Feature

History of 'The Producers': Part III

The film version of The Producers opens in New York on December 16 and then rolls out to the rest of the country on Christmas Day, buoyed, if all goes according to plan, by good reviews and positive word-of-mouth. In part, its success will rest on whether America’s multiplexes are hankering for a broad comedy in the style of the old-fashioned musicals that Stroman’s always loved. But the movie, too, has been modified for the multiplexes. Unlike the stage version, which leavened its groaners with audacious raunch, the film feels more like a big blown kiss to a bygone genre, less a strenuous preservation than an affectionate cover version, cleaned up for heartland families. “We have the word shit in the opening song,” says Meehan, “and that’s our only four-letter word in the whole movie.”

Lane, in particular, shines in his manic star turn, and the leads are all so proficient—yes, even Broderick—that in their hands, the film whiles away an entertaining two hours. But it’s a different experience than the stage show, drained of just enough of the original’s recklessness that, at times, you feel like standing up in the theater and shouting, “Wait a minute? Have we met? You’re Mel Brooks!”

As for Nathan Lane’s who-you-gotta-fuck, bell-ringing opening line—which Stroman had asked him to change during filming, a request he flatly refused—the matter turned out to be moot: The entire “King of Broadway” opening song was cut after a test audience responded well to a version without it. And the changes seemed to have worked: That preview screening, in Edgewater, New Jersey, drew wild applause, and the response cards were even more positive than the studio had hoped. The show that had once drawn gasps in Pittsburgh now got near-universal praise. “The market-research guy told us it was the best response they’ve seen since Forrest Gump,” Meehan says.

One day during the shoot, I’d asked Stroman what, of all the assorted bric-a-brac scattered on the various sets, she planned to take home as a souvenir. “The marquee for Funny Boy,” she said, referring to a large lit-up sign advertising a mock-musical version of Hamlet. “I’m going to put it on my wall.” Funny Boy is a classic, shameless Mel Brooks gag—along with She Shtups to Conquer, South Passaic, and A Streetcar Named Murray—and glitzy Funny Boy signs hung all along the film’s elaborate re-creation of 44th Street. So even when Brooks was absent from the shoot, his punch lines hovered in the sky, spelled out in lights. Between shots, Stroman would stop to gaze at the signs. “There’s something about staring at the word funny that’s good for the soul,” she said. “So when we were on 44th Street, I’d just stare at that word: Funny.”