POLL: Elaine May

The one scene that doesn't come off is Lenny scaring off Kelly's bf at U.Minn by playing a narc, cuz Grodin really doesn't have the authority to do it.

xp Grodin's insistence that much of the film was improved without Simon's approval sorta confirms Kael's review, which if i recall correctly is half about how good elaine may's direction is and half about how bad simon's writing usually is

think i will order myself up a full-on lovefilm may-fest when i get back to london, i always liked the sound of her but i never heard or saw a lick of her work

Grodin also said Eddie Albert asked him during the reception finale scene "Why are they shooting this? It isn't going to be in the film," bcz everything was so casually non-choreographed.

Anyone ever see this comedy she acted in w/ Lemmon and Falk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tzxo_BaVQ

80 today

HBD to you both.

A New Leaf is coming to DVD & BluRay from Olive Films on 9/4/12.

Edmund Wilson was infatuated w/ Elaine:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2012/12/May-in-December

on A New Leaf

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-07-24/film/a-new-leaf-elaine-may/

Ishtar blu-ray:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/06/ishtar_blu_ray_dvd_is_available_and_the_warren_beatty_dustin_hoffman_flop.html

I'll finally get to see A New Leaf this Sunday. Strange feeling: it's going to be introduced by someone who had film classes with me almost 35 years ago. I know her brother a bit, so I knew she ended up teaching in Colorado where Stan Brakhage taught. She made an impression back then, I'll say that.

ohhhhh man you're in for a treat, such a great movie.

(also, Mikey & Nickey pretty underrated itt!)

I liked A New Leaf okay, but I much prefer The Heartbreak Kid. I thought it got better once May appeared. My biggest problem was probably the very thing people love most about the film: Matthau seemed wrong to me. I think he's great as a disheveled grump, great as a wry intellectual (A Face in the Crowd, Fail Safe), and great in The Fortune Cookie; I couldn't connect with him as a spoiled scion, though. The nightgown scene was great ("Where are you right now?" "Same place I was as before..."), and May is fetching. And I liked spotting all the '70s character actors. Not just the well known ones like David Doyle and Doris Roberts, but also Graham Jarvis (he plays a con artist in The Out of Towners--turns out he was from Toronto) and a guy, possibly uncredited (he's got like one line), who I'm sure played the FBI guy in All the President's Men who has a hallway conversation with Redford. "Close your eyes and let go" makes a for a good metaphor for what it's supposed to be a metaphor for. I think a three-hour cut of this would be a tough slog.

I think Matthau's miscasting is brilliant. Like Groucho as the president of a country.

Melinda Barlow, the woman I mentioned in the previous post, said beforehand that the three-hour version involved an excised subplot with Matthau also plotting the murder of Jack Weston, and that it was intended by May to be even more of a black comedy than it is now.

There were some clear affinities between May's character and Jeannie Berlin in The Heartbreak Kid, with May's being the much gentler version.

Nichols and May discuss Ishtar and moviemaking in general circa 2006:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShLPGHoXJFY#t=1639

You could read the transcript, but they cut some of the jokes and the video is funnier.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/elaine-may-in-conversation-with-mike-nichols

The "This is shit" film Nichols talks about pulling the plug on after 5 days of shooting was Bogart Slept Here, an early version of The Goodbye Girl that starred de Niro.

I've a Netflix disc of A New Leaf on top of the pile at home.

^^Which after finishing an intense period of work and a comedown period of watching music stuff on dvd (ie: stuff I can just soak in and not have to think about too much), I got on with A New Leaf. I have an odd criticism: It feels like it should have been a British film, with, I dunno, Peter Cook and Eleanor Bron or somebody in the leads. Much of the class stuff would--to me anyway--work better with genuine British voices. But the film we have is very interesting. I can see why it wasn't successful. The humor is very dry--particularly in the context of other "Zany" films of the period-- and as a director May really makes the audience look and listen for the gags. Take the "Boston Hitlers" line, which is just thrown out there in a wide shot. A lot of the funniest things May's character does are little detail things, usually tied to her clumsiness. She gives a wonderful, endearing performance, and I think my biggest takeaway form this screening is that the tragedy of Elaine May was not that she didn't get to direct enough, or even that she didn't get to write enough--it's that she didn't get to act enough.

