Mel Brooks Yelled at Roger Ebert for Panning His Final Film
Mel Brooks’ filmography is stacked with comedy classics like Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles and The Producers, but his final directorial effort isn’t as well regarded. 1995’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which starred Leslie Nielsen as the titular undead nobleman, certainly had its moments, including the prolonged, ridiculously bloody staking scene.
But as a whole, it was far from exceptional, and couldn’t help but suffer in comparison to Brooks’ earlier attempt to lampoon old Universal monster movies.
Dracula: Dead and Loving It ended up bombing at the box office, making just over $10 million (it reportedly cost around $25 million to make). And critics weren’t particularly kind to the movie. While The New York Times called it a “slight but amusing new parody,” USA Today’s review stated that “if any movie proves that Mel Brooks’ genius for skewering creaky genres has evaporated, it’s this anemic attempt to draw new blood from low-flying vampire high jinks.”
In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert similarly criticized Brooks’ Dracula, arguing that his feature-length satire format had been “exhausted,” ultimately proclaiming that “the movie’s not very funny.”
Apparently, Brooks wasn’t too happy about that. A year after Dracula: Dead and Loving It hit theaters, Brooks sat for an interview with Entertainment Weekly. When asked about movie critics, he responded, “There’s a great quote: ‘Critics are like eunuchs at an orgy — they just don’t get it.’”
He went on to recount a story about how he’d recently ran into Ebert, and chewed him out for the review. “He didn’t like Dracula. He made no bones about it — thumbs, pinkies, every digit that he had,” Brooks explained. “And I said to him: ‘Listen, you, I made 21 movies. I’m very talented. I’ll live in history. I have a body of work. You only have a body.’”
Which, with all due respect to Mr. Brooks, was not cool. Even if Ebert was used to being accosted by angry comedy legends by that point.
Ebert later confirmed that the story was true in his “Movie Answer Man” column, and admitted that the meeting was actually somewhat hurtful. “I was saddened by my encounter with Mel, because I have been a supporter of his work (when it deserved it) since The Producers, in 1967,” Ebert wrote. He also noted that he was one of the “few critics” who actually liked Brooks’ 1991 comedy Life Stinks.
“I was surprised he didn’t realize himself that Dracula: Dead and Loving It just didn’t work,” Ebert continued. “Yes, Brooks has put together a body of work, and yes, a lot of it has made me laugh, but I would not be doing him a favor if I did not tell the truth.”
And the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic couldn’t help but point out that the “correct version” of the quote Brooks cited was by Irish poet Brendan Behan, who said, “A critic at a performance is like a eunuch in a harem: He sees it performed nightly, but cannot do it himself.”
At least Brooks’ film ended up inspiring one of the best reviewed movies of last year.
