… If he was certain a show would fail, a man could make a fortune!” “Afterall, Internal Revenue Service isn’t interested in a show that flopped. To funders, the show’s failure would simply mean a bad investment, but to the sneaky producers, it would mean a hoard of free cash. Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) is a poor play producer, scraping by in New York City by romancing - and role playing - his way to the hearts of elderly women, who offer him hefty checks in exchange for one “last thrill on their way to the cemetery.” Enter panicky accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder, in an Oscar-nominated, starmaking role), who learns of Max’s fraudulant practices and dreams up a hypothetical situation in which “under the right circumstances, a play producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit.” All a producer would have to do is raise a boatload of money for an upcoming play, promising investors shares of the profits, then use only a fraction of the money to produce a terrible play and pocket the rest.
And while both films follow theater productions with Nazi overtones, The Producers offers one of the most genius movie premises in all of 20th century entertainment. The Producers remains a worthy heir to Ernst Lubtisch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), the remake of which Brooks appeared in alongside wife Anne Bancroft in 1983. What makes the feat all the more impressive is that Brooks is one of the few to have ever won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony. Brooks should be proud - even a single Oscar is better than most comedy filmmakers, as comedians are often unfairly overlooked by The Academy. Yet of all these popular favorites, the only film to ever win Brooks an Oscar was his debut effort, The Producers, earning Best Original Screenplay over Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). When you consider the career of Mel Brooks, it’s impossible not to crack a smile just thinking of his countless contributions - comedy routines like his “10,000 Year Old Man” with Carl Reiner, television sitcoms like the James Bond spoof Get Smart (1965) and hilarious movies like Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, Kenneth Mars, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Andreas Voutsinas, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, David Patch, William Hickey, Barney Martin
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