At 76, Mel Brooks is red-hot, attracting a new generation of fans with 'The Producers'
By Lynda Gorov, Globe Correspondent, 6/15/2003

The 1968 movie of the same name won Brooks an Oscar for best original screenplay and went on to become a cult favorite. A record 12 Tonys aside, his latest success feels that much sweeter. After all, his shticky fingers are all over ''The Producers'' -- music and lyrics included.

As Brooks puts it, ''It's like when I go to the races. . . . It's much better to win the last two. You go home feeling like a winner, and I'm going out, whenever I go out, feeling like a winner. It's very nice when the critics agree something is good. It's even nicer when the public fights to get in.''

''The Producers,'' the story of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, who set out to stage a failure called ''Springtime for Hitler'' but end up with a hit on their hands, has been a sellout in almost every city it's played. Brooks himself keeps buying tickets, watching his creation from the audience, and being pestered by people who want autographs.

''I always wonder why they don't ask for one themselves,'' he says. ''I always write `To Cousin Shirley' to screw them up.''

That sort of go-for-the-laugh lament is classic Brooks. Brad Oscar, who took over as Bialystock from Nathan Lane on Broadway and re-creates the role in Boston, recalls Brooks standing just beyond the stage and acting upset after run-throughs in New York.

''It's terrible, it's terrible,'' he'd cry. But then he'd crack a small smile and say, ''Surprisingly good.'' According to Oscar, from Brooks that's high praise indeed.

''What could be better for Mel than this?'' Oscar says. ''Here's a man who so made his mark in the movies. This is a glorious and well-deserved tribute, not only to his mastery of the theater craft but of his smarts to gather a creative team and not say, `I'm going to do it myself.' ''

Oscar also says his initial impression of Brooks was exactly what he expected: a Jewish Yoda, with a raspy voice and rat-a-tat timing. Friends say that's Mel. ''The Producers'' the second time around hasn't changed him. Still, he's too much a Hollywood player not to understand how much luck figures into any box-office equation. Enjoying his success does not mean taking it for granted.

Carl Reiner, a comedy hero in his own right and a friend for more than 50 years, attributes the play's success to ''wall-to-wall comedy,'' with laughs coming even at the final curtain. Like Oscar, he also cites Brooks's smarts in surrounding himself with people who could not only help craft his vision but who could also take his wilder impulses and tame them for the stage. For his part, Brooks knows where to give credit: everywhere.

''The success is simple: It's very, very funny and all the things that can go wrong have gone right,'' Reiner says. ''He's chosen all the right people to help him. . . . It's something very extraordinary and he's aware of it. He's very happy, but he's still the same person with the same idiosyncrasies.''

Few of those quirks are on display at his Culver City offices on a studio lot. The waiting room is sparsely decorated. Posters for his movies line the walls, but the furniture is so nondescript it appears rented. His own office is slightly more personalized, with a black lacquer piano and a table full of awards. He's got Oscars, Emmys, and a Grammy to keep those Tonys company. Brooks is dressed Hollywood casual in a black short-sleeve Izod and khakis. His hair is wispy gray, but he looks fit despite a bit of a paunch.

There's no controlling the conversation. Brooks is a verbal volleyballer, lobbing one thought after another over the desk. Thomas Meehan, who co-wrote the book for ''The Producers'' and just won another Tony for ''Hairspray,'' has known Brooks for 30 years. And he can still be overwhelmed. Then again, as Meehan describes it, he's mild-mannered Bloom to Brooks's more abrasive Bialystock.

''At the end of the day with Mel, I have to go back to the hotel, lay down, and put cold compresses on my head,'' says Meehan, adding, ''I'm only half joking. . . . Mel's a fountain of genius. Remarkable things no one would think of pop out of his head, 100 ideas a day. Many are wonderful. Many aren't. And he wants you to tell him which ones.''

The idea to turn the movie into the play wasn't an impulse that originated with Brooks. That came from Hollywood mogul David Geffen, who urged him on his way but had to drop out because of conflicts with other projects.

As a result of that urging, Brooks's movie career may heat up again. As weird as it sounds, plans to turn the play version of the original movie back into a movie musical are in the works. At the same time, Brooks and Meehan are tossing around the idea of staging ''Young Frankenstein.'' One day there might even be a theatrical rendition of ''The Fly,'' made under the rubric of Brooksfilms, the production company also responsible for ''Frances'' and ''The Elephant Man,'' among other dramatic titles.

Brooksfilms is the other side of Brooks's personality, serious and sober. He's a voracious reader, part of what he calls ''my secret cultural-intellectual side.'' In fact his creations are fraught with literary, cultural, and historical references. Most probably fly over the audiences' heads (Prince Mishkin from ''The Idiot'' in ''The Producers,'' for instance) but he says he can't help himself. ''No one knows what I'm talking about, but it pleases me, a lot,'' Brooks says.

Or, as his friend Reiner explains, ''He's more serious than anything else. You don't come by his success by being a goofball.''

To ensure continued success, Brooks stays involved long after finishing the play and music. (''People say, `When did you start writing songs?' Go back to my first movie, `The Producers.' I wrote three songs right there. . . . I wrote the songs for all my movies. But they were all surprised.'') Brooks, who continues tweaking the production to this day, still has a huge hand in casting. He loves to cast the ensemble most of all. The chorus girls kill him. ''These girls have long legs; they're Amazonians,'' he notes, adding that Ida Leigh Curtis, who'll play the sexy, silly-sounding showgirl Ulla in Boston, has ''the greatest figure, the longest legs, the most beautiful face known to mankind, the biggest . . . .''

Brooks goes on to confess that he's made repeated, unrequited sexual passes at her. He's kidding, of course. Come August, he will have been married to actress Anne Bancroft for 39 years. He still mists up when mentioning her. He actually uses the expression ''soul mate'' without sounding icky. Part of the reason for the play's success, he says, is that it shows people that fame and fortune aren't all. They need love, too.

''I mean I can't see living my life alone,'' Brooks says of Bancroft. ''Every stray thought I get I have to tell her right away so she can get a kick out of it or she can have some input, and every thought she gets she tells me. We really have a terrific time together. We laugh together, we cry together. We're very lucky to have found each other.''

That luck has extended to a career that was, by harsh Hollywood standards, in its twilight when ''The Producers'' came along. Brooks hadn't had a huge hit in quite awhile. Now he's as stunned as anyone by the crowds that turn out wherever it plays.

As Meehan says Brooks told him as the two walked to the theater during tryouts in Chicago, the winter wind whipping them into shivers, ''This is the happiest I've been since I was 9 years old.''