Bialystock&Bloom

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2016)

After seeing the musical remake of The Producers it made me appreciate the original all the more. Not even the creator himself Mel Brooks who did the remake as well should have touched the original. You just can't improve on perfection.
Poor Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock once noted Broadway producer, but now the genius behind several flop shows. When things can't get any worse he's about to be audited when drone little accountant Leo Bloom shows up in his office and starts going over the books.
If this had been a Looney Toons cartoon the light bulb would have been over Mostel's head and flashing as Gene Wilder as Bloom explains how with a little creative accounting one can make lots of money off a flop show. Then it's off to go out and try to create the biggest flop in the history of Broadway. Something no one has ever actually tried for in the history of the theater itself.
Certain films are seminal moments in the history of the genre. In comedy two previous ones in my opinion could be It Happened One Night and Some Like It Hot. Both by creative geniuses Frank Capra and Billy Wilder and both radically different films. Mel Brooks put himself in that category with The Producers. And like another genius David O. Selznick spent the rest of his career producing good film, even great ones but never topped his first and best.
All I can say is that when the film opens with that Springtime For Hitler number done in Busby Berkeley style you'll react like Brooks's theater audience did and say he succeeded. But if The Producers teaches us anything it is that flops are born, not made.
Brooks put together a perfect cast in support of Mostel and Wilder. Standing out are Dick Shawn as the method acting Hitler, Kenneth Mars as the crazy Naxi author, and Christopher Hewett as the worst director on Broadway who takes a real liking to Wilder.
The Producers got an Oscar nomination for Gene Wilder as Best Supporting Actor. It won an Oscar for Mel Brooks for Best Original Screenplay.
All I can say is that if ever an award was deserved it was the Oscar Mel Brooks got. It was certainly original.