Apparently she played that role as a last resort, cuz the studio was truculent about all her choices for it.

A New Leaf, unavailable on DVD in the UK, has now turned up on British Netflix

A New Leaf is uneven but wonderful.

HENRY: From now on, Henrietta, I'll cook.

HENRIETTA: What will I do, Henry?

HENRY: You'll eat.

or

Henry: Madam, I have seen many examples of perversion in my time, but your erotic obsession with your carpet is probably the most grotesque and certainly the most boring I have ever encountered. You're more to be scorned than pitied. Good day, Mrs. Cunliffe.

another appreciation:

http://fourthreefilm.com/2016/08/mainstream-obscurity-the-films-of-elaine-may/

for that special someone who reminds you of Mikey and Nicky

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1398326469/written-and-directed-by-elaine-may-t-shirts

Joe McElhaney on that good Elaine May detail spotting: pic.twitter.com/rMIdepYDFm

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) June 14, 2017

new New Leaf Blu

https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/a-new-leaf-2017

the tragedy of Elaine May was not that she didn't get to direct enough, or even that she didn't get to write enough--it's that she didn't get to act enough.

Her role as Henrietta in A New Leaf was a rare delight, an article of perfection.

Mike Nichols on Elaine May and his decision to not direct THE EXORCIST https://t.co/7PQEWlBcZm pic.twitter.com/WdDtDb0DxC

— Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (@suspirialex) March 9, 2018

will trod the stage again at 86

NEW LONERGAN ALERT. And wow, this CAST! pic.twitter.com/8Vkt240dRD

— Louis Peitzman (@LouisPeitzman) April 11, 2018

Watched The Heartbreak Kid tonight for the first time in at least a decade. (Instead of playing my old home-taped VHS, I lifted it off YouTube.) One of those things where you watch it, smile at all the stuff you used to love, feel a bit sad because you know you'll never love it that way again. Not that I was never aware (or at least not since I left 20 behind) that it was far-fetched and gimmicky fluff and rather cruel to Jeannie Berlin (maternal director notwithstanding...). But there were things in there that were part of me, going back to first seeing it as a teenager. They're still there--but tonight, less so.

I really don't think Walter Matthau has been funnier than in ANL.

he's terrific. the miscasting, such as it is, is hilarious. somehow that gap heightens the sense of a man totally, defiantly oblivious to his own situation. all those early scenes with him refusing to accept the facts in dealing with his accountant, his butler... terrific. the last act is a mess and a flop (no matter whose fault that was) and yet it's still delightful to watch this guy carry on with all his pretensions and selfishness, plus you get may's big costume gag scene.

also even though in the current version it's really abruptly set up, watching matthau tell off the crooked household staff was oddly satisfying.

"Henrietta, where's your left arm?"

e's terrific. the miscasting, such as it is, is hilarious. somehow that gap heightens the sense of a man totally, defiantly oblivious to his own situation. all those early scenes with him refusing to accept the facts in dealing with his accountant, his butler... terrific

Albert Brooks obv looked at these protracted studies in embarrassment when writing and filming Lost in America.

happy birthday to the Information Supervisor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CidZon6Ga98

retro in Toronto coming up soon

def seeing Mikey and Nicky, mulling the others

i wish m&n was better

how could it be??

The Heartbreak Kid on Friday! Don't miss it, Simon (my seen-it-too-many-times misgivings above aside).

I have a conflict that night, alas

Obviously would not have watched The Heartbreak Kid at home a couple of months ago had I known it would turn up on the Lightbox schedule. Anyway, full house, some appreciative applause at the end. How hard it is to see? Their print had Swedish subtitles.

well, the print they showed in NY 3-4 years ago did not (she was in the audience, so maybe it was hers).

btw tix are on sale for her return to Broadway in the Lonergan play.

Mikey and Nicky tonight!

