POLL: Elaine May

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?"

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.

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?