker 4 Steady!

Speaker 4 How do you do? I am Dr. Frankenstein.
This is my assistant, Inge. May I present Frau Blücher?

Speaker 4 I wonder what's got into them.

Speaker 4 Your rooms have been prepared, Herr Doctor.

Speaker 4 If you will follow me. Igor, would you bring the bags as soon as you're finished, please? Yes, master.

Speaker 4 After you, Frau Blücher.

Speaker 3 Terry Gross spoke with Coris Leitchman in 2009.

Speaker 6 You've made, what, two or three movies with Mel Brooks. The first was Young Frankenstein, in which you played Frau Blücher.

Speaker 2 Blücher.

Speaker 6 just, I want to play a scene from this, so just to set it up. Gene Wilder plays Dr.
Frederick Frankenstein, who is the

Speaker 13 Frankenstein.

Speaker 2 Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 Igor.

Speaker 6 And he's the grandson of the famous mad scientist who created the monster. And then he's.

Speaker 11 Life is my boyfriend.

Speaker 13 Then he learns he's inherited the Frankenstein estate.

Speaker 6 So he goes to the mansion in Transylvania. And your character, Frau Blücher, is one of the servants there.
And she was in love with the mad scientist. And in this scene, Gene Wilder, the young Dr.

Speaker 6 Frankenstein, goes to the lab

Speaker 6 with his two assistants, where he finds you releasing the monster from his restraints. Here's the scene:

Speaker 4 Frau Blücher!

Speaker 4 Stop!

Speaker 4 Don't come closer! What are you doing? I'm going to set him free! No! No, you mustn't!

Speaker 4 Yes!

Speaker 4 Are you insane? He'll kill you!

Speaker 4 No, he won't. Not this one.
He is as gentle as a lamb.

Speaker 4 Dead Beck!

Speaker 4 Dead Beck, for the love of God, he has a rotten brain. It's not rotten.
It's a good brain. It's rotten, I tell you, rotten.

Speaker 4 Ixnae on the Ottom Ray.

Speaker 4 I'm not afraid.

Speaker 4 I know what he likes.

Speaker 4 That music.

Speaker 4 Yes!

Speaker 4 It's in your blood!

Speaker 4 It's in the blood of all Frankensteins!

Speaker 4 It reaches the soul when words are useless. Your grandfather used to play it to the creature he was making.
Then it was you all the time. Yes.

Speaker 4 You played that music in the middle of the night. Yes.
To get us into the laboratory. Yes.
That was your cigar smoldering in the ashtray. Yes.

Speaker 4 And it was you who left my grandfather's book out for me to find. Yes.

Speaker 4 So that I would. Yes.

Speaker 4 Then you and Victor were... Yes!

Speaker 4 Yes!

Speaker 4 Say it!

Speaker 4 Have us!

Speaker 4 My boyfriend!

Speaker 9 That's my guess Cloris Leachman.

Speaker 2 Legina Boyd.

Speaker 11 Can you believe it's the same one who played on Raymond? I Love Raymond.

Speaker 13 Oh, Peter Boyle, who plays the monster.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Isn't it remarkable to be the same person who's doing those very divergent roles?

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, he was a great actor. He was a great actor.

Speaker 2 Well, how did you figure out how to play Frau Brücher?

Speaker 2 Brucker. Blucher.

Speaker 11 I didn't know. I had a wonderful hairdo by Mary, the head of the hair department, and a 20th and a wonderful costume.
They made it fit me perfectly and it was wonderfully designed.

Speaker 11 And that's all I knew. And I was made up.
Now I go on this set and I don't have any idea how to be Frau Brücher or have any German accent. I'd never done one before.

Speaker 11 So all the time when they were shooting, I kept saying,

Speaker 10 do you know a German accent? Hello, excuse me. Do you know a German accent?

Speaker 11 To everybody. And about three people there thought maybe they didn't know for sure.
They tried. And I think one of them was Melbrook's mother.
I think she helped me the most.

Speaker 2 Was she from Germany?

Speaker 11 I don't know anything.

