POLL: Elaine May

The lady herself to discuss Ishtar after a 92nd St Y screening:

http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T%2DLC5AE33

Also imminent on BluRay.

i watched a new leaf for the first time recently and was fairly underwhelmed. it really was not funny and matthaus character is just too mean to ever be sympathetic imo. actually, i think the same thing abt grodin in heartbreak kid so hm

Being played by Matthau is enough to get sympathy from me. "NO, don't take them OUT!!!"

I saw "A new leaf" a couple of weeks ago for the nth time and I still found it immensely enjoyable. I didn't remember the line about the Boston Hitlers - it made us laugh hard.

I've never seen A New Leaf, but I definitely want to. I recently listed The Heartbreak Kid #50 on a Facebook countdown of my favourite films.

Tix still available for her Ishtar event tonight

Elaine May is really good at making me squirm in terror of society. I haven't seen Ishtar, though. I semi-recently got a comedy record of hers and Nichols', the one where the pianist improvises and the duo improvises characters to go along with the piano, and the first bit about the boss taking his young employee to dinner, trying to get in her pants and later trying to conceal his bitterness when she makes her rejection clear, made my friend go through a few sympathetic saucer eyeballs and oh-no-he-di-ents. It's a really subtly played bit; they have these extraordinary psychic undercurrents working together.

The Heartbreak Kid made me so disgusted sometimes I couldn't laugh. Mikey & Nickey reminded me of a Cassavetes movie, a less sloppy one, but that's probably just the cast. The extras on the dvd are actually pretty interesting. The blues and blacks and oranges of the nighttime street scenes were really pretty. Haven't seen A New Leaf since I was a teenager going through a brief late-60s/early-70s comedy phase. I remember the movie being ambivalent and cruel. Is there a biography of May? What makes her so cruel?

i have ishtar on my dvr now, not sure when ill get round 2 it

What makes her so cruel?

Telling the truth can be dangerous business.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Saturday, July 7, 2007 8:23 PM

“At that time, Reagan was president, and I met him,” May said. “And he’s an amazingly naïve, innocent, charming guy who really, really cared about show business! In the nicest way, really. He knew Mike’s and my albums. He could quote them — he memorized them! He did our ‘Telephone’ routine. So he was the president. And nobody really knew what was going on, actually. I thought, ‘Really, there’s something very endearing, if terrifying, about this kind of innocence, this kind of naïvete.”

http://www.movieline.com/2011/05/ishtar-revelations-from-director-elaine-may.php

ishtar kinda reminded me of dumb & dumber, w/o nearly enough jokes. i can def understand it being a flop.

i actually liked the setup & them in ny more than the meat of the plot in ishtar/morroco -- their agent saying most ppl would kill for a booking in northern africa was pretty good; also the bitter herb line lol

She sat in the row behind me tonight at a Lincoln Center screening of The Heartbreak Kid!

I managed to avoid asking her for the Information supervisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LjmG4qtkO0&feature=related

Are you seeing her Broadway one-act, Morbs?

dunno, I saw the last one. Also I know one of the cast members, need to see if I can get a comp.

Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin did the Q&A last night, but Elaine stayed in her seat. When some questioner said it was a crime that THK was no longer on DVD, she piped up "Well then, everyone hear tonight should--" and she turned to a companion to ask, "Who owns it?" He said, "Bristol-Myers." She repeated, "Bristol-Myers."

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/315469/who-now-has-control-of-the-palomar-library

Grodin said that Neil Simon was a controlling schmuck (nicely) who left rehearsals after a few days because the actors were doing improv. "Where does it say they sing?"

What did you think of it? One of my favourite movies ever. "I'm not dying...I want out of the goddamned marriage!"

I'd seen it once before, maybe 20 years ago. Eddie Albert is pretty scary in it, a great role for him right after finishing Green Acres.

I love J Berlin's honeymoon stuff: "Lenny, that's us, 50 years from now."

"there's no deceit in this cauliflower"

The cauliflower line's great. To cross over to another thread, I think it exemplifies a kind of early-'70s gossamer that Kael was much more attuned to than Simon, Kauffmann, and Sarris (Made for Each Other, [/i]The Sterile Cuckoo[/i], etc.). I love Grodin giving his spiel to the group of kids right at the end.

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?"

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?