An Oral History of Funny in Film: Online Extra
Premiere's July/August issue features the history of movie comedy as told by dozens of comic greats. Naturally, all of the stories couldn't fit in one article, so Premiere.com is proud to present more mirth from some of filmdom's funniest folks.
Interviews by Brooke Hauser, Cristy Lytal, Jason Matloff, Kate Meyers, Mark Salisbury, Sara Vilkomerson, and Al Wiesel.
Mel Brooks, director and writer, The Producers (1968)
Matthew Broderick, actor, Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Billy Crystal, actor, City Slickers
Jamie Lee Curtis, actress, Trading Places, True Lies
Cameron Diaz, actress, The Mask
Will Ferrell, actor, Zoolander
Terry Gilliam, co-director, actor, and co-writer, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Goldie Hawn, actress, Private Benjamin
Dustin Hoffman, actor, Tootsie
Diane Keaton, actress, Sleeper
Kevin Kline, actor, A Fish Called Wanda
Leslie Nielsen, actor, Airplane
Carl Reiner, director, All of Me
Owen Wilson, co-writer, Rushmore
Mel Brooks, writer and director, The Producers
I could have had a Universal picture finished and done, if I had only used [Springtime for] Mussolini. Lew Wasserman said, "Mussolini's not such a bad guy. You know, he's acceptable. Hitler is unacceptable." I said, " Lou, that's the reason for [Springtime for] Hitler, because the Jews want to close the show, they want a flop. With Mussolini they may get a hit." He said yeah, I see your point.
Matthew Broderick, actor, Ferris Bueller's Day Off
I was very flattered to be asked to do it. I also had been doing a play where I talked to the audience and this was talking to the audience, so I thought, "I wonder if that's why I got this job?" When I first saw it, I saw it at [director]John Hughes's house. I don't remember if I thought I was good in it, but I did think, "this is super entertaining." I hoped it would be successful, but I never thought it would be this thing that's lasted so long. I don't know why sometimes things catch on, but I remember being in an elevator and an elevator man, in very broken English, told me that it was his favorite movie. It seems like it doesn't matter what country you're from; there's something very universal about saying, "Fuck it," and taking the day off, as simple as that sounds. I think there are a lot of people that don't like their job or don't like their school and it's a fantasy. And then you go to Wrigley field and catch a ball and everything works out perfectly.
Billy Crystal, actor, City Slickers
With City Slickers, the thing I'm asked about is always about the calf. When I birth Norman, it was such a realistic looking birth. The key was we made a really great rear end of a cow. It had lungs, it had everything. It looked perfectly natural. The birth canal was exactly what it would be. If we had a camera problem, we can't just shove him up there to shoot it over again. So I had this little runt calf, who was the first Norman. I kept pulling him through the birth canal and boy, to me, It felt real. 'Cause they're about 30 pounds when they're first born. Actually, that scene was shot over three different locations. So the wide shot is Jack [Palance] and I as we ride up to it, [which was shot on a] very cold that day in New Mexico. I pull the calf out on location in California. Then, when I say, "my watch came off," that's at like four in the morning on a soundstage in Culver City. It was over three months… That's a tough labor! [laughs].
Jamie Lee Curtis, actress, Trading Places, True Lies
My favorite line from Trading Places is when Eddie Murphy is in a bar, and the bad guy sits next to him and goes, "Hey you're that jive ass turkey motherfucker I was gonna carve in prison last night." And Eddie looks at him and goes, "Motherfucker, moi?" [laughs]. Motherfucker, moi. There you go.
Jamie Lee Curtis, actress, Trading Places, True Lies
There were a bunch of laughs in Freaky Friday, but not one big one. Trading Places had a couple. A Fish Called Wanda had a couple. But the biggest laugh I have ever gotten in my life, in a movie, without question, I owe to Jim Cameron. We were shooting the striptease scene in True Lies. In this sequence, here's this woman who's a conservative housewife who has to pretend to be a stripper. And here I am, me, dancing — which I can do a little bit — scantily clad. I kind of shut my eyes and imagined that I was pole dancing. It got very intense and it stopped being funny. It was Jim, who on the second day came up to me and said, "next time, I want you to let go. I want you to fall." And that is, without question, the biggest laugh I will ever get in my life.
Cameron Diaz, actress, The Mask
My first [film] was with Jim Carrey in the Mask, and that was life altering. I quickly had to learn how to play it straight with someone who is so brilliant and so funny all the time. It was definitely a challenge. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was completely oblivious. At that time, Jim was still just the white guy from In Living Color. On my way to work the first day, I was really nervous. I showed up literally not knowing where to stand in front of the camera. I didn't even think there would be a mark on the floor. Jim held my hand, I just got to show up and play with him. It was just surprising to be in the film at all. That I didn't get cut out of the film was amazing.