Speaker 11 When I first came out the door and I say, I am

Speaker 5 Frau Blücher.

Speaker 11 And I think it's said with such measurement, I was so careful to try to do it right. That's why it's so slow.
Otherwise, I'd say, I am Frau Blücher.

Speaker 5 But I said, I am Frau Blücher.

Speaker 6 The running gag in Young Frankenstein is whenever anybody says Frau Blücher, the horse is Winnie.

Speaker 11 Mel told me a few years ago that Blücher meant glue.

Speaker 11 I'm not sure that's true, but it sure is funny.

Speaker 13 So it's like they're threatening the horses with the blue factory.

Speaker 6 So what did you learn about comedy working with Mel Brooks?

Speaker 2 Hmm.

Speaker 11 I'll tell you one thing. I was going going up the steps with Jean and the other two.

Speaker 11 Remember in the castle I'm going to show them around. And I had a candelabra

Speaker 11 with the candles not lit. And I turn, I say, stay close to the candles.
The staircase can be treacherous.

Speaker 11 And then Mel came up to me, climbed up the steps and whispered in my ear. And it was a line reading.
And here it is.

Speaker 11 Stay close to the candles.

Speaker 2 The staircase can be treacherous.

Speaker 11 Which means we've already lost a couple of people.

Speaker 3 Cloris Leachman, speaking to Terry Gross in 2009. She died in 2021.

Speaker 3 Coming up to complete our Halloween Day tribute, the director and co-writer of Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks. This is Fresh Air.

Speaker 9 This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pastor-raised eggs. Farmer Tanner Pace describes what makes a pastor-raised egg unique.

Speaker 14 Before we first started with vital farms, I thought, you know, an egg's an egg, not a big deal, but it's hard for me to even eat an eggs that's not a vital farm egg.

Speaker 14 Now, vital farms eggs are usually brown to lighter brown in color. And when you crack a pasture-raised egg,

Speaker 14 you have to hit it harder than what a person thinks just because the shell quality is so good.

Speaker 14 And basically when that egg cracks in the skillet or bowl, that yolk is almost kind of an orange shade. And that is part of what I love about a vital egg is just the shade of yolk.

Speaker 14 I love pasteurised eggs because you can see the work and the pride that the farmers have and have put into these eggs.

Speaker 9 To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com. This message comes from Grammarly.

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Speaker 3 By the time he directed and co-wrote Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks already had written for TV's Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, recorded hit comedy records in which Carl Reiner interviewed him as the 2,000-year-old man, co-created the TV series Get Smart, and directed such movies as The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, and Blazing Saddles.

Speaker 3 I spoke with Mel Brooks in 2013 and offered the opinion that you couldn't create a great parody of something unless you both understood and enjoyed the thing you were lampooning.

Speaker 15 I loved Westerns as a little kid and I loved horror films. And And I had fun with them, but I also

Speaker 15 saluted the glory of the Western and the glory of James Wales,

Speaker 15 you know, Frankenstein and Dracula. And we were, you know, what does a little kid in Brooklyn have?

Speaker 15 And when it comes to art, it ain't much, but it's

Speaker 15 those movies that you got in. And we didn't have any money.

Speaker 15 I was the baby boy of four, all together with four brothers. My mother lost her husband.
I lost my father. I was only two, and he died of tuberculosis.
And we were really, you know,

Speaker 15 poor. I mean, dead poor.
And I remember my mother gave me three bottles. I wanted desperately.
to see a Ken Maynard Western. I mean, desperately.
And you get two other pictures with it.

Speaker 15 You get three pictures for a dime.

Speaker 15 She gave me nine cents. I mean, she gave me three bottles, which

Speaker 15 three cents on each deposit bottle at Mr. Shanus' grocery store.
I had nine cents. I needed another penny.
And I said, Mom, I need another penny to get into the movies.

Speaker 15 It must have been about, you know,

Speaker 15 seven or eight, I don't know. And she said,

Speaker 2 I don't have it.

