Hacker Cinema
The Producers
1968 · Film · 89 min
Directed by Mel Brooks
A conniving Broadway producer and his meek accountant plan to profit from charming wealthy old biddies to invest in an overbudget production, and then put on a sure-fire disaster, so nobody will ask for their money back — and what's more disastrous than a tasteless musical celebrating Adolf Hitler.
5 positive11 neutralfrom 16 commenters
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17 comments on Hacker News
Craig Reynolds - Original 1986 Boids simulation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86iQiV3-3IA
Boids Demo Reel 1987 — Part B:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBniZYiyrb4
>Early motion tests of the boids model of flocking and related collective motion (herds, schools, crowds). Recorded on a Symbolics Lisp Machine between 1986 and 1987.
Stanley and Stella in “BREAKING THE ICE” - Original Symbolics Tapes Restored & Remastered, 1080p:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYEp26g14Wk
Craig Reynolds #SCCS2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqP_c5zm89Q
>Pioneer Craig Reynolds shares his groundbreaking work in artificial life and computer animation. Reynolds describes his lifelong fascination with simulating natural complexity computationally. By modeling flocking birds from the bottom up, based on simple rules for how individual birds move, Reynolds made the astonishing flock emerge. This agent-based approach allowed new insights into collective behavior impossible to gather from nature alone. Reynolds reflects on the significance of his iconic 1987 "Boids" model for animating birds in films like Batman Returns. But its influence extends further - to complexity science and understanding real-world systems like traffic flow and crowd dynamics. According to Reynolds, the beauty of simple models is their emergent properties. By distilling phenomena to basic rules, computer simulation uncovers new truths about the world. Join this fascinating conversation with a legend of artificial life and computer graphics.
Blender Tutorial - Full Guide to Boid Particles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3TUPYVsxow
"Concierge" clip from 1968 Mel Brooks' "The Producers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6mTMShVyk
>Doity, disgusting, filthy, lice ridden boids.
>To be fair, it's very hard in cinema to have people "get" the point without spoon-feeding it to them
And plenty of people will happily ignore any subtext you create, and most of the text you create, to just consume a portion of the imagery you put out. Neonazis LOVE all sorts of movies and characters that are supposed to be warnings about how bad Fascism is.
Yet they do NOT love Mel Brook's "The producers", because it makes Nazis look goofy. If you are trying to turn people off something, the absolute minimum bar is to demonstrate it's frank stupidity. You must eschew any and all "Coolness". This was also used to turn people away from the KKK when their stupid club rituals and limp handshake were shared without the normal framing.
Some of the film production money laundering rumors I've heard about make the fabulous Mel Brooks film 'the producers' look run of the mill..
> A) not all movies break even, most lose money, so the "hits" are needed to keep the lights on. It's not unlike VC investing.
Hollywood accounting, which surely inspired The Producers, can obscure a film's real profitability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Actually, that Coalition Technologies company was interesting. Maybe the summation line was a bit over-the top.
Yeah, the Web has allowed shops that used to be no more than kiosks in the corridors of a dying mall, to front like they are megacorps.
Nothing new (as was pointed out), but it’s a lot easier to do, these days, than it used to be.
This guy probably could have pulled it off, if he had kept his scope small.
That’s what tends to kill a lot of cons; they get too big, where they allow themselves to be put into a “put up or shut up” situation.
Sort of reminds me of the movie The Producers.
I often read about successful companies that started off as spit-and-baling-wire façades.
Perhaps they have; you're just thinking of the wrong films. I keep wondering if this is a The Producers situation, with the caveat that I can't imagine this being as wildly successful as Springtime for Hitler. Frankly, they are running service so badly that I can't think of any reason other than purposeful sabotage.
