POLL: Elaine May

Ishtar is probably the one that suffers most from May's lack of interest in framing or visual storytelling, as well as leaning into improv. Hoffman just isn't interesting enough as a creator (or actor imo) to craft anything revelatory in the moment - the film would probably have been better sticking to May's script and letting the cinematographer do the pretty set-ups she argued against.

(Hoffman also thought in advance that the script should never have left New York, and that the first half-hour of the final movie is still great.)

the first acts of movies are a hell of a lot easier to script and pace successfully than the second and third acts are.

Co-sign on the first half hour of Ishtar. The rest is unwatchable, barely above Spies Like Us.

Curious to read the new Nichols blog though, just to read the Elaine May stuff

the first acts of movies are a hell of a lot easier to script and pace successfully than the second and third acts are.

Not usually an issue with May - we can't tell anything about the act structure of A New Leaf with a 90-minute middle act thrown out by the studio and a judge, but as great as the "I'm pooooooor" sequence is, the later parts all work onscreen. The first act in Heartbreak is perfunctory, with chaos ramping up in the 2nd-through-fifth. The structure and pacing of M&N has nothing to do with scripting. And The Birdcage may have stuck to the pace of La Cage (idk), but is very close to the escalating-farce family-conflict structure of Heartbreak Kid.

agreed that the second half (or whatever) of A New Leaf works onscreen, but for me it works more like a collection of incredible sketches, than as pieces of a larger comedy... but of course it's impossible to know how it was all supposed to work. Birdcage is definitely great evidence that she knew her way around scripting and pacing a comedy, for sure.

the Ishtar problem is just that the North African material isn't funny, while watching Beatty and Hoffman try to write songs together is hilarious. the rare movie that arguably peaks (into true all-time brilliance imho) while the opening credits are still being doled out. the pause and delivery of the word "Why?" in that songwriting session cracks me up just thinking about it.

There are funny elements and bits in the African material, but structure-wise, a big problem is that it loses the thread of the leads' own aims for far too long. It's a bathetic triumph when they get up and perform a whipped-into-shape version of that terrible opening-sequence number. But the thing would hang together better if the story had enabled their getting caught up in CIA missions to also sustain a stronger throughline, sneaking off to find places to perform along the way & such.

(If she'd been allowed to shoot the desert stuff in the US, perhaps they could have thrown more of it out and focused on the New York narrative? But having been forced to go to Morocco to use up Coca-Cola's trapped-in-the-country money, the impetus to use as much as possible would have been strong...)

In general it seems she might have been better served as part of a directing team, to riff ideas on set and vibe with the actors, but with a more practically-minded partner to balance that and run comms with the crew. (Apparently she wrote lots of Reds in the edit with Beatty, too?) But her never giving a fuck about film directing in the first place was probably the biggest strike against her finding a more productive way of doing it, within the system or otherwise.

In general it seems she might have been better served as part of a directing team,

From the full post-Ishtar-screening discussion with Nichols:

Now tell us a little about the people who you made your movies with. People like our friend Anthea Sylbert, who was a great costume designer and an inspiring and remarkable person—how important is a person like that?

There’s about five of them. And when you meet them, they’re sort of like friends, you want to keep them. On Heartbreak Kid, I had no idea what these people would wear. Anthea said: “Well, cotton underwear is what the girl would wear, that’s what those blondes wear.” She was just perfect. She was just a true artist. And in A New Leaf, she said: “Have you thought about what’s in your purse?” Man, I hadn’t thought about my part. I had no idea. And every once in a while you get a fantastic art director, and Sylbert was wonderful. I do miss that. Those wonderful people who work with you on a movie, and who tell the story with you. That’s the best part of making movies, I think. It’s the only thing where you can work in a group where five or six people all tell the same story in their own specific voice. The music person has a voice. The makeup person makes you up to tell the story… And they all tell the same story. And I miss that because you can’t really do it on the stage.

On first directing:

I know nothing. I actually remember calling you and I said, “Well, how should I say action? Firmly or…?” I began sort of on one foot and just continued that way.

I think the real secret of movies is putting a crew together. And it takes about 25 years to get it right. That’s not an exaggeration. And you have to do it steadily because you can’t ask anyone. Everybody will say about everyone you ask, “He’s a very good man.” Nobody will ever tell; you have to find out. And when you have that many people that can you depend on, everything changes.

You’ve never seen a movie with that many mistakes in it. My editor was a really nice man who had a drug problem. And the first cut he did, he did flash forwards, so that I would watch the scene and there would be a piece of the next scene in it. He’d never edited. It was his first movie. And I said, “There’s a piece of the next scene in this,” and he said it’s a flash forward. I didn’t know what to do. And fortunately, well he didn’t OD, but he took too many drugs and left, and the apprentices and I sort of took out the flash forwards.

