The Producers (1968 film)

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The Producers (1968)
Directed by	Mel Brooks
Produced by	Sidney Glazier
Written by	Mel Brooks
Starring	Zero Mostel Gene Wilder Kenneth Mars
Music by	Brian Morris John Morris
Cinematography	Joseph Coffey
Editing by	Ralph Rosenblum
Distributed by	Embassy Pictures
Release date(s)	March 18, 1968
Running time	90 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English
Budget	$941,000 USD (est.)
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IMDb profile

This page is about the 1968 film. For the 2005 movie, see The Producers (2005 film). For other uses, see The Producers (disambiguation)

The Producers is a 1968 feature-length comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks. In the film, two New York City con men (Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom) attempt to cheat theater 'angels' (investors) out of their investment money by deliberately producing a "flop," or intensely unsuccessful show.

This was the first film directed by Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner Mel Brooks, and it sparked Brooks' lengthy career.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 Release History 4 Reception 5 Awards and Recognition 6 Trivia 7 Quotations 8 References 9 See Also 10 External links

[edit] Cast

Zero Mostel - Max Bialystock

Gene Wilder - Leopold Bloom

Kenneth Mars - Franz Liebkind

Lee Meredith - Ulla

Estelle Winwood - Hold Me-Touch Me

Christopher Hewett - Roger DeBris

Andréas Voutsinas - Carmen Ghia

Dick Shawn - Lorenzo St. DuBois (L.S.D.)

Renée Taylor - Eva Braun

[edit] Plot

Max Bialystock is a failed, aging Broadway producer who ekes out a living romancing rich old women in exchange for money for his "next play." He encounters the nebbish accountant Leo Bloom when the latter is sent to Bialystock's office to do his books; in the process of this, a chance comment by Bloom inspires a scheme to massively oversell shares in a Broadway production, then purposely make a horrific flop, so that no one will ever audit its books, thus avoiding a payout and leaving the duo free to flee to Brazil with the profits. After an extensive search they find an unproduced play which Bialystock gleefully describes as "a love letter to Hitler," written in total sincerity by a deranged ex-Nazi named Franz Liebkind. They convince Liebkind to sign over the rights, then collect money from dozens of little old ladies—ultimately selling 25,000 percent of the play—and hire the monumentally untalented director Roger De Bris to stage the production. The part of Hitler goes to a charismatic hippie named Lorenzo St. Dubois (aka LSD), who wanders into the wrong theater by accident during the casting call.

The result of all of this is Springtime for Hitler, a cheerfully upbeat (and apocalyptically tasteless) musical comedy detailing the life of the dictator, which opens with a lavish production number celebrating Nazi Germany overrunning Europe. Unfortunately for the protagonists, their attempt to make an unwatchable play backfires as, after initial dumbfounded disbelief, the audience finds the inept production so funny that they view it as an over-the-top satire on Nazism and universally hail it as a hit.

After an enraged Liebkind attempts to shoot the producers in their office, the three of them band together and, in desperation, blow up the theater to end the production. They get caught in the explosion and are hauled off to jail. Found "incredibly guilty" in their criminal trial, they are sent to prison, where they proceed to create a new play starring their fellow convicts entitled "Prisoners of Love," running the exact same scam as before.

[edit] Release History

According to Brooks, after the film was completed, MGM executives declined to release it due to "bad taste" until Peter Sellers saw the film privately and placed an advertisement in Variety in support of the film's wider release^[1]. It was still only released to only a small number of theaters^[2]. The Producers was rated PG by the MPAA for brief mild language.

In 2002 The Producers was re-issued to three theaters by Rialto Pictures and earned $111,866^{[3] [4]}at the box office.

In 2001 Brooks adapted the film into a Broadway musical of the same name (The Producers). In 2005, a film, based in turn on that musical, was released (The Producers).

The Producers is currently available on DVD, released by MGM. As of 2007 the film continues to be distributed to art-film and repertory cinemas by Rialto.

[edit] Reception

The film received harsh reviews from New York critics Renata Adler ("shoddy and gross and cruel" in the New York Times), Stanley Kauffmann("the film bloats into sogginess." -- New Republic), Pauline Kael("amateurishly crude" in the New Yorker) and Andrew Sarris, partly due to its directorial style and broad ethnic humor ^[5].

