Still Looking for a Laugh

Cloris Leachman read for the role she played in the movie but then it went to Andrea Martin. What happened?
The problem is, there's a lot of singing and dancing for Frau Blücher in the show. Cloris is 81. I don't want to be responsible for killing her. Although she wouldn't mind dying on stage. It's a very difficult role for anyone over 50, let alone over 80. She was very, very disappointed. But she took it in stride and she's on to other things.

So it wasn't a matter of trying to completely divorce this cast from the cast in the film?
No, no. It was nothing like that. Peter Boyle is dead. Gene Wilder and Terri Garr are out of commission. Madeline (Kahn) is gone. If I could have resurrected the entire cast and put them on stage, I would've done that in a minute.

David Hasselhoff told me you specifically sought him out for the role of the flamboyant gay direct“r in "The Pro”ucers" in Las Vegas and he was stunned you even knew who he was.
Oh yeah, I wanted him right from the beginning. I “aid, "Why don't we get David Hasselhoff? He's gonna look great in a ”ress!" He's very up, a very positive guy and he sings beautifully.

Did you have any idea that he was having all these personal problems?
No, not at all. No idea. It was foolish of him to allow his occasional binges or whatever to be filmed. But it was even more foolish for his kids to give it up to his ex-wife, that tape. But he's the goodest guy. He's the goodest parent and the nicest father.

On that videotape, his daughter warns him he could be fired from the show if he didn't stop.
No, we never said anything like that. That was her admonition to make him stop. We never said anything about that. We never even knew about that so how could we say that?

You broke a lot of molds with the use of vulgar epithets, farting and interracial relatio“s in "Blazing S”ddles" and others. I wonder if the fact that Hollywood had just abandoned the morals code, known as the Hays Code, liberated you.
I got into a lush, verdant, exciting valley between the Hays days and political correctness. Right now, you couldn't say the n-word. A lot of things I did were looked down at as not nice. But comedy is truth-telling. It doesn't necessarily have to be nice. In fact, the funniest comedy is frequently not nice.