Speaker 15 So she went, she knocked on Mrs. Miller's door.
She said, Mrs. Miller, we don't have any cash in the house.
Can I have a penny?

Speaker 15 So I cherish those movies because they really lifted my spirits and are indelibly engraved in my brain as

Speaker 15 important

Speaker 15 steps in my world education.

Speaker 3 And what about, say, Alfred Hitchcock, whom you lampooned in High Anxiety? Those would have come a little later for you, but much later.

Speaker 2 I love those two.

Speaker 15 I always thought, you know, that Alfred Hitchcock was the very best director who ever directed films.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 when I was doing, I had the idea for high anxiety. I wrote him a letter saying basically, dear Mr.

Speaker 15 Hitchcock, you know, I do genre parodies and I, in my estimation, you are a genre and that you're just amazing and I would like to do a movie dedicated to you and based on your style and your work.

Speaker 15 And he said,

Speaker 15 he called me and he said,

Speaker 15 I love Blazing Saddles.

Speaker 15 I think you're a very talented guy and I'd come to my office I came to his office at Universal and he told me to come back every Friday at a quarter to 12 because at 1230 we would eat so 45 minutes of work and he would work on my script on high anxiety with me and he said well don't leave out this and don't leave out that he said what are you going to do about the birds I said well gee I at the moment I haven't included and he said well why don't you have them attack you with their ref you know refu, with their duty?

Speaker 15 He said, it's going to be funny. I said, thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock.

Speaker 15 So he gave me the birds, and he gave me a couple of others. He gave me one joke I couldn't use.
He's a very, very interesting writer.

Speaker 2 What was the joke that you couldn't use?

Speaker 15 Well, I couldn't use it because, I mean,

Speaker 15 it wasn't part of

Speaker 2 his work.

Speaker 15 I loved him. He was.

Speaker 15 He was colorful, he was sweet, and he saw the rough cut of high anxiety. And he got up and wiggled by me.
Never said a word.

Speaker 15 I said, oh my God, it's,

Speaker 2 ah,

Speaker 15 I'm ruined. It's terrible.
And he left. And 24 hours later, a beautiful wooden box arrives, placed on my desk.
It is

Speaker 15 six magnums of Chateau Aubrian.

Speaker 15 1961. Priceless.

Speaker 15 Maybe the greatest wine ever made, including Rothschild or any other. And with a little note saying, have no anxiety over high anxiety.
It's wonderful.

Speaker 2 Love hitch.

Speaker 3 Now, you seem to have a great track record directing and writing for women. I mean, not only Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Terry Garr, getting really wonderful comic performances from these women.

Speaker 4 What was your method?

Speaker 15 Well, you know, it was respecting

Speaker 15 their ability to deliver comedy, as well as, and sometimes a lot better, than male comedians. And they knew that I respected

Speaker 15 their ability and their talent. And they gave all because of it.

Speaker 15 And they weren't ashamed or afraid to reveal maybe unconscious aspects of their comedy talent, which may have been a little off-color, a little crazy, or a little bizarre that they wouldn't show anybody, but they'd show it to me because they knew I respected

Speaker 15 the full range of their gifts.

Speaker 3 Young Frankenstein came out the same year as Blazing Saddles. The standout scene has Gene Wilder as the scientist and Peter Boyle as the creature singing, putting on the writs.

Speaker 3 And I know that that was not your idea. That was co-writer Gene Wilder's.
Yes. So how long did it take before you figured out he was right? And then I have a question

Speaker 3 about what sort of direction you gave to Peter Boyle for that number, especially his singing.

Speaker 15 Well, actually, you know,

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 15 Gene first brought it up

Speaker 15 to show

Speaker 15 the wizardry of this, you know, Dr. Frankenstein coming up with this incredible creature,

Speaker 15 reanimating dead tissue. And not only does it move, does it walk and talk, but it also dazzles you with song and dance, you know.

Speaker 15 So I said,

Speaker 15 I think we're tearing it, Gene. I think, you know, we're going too far.

