I don’t have a set method for choosing the subjects of my When Good Directors Go Bad columns. Occasionally, I’ll try to spotlight a director who recently released a new film, and once I even used an acclaimed filmmaker’s death as an excuse to re-examine his most notorious work (sorry, Michelangelo). But most of the time I’ll just write up whatever I can get my hands on in time. However, when I wrote a piece on Mike Nichols a few weeks ago, I knew there was only one logical follow-up: his former onstage partner Elaine May. And Elaine May meant one thing: Ishtar.
Elaine May was one of the great unheralded filmmaking talents of the 1970s. While guys like Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg were turning Hollywood upside down, May carved out a fascinating niche for herself. All three of her 1970s films — A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, and Mikey and Nicky — were characterized by May’s probing curiosity about the male psyche and her ramshackle directing style. But if May appeared slapdash behind the camera, she was a perfectionist in the editing room, and both A New Leaf and Mikey and Nicky were taken out of her hands at various points in post-production.
Ishtar was May’s first effort behind the camera in a decade, and it seemed a strange project for her, considering her previous work. Gone was the misanthropic view of relationships found in A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid, and the caustic portrait of friendship in Mikey and Nicky. Instead, the film’s protagonists are a pair of chummy, not-too-bright aspiring
singer-songwriters, Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Clarke (Dustin Hoffman). They’re lousy, but they’re endlessly enthusiastic about their work ("Shit, man," says Clarke to Rogers when they’re hammering out a new song, "when you’re on you’re on!"), and this attitude extends to their friendship.
Ishtar has amassed a cult following over the years, and watching the film’s opening half hour it’s easy to see why. When Rogers and Clarke sing songs like "(I’m Leaving Some) Love in My Will" before dumbfounded audiences, the movie is pretty priceless. The wonderfully awful songs were penned by Paul Williams (assisted by May and Hoffman), and Hoffman and Beatty are wonderful playing against type, with Hoffman as the would-be lothario and Beatty as a romantic sadsack. Had May simply made a film about these two guys trying to make a name for themselves as musicians, composing songs and performing, it might have been a comedy classic.
Alas, the movie isn’t called Rogers and Clarke. It’s called Ishtar, and before long the film drops its heroes off in the titular (fake) North African country, and drops most of the laughs with it. As the film progresses, Rogers and Clarke become pawns in a civil war involving a CIA agent (Charles Grodin), a band of revolutionaries led by sexy Isabelle Adjani, and an ancient map. Oh, and a blind camel.
Much of the film’s then-notorious $55-million price tag went to the scenes in North Africa, but almost nothing about these scenes works. I can’t decide if May simply miscalculated her strengths as a filmmaker, or if she decided sometime during production that her heart really wasn’t in the civil-war material but figured she might as well grit her teeth and finish anyway. Either way, it’s a little heartbreaking how far astray Ishtar has gone by the time Beatty, Hoffman, and Adjani are firing
machine guns at a pair of CIA helicopters in the desert. If there’s any truth to the belief that a big budget is the enemy of comedy, then Ishtar is Exhibit A.
Most of the filmmakers I’ve spotlighted in this series have rebounded from their films to recapture their reputations, or at least to continue having productive careers. But Ishtar effectively torpedoed May’s career as a director — due both to its budget overruns and to May’s unwillingness to make nice with Hollywood — and she’s worked exclusively as a screenwriter and occasional actress since. It’s a shame, since I for one would love to see May direct another film. At a time when even "edgy" comedies like Juno are essentially warm and fuzzy, we need her prickly comedic sensibility more than ever.