POLL: Elaine May

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

She is heartbreaking in this; it's a good play. (Michael Cera plays a clueless Masshole aspiring artist.) She has the funniest line of the night, in response to her son-in-law's "It's hard getting old."

Elaine is almost off in her own project in Enter Laughing (1967), the first film Carl Reiner directed (about a Jewish kid in the '30s -- him -- deciding to be an actor). She's the actress daughter of a pretentious ham (Jose Ferrer) way off Broadway, but she'll settle for encouraging him to cast younger men she can make out with onstage. She gets 80% of the laughs in the picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2FFyA8Qpkc

(yes, that's Rob Reiner as a schlub)

Mikey and Nicky was personal for May. She grew up in a mob-connected family, and the film’s characters are based on low-echelon gangsters she knew from that time. In fact, this was a project that she had been thinking about since the 1950s, when she was living in Chicago and working with the improvisational group the Compass Players. Friends such as Alan Arkin and Mike Nichols remembered scraps of paper strewn around her apartment with references to the title characters. It was her first totally original screenplay.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6160-10-things-i-learned-mikey-and-nicky

Watched it last night and was a little (or a lot) dubious that Nicky had been that much of a loathsome fuckup and made it into his 40s alive; I was certainly glad when he finally got it.

damn, cold

saw it on tuesday having forgotten i'd heard it wasn't a comedy; took me a while to find its groove but it's a good movie with some really interesting things on its mind re: jealousy and unaddressed resentments in male-male friendships etc. very "actory" movie in that so much has to be unsaid. last scene really landed hard.

^^Probably one of the darkest '70s movie endings.

The film's original .8 million budget had grown to nearly $4.3 million (6.6 million in contemporary dollars[1]) by the time May turned the film over to Paramount. She shot 1.4 million feet of film, almost three times as much as was shot for Gone with the Wind. By using three cameras that she sometimes left running for hours, May captured spontaneous interaction between Falk and Cassavetes. At one point, Cassavetes and Falk had both left the set and the cameras remained rolling for several minutes. A new camera operator said "Cut!" only to be immediately rebuked by May for usurping what is traditionally a director's command. He protested that the two actors had left the set. "Yes", replied May, "but they might come back".[2]

I mean, come the fuck on.

Michael Cimino: "Hold my beer..."

legendary anecdote, plus the reels in her garage

i wanna know how her numbers stack up to kubrick's wastage....

the screening the other night was introduced by producer john hausman, and he told the "they might come back" anecdote, but then drifted into musing about how with digital, young filmmakers are just shooting constantly, creating editing hells for themselves but just not even having to worry about these issues. made me think, all may was really doing was arguably wasting other people's money, right? can't say it strikes me as crazier than, like, warner brothers spending tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars on post-wrap *reshoots* for "justice league" because they didn't know what they wanted, and were retooling their whole lineup's vibe on the fly, strikes me as far more absurd and stupid. tho obviously in may's case the relevant thing is that it was self-defeating since it severely curtailed her opportunities to make more films. feel like a man in the same position would get more chances to redeem, idk.

Kind of. Much of it depends on the film being made. In Steven Bach's Final Cut (the book about the Heaven's Gate debacle), he makes sure to illustrate the Heaven's Gate wasn't even United Artists' most expensive and trouble/overbudget production of 1979--Moonraker was. But Moonraker was a franchise film that they felt would ultimately payoff whatever money was sunk into it (and did, becoming the biggest Bond film up to that point at the box office), and Heaven's Gate was a fast-tracked prestige film that went wayward in directions not yet imagined by the industry.

The digital thing seems like sort of a false equivalency--sure, theoretically you can shoot more stuff, but at the same time you're still running up against other same old same old budgetary restraints (paying crew, renting gear, union requirements, insurance etc.), plus there are only so many hours in the day.

But yeah, the film did May no favors re:her directing career. Ishtar only happened because Beatty went to bat for her.

Yeah, I wasn't sure but I got the sense he was maybe talking about students or w/e, where there's much less of a crew and so on, and he's just startled to see people leaving the camera rolling between takes or while everyone's moving lights around. Versus a lifetime of feet of film === $$$.

Saw it yesterday (thanks Criterion Channel)...hmm a bit. It seems like half a remarkable film; I don't want to take away from May's clearly intentional development of the characters over the years, and the relatively circular dialogue at points and other lacunae similarly are part of the whole point, but my attention kept drifting at points. I suspect I'll like it better on a second watch, though. Absolutely a great in medias res start to the whole thing, and I loved Ned Beatty just being sick of this shit.

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?