We’ll All Meet Again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money

December 16, 2021 7:17 AM

There's no sequel yet, but Mel Brooks reminisces about the genre he hadn’t wrecked yet and "the Making of Spaceballs"
posted by chavenet (23 comments total)

I had no idea Dot Matrix was played by Lorene Yarnell. That's wild. Shields and Yarnell were a big thing when I was a kid.

I’ve even gotten some letters from young fans that saw Spaceballs before they saw Star Wars. They would often ask me why Star Wars wasn’t so funny.

I saw a comedian do a bit about this. I don't remember his name but he talked about how he didn't like Star Wars because he saw Spaceballs first. I wonder if he heard Brooks talk about that or if maybe Brooks has heard the bit.
posted by bondcliff at 8:03 AM on December 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

"I wanted to make fun of presidents, because presidents were not always the smartest people to lead a country"

I wonder if this inspired the "comb the desert" bit:

Professional mime Lorene Yarnell was in the Dot Matrix outfit on set and was terrific. She was a real trooper while encased in her metallic shell when we were shooting on location in Yuma, Arizona, re-creating the desert scene in Star Wars. Sometimes the temperature got up to 110 degrees. But Yarnell came through every time. The problem with shooting in the Yuma desert was that if you do more than one take in sand, you’ve ruined the pristine quality of the sand. It would drive us nuts. We had to get a blower or a sand broom out there to make sure that the sand was ready for the next take.

Spaceballs definitely beat Star Wars in my book growing up!
posted by trig at 8:10 AM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I probably saw Spaceballs at some point before Star Wars because I spent years wondering where in Star Wars was the scene where the Jawas are walking single-file on top of a sand ridge and that's obviously from Spaceballs.

Also, pre-Internet I have no idea how the "Spaceballs 3: The Search for Two" joke got around, but everyone in my pre-teen cohort knew it. I think it's from an interview Brooks gave at one time?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:05 AM on December 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

Wow. I'm willing to bet Brooks just provided a few brief anecdotes, then some low-level copy editor wafted out the rest of that graceless puff piece. There's no way that was written by Mel.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:39 AM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Anyway, that aside I still re-watch Spaceballs now and then and enjoy it every time.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:40 AM on December 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

There's no way that was written by Mel.

It's an excerpt from a new autobiography, apparently: "From ALL ABOUT ME! by Mel Brooks, published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC" ["...which is just part of what's wrong with publishing in America today" -- William Goldman]

But yeah, there's definitely someone in the middle between the man and the words. There's no way Mel Brooks uses "he quips" to introduce a quote. So much for Ballantine; you'd think someone like that would rate a ghostwriter with an ear for language.

Still, I like that so much of the piece is him giving props and credit to other people's contributions, down to specific lines. And the amount of fun he has comes through even with the hacky prose, even if his voice doesn't.
posted by trig at 11:08 AM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I was that weird kid in my social circle who liked Spaceballs when it first came out; people thought the jokes were too obvious, or too Jewish, or something, and made fun of me.

I liked Abba, too. So satisfying to see that I was right all along on both counts.
posted by Melismata at 11:58 AM on December 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

Mel Brooks is 95 years old, for fuck's sake, give him a break, folks!
posted by chavenet at 12:15 PM on December 16, 2021 [15 favorites]

Nobody wants you to remember Spaceballs: The Animated Series.

I remember.

God help me, I remember.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:29 PM on December 16, 2021

he didn't like Star Wars because he saw Spaceballs first

Not only did I see Spaceballs first (and several times since), I still haven't actually seen any of the Star Wars films.
posted by wierdo at 12:37 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I love Mel Brooks, but this article is like an episode of The Chris Farley Show:

"You remember Spaceballs?"

"Yes."

"You remember that time, when, when Rick Moranis was funny as Dark Helmet?"

"Yes."

"And he said "They've gone to plaid! Remember that?"

"Yes."