Jim went off all the time. He's a dancer, a choreographer of his body. He gets in a groove and it just comes out. Whenever he was the Mask, he really did turn superhuman, and his body would do things you just didn't expect. He could do something as Jim and you'd be like wow but as the Mask you just got lost in the superhuman strength.
Will Ferrell, actor, Zoolander
It's so funny that [my] Mugatu [character] became kinda famous, like a cult thing. I didn't feel like I was giving them what they wanted, because, the director kept going, "Okay, that was good. Do whatever you want to do. Have fun with it." And I was like, "I am. I think. Gosh, am I not doing it right?" So it's so funny to me that the first one I filmed, I was really self-conscious about.
Terry Gilliam, co-director, actor, and co-writer, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
[Making Grail] was constantly bizarre and if we hadn't been so naïve and so determined we would never have gotten through it. We shot it in about four and a half weeks for, I think, 400,000 pounds or dollars. Literally everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We just ploughed on. The very first day, the very first shot of our very first movie all on our own, we were up in Glencoe and Hamish McInnes, this great British mountain climber, had built the bridge of death across a great chasm up there. We had to hump all the gear down from the road, down the side of a mountain, across a river, up the other side of the mountain to get to the Bridge of Death, and on the very first shot, the camera breaks. It was like that constantly.
Goldie Hawn, actress, Private Benjamin
Like Lucy [Ball] and Judy Holliday, [my character Judy Benjamin] had an openness and gullibility where she believes what she's told. There was a sense of innocence, self-humor and also self-recognition. You can't do that without being smart, self aware, and comfortable with your own being. Lucy and Judy Holliday were intelligent women who really were unafraid to be who they are. There was no pretending. You can't teach that vulnerability, that wide openness. You can only own it.
Dustin Hoffman, actor, Tootsie
Columbia allowed me to spend money on makeup tests. Dick Smith, the best makeup man around, was hired. We were challenged for a number of months. We wanted to be able to fool the audience. I already have a neck that's out of proportion with the rest of my body so we worked on costumes to soften that. And lifts were given to me to pull up my face almost like a facelift.
I didn't want to have falsetto like in Some Like it Hot because they had done everything you could do with that. I remember being in the shower and trying the voice for the umpteenth time and I thought instead of trying the voice, maybe I should recite the lines of great female parts. I was thinking about what parts Dorothy would have had in regional theater. I thought she would love to play Blanche Dubois. It was like lightning struck because Blanche DuBois is southern and by trying to inflect a southern accent, it caused the ends of my sentences to go up rather than down.
Diane Keaton, actress, Sleeper:
I was playing [laughs] an idiot. Woody would sometimes have ideas that wouldn't be in the script. I remember one day he thought, "Well, you be Marlon Brando and I'll be Blanche DuBois." And I went, "What?! No, no, no, no! I can't do it. I can't do it." But we shot it. That day we just went out there and we shot it. And it got done.
Kevin Kline, actor, A Fish Called Wanda
I figured that the ingenious English special effects guy would have some amazing fake fish that would wiggle in my hand and [then] I'd fake eat them. I got there on the day [we filmed that scene] and they said [imitates British accent], "Uh, if you could give it a bit of a shake, it will look like it's wiggling." [laughs] And that's what I did! It was just little rubber thing. They also made some other thing out of gelatin, but of course, once they went in the water they'd then come apart in my hand. It got terribly frustrating. By the end I was like, "oh just get me a real fish," but that would really have wrecked havoc on the continuity.
Leslie Nielsen, actor, Airplane!
[Airplane!] was a different kind of comedy in the sense that with Airplane!, and of course the Naked Guns, and pretty well anything that the Zuckers and Jim Abrams do, even today, is that they don't try to tell anybody what's funny. They just go ahead and put it up on the screen and if you keep your eyes open [you'll catch it]. The essence of the humor is that you have to pay attention.
Carl Reiner, director, All of Me
Lily [Tomlin] is one of the great comic minds that we have today. She gave us a perfect performance, but she's not easy on the set because she keeps creating on after you've shot a scene. She says, "Oh wait, I got a better idea." Sometimes you have to re-shoot because she's changed something for the better. You don't turn down good ideas, so we just re-shot it. It's kind of a pain in the ass at the time, but you're so happy that you have people like that who can be a pain in the ass and improve the movie as they're being a pain in the ass.
Owen Wilson, co-writer and producer, Rushmore
I remember when we were working on Rushmore, [Wes Anderson] he'd gotten a book on Jacques Cousteau because we were working in a library. Wes went off on tangents about how cool Jacques Cousteau was, and the fish tanks in Rushmore [came out of] stuff that we thought was funny and kind of cool. Piranhas are something that every kid's into, you know? The way they have like those little sharp teeth and the huge mouth open is really interesting to kids. They're right up there with dinosaurs and petrified wood. I still don't even know what petrified wood is. Like what's the difference between petrified wood and a rock? I can't tell.
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