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STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM - “The Producers”

Jeffrey Tung
Aug 21, 2017
4 min read

With a title like Springtime for Hitler, what can go wrong… er… right?

That’s the question two desperate “producers” ask themselves when they try to make a musical based on such a title.

Directed and written by Mel Brooks, The Producers is about former Broadway hit producer Max Bialystock who is now resorting to romancing elderly, wealthy women to finance his next play. When accountant Leo Bloom arrives to do his books, he notices a $2000 discrepancy. Max convinces him to shuffle around the numbers; a very illegal act.

Leo realizes that with some “creative accounting” he casually points out that, theoretically, a producer and make more money with a flop than with a hit by overselling shares in the production.

Max takes this seriously and convinces Leo to join him in finding the worst play so it can instantly flop on the first night, avoid paying the backers, and then flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits.

The film is about their journey from getting the rights from the play’s author, hiring a director, watching the casting process, all the way up to premiere night. Honestly, it all comes together pretty fast.

Mel Brooks has a highly prolific film career, with The Producers being his first and one of the most famous ones. It won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay at the 41st Academy Awards. It’s an achievement for a first-time filmmaker.

So is it wrong to say it’s not all that funny?

Don’t get me wrong. Anytime the slapstick is happening, it’s funny.

However, the film also relies on shock humor (i.e. the many actors dressed up as Adolph Hitler for an audition, Max romancing the elder women, the ENTIRE Springtime for Hitler opening number.)

Maybe it’s because I’m supposed to watch it for the satire it is as opposed to taking it seriously. I’ll admit, I’m terrible at watching comedy movies alone because I’m not laughing when I feel like I should. This isn’t because I’m watching a bad comedy movie; it’s any comedy movie, even the legendary ones.

Throughout the film, I was thinking about how this entire scheme doesn’t fall apart midway.

Roger De Bris, the awful director that Max hires to direct this thing? Max says so himself that his plays “close on the first day of rehearsal.” So… why didn’t it? As I said, the play has its premiere. Not preview night, where critics get to write about it first: PREMIERE!

We see the author of the play, Franz Liebkind, outraged of how his character of Hitler is portrayed on stage… yet the actor is essentially just playing himself and reading the lines. What, Liebkind really didn’t expect this? HE WAS AT THE AUDITION WHEN THEY CASTED HIM! You know that one famous line from this film? “That’s our Hitler!” The author was there when Max yells it… and it immediately cuts to premiere night. Uh… no! Leibkind is supposed to be appalled that he would even consider him playing the character he holds dearly. Not only that, but De Bris doesn’t even get his own opinion on the matter. And if you’re thinking, “well, maybe they compromised somewhere in the middle, and they briefly mention it.” Nope! Not at all!

What I’m saying is this: there’s a scene where Liebkind bursts into Max’s office, and fires a gun (and missing… a lot) at Max and Leo for “breaking the sacred oath” (which never appears in the film, but in the musical adaptation of The Producers, but wait a minute: it never happened in the film so WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT!) and essentially ruining his play and tarnishing the image of the Hitler he wrote about. This entire scene should’ve happened during the rehearsal process, NOT the climax when the play has already had its opening night!

Also, what’s with the shocked faces on everyone’s faces when they’re watching Springtime for Hitler? Did they go in thinking it was a comedy BEFORE the hippie actor started saying his lines?

Another problem is the editing. There are multiple instances that continuity within the same scene is disrupted. An example can be a character’s arm is on a table, but when the scene cuts to a different angle, the arm is not on the table anymore.

I got introduced to the film just based on the reputation that Mel Brooks had in the late 2000s. I had watched his other films before finally sitting down his first. It’s a very story-efficient film: each scene, at least with preparing the scheme, lasts as long as it needs to. Honestly, the times I was thinking of that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“get on with it!”) were the antics of the one-off characters who were slowing the pace of the film.

Like I said; maybe I’m taking The Producers WAY too seriously. It’s not about whether or not the plan falls apart; it’s about realizing that no matter how much thought and planning you put into something, the end result MAY NOT end up the way you want it.