Sparring Partners

Talk to the hand: Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) pitches his scheme to Leo Bloom (Matthew Broderick) in The Producers. Photo Andrew Schwartz. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

Take Three of The Producers came into being because Mel Brooks (who wrote the 1968 film, i.e. Take One) wanted to make a cinematic record of the performances delivered by Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in the 2001 Broadway version (Take Two). First-time filmmaker Susan Stroman, who directed the stage production, accomplishes this aim admirably, but Broderick and Lane’s performances are too big for cinema, their comic timing too stagy. The two actors are used to projecting and mugging for the back row of the highest balcony, playing to — and off — a live audience; at several points in the film, Broderick and Lane deliver a punchline and then seem to wait for audience reaction. Even so, the movie succeeds in giving moviegoers a whiff of the on-stage chemistry that packed New York’s St. James Theatre for more than a year.

Lane plays Max Bialystock, a down-on-his-luck Broadway producer whose credits include Hamlet: The Musical and The Breaking Wind. One day, a neurotic accountant named Leo Bloom (Broderick) visits Bialystock’s plush offices to work on the producer’s books. Bloom mentions in passing that with some creative bookkeeping, a theatrical flop could earn Bialystock far more money than a hit. The game is on.

Before long, Bialystock has seduced enough rich old ladies to raise $2 million. He and Bloom then set out to find the worst possible script. They stumble on a doozy: Springtime for Hitler, a sweet depiction of Adolf Hitler’s love for Eva Braun by a neo-Nazi named Franz Liebkind (a glorious performance by Will Ferrell, a newcomer to The Producers franchise). Bloom and Bialystock then hire an apolitical queen (Gary Beach) to direct and a ditzy, leggy Swedish blonde (Uma Thurman) to play Braun. Instead of flopping, however, the resulting musical is acclaimed, improbably, as a satiric masterpiece.

Line dancing: Leo and his "Girls With Pearls." Photo Andrew Schwartz. Courtesy Universal Studios.

Brooks’ original film paid homage to Broadway in its brassy, Ziegfieldesque heyday (roughly the ’30s to the late ’50s), and so does this new version. Filmgoers love a period piece — provided it says something about the present. But this story is focused exclusively on the receding past. The Producers lovingly evokes a time when shows were big, stars were stahs and being a musical producer meant dating showgirls and getting ink from columnists like Walter Winchell.

On its own, this narrow focus wouldn’t be a fatal flaw. But the Producers franchise also riffs relentlessly on the New York of that period. In order for Brooks’ caricature of the Great White Way to hit home, the audience needs to know enough about the place to get the jokes. A theatre-going crowd in Manhattan can be counted on to do so; I’m not so sure, however, about a multiplex crowd in Canada. The story’s utterly New York state of mind explains why the Broadway version never traveled well — the first-rate Toronto production closed in under a year and Londoners seemed only mildly amused. The assumption that New York lies at the centre of the universe, and that we all appreciate the significance of a place like Sardi’s, has seemingly passed its best-before date.

Even so, Lane and Broderick are a pleasure to witness, and the film invites viewers to conjecture why they’ve become one of the most successful stage partnerships in history. (They’re currently starring together in a hit remount of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple.) Theirs is indeed a strange, asymmetrical pairing. Where Lane is plump and loud, Broderick is (more) slender and reserved. Lane has comic firepower aplenty, but Broderick seems to have only the vestiges of his boyish, Ferris Bueller charm. Manically extroverted throughout, Lane thankfully pulls back before the point of no return (namely, that place inhabited by Robin Williams). Broderick, meanwhile, shifts nicely from mousy accountant to studly mogul; by the end, he’s found the inner fire to match Lane quip for quip.

Blonde ambition: Max and Leo vie for the attention of Ulla (Uma Thurman). Photo Andrew Schwartz. Courtesy Universal Studios.

Broderick recently explained his feelings about his on-stage relationship with Lane. “It’s comfortable and at the same time not too comfortable. Nathan’s very challenging. It’s like a boxing match. There are elements of competitiveness, but it’s the good kind.” Their success seems to rest on Lane setting a high bar and Broderick striving to clear it. They don’t observe straight man-funny man conventions; each allows the other to shine.

In a climactic scene in the film, they affirm their friendship with a musical number called 'Til Him, a curious amalgam of love song and platonic tribute. “No one ever really knew me, ’til him,” Lane sings. “Everyone was always out to screw me, ’til him.” To which Broderick replies: “He filled up my empty life, filled it to the brim.” The lyrics reflect the essence of Lane and Broderick’s shtick. Lane’s mania needs to be grounded by an actor who doesn’t need to win every joust. In Broderick he found a performer who competes with him enough to make it interesting, but finally acknowledges Lane’s superiority. Broderick’s efforts to keep up, however, bring out his own personal best.

More than anything, this new Producers succeeds as a chronicle of this real-life collaboration. As a film in its own right, however, it’s too theatrical, its humour too Manhattan.

Alec Scott is a Toronto writer.

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