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Parker, a scrambler with strong currents of cockney in his speech, started out in the mail room of a London ad agency and within seven years was the head of his own flourishing production company. His specialty was commercials that recalled old movies. One showed a freshly forlorn figure at a railway station, trudging through clouds of locomotive steam, accompanied by the Rachmaninoff theme from Brief Encounter and making his melancholy way home to break open a Birds Eye Frozen Dinner for One. Parker made over 600 commercials in less than six years, hankering all the while to do something more expansive.
While preparing a film for the BBC about some Jewish children during World War II, Parker and his friend. Producer Alan Marshall, were toying with the idea of making their first feature. Parker kept his own kids entertained on long car trips with some improvised stories about a sawed-off gangster named Bugsy Malone.
The kid looked to them like a hot prospect. "It seemed like a natural," says Parker. "A movie parents could take their children to and not fall asleep." Recalls Marshall: "We'd talk to some money people, tell them we had a great idea—a gangster movie. 'Terrific.' they'd say. Even better, they liked the idea of a musical. Then we'd tell them, 'Yeah, the best part is it's going to be all kids,' and they'd cough a little and say, 'Right, lookit, we'll see you around.' "
People who back movies are usually large on imitation and wary of innovation. The idea of an all-kid gangster musical must have seemed like an unprecedented long shot. There has never been anything quite like it, although, pressed, a film buff might recall a 1933 western curiosity called Terror of Tiny Town, acted by midgets. After meeting persistent, not to say astounded resistance, Parker and Marshall had to put up more than $50,000 of their own money to get initial work on the movie under way. Various film-investment outfits and Paramount supplied the balance of the nearly $1.5 million budget, part of which was spent acquiring 100 gallons of synthetic cream and over 1,000 pies to fuel the action scenes.
If financing Bugsy was a hassle, getting it all on film was a tag-team match of patience, precision, skill and sanity. Parker and company met upwards of 10,000 kids to fill Bugsy's 200 parts. Children were pulled out of schoolrooms, selected from auditions and video-taped screen tests. They were cast within comfortable proximity of their own personalities. Scott Baio, from Brooklyn, made a handsome, steady Bugsy. The expansive John Cassisi, a neighbor of Baio's from Bensonhurst, was chosen for Fat Sam after Director Parker spotted him in his seventh-grade class at P.S. 201. " 'You,' he says, 'I wanna talk to you,' " is the way Cassisi remembers it. "I thought he was the new dean or somethin'." Paul Murphy, from a South London Jamaican family, fit the role of Leroy because he likes to box with friends. Making the movie meant sacrifices, however. Paul missed out on the neighborhood cricket matches and could grab not even a minute to watch the pros on TV.