Mel Brooks was so brazen in its satire that major studios would not touch it, nor would many exhibitors. Brooks finally found an independent distributor who released it as an art film, a specialized attraction. In 1968, Brooks received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film, beating such writers as Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes. "The Producers" became a smash underground hit, first on the nationwide college circuit, then in revivals and on home video. Brooks later turned it into a musical, which became hugely successful on Broadway, receiving an unprecedented twelve Tony awards. With the moderate financial success of
Mel Brooks Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, and Barry Levinson and was the first movie produced by Brooks himself. It starred Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, and Dick Van Patten. The film satirizes such Hitchcock classic films as "Vertigo", "Spellbound", "Psycho", "The Birds", "North by Northwest", "Dial M for Murder", and "Suspicion". Brooks stars as Professor Richard H. (for Harpo) Thorndyke, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who also happens to suffer from "high anxiety". By 1980 "Siskel and Ebert" called Mel Brooks and Woody Allen "the two most successful comedy directors in the world today ...