The Real Candy Man: Director Mel Stuart. (Photo copyright David Savage/Cinema Retro. All rights reserved.)

David Savage (to Rusty Goffe): What was he like on the set of Willy Wonka? Was he a tough director?

RG: He was a very tough director. Mel is one of these directors who knows what he wants. But he’s one of the few directors I’ve ever worked with who can put that to that [gestures from mouth to head]. So you can understand and know exactly what he wants. There are some directors where you’re thinking ‘What’s he going on about?’ But now when you see the film, he created magic. Not just a classic film, no seriously -- you created magic, Mel. It’s now forty years on, I was at an event last week in New Jersey, people are still crying, they still love it, people are still telling me everything about it.

DS: What were the origins of Willy Wonka? I understand your daughter had something to do with it.

MS: My daughter comes in one night, ‘Daddy, I want you to make a movie out of this book.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.’ Well, I don’t know what it is, but it sounds like a kid’s story. You know I don’t do kids’ stories, I told her, I do documentaries. ‘Daddy, I don’t care!’
She was screaming and yelling at me. I said, ‘Shut up, I’ll read the book.’ So I read the book, and it was a nice book. So I go to Dave Wolper, the guy I worked with, and I say ‘The kid wants us to do this story.’ Dave asks, what is it? I tell him the story. That’s all Wolper ever heard. He never read the book. So we go to Quaker Oats, because we were doing documentaries for them at the time, and they ask us, ‘What have you got about chocolate? We want to make a chocolate bar.’ I mean, the odds! L-U-C-K. And Dave Wolper says, ‘We’ve been working on this story for years, we think it’s the greatest thing that ever was put on paper. It’s got a factory, it’s got a man and a kid, we could make Wonka bars and you could make a fortune!’ So they bought it and gave me two-million-eight, and that was a big budget...

DS: So they financed the picture?

MS: They financed the picture.

DS: So this was not a studio picture.

MS: No, no! Paramount bought it when it was done, as the distributor, but the company, thank God, put up the money. There was nobody from the studio telling me what to do, nobody giving me ‘notes,’ I could do whatever I want.

DS: If this had been a Hollywood studio picture, and you had interference from the producers...

RG: It never would have come out.

MS: It never would have worked. Gene never would have been as crazy. [The studio] would have said, uh-oh, he’s getting too crazy, I mean they didn’t get it. So, Paramount bought it. And by the way, Quaker Oats was never able to make the chocolate bar. It was melting right on the shelves. They couldn’t get the formula right. So the candy bar failed and the picture lived on.

DS: You are on the record as saying that you don’t think this is a children’s movie. You said you think it’s a film for adults that children appreciate.

MS: Absolutely.

DS: Can you elaborate a little on that?

MS: I’ll give you an example. It’s filled with English poetry, it’s filled with Shakespeare. I didn’t worry whether the kids ‘got it.’ There’s a great example. Violet runs and steals a piece of gum and chews it, which causes her to blow up like a big balloon. And the father rushes over to Wonka and says, you’ve turned my daughter into a blueberry! I’ll destroy you for this! And Wonka says, ‘Tell me where is fancy bread, in the heart or in the head.’ That’s from The Merchant of Venice. Now, if you’re really smart, you’ll get it. Don’t tell me an eight-year-old kid is going to get that line. But maybe later they’ll get it. And if he doesn’t get it, that’s too bad.

Reunited: Julie Dawn Cole and Peter Ostrum 

DS: Tell me, who put in all those bits of English poetry and Shakespeare? Was it Dahl?

MS: Dahl did most of it. And as you probably know, ‘The Kid’ also supplied a lot of it.

DS: David Selzter [who would later go on to write The Omen].

MS: There’s a great story about Seltzer. I think it’s one of the greatest stories ever. I love writers. Seltzer had come over to punch up Roald Dahl’s script. It’s very important that you know that writing a script is not writing a story. You can’t shoot a story. You have to shoot a script. You need that extra thing. And Roald Dahl did most of it but it still needed something. The Kid, David Seltzer, for example, came up with the idea of Slugworth. . . So I get to the last page of the script. And the last line in the original script was -- as they’re going up in the Wonkavator -- Grandpa Joe says, ‘Yipee.’ So I’m shooting with Gene on the set, and all the Germans are running around, and I turn to the last page and I see this last line. I said, I’ll be damned if I end this picture with the word ‘Yipee.’ So I turn around and say ‘Get me The Kid! Get me The Kid!’ Now he had been in Munich and we had him locked up in his hotel room and he couldn’t come out until the end of the picture, so he’s in Maine trying to recuperate.

DS: Trying to get his head back together.

MS: He’s in this remote cabin in the middle of the woods by this lake, and it just so happens that there is a pay phone stuck to a tree trunk by his cabin. So we called the phone in Maine, and by sheer luck -- it was a phone for six people -- he picks up the phone. He says hello, and I say ‘David! You didn’t give me the last line of the picture! I can’t end the film on yipee! You’ve got to come up with a great line.’ He says, ‘How much time do I have?’ I said, ‘You have five minutes.’

DS: I think I would have had a nervous breakdown.

MS: Well I couldn’t. I’m not a writer. Remember this kid is only twenty-two, twenty-three! So he puts the phone down and walks away and comes back two minutes later. He said, ‘OK. Willy Wonka says to Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. Charlie says, what happened? He lived happily ever after.’ I said, ‘Not too bad Seltzer. You can go back to your cabin.’ [Laughs]. The next feature I did, One Is A Lonely Number, from MGM, I insisted they hire him.

Coming next: Part II of my interview with more cast members of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE DVD/BLU-RAY COMBO SET AND SAVE OVER $20!