“Don’t just tap the bell; Ring the bell.”
Thus is the motto of Mel Brooks. This is something he has talked about many times in interviews. There is no sense in going all the way up to that bell if you’re not going to make the most of it. You’re already up there, you might as well ring the bell proud.
And that mentality actually does lend some credence. Not only does it apply in film, but it is also something you can apply to your every day life. Let’s say you surprise your wife by taking her to Paris for your 20th Wedding Anniversary, because she had always wanted to see the Eifel Tower. You buy the tickets, book the room, take the week off work, go through all the hassle of getting there. Then, you wake up on your first day there and you both decide “Ya know, I don’t really feel like visiting the Eifel Tower after all. Let’s just order up some steak tartar from room service and stay in.” If you’re going to do something, you might as well go all the way and see it through.
In the case of The Producers, though, Mel Brooks was able to ring that bell proudly for all it was worth, squeezing every little bit of delicious, ingenious dark satire out of it. The Producers was his first foray into film. Before that, he had been a comedian, one-half of The 2000 Year Old Man, served as a writer for Your Show of Shows and had also created Get Smart with Buck Henry. That alone would’ve surely been more than enough for just about anybody else. But we guess that’s why we are who we are, and Mel Brooks is Mel Brooks.
“I worked for a producer who wore a chicken fat-stained homburg and a black alpaca coat. He pounced on little old ladies and would make love to them. They gave him money for his plays, and they were so grateful for his attention. Later on there were a couple of guys who were doing flop after flop and living like kings. A press agent told me, ‘God forbid they should ever get a hit, because they’d never be able to pay off the backers!’ I coupled the producer with these two crooks and – BANG! – there was my story.” – Mel Brooks; Circa 2008
The Producers tells the story of Max Bialystock, a down on his luck Broadway producer who has just come off his latest flop. Leo Bloom, an accountant, appears at his door one day to do his books, when he realizes that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit. As far as Max Bialystock is concerned, this is foolproof. Utterly foolproof. With his newfound neurotic confidant in tow, Max and Leo embark on this harebrained scheme, determined to ensure their show will close in one night. They must find the worst play (“Springtime for Hitler”), the worst director (Roger DeBris), and the worst cast (L.S.D.) in order to pull this thing off.
What follows is nothing short of a two hour romp that is tasteless, crude, and outrageous. It is everything you could want out of a dark comedy, and certainly everything you would come to expect out of a Mel Brooks movie.
However, what is probably most remarkable about The Producers, in addition to the fascinating backstory that goes along with it, is the casting. Zero Mostel, who had been blacklisted in the 1950s, is in true form here as Max Bialystock. There is really no other actor that could’ve done what Zero Mostel does. (No, not even Topol…) He is boisterous, loud, sleazy… But at the same time, you feel compassion for him. Gene Wilder, in an Oscar-nominated turn as the timid accountant Leo Bloom, defines the role, and somehow even manages to keep up with Mostel’s madcapness. Throw in Christopher Mr. Belvedere Hewitt in a dress, Kenneth Mars as a neo-Nazi playwright, and Dick Shawn as a supremely psychedelic Adolf Hitler, and you’ve got yourself quite the spectacle.
Also notable is, unlike the other dark comedies we have revisited in the past, the laughs aren’t derived so much from uncomfortable situations the characters find themselves in. Instead, the laughs are right there in front of you, in its twisted, sly way. The darkness comes from the audacity of what is going on on-screen (the very notion of a musical romp about Adolf Hitler). As bright and colorful as the film may seem on the surface, there is certainly an under looming dark-cloud behind it all. There is much more than meets the naked eye here.
And that’s what makes The Producers work so well. It goes far beyond what, at that point in time, people had come to expect from a comedy satire. It really reinvented the genre. Hitler wasn’t really something that had been joked about post-WWII. It had still been freshly ingrained in the minds of those who lived through it, a mere 30 years later. For what it’s worth, Brooks had fought in the war. But that doesn’t mean a thing. To him, there was only one real way to battle Hitler.
“You have to bring him down with ridicule, because if you stand on a soapbox and you match him with rhetoric, you’re just as bad as he is, but if you can make people laugh at him, then you’re one up on him. It’s been one of my lifelong jobs – to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler.” Mel Brooks; Circa 2015.
At the time of the film being released, it almost seemed as if the world wasn’t quite as ready to face history head on and laugh at it. The film premiered in 1968 in New York. The premiere of the film saw only a small handful of people in the audience, including an old bag lady who woke up and started laughing during “Springtime for Hitler.” But it seemed as if maybe the world wasn’t ready. Yet.
Then, Peter Sellers had taken out a full ad in the paper, proudly declaring his love for the film. That seemed to set everything in motion. The Producers had turned into this cult film that you just had to see. It even garnered Mel Brooks an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. If you think about how many comedies have had that honor bestowed upon them, you’ll realize it is quite the accomplishment.
The Producers has gone onto become not only a great cult-classic, but also lead to the 2001 Broadway musical starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. On Broadway, it was met with outstanding praise and reviews, breaking all sorts of records, including winning 12 Tony Awards, more than any other shows in history. In turn, that production lead to a 2005 remake, also helmed by Lane and Broderick, co-starring Will Ferrell and Uma Thurman.
Mel Brooks has surely gone on to do films that have deemed themselves way more commercial, such as Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, but The Producers shouldn’t be slighted in the least because of it. The Producers is the one that started it all, and even as we approach the 50th Anniversary of its release, the dark, twisted charm still manages to shine on through.