Negative reviewers generally made much of the bad taste and insensitivity (against a narrow and agressively conservative moral standard) of devising a broad comedy about two Jewish men conspiring to cheat theatrical investors by devising a designed-to-fail singing, dancing, tasteless Broadway musical show about Hitler (a mere 23 years after the end of World War II). ^[6]

Time Magazine's reviewers wrote, "...hilariously funny ... Unfortunately, the film is burdened with the kind of plot that demands resolution ... ends in a whimper of sentimentality ... The movie is disjointed and inconsistent ..."^[7] and "... a wildly funny joy ride ..."^[8], "...despite its bad moments, is some of the funniest American cinema comedy in years."^[9]

The film industry trade paper Variety magazine wrote, "The film is unmatched in the scenes featuring Mostel and Wilder alone together, and several episodes with other actors are truly rare"^[10]

Reviews in the U.K. were positive to very positive^[6].

[edit] Awards and Recognition

In 1968 The Producers won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay—Written Directly for the Screen and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Wilder).

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In 1969 The Producers won a Writers Guild of America Best Original Screenplay award.

In 2004 The Producers was placed at #11 of the American Film Institute list of The 100 Funniest Films Of All Time.

[edit] Trivia

• Max Bialystock is named after the Polish city of Białystok. A 'Bialy' is a kind of bagel.
• Leo Bloom is named for the subject of the novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. Leo meets Max on June 16, the date that all of the action in Ulysses takes place.
• One of the rejected manuscripts in the search for a story is the opening sentence to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a "giant cockroach". Bialystock quickly dismisses the story idea as "too good" for his nefarious purposes.
• Carmen Ghia is named after the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
• The writer-director Mel Brooks' is heard very briefly in the film, singing "Don't be stupid, be a smarty/Come and join the Nazi Party" in the song Springtime For Hitler. His version of line is also dubbed into each performance of the musical and in the movie version of the musical.^{[citation needed]}
• At its theatrical release in Sweden, the film was given the Swedish title Producenterna (The Producers), but it was not a success then. After it was re-released under the title Det Våras För Hitler (Springtime for Hitler), it did score with the Swedish audience. Because of this, all of Mel Brooks' films were given a title with Det våras för... (Springtime For...) in Sweden, up until Life Stinks. (For example, Blazing Saddles was retitled Det Våras För Sheriffen (Springtime For The Sheriff) and Spaceballs was retitled Det Våras För Rymden (Springtime For Space). After this, Mel Brooks himself has complained at the Swedish habit of always calling his films something with 'Springtime For...' and so, his last two films have been called Robin Hood: Karlar I Trikåer (Robin Hood: Men in Tights) and Dracula: Död Men Lycklig (Dracula: Dead and Loving It), although the latter is called Det Våras För Dracula on the Swedish DVD cover).^{[citation needed]}
• The foreman of the jury is Bill Macy, who would later star in the 1970s sitcom, Maude, and numerous Hollywood films
• Dustin Hoffman was originally cast as Franz Liebkind, but bowed out to star in The Graduate, which also starred Mel Brook's late wife,Anne Bancroft.^{[citation needed]}
• Peter Sellers was a huge fan and appeared on Michael Parkinson's BBC1 chat show Parkinson in a Nazi helmet reciting the entire "Hitler was a better painter than Churchill" speech. ( Parkinson BBC1 09/11/74 & BBC Audiobooks (5 Feb 1996))
• The title of the U2 album Achtung Baby comes from a line in the movie.
• A spoof of The Producers is the Goof Troop episode "Pete's Day at the Races" {Black Pete tries to pull a scam by overselling a racehorse}.
• This film is number 12 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

[edit] Quotations

From Mel Brooks' interview: "I was never crazy about Hitler...If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win...That's what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are."

[edit] References

[edit] See Also

Differences between film and musical versions of The Producers

[edit] External links

• The Producers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Producers at the TCM Movie Database
• The Producers review by Roger Ebert
• Scene from The Producers

Films Directed by Mel Brooks

The Producers | The Twelve Chairs | Young Frankenstein | Blazing Saddles | Silent Movie | High Anxiety History of the World, Part I | Spaceballs | Life Stinks | Robin Hood: Men in Tights | Dracula: Dead and Loving It