The stage show of The Producers was a huge hit on Broadway. It won huge critical acclaim and no show has won as many Tony awards. "It is," said the New York Times, "the real thing." And, then, despite Richard Dreyfuss's controversial withdrawal, Mel Brooks's musical became a sell-out hit in the west end, won more awards and even more critical acclaim. Now they are going to make a movie of the stage show of the movie.
Am I missing something here? I certainly was when I went to see the London production. I have never felt lonelier in a theatre. When everyone laughed uproariously at the Hitler jokes and the SS dancers, and leapt to their feet to give the show a huge standing ovation, I remained seated, a gloomy curmudgeon.
So what's not to like? First, there were all those tacky publicity shots in the papers with Mel Brooks using a comb to make a Hitler moustache. How could you not hate someone who does that? And the show itself is immeasurably more offensive than the original film, going way over the top with the Hitler routines. "But it's meant to be offensive—that's the joke," you say. "It's meant to be over the top—that's what Mel Brooks does." Well, perhaps it's not a very funny joke. SJ Perelman, who knew a thing or two about humour, once said, "the difference between Mel Brooks and Woody Allen is that Woody Allen is funny."
But this is not about personalities. There is a difference between a cult classic made when Jews were still in the ethnic closet and the biggest sellout show in town, 30 years after Jews have made it into the mainstream. The Producers—the 1968 film—was Brooks's first film (if you discount The Critic, his 1963 animated short). Jews were not in fashion. People called Melvin Kaminsky still had to call themselves Mel Brooks. Zero Mostel's career had been destroyed by being blacklisted in the 1950s, and The Producers was only his second film since McCarthyism. Gene Wilder (née Jerry Silberman) was also a nobody: The Producers was his first big film part. That was the point about the film. Yes, it was funny and it was crazy, but the humour came from the context. This was a loud, hysterical scream from the margins. A bunch of unheard-of Jews on the loose. The bad taste was part of the point. No More Mr Nice Guy.
The context has changed. Jews have found their voice, here and in America. Brooks is a huge name. Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Lee Evans are stars on stage and screen. The audience is rich and plentiful. The joke feels different. It feels nasty. It is offensive. No one wants to say they are offended, that the idea of all these stars making these huge budget musical about Hitler stinks. Of course not. Because no one wants to do the emperor's clothes thing. In today's culture the worst sin—worse than making musicals about Hitler—is to not get the joke. Not to be too po-faced. Hello magazine? Jerry Springer (or Jerry Springer—The Opera)? Big Brother? It's postmodern, it's camp, it's…
Enough. Who gave Brooks the licence to turn a joke about Nazism into a franchise—two films, noch? I don't wish to get all pious and PC. There's too much PC piety around, and too much of it is about the Holocaust. There's also a lot of terrific writing around about Nazism and the Holocaust—but it's cleverer, funnier and has thought a lot more than Brooks. And a lot of it has stayed on the margins because it's not "postmodern" enough.