"That was awesome."
posted by zardoz at 1:23 PM on December 16, 2021 [11 favorites]

zardoz: according to the article, Elon Musk is a fan. I bet he has initiated that exact conversation.

I saw this in the theater as a kid. I enjoyed it, except for the part where I was absolutely terrified by the chestburster. It didn't matter that it was supposed to be funny -- I was not allowed to see Alien and had no idea. Had vivid nightmares that night.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:34 PM on December 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

"this happens in the movie" and then "here's this great bit of dialogue" and "actor turned in brilliant performance"

Every single entertainment autobiography I've read in the last decade or so has been basically this, with the possible exception of Martin Short's.
posted by tclark at 1:40 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I still can’t meet anyone named Schwartz without giggling a little somewhere inside.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:48 PM on December 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

I saw this in the theater as a kid. I enjoyed it, except for the part where I was absolutely terrified by the chestburster.

I didn't really know about Alien as a kid and I interpreted John Hurt's slightly annoyed "oh no, not again" line to mean that a singing alien has already burst out of his chest at least once and therefore it's survivable (at least in the Spaceballs universe).

In my headcannon, this is equivalent to that time in Futurama that Fry ate the gas station egg sandwich. Everyone warned John Hurt not to have the special, but he had it anyway, even though he knows what happened the last time he ordered it.

Also, no one in the diner really cares that an alien has just burst through someone's chest.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:53 PM on December 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I interpreted John Hurt's slightly annoyed "oh no, not again" line to mean that a singing alien has already burst out of his chest at least once

Me too! I actually had no idea until today that he was the same actor as the guy in the Alien movie.
posted by trig at 4:07 PM on December 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I'm guessing, from the "The Search for More Money" subtitle, that the sequel (if it had happened) would have been more focused on Star Trek, which suits me down to the ground. (The guy who says "We ain't found shit!" in the combing-the-desert scene is future Star Trek: Voyager actor Tim Russ.) Also, I hadn't seen Alien at that point either, but I'd picked up enough references from here and there, and may have even read the version of the scene in the novelization, to have understood the reference in this movie; as someone pointed out once, it may be the best bit in Spaceballs because it just comes out of left field.

Every single entertainment autobiography I've read in the last decade or so has been basically this, with the possible exception of Martin Short's.

OK, I'll bite: what's the difference in Short's?
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:10 PM on December 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed it, except for the part where I was absolutely terrified by the chestburster.

As someone who was just old enough to have seen Alien before Spaceballs and to see that Michigan J. Frog cartoon multiple times on Saturday mornings, that scene had me gasping for air from laughing so hard. I remember pitching out of the theater seat, even—it’s the the closest I’ve ever come to literally ROTFL LMAO.
posted by ejs at 5:53 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

OK, I'll bite: what's the difference in Short's?

Nothing in particular other than I got the sense that his autobiography showed him in a more realistic light, and I felt like I got a bit more of his honest opinions about things rather than platitudes. It wasn't a highly exceptional autobio, aside from the fact that I'd read several that just seemed like they were extruded under the very close eye of a publicist rather than written.
posted by tclark at 6:41 PM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I had never seen the Michigan J. Frog cartoon, but Mom used to sing “Hello Ma Baby” to us almost every day when we were kids.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:41 PM on December 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm listening to the audiobook of his autobiography now (read by the man himself). The whole thing reads like a slightly beefed up Wikipedia article. You can tell that he's been telling some of these stories at cocktail parties for decades, but it seems like either the ghostwriter is a complete hack, or the lawyers took out most of the good stuff. It's like a 12-hour episode of Fallon.
posted by Optamystic at 1:18 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Should have been written when Carl Reiner was around to ask the questions.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:25 AM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

In enjoyed Carl Reiner's My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir and I Just Remembered. He recounts funny and at times touching anecdotes from his life and career - nothing like that Brook's excerpt. If I recall correctly, Reiner says his memoirs inspired Brooks to do his own, but it seems he just followed the concept, not the execution.
posted by kgander at 2:39 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]