‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights’: the movie conjured up by an 11-year-old child
Anyone in the movie business knows it takes a minor miracle to get any film off the ground. Even though the script may be great, and big names might be attached; it doesn’t mean anything as long as there isn’t some sort of financial backing behind it. Although inspiration can come from the strangest places when putting together movies, Mel Brooks‘ inspiration for Robin Hood: Men In Tights was far from the creative partners that he was used to.
At this point in his career, Brooks had already been known as one of the best raunchy comedians in the business. Throughout his work on movies like The Producers and Blazing Saddles, Brooks’ strange approach to comedy was still among some of the best lighthearted content in the industry at the time. While there was no initial idea for a one-to-one parody of the story of Robin Hood, his writing partner J David Shapiro, had the idea of turning the idea into a reality through a chance visit with his dentist.
When getting his dental health in order, Shapiro began talking about his job before his dentist, Evan Chandler, floated the idea of making a parody of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Since the movie was one of the biggest hits at the time, the enhanced melodrama would work perfectly for a farce, taking the extravagant elements of the piece and turning them into the most absurd things anyone could imagine.
Then again, the dentist wasn’t even the one to come up with the idea. A few weeks before Shapiro’s appointment, Chandler got the idea from his 11-year-old son, Jordi, who thought seeing a version of Robin Hood that wasn’t taking itself seriously would be funny. While the idea may have sounded absurd at the time, sometimes absurdity works best when it’s in the hands of comedians.
Being one of the biggest successes of 1993, one of the film’s greatest strengths is how often it breaks from the traditional. While the idea of Robin Hood being outstanding with a bow and arrow is nothing new at this point, seeing him lose only to review the movie script saying that he can go again is the kind of fourth wall humour that no one was expecting at the time.
When writing the screenplay, Chandler eventually sold it to Brooks for $500,000, setting to work on casting some of the best comedic actors of the day like Cary Elwes. Having already made an absurd take on a fairy tale with The Princess Bride, Elwes fit like a glove in the role of the titular anti-hero, playing him with a touch of swaggering confidence and the trademark buffoonery that needs to turn up in a Mel Brooks film.
Although the movie was hit and miss with critics at the time, it became one of the biggest successes of the year, earning $72million on a $20m budget. While it would become a huge success and another staple in Brooks’s filmography, there was only one miscarriage of justice. When credited for the screenplay, Jordi Chandler would not be credited as one of the leading writers of the movie.