“It’s absolutely amazing, but under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit.” Thus spoke accountant Leo Bloom, played in The Producers (1968) by the much-mourned Gene Wilder. In Bloom’s thought experiment, a dishonest producer would raise a vast sum by selling the profits of a Broadway show many times over. Provided the Broadway show was a flop, nobody would come looking for their share of the profits and the fraudsters could retire to Rio. If the show was a hit, of course, “well, then you’d go to jail”. That was where Bloom and his partner Max Bialystock ended up: their musical, Springtime for Hitler, was far too good.
“這很不可思議，可是在適當(dāng)?shù)那闆r下，制作人如果出一部爛戲，反而比制作一部好戲賺更多。”利奧?布魯姆(Leo Bloom)在《金牌制作人》(The Producers,1968)中如是說，飾演該角色的是深受人們緬懷的吉恩?懷爾德(Gene Wilder)。根據(jù)布魯姆的思維實(shí)驗(yàn)，一個不誠實(shí)的制作人可以通過把一部百老匯戲劇的收益夸大好多倍，然后從中大賺一筆。倘若這部戲搞砸了，沒人會去查看自己應(yīng)獲利潤的份額，而騙子可以退隱里約熱內(nèi)盧。當(dāng)然，如果這部戲火了，“那么你就得坐牢”。而這正是布魯姆和他的伙伴麥克斯?比亞韋斯托克( Max Bialystock)的下場——他們制作的音樂劇《希特勒的春天》(Springtime for Hitler)實(shí)在太成功了。