| Allison Vincent |
Young Frankenstein plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, May 25th, through Tuesday, May 27th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
As a kid growing up at the tail end of the 80s through the 90s with access to cable and an unrestricted library card, it was pretty easy to consume the media I wanted without too much interruption from my parents. My dad was lax, to say the least, when it came to pre-screening anything. When I was four, for example, I brought Conan the Barbarian to my grandparents’ house to watch before bed. This is the film that features Arnold putting an obnoxiously large sword through as many people as possible and the big bad, James Earl Jones (Sir, what are you doing here!?), making hand soup.
Anyway.
This resulted in a family meeting and my access to hyper-violent, “this could scare her” media was narrowed…briefly. For the rest of my single-digit childhood, I was allowed to read Goosebumps and watch Are You Afraid of the Dark, and after a furious battle with my mother, I was allowed to read Stephen King AT HOME.
Sidebar: This rule was implemented after I got caught reading The Shining at my Catholic grade school during religion class and the school called a family meeting of their own in which my dad just kept screaming “SHE’S READING ABOVE GRADE LEVEL! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?” Needless to say, my parents divorced when I was eleven.
Despite this compromise, my dad would sneak me the Universal monster movies around Halloween time. My mom would invariably hear the melancholy violins or shrieking maidens and stomp downstairs to fuss at him that it would give me nightmares (which they 1000% did) until he finally said, “Listen, Maria, it’s just a great movie,” and in his mind that was the nail in the coffin of all this “too scary” nonsense. He was an older dad, born in 1948 with an absolutely broken appropriateness meter. He loved movies. Movies were his hobby and I think the old black and white horror films like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, etc., were nostalgic for him and something he wanted to share with the burgeoning cinephile next to him cradling the foot-long King Kong action figure he had purchased for me instead of a baby doll. Clearly, the road to me becoming a horror nerd was paved by my father from an early age.
I remember the first time we watched Young Frankenstein, I was primed and ready to be scared as the opening credits began to roll. It looked, felt, and read like a Universal monster movie to me. But after a few minutes, I realized that this was funny. Gene Wilder driving a scalpel into his thigh wasn’t horrific, it was silly! Of course, there were lots of jokes I didn’t get that my father cackled at. I did get a reprimand for singing Teri Garr’s iconic “roll, roll, roll in the hay” by my mother in the days following my first screening.
Even as a kid, I understood that this movie was special. About a decade before I had a grasp on the concepts, or words, parody and satire, I understood that Brooks was making fun of Frankenstein without making fun of it. Really it was like a love letter to the original film while still being the zany Brooks and Co. movie that makes you laugh until you cry. As an adult, hearing how Brooks was able to secure a deal for it before Blazing Saddles premiered and was a verified hit is incredible.
There is a whole, glorious chapter of Brooks’s memoir, All About Me, where he talks about making Young Frankenstein. The book is delightful and everyone should read it, however *pro tip* listen to the audiobook version where Mel reads it himself. Incredible stuff. In the chapter, Brooks reveals how during a break on set for Blazing Saddles he spied Gene Wilder intently working on a notepad. When he asked him what he was writing, Wilder showed him a page that said “Young Frankenstein.” Brooks immediately asked him to lunch to chat. At lunch Wilder pitched a movie “about Baron Frankenstein’s grandson [being] an uptight scientist who doesn’t believe any of that nonsense about bringing the dead back to life. Even though he is clinically a scientist, he is as crazy as any Frankenstein” (Brooks 2021). Brooks loved the idea. He was a huge movie fan himself and thought paying homage to the Universal greats while also incorporating his and Wilder’s trademark comedy would be a match made in heaven.
Because of his love and respect for the old Universals, Brooks was hellbent on making the film look and feel as close to James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein as possible, from the score to the title cards to the iris wipes. He was even able to find pieces of the original lab equipment from Whale’s film to use for Young Frankenstein, which had been sitting in a garage since the film wrapped production. The biggest piece of this effort was Brooks’s insistence that the film be shot in black and white. In 1973, Brooks and Wilder were brokering a deal with Columbia and had a handshake agreement by the end of the meeting. But as Brooks notes in his memoir, he popped his head back into the room after starting to close the door and said, “Oh by the way, it’s going to be in black in white” and ran down the hall (Brooks 2021). The deal with Columbia fell apart shortly after due to both artistic and budgetary disagreements, but the project was soon picked up by 20th Century Fox and given a bigger budget.
With Brooks at the helm directing, he made a point of ensuring that the movie felt as authentic as possible while also balancing the comedy peppered throughout the script. One of the most iconic scenes in the movie, Victor and the Monster singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” was in danger of being cut from the movie for being “too silly” in Brooks’ eyes. He was worried it broke the continuity of tone throughout the rest of the movie. Brooks and Wilder debated over the scene until Wilder asked that they just shoot it and see. Brooks capitulated, and thank god he did. At test screenings, people were screaming with laughter. Brooks said, “Not only does it work, but it may be one of the best things in the whole movie.” The scene is hysterical, and, yes, very silly, it is also the catalyst for the creature being perceived as dangerous by the community and points to the very big reanimated heart pumping beneath the whole film.
Young Frankenstein isn’t just a zany comedy. In my dad’s words, it “is just a great movie.” The cast is absolutely stacked, featuring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Gene Hackman, and Cloris Leachman. Each performance is 100% committed and absolutely brilliant from both a comedy and acting standpoint. It is a loving tribute, carefully crafted by people who grew up watching those old movies. They, like me, were dazzled by the shots, chilled by the make-up and action, and torn by the complicated human aspects of the monster’s plight. Brooks wanted to share that, in his own artistic voice, with his audience as a labor of love.
Each rewatch of Young Frankenstein reveals another layer of how brilliant the film actually is. As a kid, it taught me that comedy can be silly and smart, and brimming with heart. Now as a writer and theatre maker here in the Twin Cities, whenever I’m at a table working on a comedy script with other writers or directing a comedic scene in a play, I’m always asking myself, “What’s the heart of this?” Why do we care beyond the laughter? Where does the laughter come from? What is it doing? In clown class at the University of Minnesota, I learned that “you have to make them laugh before you can ask them to cry” and I think that’s exactly why Young Frankenstein remains not just an excellent comedy, but a classic film. Mel Brooks remains one of my comedy heroes and biggest influences as a comedian. He is such a good reminder that being silly is actually quite profound. It is a way to get past all the artifice and peek at the human soul.
Most of all, the movie provided me with my own nostalgia of sitting on the couch with my dad, who was a very complicated guy, but loved movies. He, like Brooks, wanted to share an experience with me, to remember his boyhood, to laugh together, to be moved by a story. And if that ain’t the point of art, I don’t know what is.
References
Brooks, Mel, All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, 2021.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon