“I’m having a rhetorical conversation”
by chuckofish
Last week I watched The Producers (1967) on TCM. You know, the one about a washed-up Broadway producer who devises a plan to make money by producing a sure-fire flop–Springtime for Hitler. It was hilarious. As the producer Zero Mostel is beyond anything else ever. His comb-over is the best/worst in movie history. Gene Wilder is perfect as the overwhelmed accountant. It is silly, silly, silly. I’m not sure what today’s progressive audience would make of it, especially scenes like this:
…but I really don’t care. Everybody is insulted in this movie. Even old ladies.
Mel Brooks won the Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay–Written Directly for the Screen–for The Producers over writers Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes. I think he was a little surprised.
Brooks is an interesting guy. It is noteworthy, I think, that Brooks graduated from high school in January 1944 and was immediately drafted into the Army. He was sent to Europe where he participated in the Battle of the Bulge, joining a battalion that was responsible for clearing booby-trapped buildings and defusing land mines as the Allies advanced into Nazi Germany. He was a real life Shecky Greene in Combat!. At the end of the war he was honorably discharged as a corporal. I bet he felt lucky to be alive. He headed to the Catskills to become a comic and the rest is history.
Sadly, the Hollywood elites of today are unable to make movies like The Producers anymore. They take themselves too seriously as artistes and produce overblown, overly-long messes. Mel Brooks never took himself too seriously and I am thankful.
So watch The Producers–It may be “shocking, outrageous, insulting”–but relax and let yourself laugh. It’s funny.
dual personalities 