Speaker 15 We want some of the very similitudinous quality that

Speaker 15 was in the

Speaker 15 original James Whale movie, you know, which was serious and scary. And I don't want to lose the seriousness and the scariness of it.

Speaker 15 just for silly comedy, you know, just for taking comedy too far. And he kept pushing.
He said, no, no, it will show, demonstrate the doctor's abilities to teach the monster.

Speaker 15 And finally, he kept bugging me, and I said, look, okay, I'm going to shoot it, and I'm going to put it aside, and we'll see whether or not it's useful in the main body of the picture, okay?

Speaker 15 He said, okay, that's all I asked. Just shoot it and look at it later when you're putting it together.

Speaker 15 And I shot it, and I still was afraid of it. And then when I saw it later with all the film that we had collected, I said, gee, it may be the best thing to film.

Speaker 15 And I called Gene and I said, you're absolutely right all the time. And I'm glad it's in, totally.
And I'm looking on the cutting room floor for any outtakes, you know.

Speaker 3 And what direction did you give to Peter Boyle?

Speaker 3 And was putting on the writs always the first song choice?

Speaker 15 Yes, always. The Irving Berlin, and

Speaker 15 I said, Peter, sing it from your heart. Sing it like it's a cry of love and

Speaker 15 freedom and everything you can think of that's good.

Speaker 15 And he did.

Speaker 3 Mel Brooks spoke with me in 2013. Mel Brooks was born in 1926, and he's still got projects in pre-production, including two planned films, Space Balls 2 and Very Young Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 Happy Halloween, Mel.

Speaker 3 In the new movie Bogonia, which is now playing in theaters, Emma Stone stars as a high-powered CEO who gets kidnapped by a low-ranking employee played by Jesse Plemons, who believes she's an alien from outer space.

Speaker 3 It's the latest dark comedy from the filmmaker Jorgos Lanthemos, who previously directed Stone and Plemens in last year's Kinds of Kindness. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review of Begonia.

Speaker 2 As an admirer of the Greek director Jorgos Lanthemos, it gave me no pleasure to report that his 2024 film Kinds of Kindness was all kinds of lousy.

Speaker 2 A trio of stories about human cruelty, each one more wearying than the last.

Speaker 2 You couldn't fault the actors, though, not Emma Stone, a brilliant Lanthemos regular, who won an Oscar for her role in his film Poor Things, and not Jesse Plemens, a versatile addition to the director's regular company.

Speaker 2 Now Stone and Plemens have reunited in Lanthemos' wickedly funny new psychological thriller, Begonia, which at times plays like a discarded fourth story from Kinds of Kindness that was expanded into its own feature.

Speaker 2 Begonia is actually a remake of another film, Tang Junhuan's low-budget thriller from 2003, Save the Green Planet, which is now regarded by many as one of the most significant Korean movies of this century.

Speaker 2 Although Begonia is a bigger, more lavish production than Save the Green Planet, it does preserve many of the same plot details.

Speaker 2 Jesse Plemens plays Teddy, a part-time beekeeper who also works in a warehouse owned by a major corporation that makes drugs and pesticides.

Speaker 2 He blames the company and its CEO, Michelle Fuller, that's Emma Stone, girl bossing to the max, for their role in endangering bee colonies around the world. But Teddy's rage goes further.

Speaker 2 He claims that Michelle is an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy, bent on destroying planet Earth.

Speaker 2 And so with the help of his cousin, Dawn, played by Aiden Delbus, Teddy ambushes Michelle outside her home and knocks her out.

Speaker 2 When she comes to, she's tied up in the basement of Teddy's farmhouse and shaved bald for reasons that only her captor can explain.

Speaker 8 Where is my hair?

Speaker 3 Your hair has been destroyed.

Speaker 15 You shaved off my hair?

Speaker 2 Yes, we've shaved off your hair.

Speaker 15 Why have you shaved off my hair?

Speaker 3 To prevent you from contacting your ship.

Speaker 15 My ship?

Speaker 3 Your ship?

Speaker 15 What ship?

Speaker 3 Your mother's ship?