And I managed to learn on that movie, while shooting it I made so many mistakes that I actually learned a little bit about how to make a movie. I didn’t learn—I had such a good focus puller I didn’t know there was such a thing as focus until the next movie.

July: https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/ishtar-le

89.

Happy Birthday to Elaine May - Directing A NEW LEAF in 1971 pic.twitter.com/u5wyndoTbc

— Hill Illustration (@charliehillart6) April 21, 2021

Honorary Oscar!

Mikey and Nicky is annoying the fuck out of me. I'm just sad Mikey is going to end up getting killed for this doofus

Ok, not so keen on Mikey now either

Yah that’s a difficult one to get through

I like movies with shitty people in them but Nicky is such a pain in the ass, dumbfuck. It's innervating.

I've now seen all of these movies bar a new leaf and I don't really like any of them. Heartbreak kid is my favourite

The copy on Amazon Prime seems to be stretched horizontally. I agree with comments above that it also looks like crap. Not just the darkness but also e.g. starting with a freeze-frame of a door because they didn't shoot enough coverage.

not shooting enough was famously the biggest problem with Mikey And Nicky

Mikey and Nicky is perfect

I think Morbs said Mikey and Nicky was his favorite gangster film.

Also his favorite gay romance.

thought this thread was bumped because of her guest role in the Good Fight, where she played RBG in a dream sequence where she basically says "fuck Black people, get yours" to Christine Baranski's character

If you’re giving out spoilers, how about a timestamp

don't have a timestamp for you but there's video here: https://ew.com/tv/the-good-fight-diane-rbg-clip-interview/

I had already acquired the episode due to hearing that May was in it, intending to watch the story it told; now that I know she's only in one scene and what she does in it, I shan't bother watching the story, but I still would have checked out the whole minute or five or w/e of her performance. Being directed to an Entertainment Weekly video of the writers of the story breaking down their intention in telling a story that I haven't seen has entirely drained my ability to invest into May's involvement in the story.

tbf, it's the Elaine May thread; it's reasonable that people might pop in with comments on a recent tv appearance. i get the desire for a spoiler tag or something, but if you are saving watching something i do recommend leaving such threads lie until you've gotten around to it. for example i usually unbookmark film-anticipation threads in between when the film comes out and when i watch it, but that's just me.

without being mad at Murgatroid or anything, I do think there's a difference between "btw y'all May took her first non-Woody screen acting role in 31 years this week in case anyone wants to check it out!" and "here is a complete summary of May's first acting role in 31 years, including the punchline, which aired a day and a half ago"

(her first notable screen acting role in 21 years if we assume fewer people here regularly watched Woody's Bezos miniseries, which he promoted by saying "It was a catastrophic mistake. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm floundering. I expect this to be a cosmic embarrassment," than The Good Fight)

I didn't think it was a spoiler because it's a dream sequence that does not impact the actual plot whatsoever

Why the Indicator Ishtar got canceled:

-Ishtar had gotten to a point where the studio was asking for significant cuts to every single feature on the disc and to leave off things already licensed for it altogether, and they just decided to cancel the release instead of dropping it all, the studio did not want anything that discussed the film's past reputation at all, too many sensitivities, they could have done a vanilla edition and decided it wasn't in the spirit of the label

Powerful studio people who interfered in 1986-1987 still alive? Never underestimate the sustaining powers of hate.

The speculation is that it's actually Warren Beatty who stepped in here. But really, how powerful even is he these days?

Annette Bening could not be reached for comment.

Beatty's meddling is supposedly why the Criterion edition of Shampoo was less than stacked.

Whaddya want, guy always had a lot of energy to carry out his various activities.

the studio did not want anything that discussed the film's past reputation at all

Forgot that Sony did a still in-print "Director's Cut" Blu of Ishtar.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0037QGRVK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_i_H8AD6ZAX5TV39ENHDH3T?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Mikey and Nicky was really hard going. It was an Elaine May version of a toxic John Cassavetes film, starring Cassavetes himself

mikey and nicky is amazing

Yeah it's an experience, if nothing else.

Came here to post that I had recently rewatched Enter Laughing, a film I had fond memories of seeing on a TV matinee movie as a kid, and had forgotten Elaine May is in it. Turns out Morbs beat me to it four years ago.

CRACKPOT LIVES https://t.co/UiDmcaMYL6

— Ben Mekler (@benmekler) February 8, 2024

what are the best films directed by nonagenarians?

Aside from Manoel de Oliveira's?