One of the Most Inspirational ‘80s Comedies Was Secretly Inspired by Mel Brooks
1982’s Diner was the comedy that dared to ask: What if some dudes hung out in a greasy spoon restaurant and just talked about stuff?
The movie starred Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin and Paul Reiser, just to name a few. It followed a group of friends in the late ‘50s who routinely meet at the local diner to chat about the music, sex and the minutiae of their day-to-day lives.
Don't Miss
While that concept may not sound all that novel today, at the time, it was so unusual for mainstream entertainment, that some found it tough to grasp. According to writer-director Barry Levinson, during the editing process, a studio executive tried to get him to cut an argument over a roast beef sandwich because it didn’t do anything to “advance the story.”
Diner, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, subsequently had a huge influence on some of the biggest movies and TV shows of the ‘90s, laying the groundwork for Seinfeld, which took the “friends talking about relationships in a diner” concept and ran with it.
And Quentin Tarantino once recalled that critics referred to Reservoir Dogs as “Diner with guns,” after noting that Levinson’s films were perhaps the best reference point for explaining where his stylish dialogue originated.
Diner even inspired one of the most successful Saturday Night Live “Digital Shorts”: “Dick in a Box.” But this wasn’t due to the film’s artistic success, it was just because The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone randomly remembered that the character played by Mickey Rourke was a giant creep who commits sexual assault with a popcorn bucket.
But it’s very possible that none of this would have happened without the great Mel Brooks.
Levinson worked with Brooks as a co-writer on Silent Movie and the Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety. In fact, Levinson is also in High Anxiety, playing the aggrieved bellboy who goes full Norman Bates on Brooks’ character.
As Levinson recently told IndieWire, the idea to mine his real life past for a movie project came from conversations with Brooks. “We worked together for a little over three years,” Levinson explained. “I would tell him stories about the diner guys at lunch, and one day he said to me, ‘You should write that as a film.’ I had never thought about it. I said, ‘Really?’”
Brooks even recommended a classic film that could help inform Levinson’s script: Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni. Unfortunately, Levinson couldn’t actually find a copy. “Back then it wasn’t like you could pull it up on streamers. I never did get to see it,” Levinson revealed. “But that idea got put in my head, and I just started writing.”
Brooks’ recommendation was a good one, since I Vitelloni was also a group of male friends in the 1950s.
No popcorn-related crimes, though.
