Influences
- Max Bialystock is named after the city of Białystok, Poland. A 'bialystoker' is a roll similar to a bagel.
- Leo Bloom is named for the protagonist of James Joyce's classic novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. Leo meets Max on June 16 (Bloomsday), the date on which Ulysses takes place. Bialystock at one point calls Leo "Prince Myshkin", the titular protagonist in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot.
- In the search for "the worst play ever", Max reads aloud from one of the rejected manuscripts. It is the opening sentence of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa finds himself transformed into a giant verminous bug, and Bialystock dismisses it as "too good". The book was also used as a joke in Mel Brooks' movie Spaceballs: "Prepare for Metamorphosis, are you ready Kafka?".
In a case of life imitating art, however, The Metamorphosis was produced on Broadway (1989), featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov as Gregor and René Auberjonois as Gregor's father. - Roger De Bris (pronounced "debris") is named for the Yiddish term for circumcision.
- Carmen Giya is named after the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, a popular car in production in 1968.
- The "singing Hitlers" at their audition sing a number of pieces. Mentioned or performed are Lilac Time, "A Wand'ring Minstrel I", "Beautiful Dreamer", and "Largo al factotum" ("della ... città" being all that is heard).
- Siegfried from the Siegfried Oath is the main character in The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner.
Read more about this topic: The Producers (1968 film)
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)