I asked Craig if he had any good Boids links, and he dug these up! (Plus a few more I found.)
https://web.archive.org/web/19990117095925/https://http1.brunel.ac.uk:8080/research/AI/alife/al-boids.htm
>Craig Reynolds' Boids
>"The motion of a flock of birds is... simple in concept yet is so visually complex it seems randomly arrayed and yet is magnificently synchronous. Perhaps most puzzling is the strong impression of intentional centralised control. Yet all evidence indicates that flock motion must be merely the aggregate result of the actions of individual animals, each acting solely on the basis of its local perception of the world." - Craig Reynolds
[...]
>References: "Artificial Life : The Quest for a New Creation" - Steven Levy
https://books.google.nl/books/about/Artificial_Life.html?id=hN7CQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
Steve Levy's page on his "Artificial Life" book (with glorious 1997 web site design):
https://web.archive.org/web/19981202151154/http://www.echonyc.com/~steven/alife.html
Tal Cohen's Bookshelf: Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation / Steven Levy
http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/failed%201%20subitem/Def-of-life/Langton/Artificial%20Life%20The%20Quest%20for%20a%20New%20Creation%20-%20Steven%20Levy.htm
Bruce Sterling. Artificial life.
http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/f_sf_04.txt
Half Life Wiki: Boid
https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Boid
>A "Boid" is a virtual entity used in "Boids", an artificial life program simulating the behavior of birds or fish in their flocks or schools, respectively (with each other, as well as their environment), developed at Symbolics Inc. in 1986 by Craig Reynolds, an artificial life and computer graphics expert, and named "steering behavior".[1] The source code has been released a few years after 1986, allowing the creation of many variants since then, including Valve's creature (that even resembles the original Boids by Reynolds). It is also implemented in the free C++ library OpenSteer, designed to help construct steering behaviors for autonomous characters in games and animation.
>The term "Boid" is the abbreviation of "birdoid" ("like a bird"), as the program rules applied equally to simulated flocking birds and schooling fish. It was also inspired by a scene from Mel Brooks' 1968 film The Producers where the playwright's landlord complained about his keeping pigeons on the roof, referring to them as "boids", or "bird" in a stereotypical New York accent. The term also linked up with the ellipsoid-based 3D modeling tool by Tom Duff at the Graphics Lab of New York Institute of Technology named "soids".[2] Therefore, in regard of the source of the creature's name, its proper in-universe name remains unknown.
Alvy Ray Smith used Tom Duff's "soids" (short for "ellipsoids") for Chromagnon:
http://alvyray.com/Art/Chromagnon.htm
>I modeled the skeletal hands from cylinders and spheres, using Tom's "soids" program.
Roadmap-Based Methods for Flocking Motion with Obstacles
https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mount/Indep/Kevin/Webpage/index.htm
>It was also inspired by a graphics modelling and rendering system by Tom Duff when he was at the Computer Graphics Lab of the New York Institute of Technology. It used ellipsoids as its primitive shape and was called "soids".
Craig Reynolds Boids page
https://web.archive.org/web/19981202064632/http://www.hmt.com/cwr/boids.html
>Boids: Background and Update, by Craig Reynolds.
>[You need to be using an Java-enabled browser to see this demo.] (more information about this applet is available)
>In 1986 I made a computer model of coordinated animal motion such as bird flocks and fish schools. It was based on three dimensional computational geometry of the sort normally used in computer animation or computer aided design. I called the software boids.
[...]
Brunel University Artificial Intelligence Site / Artificial Life / Boids / Three "Boid" Term Sources
https://web.archive.org/web/20010505042228/http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/AI/alife/alife-main.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20010224013859fw_/http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/AI/alife/al-boids.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20001004064622/https://http1.brunel.ac.uk:8080/research/AI/alife/al-boid2.htm
>I have learned (on extremely good authority!) that there were actually three sources of the term 'boid'! Here they are:
>"Boid" was an abbreviation of "birdoid", as his rules applied equally to simulated flocking birds, and schooling fish.
>It was also inspired by a graphics modelling and rendering system by Tom Duff when he was at the Computer Graphics Lab of the New York Institute of Technology. It used ellipsoids as its primitive shape and was called "soids".
