Daniel Klos wrote to ask…
Regarding your recent posting about Mel Brooks claiming to be broke prior to taking on the Blazing Saddles assignment: Whether he got the chronology right or wrong, when show business figures (particularly high profile show business figures like Mr. Brooks) claim to be "broke," are they simply being hyperbolic in their language? Or do they actually mean that they're living-paycheck-to-paycheck broke or on-the-verge-of-being-evicted broke? Since you are in show business yourself and may have more of a first-hand awareness of this than someone like me, how common is it for celebrities to actually be on the verge of being destitute once they've achieved their celebrity?
Not that uncommon…and I'm sure it happens in every industry where your take-home pay can go from low to high and then drop. We hear more about it happening with celebrities because we hear more about everything that happens to celebrities.
But it may be more common in show business because incomes can be more roller-coastery and less predictable. You know…you get hired on a new TV series. Your income goes way up. Will that series be on for ten years or ten weeks?
I'm thinking now of a friend who was on a sitcom. While it was on, his income was around $600,000 a year. The year after it was canceled, he made closer to $50,000 and the year after, less. He wound up selling the house and a lot of luxuries he'd purchased when he thought the money would be steadier and there'd be more of it.
Yeah, big stars do go broke and it's sometimes almost comical to hear that Willie Nelson or Wayne Newton or even folks with different initials have had to declare bankruptcy, sell their assets, etc. Something I've never quite understood is how someone with $30 million winds up broke. I mean, if you lose $30 million, it doesn't all evaporate one morning. It probably means that one week, you have $29 million and a few weeks later, you have $28 million and then you have $27 million…
When you get down to around $18 million, don't you say, "Hmm…maybe I'm doing something wrong here"?
From what I hear, Wayne lived on the presumption that he'd be packing them in at Vegas showrooms forever and then — not necessarily in this order — his voice went away and his audience went away. (Willie, I can't begin to explain. No one can do that much cocaine and he sure didn't spend it all on clothes.) I think what happens is that sometimes the money comes so easily and endlessly that you get reckless with living well and start gambling on new business ventures, figuring there's plenty more where that came from. And then there isn't.
I can't say exactly what it was with Mel Brooks. The Producers was not a very lucrative success for him at the time — more of a "cult hit" than we now remember. To get another movie made, he had to take a very low-paying deal on The Twelve Chairs and that did little business.
On the other hand, I remember that he got up at Howard Morris's last wedding and as part of a toast, he said, "I am so happy for Howie that he's discovered the same joy I once found…a wife who works!" Before Blazing Saddles changed his fortune, Mel's big problem may have been not that he and Anne Bancroft were in financial jeopardy but that she seemed to be the breadwinner. That mattered a lot to men of his generation.
Just speaking for myself, I have rarely been able to look very far ahead and estimate how much cash would be coming in or when it might arrive. I've been pretty conservative in my spending and I've never had a period when if everything suddenly stopped, I'd be worried about how to afford groceries next Tuesday or the next rent or mortgage payment. But I can sure understand the temptations involved or the cockiness or how sometimes what looks like an absolutely-certain project can suddenly fall through. It's hard to live within your means when you have no idea what those means will be in six months.