Speaker 2 Teddy demands that Michelle take him and Dawn to her leader. Michelle's response is startlingly cool and methodical.

Speaker 2 Rather than screaming or pleading for her life, she calmly explains that she isn't an alien, and that Teddy and Dawn would be wise to let her go.

Speaker 2 Even when she's incapacitated, she seems unnervingly in control of the situation, and you begin to wonder fairly early on if Michelle really is from Andromeda.

Speaker 2 Weirdly, the answer almost doesn't matter, because there's always been something otherworldly about the way Lanthemos regards his characters.

Speaker 2 Watching one of his movies, like Dog Tooth or The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is sort of like watching a strange behavioral experiment, conducted by an extraterrestrial being.

Speaker 2 Even so, Begonia doesn't have the staccato rhythms and bizarre nonsequiters of most Lanthemos movies.

Speaker 2 It was written by Will Tracy, a co-writer on the 2022 horror satire The Menu, and the dialogue has a lucidity that sucks you in.

Speaker 2 Teddy strains to be polite with Michelle at first, but he starts to unravel as her barbed, insinuating words get under his skin.

Speaker 2 The more Michelle talks, the more she backs Teddy into a corner, exposing layers of grief, trauma, bitterness, and disillusionment, especially concerning politics.

Speaker 2 Teddy has been all over the ideological spectrum, alt-right, leftist, Marxist, but now shuns all labels, dismissing them as performative garbage.

Speaker 2 Michelle seems to share his cynicism, or maybe she's just saying that to mess with him, in the same way that Lanthemos is messing with us.

Speaker 2 Scene by scene, Begonia keeps us guessing. Which of these two characters should we be more afraid of? Is Teddy just another crackpot conspiracy theorist? Or might he be onto something?

Speaker 2 Plemmens' tense, heartbreaking performance allows for both possibilities, and his psychological duet with Stone is riveting to watch.

Speaker 2 There are also haunting grace notes from newcomer Aiden Delbus, who is autistic and is playing an Autistic Pan, Don,

Speaker 2 the one character here who seems completely guileless. Like many Lanthemos movies, Begonia teems with startling tonal shifts and sudden eruptions of violence.

Speaker 2 Yet it also feels like a more accessible object than he's made before, more of a clever product, perhaps, than a sui generous vision. It's a remake, after all, and a fairly faithful one at that.

Speaker 2 Where it differs most from its source material is in the way it looks.

Speaker 2 Where Save the Green Planet felt grauddy and claustrophobic, Begonia, shot by the gifted cinematographer Robbie Ryan, is almost distractingly gorgeous.

Speaker 2 The final sequence, in particular, has a spooky apocalyptic grandeur that left me in a state of near awe.

Speaker 2 Lanthemos may be something of an arthouse prankster, but even in his impish gaze, our endangered planet can still be a thing of beauty.

Speaker 3 Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. On Monday's show, Richard Linklater, who made the films Slacker, Dazed and Confused, The Before Trilogy, and Boyhood, talks about his two new films.

Speaker 3 Blue Moon is about lyricist Lorenz Hart, Nouvelle Vogue is in homage to director Jean-Luc Godard, and the making of his 1960 revolutionary French New Wave film, Breathless. Join us.

Speaker 3 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer.
Our senior producer today is Roberta Scharrock.

Speaker 3 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez.

Speaker 3 For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancoo.

Speaker 9 This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pastor-raised eggs.

Speaker 9 Farmer Tanner Pace shares why he believes it's important to care for his land and how he hopes to pass the opportunity to farm onto his sons.

Speaker 14 We're paving the way for a future. We only have one earth and we have to make it count.

Speaker 14 Like my boys, I want to see them taking care of the land for them to be able to farm and then generations come I really enjoy seeing especially my whole family up there working with me and to be able to instill the things that my father mother and then grandparents instilled in me that I can instill in the boys that's just the most rewarding thing that that there could ever be vital farms they're motivated for the well-being of the animals for the well-being of the land the whole grand scope of things they care about it all.

Speaker 14 You know, and that means a lot to me.

Speaker 9 To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com.

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