Geekshow

To Make Or Remake: The Producers Part 1

“It was shocking, outrageous, insulting – and I loved every minute of it!”

That quote, from the song “Where Did We Go Right?” in the Broadway musical version of The Producers, perfectly sums up how I feel about all three incarnations of this remarkably crude and endearing story. There is so much to cover this week that I have split this one up into two separate articles, so as not to bore you all. 

Well, the first glance that viewers had of this tale was in 1968 when comic genius Mel Brooks had a great idea for a story based on a theatre producer he worked for as a kid who wined and dined old ladies into giving him cheques made out to cash so that he could produce plays. After trying a few different mediums, Brooks realised that his story was best suited in the film format and thus he set about writing and directing his first ever feature, The Producers. Because of the (if greatly delayed) success of this film, Brooks’ career took off and he later went on to make such marvels as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Robin Hood: Men In Tights, to name but a few. But I digress. The film starred Zero Mostel and a then unknown Gene Wilder, both of whom were cast perfectly for the roles of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom respectively. 

The plot goes like this. Max Bialystock used to be the King of Broadway. Now he’s a washed up hack who has to romance little old ladies to finance his plays. Leo Bloom is his accountant who, after discovering a minor case of fraud in the accounts of Max’s last play, posits that a producer could make more money with a flop than with a hit. Max embraces his duplicitous nature and embarks the pair of them on a scheme to run off to Rio with a million dollars after producing the biggest flop on Broadway. 

All seems like it’s going to plan: Max is able to convince Leo to leave his humble life as an accountant after igniting his desire to be more in life than someone who counts other people’s money; they find the worst play ever written, called Springtime For Hitler; get the ex-Nazi nincompoop to sign over the rights; hire the gayest director in town to run the show; Max screws over (quite literally) every little old lady in New York to raise the money; they hire a hippie beatnik to play Hitler; and Max gets himself a little Swedish special treat in the form of a secretary who dances like a go-go girl when he tells her to “go to work” to reward himself for all the effort. 

On opening night Max and Leo are as happy as clams – until they hit intermission and the audience makes them painfully aware of how dire things are about to turn out for them! Somewhere along the line all their wrongs have turned out right. Initially shocked and appalled at Springtime For Hitler, the beatnik named L.S.D, shows the audience a riotously funny side of the fuehrer that makes them hail the show as the funniest thing on Broadway. The flop has flipped and Max and Leo are in serious trouble. The “neo-Nazi nitwit” Franz Liebkind, the author, threatens to shoot them, however, Max talks him out of it.  They need a way to close the show and they need it fast, or else Max and Leo are going to go straight to jail. 

The three of them head down to the theatre and try to blow it up. Instead of getting away, Max and Leo are caught by the authorities. The judge is moved by their unlikely and heartfelt friendship so decides not to separate them and sends them both to Sing Sing Prison. There the movie concludes with Max and Leo conducting the prisoners in another musical and running the same scam yet again. 

At the time of its release, The Producers was not at all a popular movie. Still very close to World War Two, people just didn’t find the whole subject matter very appropriate or worth investigating. The fact that his script was initially titled Springtime For Hitler, may have contributed to this feeling. Brooks maintains that people simply didn’t get it; that to fight a dictator like Hitler, the only way to do so successfully was to bring him down with humour. It was only after an accidental screening of the film by renowned comedian Peter Sellers that he jumped on the bandwagon and drew in the masses after placing a large ad in the newspaper describing how good he thought the film was. Then the audiences flocked to see it – and they finally got the joke. 

Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock is fantastic. He is larger than life, boisterous, overbearing, yet charming and hopelessly devoted to being unscrupulous in a bit of an amateurish way. Underneath it all there really is a good heart to the man, and that is shown in his relationship with Leo. 

And Leo. He is a fascinating character. More of a mouse than a man, as Max describes him; he is awfully trapped by his own insecurities and phobias. The idea of taking a leap and making himself vulnerable to something potentially great scares him to death. But Max takes him under his wing and shows him that not only is Leo capable of greatness but that he is a genuinely decent person who really deserves it. Absolutely unknown at the time, Gene Wilder gives a fantastic performance in this film. He is completely neurotic and insecure, mousy and easily frightened, yet genuinely pure, naïve and well intentioned, despite his involvement in the scheming that goes on throughout the movie. 

I also cannot fail to mention the completely marvellous casting of Kenneth Mars as Franz. In a bizarre twist, Dustin Hoffman was initially slated to play this role but pulled out at the last minute when he was hired for The Graduate. Kenneth I think worked out for the best. He is loopy and crazy in the role as well as physically dominating enough to be a bit of a threat to Bialystock and Bloom at the end. Definitely the best portrayal of Franz there has been in my humble opinion, even if the character’s dialogue was better in the two subsequent remakes. 

The jokes are very funny in the original movie, even if I have heard them several times over in the musical stage show and the 2005 film. The little plot changes were not something that I was expecting going in, however, I found them quite interesting in terms of them being abandoned ideas for the story’s two later manifestations. Specifically here I reference the characters of Lorenzo St. DuBois (aka L.S.D) and Ulla, as well as the alterations in plot to the ending segments of the film. 

L.S.D is clearly a mark of the times the film was originally written in. A beatnik hippie was more a sign of the social climate in the 1960s, so it really would have resonated with that audience. Sure, the hippie is recognisable today but it is often nothing more than a cliché. I particularly like the “I liebe ya baby, I liebe ya” section of Springtime For Hitler. Very clever writing from Mel there. And a great way of accomplishing Mel’s goal of bringing Hitler down in people’s perspectives by reducing him to nothing of importance with humour and ridicule. 

Ulla is very different as a character in this initial representation than she is in the later ones. Here she is a much bigger bimbo and the language barrier has a much greater effect on her behaviour. Instead of being attracted to Leo, she seems to be the plaything of Max, submitting to him with a giggle and joyfully shaking herself around to music whenever she is to set to work. Underdeveloped though she is, she serves her purpose as juxtaposition for the little old ladies Max has to swindle, as well as providing a few extra laughs to satiate the audience in the slow moments.

The fact that the original movie is much shorter in duration that its two successors just goes to show just how much extra was added to the story later on. The whole Leo/Ulla love story and their subsequent escape to Rio in and of itself adds at least a good half hour more to the tale in the two remakes. And that’s not even counting in all the musical numbers! But while the whole “let’s blow up the theatre” thing is amusing and decisive, knowing that there is the potential for so much more to the story, it all just feels like a quick fix. Or at Max puts it in the 2005 film, “a sure fire way to end the show”.

Still, this movie is definitely worth watching, if only for the masterful performance of the cast and as the basis for the very huge success of the film’s two remakes. But discussion on the musical and the second film will have to wait till part two for now. Right now let’s take an intermission.