Ulla (Leigh Zimmerman) turns out to have impressive secretarial credentials in a job interview with Max (Brad Oscar), left, and Leo (Larry Raben). They're "The Producers" in Mel Brooks' stage comedy that opened this week at Paris Las Vegas. Photos by K.M. Cannon. A chorus line of little old ladies is part of a day's work for the show's versatile chorus. "Everybody is slightly demented," co-star Larry Raben says of the cast. "It makes it such a fun workplace." David Hasselhoff, left, and Rich Affannato bonded while watching football in Hasselhoff's dressing room.

This is just too much football talk for a Broadway musical. Or is it?

David Hasselhoff likens his contributions to "The Producers" to being "like Terrell Owens." He's not the quarterback, but the star wide receiver. "I'm going to catch maybe two or three passes and take all the glory.

"And I might drop a few," he adds.

Hasselhoff plays an outrageously gay director in the Mel Brooks comedy that began previews this week. Rich Affannato, who plays his equally limp-wristed sidekick, remembers going over the Colts-Patriots playoff game in Hasselhoff's dressing room.

"I was pumped that the Colts won and he was so pumped. I found it so odd that five minutes later we were onstage talking about wigs and gowns" for Hasselhoff's big drag number, "Keep It Gay."

Odd, but also in keeping with the history of a musical that, from the earliest testing with focus groups, engaged a wide audience in a way no Broadway show had for years.

"Once it all started to come together and got to Chicago to try out, I think we were all aware we were in the presence of something special. Sort of a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most of us," says Brad Oscar, an original cast member who now leads the new Paris Las Vegas edition. "Because the show played like nothing I've ever been a part of. The audience reaction was ridiculous."

Still, Las Vegas is an uncertain market for Broadway musicals right now. The Theatre des Arts' last production, "We Will Rock You," disappointed its backers. And for that matter, so did the 2005 movie adaptation of "The Producers," even though it reunited the original Broadway team of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

If you're trying to rope in the guy sitting in the sports book and not just his wife, Hasselhoff may have the universal recognition to seal the deal.

Those who already love the show will find a seasoned cast delivering a 90-minute condensed version of the 2001 hit that's still running on Broadway, overseen by original director Susan Stroman.

"I'm walking into a well-oiled machine. There's only three of us that are new," Hasselhoff says. "It's overwhelming in the beginning, but now it's great."

Oscar opened the show in the smaller role of a scatterbrained Nazi playwright (played in Las Vegas by Fred Applegate), while also serving as Nathan Lane's understudy. When Lane left the lead role of Max Bialystock, Oscar racked up more than 1,100 performances as Max on Broadway and London's West End.

He admits it was great to be away from the role for a year and a half, but now is happy to be back. "I don't know. There's something about this show. I guess it's the exchange of energy between the audience and the performer that really sort of fulfills me every night."

Larry Raben also has been in the Broadway edition as mousy accountant Leo Bloom, the part Broderick created on Broadway. Raben saw Broderick do the show by buying a ticket in the last row of the balcony. He laughed so hard, "people were turning around looking at me."

Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel first played the scheming duo in Brooks' 1968 movie version of "The Producers." It wasn't a musical per se, but was built around a very memorable production number: "Springtime for Hitler," a musical-comedy about Adolf, Eva and the Third Reich. It's the worst idea in theater history; the sure-fire flop dreamed up by Max and Leo in a scheme to defraud Max's pool of little-old-lady investors and abscond with all their oversold shares.

For this they will need not just terrible material but the world's worst director. Hasselhoff took the Roger DeBris role played by Gary Beach on Broadway and in the Lane-Broderick movie. The real producers first asked him to play the Nazi playwright because, as it turns out, Brooks was scared to ask him to play DeBris.

But they were on the same page. "Everybody would expect me to play the Nazi role," Hasselhoff says. "I want to push the envelope. Acting for me now is doing what I want to do," and he wanted to stretch his legs. Literally.

"It's legs and lungs," he says of getting up to speed.

Raben theorizes that "The Producers" was such a big hit because the slapstick comedy, full of gay stereotypes and ethnic humor, came "at the time everything was so politically correct, people were nauseated by it and hungry for something to make them laugh."

And yet, Oscar adds, "what's so special about Mel's comedy is how it embraces everyone. We can all laugh at each other. What are we? We're all just human beings trying to get along in the world."

The show plays with the heightened reality of a black-and-white movie comedy. But Raben says that "if it heads toward a cartoon, it goes totally the wrong direction."

"It needs to be big and it needs to be turned up to '11,' " adds Oscar, dropping an adage from "This Is Spinal Tap." But he says Stroman tells the cast everything has to be "sharp and specific." If it becomes too broad, "it becomes sloppy. It becomes general. It's not going to be funny."

Affannato remembers testing a slow exit where "my limp wrist was moving off the stage after me." Stroman cornered him later and said, "Kid, keep it to 10 seconds."

Keeping the storytelling in mind helped the team of veterans cut down the show. The sacrifices include Max's bring-down-the-house number "Betrayed," because it recaps the story instead of moving it forward.

"There's a real story," Oscar notes. "This isn't just a Carol Burnett show. This isn't just vaudeville, even though it hearkens back to all that stuff." It's important to "tell this real story of this man who finds his first true friend, and the way that Leo's world is totally opened up by Max. It's a really sweet story. ...

"I think the last thing people expect is to maybe feel something emotionally for these guys. And I hope every night that they do. I know I do."