The Producers

And the answer is...

The Producers.

Movie-themed memes with personalized greetings are getting tossed to the following as they take their curtain calls in no particular order.

First up, we have my sib from another crib, the always entertaining Chris of the Cinematic Travelers podcast, coming into this trivia as he always does like a wrecking ball.

Jerry Herman is like, Mel, you write songs for your movies.

You wrote already Springtime for Hitler once.

You wrote The Inquisition for History of the World Part One.

You wrote all these things that people have stuck in their head for 30 years after seeing the movies.

And they say, we just need to find the worst director of all time and find the worst play and the worst cast and just do everything the worst and it'll just close on opening night and boom, we're rich.

Which is a very funny idea.

And they find a Nazi who has a script called Springtime for Hitler.

And they find this outrageously gay stereotype director to direct it.

You know, okay, listen.

Have either of you seen the musical The Producers?

I love The Producers.

I had to do it in high school.

Yeah.

All right, we have a lot to get to.

Ready to go.

Oh, Torgo also came in and says, "Go watch The Producers, you dummy.

Mm-hmm

... and I don't, I, is this okay? You know, there's always the, like, wait, is it okay they did that? Is it okay they did that? But in general, if y- I, I, I don't mean to compare this to the producers, right? Because if you think of Mel Brooks comedy, Mel Brooks comedy in some of this concept was some of the first comedy to push boundaries like that.

Mm-hmm.

This makes Mel Brooks, the producers look very tame.

[laughs]

Right? But at the time, people were walking...

Yeah

...

Yeah.

yeah anyways um so yeah but before we begin our discussion on uh the film we'll uh we will be doing a spoiler filled discussion on the producers which is the episode the film we'll be talking about today on the episode um if you haven't seen the film yet uh check it out and then come back to hear our full thoughts on it uh weirdly enough it's kind of hard to grab a copy of um unless you were to go for I think there was some company I think it was Kino Kino Lober is doing like a they did a restoration of it not too long ago and prior to that it was kind of hard to really pick up a copy of this it's not even on like the Mel Brooks Blu-ray collection they released years ago for 20th Century Fox which is really odd but whatever um maybe they didn't know the rights I don't know um But yeah, if you haven't seen the film, like I said, come back to, you know, watch the movie first, come back to hear our full thoughts on it.

And like I said, we'll provide a spoiler filled discussion for the producers.

With that said, we'll I'll just get started with the premises in case you are not aware of what it's about or you've forgotten for.

whatever reason um so once king of broadway max uh bli stocks a talent talents have dried up uh one day when leo bloom his accountant is auditing his latest flop max learns that it's possible to make more money from producing flops than it is to create hits uh and so max persuades leo to become his partner in the production of the biggest flop of all time and I mean this with no sarcasm and no joking for first-time listeners of the, you know, if you've ever seen the movie, the play is called Springtime for Hitler.

And so they intentionally hire a bad cast and the world's worst director, they could ever imagine uh all is set for max and leo to make a fortune and then opening night occurs um and if you've seen the movie you know exactly where this is going um so i'll just leave it at that for for the time being um but yeah so the producers was the directorial debut for Mel Brooks, who also wrote the picture.

The film stars Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Kenneth Mars, and Christopher Hewitt.

And that's pretty much the cast.