The Producers

The once-great Max Bialystock (Mostel) had once been the toast of Broadway, but now he has been reduced to a washed-up, aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Broadway producer who barely ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence romancing lascivious, wealthy elderly women ("angels" in theatrical terms) in exchange for money for his next play. Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Wilder), a young man who is highly nervous and prone to hysterics, arrives at Max's office to do his books and discovers a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play. Max persuades Leo to hide the relatively minor fraud, and while shuffling numbers, Leo has a revelation: a producer could make a lot more money with a flop than a hit by overselling shares in the production, because no one will audit the books of a play presumed to have lost money. Max immediately puts this scheme into action. They will oversell shares on a massive scale and produce a play that will close on opening night, thus avoiding payouts and leaving the duo free to flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits. Leo is afraid such a criminal venture will fail and they will go to prison, but Max eventually convinces him that his drab existence is no better than prison. Read more on Wikipedia.