On the way to see The Producers last evening — the movie based on the musical based on the movie — I suddenly expected not to like it a lot. I somehow imagined myself back here at the weblog, composing something about how I loved it as a film and I loved it on the stage…so how come I didn't love it when they put it back on the screen? And then I'd write some mumbo-jumbo-gooey-gumbo about how back in film form, the comparisons to the original are too stark and who can enjoy Nathan and Matthew when you still have Zero and Gene burned into your subconscious?
Well anyway, that's what I figured I'd be writing.
Instead, I'm writing that I had a very good time and I can tell you why in two words. One of them is "Nathan" and the other is "Lane." He is just so good in this movie, so much fun to watch, that it quickly becomes Zero Who? Not that he's better than the original Max Bialystock — in almost all cases, when a line is repeated from the earlier film, I prefer the Mostel version to the Lane — but there's so much else there, especially in terms of reactions and face work that…well, Nathan Lane ought to be the first performer to have his eyebrows insured with Lloyds of London. He does more with them than Tiger Woods can do with a nine-iron. I wasn't enraptured with Will Ferrell, who plays the Nazi, or Uma Thurman, who plays the Swede. And I liked Matthew Broderick, though not as much in his first scene where he takes Leo Bloom to unreal heights of hysteria. (He gets better.) But what won me over was Nathan Lane and the sheer energy of his performance…and I guess I also liked the effortless way the proceedings segue from dialogue to song and back again.
I have no idea what the box office will be like. Disappointing returns for Rent have people saying again, as they always do except when a Grease or Chicago has just come out, "There's no market out there for musicals." Funny how when an action film flops — and many do — no one says there's no demand out there for shoot-'em-ups. I didn't see Rent but it's a movie with no stars and tepid reviews, based on a Broadway show that lots of people saw but not a lot of people loved, plus that show has been generally ignored in the press since it opened almost ten years ago. One wonders if the film's failure to light up the Moviefone website is why most of the ads for The Producers seem to stress how funny it is without mentioning that anyone breaks into song. Regardless, I hope people do go because most of them will have a very good time.
And I hope they know enough to stick around. As the credits rolled at the end last evening, about a fourth of the audience made the faux pas of bolting for the exits. That always strikes me as rude, especially at a free industry screening where folks who worked on the film are likely to be in attendance. It was also a mistake because those who departed prematurely missed a couple of good songs (and some funny lines spoken by Mr. Ferrell) over the credits…and then they missed an entire musical number that has been placed after the credits. It has a surprise ending which I won't give away.
When you go to a movie, people, stay in your seat until the credits are over. If you don't do it out of courtesy, do it because you might just miss something good. You will if you leave before The Producers is over.
The screening I attended was followed by a brief Q-and-A session with co-author Thomas Meehan and I took the opportunity to ask him about the deletion of Lane's opening number, "The King of Broadway." He confirmed that it was filmed — "we spent seven days on it" — and that it'll be on the DVD. But when they tested the film with and without it, it made a huge difference and they had to delete it. The hardest part was deciding who would tell Nathan. Meehan added — this is a paraphrase but close — "For a while, I was sure we'd wind up cutting 'It's Bad Luck to Say Good Luck on Opening Night.' For me, it's the weakest number in the show and when we filmed it, we filmed some additional dialogue that conveyed the same information so we could stick it in if we cut the song. But somehow, it wound up staying in." In reply to another question, he said that he and and Mel are still on the first draft of a planned Broadway musical based on Young Frankenstein. Mel has completed ten songs, he says, and they're "all great."
I dunno how I feel about Young Frankenstein on stage. It sounds like a bad idea to me. Then again, turning The Producers into a Broadway musical initially sounded to me like a bad idea and even after it proved not to be, making a movie of that version struck me as a bad idea. I keep being wrong about this — as wrong as Max was when he proclaimed Springtime for Hitler "a surefire flop." So I'm going to shut up about this kind of thing.