A month into the shoot, the Post’s “Page Six” ran an item chronicling rumored strife on the set between Stroman and Brooks. “Our source claims the comedy legend is not entirely impressed with the work of first-time director Susan Stroman . . . and has reshot ‘scene after scene,’ ” the item read. There had been tension when the original cinematographer was fired and replaced. But when I ask Stroman about the rumors of conflicts with Brooks, she bristles. “I’ve never once fought with Mel,” she says. “Ever.”

According to all involved, there was another explanation for the rumors. Brooks wasn’t angry; he was absent. On the first day of shooting, his wife, Anne Bancroft, was admitted to Sloan-Kettering, gravely ill with cancer. So Brooks was splitting his time between the set and being with her in the hospital. Stroman believes his absences—the reason for which only she, and a few others on set, knew about—may have stoked the gossip. “That upset both of us, but we couldn’t say, ‘No, he’s not here because he’s at Sloan-Kettering.’ ” In fact, she says, the parallel between their experiences drew them together. “When I first met Mel, my husband was sick, and now the exact same thing was happening to him. So we were very close during this time. He didn’t want anyone to know Annie was sick. So the only person he would tell the truth about what was happening was me.”

The situation took a mounting toll on Brooks. “Originally, the idea as we’d talked about it was Susan was directing and Mel would be around,” Meehan, the 73-year-old co-author of the screenplay, told me. “With Mel’s experience of making so many films, over 30 years in filmmaking, he would always be a help to her if she needed it. But the way it worked out, Mel was not able to contribute as much as he would have otherwise.” Later, Meehan said, “I tried to some degree to be a surrogate for Mel. But I’m not a movie director. It was a very friendly, easygoing shoot. Sometimes the content was a little off or they were missing the readings. So I’d go over and talk to Stro, and almost every time, she would reshoot.” When Brooks was able to visit, as he would whenever he could, there would be a notable hubbub among everyone present. His spirits, to an outsider, seemed high. He’d reliably crack wise—“The stage show just opened in Argentina! Can you believe it? It’s like a Bialystock and Bloom joke!”—and, if anyone fussed over him too intently, he’d wave them off. “I’m okay,” he said one day to a determined handler, while settling into his chair. “I’m not saying ‘cut’ or ‘action.’ I’m okay.”

If anything, whether or not Brooks was there during my visits, the production hummed with the friendly air of a summer-camp reunion. Not only were Broderick, Lane, Gary Beach (as the gay Hitler) and Roger Bart (as Beach’s assistant) all playing the same roles they did onstage, but nearly everyone, from the chorus girls down to the stand-ins for Broderick and Thurman, had performed in The Producers, either on Broadway or in a touring company. “One nice thing is that I never had to learn any lines,” Broderick joked of the familial atmosphere. Then he said, “My only worry was, since it was so comfortable, that I would phone it in. That it would be too comfortable.” These players, after all, had worked together, doing the same show, with the same jokes, for nearly six years. And though they are unceasing in their praise for Stroman’s direction, she had never before been charged with commanding an entire film production. The stereotypical notion of a film director is that of a unyielding dictator, but Stroman was anything but. In fact, at times she seemed at loose ends as to how to get precisely what she wanted.

During the filming of a dance sequence as part of Broderick’s “I Want to Be a Producer” number, she watched the monitor, then grimaced. Broderick was supposed to run along a line of chorus girls dressed in $9,000 beaded costumes, pinching their asses as he goes. But on the first take, he merely flicked at their behinds. Stroman called her assistant choreographer over. “Tell Matthew to really go for it,” she said. “Make the pinches real.” He relayed the message, and they shot another take. At the moment of truth, though, Broderick flicked at the asses again. Stroman told me later she thought that Broderick may have had trouble with the tricky maneuver. On set, though, she clearly wanted him to deliver more. She pulled her assistant aside. “Matthew didn’t—” she said, then made sharp lobster pinches in the air. The assistant strolled back toward the set. “She’s not happy with the pinches,” he announced. The assistant director chimed in with a mock German accent: “Ze pinches must be correct!”