One of the best rabbit holes I've gone down, on discovering Elaine May through A New Leaf, was finding out that: she was still alive and married to Stanley Donen, and that her daughter Jeannie Berlin was the one in Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret who had been a big wow in a film of wows. How great that May's now appearing in a Longeran play.

did not know she and Donen have been a couple for close to 20 years. however, she seems to have refused to marry him.

Oh yes: whoops.

Coming to Criterion in January:

https://www.criterion.com/films/27895-mikey-and-nicky

Also, I'll be seeing her on Broadway in 3 weeks. Stay healthy, Elaine!

she's getting great reviews (the NYT liked the play more than Vulture)

http://www.vulture.com/2018/10/theater-review-elaine-may-in-the-waverly-gallery.html

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6015-raves-for-elaine-may-on-broadway

Even when her scenes are slack or have a poor rhythm they're her own; you can't mistake her for another filmmaker.

(This isn't a defense, necessarily)

I love the ending, both the final scene and the penultimate sequence where Lenny has dinner with Kelly and her parents ("this is honest food!") and the father's unsuccessful attempt to bribe him, the way the dad correctly understands that Lenny if full of shit but still loses because he doesn't understand that Lenny has fooled himself with his sales pitches as well as fooling his wife and daughter. Lenny's quiet defeat in the wedding reception scene is more powerful because it follows his improbable victory in the preceding scene imo

there was an old The Onion headline that was something like 'man arrested after acting like male lead in romantic comedy', and I remember that being a commonplace observation back in the 2000s, about how the way men act in romantic comedies are actually toxic and would be awful in real life, but I can't think of another film that dramatizes it as well as this, and sort of before the conventions of those 90s/00s romcoms had really been established?

I loved the back half too, especially in stark contrast to The Graduate (and though I don't think May has ever said anything negative about The Graduate, The Heartbreak Kid plays like a hilarious response). It manages to seem both absurd and brutally honest at the same time. And yet just as The Graduate's ending tipped Nichols belief that his romantics would end up like their parents, May's film suggests a similar future where wild and reckless abandon ultimately leads to a life devoted to quite the opposite.

Might go to MoMI tomorrow afternoon to finally see THK. Or THBK.

I definitely should see THbK. I've long loved M&N and this thread revival prompted me to finally stream A New Leaf this weekend, so thanks: it's frequently hilarious. And I totally get the suggestions upthread that the trappings of class often feel somehow 'British'.

A dimly-remembered TV viewing of Ishtar as a child barely counts as a viewing at all now, so I really should revisit that too.

That's a beautiful looking print. Metrograph screened it last year and IIRC Music Box in Chicago screened it later on in the year as well. It's still a goddamn shame this movie has been buried by a fucking drug company.

Wait, there is a remake with Ben Stiller?

Directed by The Farrelly Bros.!

Had no recollection of its existence.

Supposedly the reason why certain Palomar Pictures titles (Heartbreak Kid, Stepford Wives, Sleuth) are MIA on Blu is that Bristol-Myers got serious $$$$ for the remakes and expected the same for the disc rights to the originals.

Lolz, my first post itt is a link to the IMDb page for the then-impending remake!

I saw the remake long before the original and loved it.

It's literally near impossible for me to imagine The Heartbreak Kid without the acting trio of Charles Grodin, Jeannie Berlin, and Eddie Albert. They totally make the film! Haven't seen the remake, but also can't see how it would work.

When I finally watched the original, Lenny's character really struck me as a proto-George Constanza.

I'm looking forward to seeing Kelly Reichardt's new 70s-set film The Mastermind, which features a delusional antihero with a plan to rob a gallery. I feel like it would also be a good hook for a season of films in this lineage of pathetic but obnoxious losers with big ideas, from The Heartbreak Kid to The King of Comedy to Two Lovers.

Throw a couple of Dustin Hoffman films in there too.

Oh, and Dog Day Afternoon.

...and Wanda.

It's literally near impossible for me to imagine The Heartbreak Kid without the acting trio of Charles Grodin, Jeannie Berlin, and Eddie Albert. They totally make the film! Haven't seen the remake, but also can't see how it would work.

I could have included her too! Sorry, Cybill.