The best way to work with writers
“Next time I produce a play – no author,” yells Max Bialystock, the producer of Springtime for Hitler in Mel Brooks’s The Producers. To be fair, the unhinged writer, a former Nazi, does shoot Max.
And did you hear the one about the real-life writer whose producers blocked him from attending the Baftas? He later “liberated” the award from their trophy cabinet.
Then there are the apocryphal tales of 1970s writer-producer duos whose relationships were more Burton and Taylor than Liz and Dick themselves.