a guy just like Bialystock. I can't tell you his real name, but he screwed a lot of little old ladies on that cracked leather couch -- women with names like Abigail and Matilda ... Anyway, when I realized you could make more money with a flop than a hit, I needed to create the perfect flop." Figuring out the surefire bomb was surprisingly difficult. "I went around the block with it so many times and ended up writing about three or four really bad plays -- but they weren't bad enough. Then I came up with Hitler, and at first it was a mean Hitler saying awful things. But that wasn't funny. So why not Hitler and Eva Braun dancing and singing at Berchtesgaden? I was certain that would chase the Jews right out of the theatre." The hardest part of all was to figure out where to draw the line. "I had to make it ironic enough for the audience to get it." And not everyone did -- at first. "I got letters from rabbinical societies ... a lot of letters and I answered each one by hand." It took a year, but even with the negative review in the Times and only three cities to play in, The Producers became a cult smash -- even though Brooks says the movie never made a dime, despite costing less than $1 million to make. "It's called a rolling break-even," says Brooks, laughing. "I thought I was going to go