Director/Screenplay: Mel
Brooks
Thank God for Mel Brooks. The first introduction I had to “The
Producers,” came from an unlikely source. It was a Forensics class, that I took,
for about a week, back when I spent that one year of high school at a Magnet
Program High School, which is still possibly the biggest mistake I ever made. One
of the students, had done an amazing one-man ten-minute version of “The
Producers,” which he performed occasionally. From that point on, I know I had
to see the original version. That was years ago, since then, everybody who didn’t
know about “The Producers,” has since long heard about them. The movie is consistently
ranked as one of the great comedies of cinema, and now it’s considered one of the
great Broadway Musicals of all-time. Not only, that musical was adapted into a
feature-length film of its own, which in of itself, has its own wonderful
charm, although they did cut the best song from the musical in the movie, “The
King of Old Broadway”, well, second-best song, but I’ll get to that.
The story, if by some miracle you don’t know, involves an a
former big-time Broadway producer, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel), whose plays
have flopped so badly, that he now resorts to prostituting himself to little
old ladies, who then write him checks for a play called “To Cash.” There’s a surprising
amount of pain in the morally-challenge greedy Max. His search for that one hit
musical is Americana personified. There’s real pain in his voice, when he looks
out a window at a Rolls Royce, and yells out “When you got it, flaunt it!
Flaunt it!” or when he notes that “…this pin used to have a pearl the size of
your eye, now look at me, I’m wearing a cardboard belt.” He then proceeds to
take off the belt and rip it to pieces. This is a mere morsel, of the humor in
Mel Brooks first, and quite arguable best film. His accountant, Leo Bloom (Oscar-nominee
Gene Wilder), which is strangely names after the protagonist in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”,
comes in one day and casually notes that with a little “creative accounting,”
(the first recorded use of that term, btw) you could hypothetically make more
money producing a flop than a hit. You can all but see the light bulb go off in
Max’s head.
Step 1: Find the worst play ever written. They do with a
musical called “Springtime for Hitler,” written by a bird-loving German, who claims
he was just following orders, Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars)
Step 2: Find the worst cast and the worst director to do the
play. The worst director isn’t difficult, in the flamboyant Roger De Bris
(Christopher Hewitt), who’s knowledge of history is about as useful as a wooden
nickel. “That whole third act has to be redone, they’re losing the war!” In
casting Hitler, in the movies most dated, by hilarious moments, the cast Lorenzo
St. Dubois (Dick Shawn), a hippie who’s seems to have gone on way to many-,
well, check the first letters of his name, and see if you can guess the kind of
trips he’s been on.
Step 3: Go to Littleoldladyland and collect money to produce
the play. Step 4: Perform the play on Broadway, and before anybody can say Step
5, close on Broadway, and spend the rest of our lives on the beaches of Rio. Of
course, it goes without saying, this doesn’t go exactly as planned, but I won’t
reveal much more.
Before “The Producers” Mel Brooks started as a writer in
that legendary writers’ room on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” (The Morey
Amsterdam character on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” is based on Brooks), created
the “2000 Year-Old-Man” sketch with Carl Reiner and co-created the TV show “Get
Smart” with Buck Henry. Before that, he fought in WWII, and has swore that his
career will be devoted to making sure people laugh at Hitler. Putting on a
musical called “Springtime for Hitler,” on Broadway might be the biggest piece
of bad taste, ever conceived, of course that’s the idea. I recently heard Jeff
Daniels note that “Mel Brooks doesn’t know the meaning of the term ‘politcally
correct’, and thank god.” His observation is correct, there wouldn’t be an “Airplane,”
or even a “There’s Something About Mary,” without Mel Brooks, and with “The
Producers,” he won his only Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Roger Ebert
tells a story, shortly after the film came out, he was in an elevator with Brooks
and his wife Anne Bancroft, when an old woman came onto the elevator and she
said she thought his movie was vulgar. Without missing a beat, Mel Brooks
replied, “Honey, it rises below vulgarity.” I don’t know what that means, but
it sure sounds like a good description of him.
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