TIFU by comparing someone to Hitler

I’m a manager at a tech company, currently recruiting for my team. For those not in the know, recruiting is a miserable process. Trust me, we hate this end of the process almost as much as you do. I must’ve interviewed over 3 dozen candidates at this point, most of which fell apart in the technical interview, and those that didn’t wound up withdrawing due to offers that came in before my talent team sent them a letter.

Anyway, I interviewed a candidate yesterday along with my lead developer, and my director. She did very well, very minor reservations about her personality given the position she was going for but we liked her a lot. We were pinging each other in the background, discussing ways to challenge her, commenting on her performance in the interview, yada yada yada. After we were done and said goodbye to our candidate, I called the two of them to discuss the interview. And me, being “funny” opened the call with “THAT’S OUR HITLER!” In my best Nathan Lane impression. My lead developer got my reference and laughed. My director did not. She remained quiet during the rest of the call, before calling me directly afterwards, asking for an explanation.

For those of you not in the know, I was referencing a scene from the 2005 movie “The Producers”. It’s a remake of a classic Mel Brooks movie from 1968, where a down on his luck broadway producer and his accountant friend (played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in the original, and by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the remake respectively) concoct a scheme to get rich quick. They figure out that they can make a ton of money by producing a massive flop of a broadway play. So they set about convincing people to invest in the play, and making the worst, most offensive play they can. They find a writer, a literal ex-Nazi soldier played by Will Ferrel, who wants to produce a broadway play glorifying Hitler. Finding the writing terrible and the subject matter sure to infuriate and offend, they pick it up and run with it. Then, we get to the casting scene, where they’re holding auditions to play Hitler, the Nazi gets furious with one of the auditioners not being able to sing to his satisfaction. He proceeds to do the whole musical number himself to perfection, whereupon Nathan Lane stands up and jovially declares “THAT’S OUR HITLER!”, giving Ferrel the part.

Now cue me, trying to explain all of this to a woman who’s never seen a Mel brooks movie in her life, insisting I was not trying to be disparaging in anyway, now embarrassed and lamenting my own stupidity. She gave me the most polite “are you stupid?” Expression she could muster before sternly telling me I should probably avoid Hitler references at work. I apologized and promised not to do it anymore, and swore up and down that the reference was to a movie that was not glorifying Hitler in any way, and was in fact, mocking him and the Nazis in general, trying to encourage her to watch the movie. We ended the call without any formal reprimand (probably because my lead got the joke, and while she’s a serious person she’s also reasonable, and decided my humiliation was punishment enough. I’m still watching my step around her just in case.

TL;DR made a movie reference that fell flat and got mild in trouble for it.