Mel Brooks: Centenarian
Mel Brooks has a reputation for being not only profoundly funny, but also profoundly generous and kind. When the Paramount Pictures archive told us that they have no sheet music assets for John Morris’s The Elephant Man, we thought asking Mel Brooks was the next best option (considering Brooksfilms produced the film and Paramount was only the distributor). Tracking down a major Hollywood legend can be a daunting task. People of this strata often don’t want to be contacted (“don’t call us, we will call you”) or are carefully guarded behind an iron curtain of business managers and attorneys. We found someone who had a business relationship with Brooksfilms and asked if they could help us get in touch. We waited and didn’t expect a reply.
A few weeks later we did receive a reply asking to clarify what exactly we intended to do with the music. Soon after, we were forwarded to Shelby van Vliet, the VP of Brooksfilms. Shelby said Mel would be delighted to allow us to publish the score…if she could find it. Mel was very fond of John Morris and thought publishing the score was an interesting idea. He kindly wrote a forward to be included in the book.
As luck would have it, Shelby found a large folder of bound scores for The Elephant Man. She told us to visit Mel’s office in Culver City to retrieve them and pilfer through boxes of archival materials for anything that would be of interest to our research.
The Brooksfilms office is located in an indescript office complex. In a previous life, it was the Desilu production offices. We parked next to the spot with a little sign indicating it was “reserved for Mr. Brooks.” Shelby told us they kept the sign up despite the fact Mel hasn’t driven in many years.
Several bankers boxes full of production papers, contracts, cue sheets, photographs, and ephemera were pulled from storage for us to explore. They were lined up in the main area of the executive suite. Some had tags and post-it notes left by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio who were in the preproduction phase of their HBO documentary, Mel Brooks: the 99 Year Old Man.
In an adjacent room was the office where Mel worked. The blue carpets were freshly vacuumed and everything was neatly organized. There were awards on shelves and a costume Mel wore in Spaceballs laying on a table. Shelby told us it was a big deal that Mel had a full personal bathroom in his office, which in old Hollywood was a sign of reaching the big time—the shower was used as overflow storage for boxes that didn’t fit elsewhere in the office.
When we reviewed the contracts for John Morris and Jack Hayes, Shelby told us Mel had a deep respect for orchestrators and admired their contributions to scoring. He knew he was paying for quality. Inside the folder of scores was a note typed by Mel’s former assistant documenting that the scores were lent to Quincy Jones in 1985.
While we didn’t get to meet the man directly, we left the Brooksfilms office glowing with appreciation that MEL BROOKS invited some kids to dig through his papers, which is a rare opportunity to be hands-on with archival materials that are generally inaccessible. Our edition of The Elephant Man and Young Frankenstein is the first of several Brookfilms scores Neumation Music plans to publish.
Thank you Mel.