Business Notes PUBLIC OFFERINGS

You might buy slapstick from this man, but would you buy stock? Funnyman Mel Brooks, 63, said last week that his production company, Brooksfilms, plans a public offering to raise cash for movie and TV projects. The company earned a mere $323,000 in fiscal 1989 and may lose money in 1990. Comedy is hot today, but Brooks may be running out of gas. He has had no major hit since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in 1974, which reaped a total of more than $86 million in North America alone.

Hollywood insiders say dealmakers have been wary of Brooks. "He's not hot enough that he can make any film he wants ((with a top studio))," says the president of a major film studio. To date, most of the independent film companies that went public in the mid-'80s have been stock-market duds. Will Brooks beat the odds? Some Wall Streeters are cautiously optimistic: "Mel has the ability and contacts to make a success of this," says analyst Harold Vogel of Merrill Lynch. Even so, the title of Brooks' next film, Life Stinks, is not exactly bullish.