 It was later adapted by Brooks and Thomas Meehan as a stage musical, which itself was adapted into a film.Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) was once the toast of Broadway, but is now an aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Broadway producer who ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence romancing lascivious, wealthy elderly women in exchange for money for his next play.Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Gene Wilder), a nervous young man prone to hysterics, arrives at Max's office to audit his accounts and discovers a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play.