The Producers (1968 film)
| The Producers | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Theatrical release poster
|
|
| Directed by | Mel Brooks |
| Produced by | Sidney Glazier |
| Written by | Mel Brooks |
| Starring | |
| Music by | John Morris |
| Cinematography | Joseph Coffey |
| Edited by | Ralph Rosenblum |
| Distributed by | Embassy Pictures |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
88 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $941,000 |
| Box office | $1.6 million (Rentals) |
The Producers is a 1967 American satirical comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks and starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film was Brooks's directorial debut, and he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Although the release date was officially 1968, the premier took place in Pittsburgh on 22 November 1967.
Decades later, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry and placed eleventh on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. It was later remade successfully by Brooks as an acclaimed Broadway stage musical, which itself was adapted for a 2005 feature film starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
The once-great Max Bialystock (Mostel) had once been the toast of Broadway, but now he has been reduced to a washed-up, aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Broadway producer who barely ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence romancing lascivious, wealthy elderly women ("angels" in theatrical terms) in exchange for money for his next play. Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Wilder) arrives at Max's office to do his books and discovers a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play. Max persuades Leo to hide the relatively minor fraud, and while shuffling numbers, Leo has a revelation: a producer could make a lot more money with a flop than a hit by overselling shares in the production, because no one will audit the books of a play presumed to have lost money. Max immediately puts this scheme into action. They will oversell shares on a massive scale and produce a play that will close on opening night, thus avoiding payouts and leaving the duo free to flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits. Leo is afraid such a criminal venture will fail and they will go to prison, but Max eventually convinces him that his drab existence is no better than prison.
...
Wikipedia