>Finally, there was a Mel Brooks film called The Producers starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder which contained a scene where the playwright's landlord complained about his keeping pigeons on the roof ("You used to be able to sit on the stoop like a normal person, but not any more, 'cause of da BOIDS. Dirty, lousy, stinkin' BOIDS")
The intended effect of ridicule is to remove the mystique and potency around the threat of a forbidden idea.
I recently saw a critique of satire[0] that mentioned white supremacists tend to be fans of movies like Apt Pupil which, while criticizing Nazism, still portray it as powerful and potent. But the Producers, which literally portrays an attempt at an in-universe pro Hitler play (albeit for in-universe subversive reasons) and similar parody content isn't well received by them, because it refuses to take them seriously.
So yes, while ridicule might make more enemies, it can also serve to make those enemies less powerful.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE
This passage resonates especially well with today's times:
Audiences hoping for safe spaces—especially Jewish audiences—can be rudely jostled by Brooks’s wilder moments. The musical number “Springtime for Hitler,” first unleashed in the movie version of The Producers (1968), of course turned Nazism into merry choreography—boys and girls singing and dancing in S.S. uniforms and regalia. The joke was something more than a joke. Those who had seen Broadway shows in the ’50s and ’60s knew how closely Brooks adhered to the shape and sound of Broadway style. The audience for musical comedies was heavily Jewish, so the wit was partially aimed at them and at Jews in general—an audience inclined to feel itself a victim of history.
The Producers. I have wondered if that film might be a bit too edgy for mainstream audiences today. On the other hand, it had a good Broadway run long after the film, so people would probably be fine for the most part.
I suggest that all HN readers in the UK go to their local stores containing DVDs/BluRays, find a copy of "The Producers", and then contact the police immediately because the movie concerns a group of crooked financiers that include Nazism to profit. Explain to the police that you are deeply offended that anyone would attempt to profit off of Nazism and that everyone associated with the movie and the people that own and run the store you found the DVD/BluRay in should be arrested and charged with offending you.
New comedy film idea: it's 'The Producers', but it's Prenda Law making porn. They don't want to be too successful because then people will notice that they're actually running a piracy-scam. But they need it to sound like something people would want to download. Instead, they start winning awards for their 'highly artistic' porn.
The Producers will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder was a fantastic actor.
Life Stinks
The Producers (new one, I haven't watched original)
Pan's Labyrinth - talks about serious issues but adds a fairy tale to shield audience
You Don't Mess with the Zohan - Adam Sandler movie, more silly than usual, but also takes on Middle East conflict with a positive (perhaps American) spin.
Fight Club ... deals with boredom of your average no-direction man, and how he finds a way to occupy himself.
(M) The Vanishing - from 80's not the American version (didn't see American version) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096163/combined
Overall I like silly movies, I'd list 5 Adam Sandler movies, and add 'The Animal' to them, and watch them any day of the week.
I had the same thought, and my personal opinion is "not even close." Idiocracy was good, but very much "one note." I can think of other better films - MAS*H comes to mind, not to mention Catch-22 (though somewhat uneven, still better). Even Mel Brook's movies - Young Frankenstein, and The Producers, especially.
Nothing in Idiocracy matches "Springtime for Hitler."
Totally missing the point with The Producers. In the movie the "Springtime for Hitler" play becomes an (unplanned) success. And the movie itself became a success, showing that you can indeed "mix oil with water" with enough audacity. The article presents it like it is obvious that Hamlet or Lolita will never work as a musical - presumably because the material is too serious for showtunes - but Jesus Christ Superstar was a huge success.
Looking at the quality of the HP TouchPad ads reminds me of the hilarous movie The Producers, where the show has to be a flop or it will financially destroy the movie makers. HP hired comedians to make fun of potential customers, like looking photos of buck-toothed relatives. Then there was the VP demonstrating the Touchpad without the camera getting a clear shot of how to operate it. Finally, shutting the show when it has barely started.