POLL: Elaine May

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.

I think most complaints i'm seeing about it are ones I reserve for Cassavetes-directed films.

Mikey and Nicky is such an odd duck: Mean Streets filtered through Husbands by the woman who made The Heartbreak Kid. It makes more sense than it should; The Heartbreak Kid already showed that May understands toxic masculinity as well as Scorsese or Cassavetes. A few too many of the scenes between Cassavetes and Falk are allowed to ramble on too long, a Cassavetes tactic that doesn't always play as well here (a recent rewatch of Husbands confirmed for me that Cassavetes exerted more control over the shape of his films than appears). I can see it growing on me with later viewings, but for now I file it as more of a curio (albeit a successful one) than a legit 70s Classic.

That ending, though.

seeing Ishtar on the big screen tonight, woohoo!

a dangerous business...

Watched the Criterion of M&N last night, which I'd last seen only four years ago. A 5-star film.

The alleged "loose" woman who bites Falk is played by Walter Matthau's wife Carol Grace. She'd also been married to William Saroyan... twice. Hadn't had a film credit since '59, never had another.

Very brief but amusing roles for M Emmett Walsh and Bill Hickey.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/awards/tony-awards-2019-elaine-may-wins-first-major-acting-award-at-age-87/ar-AACDbSD?li=BBnb2gh

!!!

https://thefilmstage.com/news/elaine-may-to-direct-first-narrative-feature-in-30-years-with-dakota-johnson-led-crackpot/

!!!!!!

I rewatched Heaven Can Wait (1978) last night, script credited to Elaine and Warren Beatty. Her touch is most apparent with the Charles Grodin-Dyan Cannon murderous couple ("Don't cover my mouth!" "You used to like it") and in cop Vincent Gardenia's pre-climactic grilling about hats, cocoa and cookies.

88! I wonder if she plays piano.

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. Yes to all, gotta say some of it seemed familiar too. Will say no more.

If you're leaning in the direction of "She ripped off Mean Streets," it was shot in '73 and the script existed long before that.

No, I didn't mean Yes that part in particular. Hadn't thought of Mean Streets: some similarities, but whatever the chronology, provenance etc. of scripts, seemed and seems like such relationships could exist in and between many lives...

i've now watched all four of these and i don't really get her. the new york part of ishtar is very funny but the rest of her filmography leaves me cold. i watch a lot of old movies but her movies feel so of another time that they feel completely foreign to me (harold & maude is another movie like that to me). also i'm turned off by how little interest she seems to have in the visual aspect of moviemaking - ishtar looks alright but mikey & nicky looks like crap, is often out of focus and/or murky and dark. what am i missing

I think the grimy run & gun look of Mikey & Nicky works for the material. (My only complaint with the look of it would be the couple of scenes where you can plainly see the wireless mics on Falk & Cassavetes, which takes me out of the movie if I notice them.)

But I know what you mean. Mikey & Nicky is the only one of her movies that 100% works for me, I rate New Leaf and Heartbreak Kid as 'good but could have been great', and part of what holds them back imo is the bland approach to shooting & staging. I always chalked it up to her coming out of theater. But I dont think youre missing anything per se if it doesnt work for you, I think with these films you either find a way to look past the flaws and enjoy the writing & performances or you dont.

The Heartbreak Kid is an ordinary looking film, although it's been so long since I watched anything but a deteriorated print (VHS, YouTube, Swedish print), it's hard to say. For that particular film, it never bothered me.

The way she shoots Cybill Shepherd--the female gaze--means more to me.

Doc otm re Matthau's casting as a rich wastrel scion:

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.

and Zack Snyder's Gardner Fox's Justice League: The Whedon Cut:

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.

omg that DN

and i think this might be the week i finally accept the Youtube quality and watch Heartbreak Kid. ~april is May~

Here's a wayback link for the Movieline report on May's appearance at the Ishtar screening upthread

No doubt hero of the arts Brian Calle is rushing to restore the archives of the Village Voice, but just in case this doesn't happen for no apparent reason, here's that piece on revisiting A New Leaf.

And new to the thread: MAD Magazine's take on The Heartbreak Kid, by Drucker and Siegel. (nb that you'll have to scroll up and down to read the opening double-truck.)

https://vitatrain4life.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/giphy-49.gif

the Heartbreak upload is very poor quality, but it's not like May's main concern was the look of the film, soo... Just pretend you're watching broadcast TV on a CRT.

Don't watch it on fucking Youtube, you'll miss the unctuous texture of the egg salad on Jeannie Berlin's face, and the intensely rich redness of her sunburn.

Somewhere in storage I have a copy of the widescreen DVD of the O.G. Heartbreak Kid from Anchor Bay. Probably some decent rips up on back channels. Apparently Bristol-Myers Squibb (who through some litany of business deals own the Palomar Pictures library) are holding it and other films hostage because they made King's Ransoms on remake rights*, and are trying (and failing) to make lightning strike twice on physical media/streaming licensing.

*In addition to THK, they've got The Stepford Wives and Sleuth.

Torrenting is really the only accessible other option - it's a three-hour round trip walk to the one video store that has it here, and they require a $200 deposit for their sole copy. Discussion upthread notes how scarce prints are, even if repertory cinemas had not been closed for a while, for some inexplicable reason.

I assume BMS (who owned Palomar in time to actually make most of the library, including THK) just don't care enough to bother licensing, and are setting their rates high enough to turn away suitors on purpose. Pelham 123 is their other notably-remade title.

Paramount was able to get a temporary DVD license as part of their deal for the Stepford remake, and a bunch of non-remade Palomar titles were put out on DVD by MGM back in the day, some of which Kino has more recently put out on Blu.

Carrie Courogen
@carriecourogen
·
Apr 4
Replying to
@carriecourogen
A podcast as big as Blank Check, with a large fanbase talking about how they are being introduced to this filmmaker via the podcast, has a responsibility to do more than the bare minimum to get this right. This many errors, tired exaggerations, and assumptions is unacceptable.
Her fact check of the Elaine May episode:

I fact checked the Blank Check episode on Elaine May’s A New Leaf pic.twitter.com/3Zslz39MJz

— Carrie Courogen (@carriecourogen) April 4, 2021

For those not listening, her corrections do not correspond to errors made on the podcast.

i think they kinda do? the hosts' hearts are in the right place, but they are not really research and facts oriented - the comment about skimming wikipedia is really not too far off of the way griffin will typically characterize his own pre-show reading.