So I’ve gotten my hands on the US release of the Producers DVD a few days early. The DVD is a lot better than I expected and a welcome change from the Mel Brooks Collection box set. The audio and video quality are great (5.1 eng/french & stereo commentary), but what’s really superb is the inclusion of the various alternate/deleted sequences in nearly as good video quality as the main feature. The deleted scenes even include subtitles. Unfortunately, the audio for these segments is only stereo as opposed to 5.1 audio. I was happily surprised to discover Ernie Sabella (A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To The Forum, Guys & Dolls, Mousehunt, Lion King, etc…) in one of the cut scenes! Here is a list of which scenes are included:

• King of Broadway (You all know what this is!)
• Hide and Seek (Alternate intro to first little old lady)
• I Wanna Be A Producer (African American accountant bit)
• In Old Bavaria (Pre roof top visit)
• Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop (Reprise) (Post roof top visit)
• Along Came Bialy (with vignettes) (Some of these vignettes appeared in the trailer)
• That Face (reprise) (Nathan & Matthew singing while entraced by Uma, I love Nathan’s lines here)
• Astor Bar (Recreation of bar scene from original movie, you will recognize the set from the publicity Photo of Matthew, Nathan, Sussan & Mel)

There is also a little documentary about the anatomy of a scene which features “I wanna be a producer”… it runs 15 minutes and discusses the preparation and challenges involved with coreography, costumes, sets, etc… it’s narrated by Susan Stroman. Rounding out the special features is a bloopers reel. My favorite portion is when Matthew and Susan trade stories of how they received various bruises (guess who is accused of inflicting them?). I probably won’t get a chance to listen to the running commentary by Susan Stroman until next week… but I suspect it’s probably insightful considering it’s Susan Stroman’s first film directing effort.

My biggest gripe with the DVD, besides the absence of a second disc with all the website and promo stuff, is the lack of the ability to watch an uncut version with the deleted scenes seemlessly spliced back in. The cut versions of the various scenes seem like they could be spliced back in with a simple digital editor with very minor continuity hiccups (ie audio click/frame misalignment). If they don’t release a newer version on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray I wouldn’t be surprised if a frustrated fan took it upon themselves to splice them back in. At least looking at the DVD size it seems like they’ve maxed out the data to the dual layer capacity.

Definitely recommended!

I wonder how similar the UK/Australian versions are. I actually prefer the UK art work.