The Producers

In 1972 something happened which I don’t think was ever to happen again: all five members of my immediate family went to the cinema on a Saturday night. For this to happen, for my late teenage brothers to want to be seen in my company on Kings Road Chelsea, it must have been some film. It was.


The genuine ‘sleeper’ hit doesn’t exist anymore. Since Blair Witch everything gets trailed to death on the net before most people have seen a frame and The Producers was a classic example of the sleeper hit. The executives at Embassy Pictures initially refused to release it on the grounds of bad taste and it took a full page ad by Peter Sellers to get a very limited release. Still, it got an Oscar for best screenplay plus a nomination for Gene Wilder as best supporting actor but with an unwilling studio and a fairly dull title it could have easily gone the way of 1968’s duds like Live A Little, Love A Little (Elvis) and The Pink Jungle (James Garner). Even the critical reception was mixed; until IMDB the bible of film comment in the UK was Halliwell’s film guide in which the great man and sometime ITV film buyer, while grudgingly acknowledging its cult following, condemned it as ‘dismally unfunny’.

So it was left to audiences to discover it for themselves and that included my own mother. One afternoon, listening to Radio 4, she heard a short piece on the film including a synopsis and a clip from ‘Springtime For Hitler’. She related this to my father that evening and the family outing was in the bag. In those days both parents sold antiques on Portobello Road as a sideline. This meant getting up at half past four to catch the early trade and a Saturday night out was almost non existent. But they found an anticipatory second wind we all trooped along to The Classic, Chelsea and dutifully sat through the supporting feature (The Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers - surprisingly funny in a full cinema) before a fat old grotesque filled the screen being seduced by an old lady.

I won’t bore you with the plot. Most people have now seen it or at least think they have and it’s not the plot that’s funny. In fact, like a lot of films which are genuinely funny, it’s fairly obvious that a lot of bitterness and hate went into its making. Brooks had been knocking around for years as his contemporaries (Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Neil Simon) became stars but aside from The 2000 Year Old Man and The Critic (OK, that got an Oscar too) was not a name on everyone’s lips. He wasn’t to everyone’s taste and was almost condemned to become saddled forever with the accursed title ‘Comedian’s Comedian’ reserved for the under-rated user-unfriendly stand up who is adored by his peers but ignored by the wider World. What he did with The Producers was to take all the worst aspects of showbiz, all its greed and shallowness and pig ignorance and spew it out in one 90 minute chunk.

So it’s not just Springtime For Hitler that we should be celebrating. Let’s also hear it for Roger De Bris, the idiot director. After reading the script for Springtime he says “Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that...” which, having met a few stage and TV producers, is not far off the mark. The entire profession is staffed by people who literally know nothing but, crucially, will do anything. And Brooks loves it and wants to be part of it and, if you’ve ever seen him interviewed, has no ‘off’ switch but he was also fully aware of how evil and dangerous it is. And in a world where politics has become a branch of showbiz and where Tory hopefuls name check The Jam it’s a lesson worth heeding.

From The Producers it’s a fairly regular slope downhill to Robin Hood – Men in Tights. Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein are funny; I have friends who cite the farting scene as the funniest thing ever. Silent Movie to History Of The World have their moments. To Be Or Not To Be is a fairly pointless remake of a Lubitsch classic but it’s nice to see him working with Ann Bancroft. Then there’s Spaceballs which, along with everything else on film since, was dire. A look at his entire canon indicates that The Producers got everything Brooks truly cared about and the remainder got what was left over. And if you don’t think so then ask yourself why there’s been no stage musical of Life Stinks.

Not Famous

Everything that follows is true.

The other day I was on the phone to a friend discussing Ashes To Ashes, the BBC's pointless sequal to Life On Mars. I was explaining that it was odd seeing The Blitz At Billy's being recreated as an historic artifact as I'd visited there some time around 80/81. I remember the music, a lot of Bowie, some Kraftwerk or Kraftwerk soundalikes, a smattering of punk and some Thin White Duke friendly soul. I also remember the slightly snotty cross dresser on the door and later found out that this was Philip Salon but have no memory of Boy George handling the coats. Maybe it was his night off.

My friend sniggered. "So you must be the only person to go to The Blitz at that time and not end up either with a hit single or on the cover of The Face. I see a pattern forming here." And up to a point he's right.

Consider the following two examples:

Exhibit a: It's 1977 and I'm in my first year at Hull University. As a compulsory part of my degree I have to do an ancillary subject in my first year and choose English. There are three of us in the room, two students and a tutor. The tutor, Andrew Motion later wins the Aarvon Foundation poetry prize and goes on to become Poet Laureate. My fellow student Ollie Reynolds also goes on to win the Aarvon poetry prize a few years later. Both of them later had slim volumes of poetry published by Faber & Faber.

Now I don't claim to be a poet. I can dabble in verse with the best but any later success I had was with song lyrics which are a different beast altogether (and don't let a shrill Dylan or Blake fan tell you otherwise). On the other hand someone at Faber & Faber could have at least investigated the mysterious "other student" and found out whether my bardic tap could be turned on.

Exhibit b: My non career as a poet is one thing - it would have helped if I'd actually written any - but this example is more uncanny. Back in that fertile age of live stand up comedy known as the late 1980s I was performing with a comedy music group called The Draylon Underground. We hadn't been going all that long when we were asked to be on a TV show set at the then up-and-coming venue called Jongleurs. In those far off days of 1987 Jongleurs would still be open to some experimentation in the kinds of acts it presented and was particularly fond of comedy music acts (as long as they were funny) and magicians, jugglers, mimes, anything that worked. At around the same time as the TV show went out the venue hosted a live recording for an album. If you really want to hear it you can download it, probably illegally, from here. Now notice how every act has a photo except ours (note: it's not the original playbill style cover). Also notice which act was never given their own TV show. OK, The Dialtones never got that far as a group but as individuals Ronnie Golden and Mac McDonald both popped up all over the place from Red Dwarf to The Young Ones. As for the rest? Arthur Smith, Mark Steel, Paul Merton...

There's no need to feel bitter and I've got my own very good reasons to mistrust the fickle finger of fame. I'm also aware of how just missing out is incredibly common. For instance, unless you're obsessive about this kind of thing you'd be hard pressed to name even a fraction of acts that didn't win the Eurovision song contest and yet they'd have been seen by more people in one TV appearance than probably saw Henry Irving in his entire lifetime.

So let's hear it for the Schmetterlingers, The Mouth & McNeils and even the Arzu Eces.!

Throw rose petals into the paths of the Buzz Aldrins and Pete Bests who just missed out on becoming legends and had to settle for being the answers to tie-breaker questions in pub quizzes!

And if anyone wants a copy of the Jongleurs album or even some unpublished post-modern poetry...