By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
Telegram-Tribune

You've probably never heard of Andrew Bergman, but you've probably laughed at his humor in some of the best comic films made in the last 20 years.

His latest, "It Could Happen to You," opens Thursday.

It's about New York cop Nicolas Cage who promises half a lottery ticket to waitress Bridget Fonda in lieu of a tip, much to the dismay of his greedy wife Rosie Perez when their winning ticket turns out to be worth $2 million.

The situation is typical Bergman: a witty, romantic, urban, "Capraesque" screwball comedy in the tradition of old-fashioned Hollywood directors.

Bergman studied Frank Capra and other filmmakers of the 1930s as a doctoral student in American intellectual history.

The result is "We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films" (1971), still a popular textbook in film courses. The chapter on Capra describes screwball as "a comedy at once warm and healing, yet off-beat and airy."

The 49-year-old Bergman's knack for comedy began in childhood. His father, a newspaperman and one-time writer for comic pianist Victor Borge, helped discover comedian Ernie Kovacs.

Bergman was 26 when he found himself working with comedians Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor. Their rewrite of Bergman's first screenplay ("Tex X") about a black militant cowboy became the hugely successful "Blazing Saddles."

The money he made let him stay in his native New York City, making movies about "ordinary people falling into hideous circumstances," Bergman told Premiere magazine in 1992.

He makes comedies like Alfred Hitchcock would have if he'd dabbled in humor instead of mastering the macabre.

Like most Hitchcock heroes, Bergman's Everyman falls into a remarkable situation, encounters a series of unusual people and discovers something extraordinary in himself.

In his second screenplay, "The In-Laws," New York dentist Alan Arkin is drawn into the increasingly bizarre schemes of his daughter's mysterious soon-to-be father-in-law (Peter Falk) involving the CIA, a weird Latin American dictator and tall tales of giant flies stealing babies.

The wild and crazy plot has acquired a cult following, counting Marlon Brando among its fans and leading him to co-star in "The Freshman," writer-director Bergman's best film.

In this off-beat story, New York film student Matthew Broderick gets mixed up with Brando mimicking his Oscar-winning performance as "The Godfather." The powerful patriarch entraps the naive freshman in a plot encompassing endangered species, gourmet cooking, corrupt officials, and Bert Parks singing Bob Dylan.

The story is original and the dialogue sparkles, but the fresh characters and their relationships really stand out.

Brando is perfect as the mysterious, mumbling mobster-like "importer" who employs and befriends Broderick, mixing affection, tenderness and a touch of terror into their bond.

The film features an unforgettable bit by Paul Benedict as Broderick's conceited professor who is obsessed with "The Godfather" movies and his own required textbook about them, "Guns and Provolone."

A former teacher himself, Bergman wrote another college story for his directorial debut a decade earlier.

In "So Fine," nerdish professor Ryan O'Neal saves his dad's garment business by accidentally inventing "see-through" jeans while falling in love with the hot-blooded Italian wife of a monosyllabic, larger-than-life loan-shark.

It culminates in a hilarious comic opera version of "Othello." The line between art and reality blurs as the film characters end up on the stage acting out their relationships through the characters in the play.

Life imitates art again in "Soapdish," a fast-paced farce (Bergman co-wrote with Robert Harling) about the real-life soap opera surrounding the stars of a fictitious daytime TV serial.

Scandals, miraculous recoveries, sudden revelations, and endless plot twists occur on and off stage in this comedy-of-errors starring Sally Field as "America's Sweetheart."

The film abounds with great comic performances with Kevin Kline as Field's old flame, Whoopi Goldberg as her writer, Cathy Moriarty as her rival, and Robert Downey Jr. as her producer.

As in Shakespearean comedy, all ends well.

The same is true in "Chances Are," a film Bergman co-produced (with long-time partner and fellow New Yorker Mike Lobell) but could have written since it reflects his style and content.

The romantic fantasy finds Downey simultaneously trying to convince Cybil Shepherd he's her dead husband reincarnated, resisting being seduced by "their" daughter (Mary Stuart Masterson) and preventing best friend Ryan O'Neal from finally confessing his love for Shepherd.

Thwarted lovers and a reincarnated spouse are key plot elements in the last film Bergman directed, "Honeymoon in Vegas."

Nicolas Cage, terrified of marriage, finally proposes and heads for Las Vegas with girlfriend Sarah Jessica Parker who looks just like the dead wife of big-time gambler James Caan.

Love-struck Caan cons Cage into losing $65,000 but offers to forgive the debt in exchange for a weekend with Parker. Upset with Cage's inability to commit, she agrees and the exasperated Cage spends the rest of the film trying to win her back.

And tying it all together is American icon Elvis Presley.

There's a convention of Elvis impersonators in Las Vegas, Elvis songs comment on the action on the screen, and the climax finds the desperate Cage sky-diving into Vegas with the Utah chapter of The Flying Elvises.

In the end, love triumphs. As Caan tells Parker, "It's Romeo and Juliet. George and Gracie. All the big ones."

It's also Bergman, wacky, weird and wonder-filled.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter.

• "Blazing Saddles" (1974) (w)
• "The In-Laws" (1979) (w)
• "So Fine" (1981) (w-d)
• "Oh, God! You Devil" (1984) (w)
• "Fletch" (1985) (w)
• "Big Trouble" (1985) (w)
• "Chances Are" (1989) (p)
• "The Freshman" (1990) (w-d)
• "White Fang" (1991) (p)
• "Soapdish" (1991) (w)
• "Honeymoon in Vegas" (1992) (w-d)
• "Undercover Blues" (1993) (p)
• "It Could Happen to You" (1994) (d)
• "The Scout" (1994) (w)

• "The Big Kiss-Off of 1944" (1974)
• "Hollywood and LeVine" (1975)
• "Sleepless Nights" (1994)

• "The Dictator"

• "Social Security"