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ON THE RECORD: “The Producers” from Hollywood and the Songs of Gus Kahn
By Steven Suskin
25 Dec 2005
This week’s column discusses the soundtrack CD of “The Producers” and the unexpectedly tuneful anthology album “William Bolcom, Joan Morris, Max Morath & Robert White sing Gus Kahn.”
THE PRODUCERS [Sony 82876-74691]
How the motion picture version of the Mel Brooks musical The Producers (starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, directed by Susan Stroman) compares to the Broadway musical itself (starring and directed by same) is not the point of this column. How is the CD (on Sony) is the question, and how does it compare to the earlier one (also on Sony)?
This is a somewhat tricky question, as the score of The Producers is not, exactly, A Little Night Music. The songs of Mel Brooks speak for themselves, or — I suppose — hum for themselves. The Brookssongs work perfectly well onstage, as is evidenced by the Tony Award the composer-lyricist took home that June night in 2001. But these are songs that you might not necessarily want to listen to again and again; you do not walk away from the third viewing, or the fourth hearing, marveling at the hidden richness of the music or the layered nuance of the rhyme. That being the case, additional exposure to the songs (courtesy of the new film or the new CD) provides some but not many surprises.
With the Messrs. Lane, Broderick, Beach and Bart repeating their duties, and resinging their oft-sung songs, the performances on the new CD sound pretty much more like those on the old. Of the newcomers, Uma Thurman — with a dearth of musical comedy experience — doesn’t quite measure up to the Ulla of Cady Huffman. At the same time, Will Ferrell — despite the very same dearth — makes a totally winning Franz Liebkind. Should anybody want to turn Promises! Promises! into a big-budget cinema extravaganza, here’s your boy.
If the film “Producers” soundtrack gives us pretty much the same songs and the same performances as the Producers cast album, the sound itself is very different. The music department is held over from Broadway. Mr. Brooks has often thanked Glen Kelly — “who took my rude, simple 32-bar songs and made them sound like glorious and memorable show tunes” — so I suppose I should cite him here. (Kelly is credited as merely the dance and incidental music arranger, but I trust he has been paid accordingly.)
If Brooks’ songs and Kelly’s arrangements are the same as Broadway, orchestrators Doug Besterman and Larry Blank have gone back to the bandbox.
The Producers, the show, lovingly lacerated the pit orchestra sound of the 1950s. “The Producers,” the movie, turns instead to good old M-G-M. If you want 16 violins on Broadway, you use the five you have and support them with oboe, flute, and — so help us — synthesizer. If you want 16 violins on screen, you simply hire 16 violins. In film you can vary your instrumentation song by song, as musicians are paid by the session; at the St. James, every song is played by the same musicians, and the third trumpet can’t pick up a cello when you need it. The Broadway pit has 24 players (including five violins, one cello and one bass); the film orchestra, in it grandest musical moments, starts with 25 strings.
In many aspects of “The Producers” film, they seemed to have chosen to replicate the stage show. In the musical department, at least, the thinking seemed to be: This is a big Hollywood musical now, so let’s make it sound like one. This gives the score new life, with the songs swelled by amplification of the best kind. Every once in a while you check the liner notes looking for Conrad Salinger, or at least Ray Heindorf; instead, the name on the label is merely Bialystock and Bloom. . . . err, Besterman and Blank. The orchestrations make this a different, and delightful “Producers” than the one we hear on the Broadway cast album. If “The Producers” has had its bumps on the road to Hollywood, the music men at least have made a sterling adaptation to the new medium.
And let us add that the end credits include a new song, “There’s Nothing Like a Show on Broadway.” This is followed on the CD by “The Hop Clop Goes On,” which is “Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop” sung as a power ballad by Mr. Ferrell, and which is among the most delicious things on the disc. Continued...
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