Mel Brooks' Sci-Fi Flop SOLARBABIES Made Him 'Ready to Jump Off a Roof'

In an interview with SlashFilm writer Blake Harris for the podcast "How Did This Get Made?", comedy legend actually answers the question that the title asks, explaining how his producing the sci-fi flop SOLARBABIES threatened to ruin his life.

In the interview, Brooks says, "I'm broke. This film... people are coming to my house and my wife (The Graduate star Anne Bancroft) is saying, 'Who are these people in our kitchen?' I said, 'No, I'm just getting a little more insurance.' But really I'm getting a second mortgage on the house. I had two cars, I put them up. I mean, I'm practically ready to jump off a roof, you know? I mean a roof like the Empire State Building, I'm ready to go. Because I am legally broke and in debt for the first time in my life. Seriously in debt... I stay up for two-three nights in a row without sleeping, and I make a phony baloney trailer so it looks like Star Wars. It looks like the greatest thing - it looks like it's going to be the greatest sci-fi picture ever made - a fairy tale in space. Irresistible! I make a 10-minute trailer. I take it to all the studios. I almost got Michael Eisner - where was he at the time? Paramount, and then went to Disney - and he said, 'I'll give you back the money.' He's gonna give me back the $23 million, it's gonna be his picture, you know? But [then-Paramount president of production Jeffrey] Katzenberg said, 'No.' So anyway, this movie is now, like, I hear the death knell. I hear a bell tolling late at night. I can't sleep. Everything is mortgaged...I'm finished, I'm just finished."

Read the full article here, or listen to the full conversation on How Did This Get Made? here.

Brooks is one of the few entertainers to earn all four major entertainment prizes - a Tony, an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar. Brooks won his first Oscar in 1964 for writing and narrating the animated short, The Critic, and his second for the screenplay of his first feature film, The Producers, in 1968. Many hit comedy films followed including The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be and Spaceballs.

For three successive seasons, Mel Brooks won Emmy Awards for his role as Uncle Phil on the hit sitcom Mad About You. Brooks received three TONY AWARDS and two GRAMMY AWARDS for The Producers: the New Mel Brooks Musical, which ran on Broadway from 2001 to 2006. He followed that success with The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, which ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009.

In 2009, Brooks received The KENNEDY Center Honors, recognizing a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to American culture. In the spring of 2013, he was the subject of an Emmy Award-winning AMERICAN MASTERS documentary on PBS called Mel Brooks: Make A Noise and was the 41st recipient of the AFI's Life Achievement Award.

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