Elaine May’s Long Road to Cinematic Redemption Leads to ‘Ishtar’

Film at Lincoln Center will, from Friday, be hosting a one-week overview of a director whose oeuvre is suitably brief, “Elaine May.” Ms. May has only a handful of pictures to her name, but she’s had a long and wide-ranging career as a comedienne, playwright and screenwriter, as well as stage and screen actress. In recent years, Ms. May portrayed Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the CBS television series, “The Good Wife,” and was a brilliant foil to Woody Allen in his six-episode Amazon series, “Crisis in Six Scenes” (2016).Mr. Allen considered that venture “a cosmic embarrassment,” but, really, what do artists know? Retrospect allows for judgments both tempered and sharpened by time: “Crisis” was, if not among Mr. Allen’s best, then a winning return to form. As for Ms. May: The eponymous retrospective at Lincoln Center is predicated on the 50th anniversary of her 1976 film, “Mikey and Nicky,” with “A New Leaf,” her 1971 picture starring Walter Matthau, also featuring. But it also provides an advantageous moment to ponder another film on the docket, “Ishtar” (1987).You remember “Ishtar,” don’t you? “A lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy,” wrote the critic Roger Ebert in his thumb-wielding prime. Janet Maslin at The New York Times was kinder, noting that Ms. May’s comedy was “a mixture of small, funny moments and the pointless, oversized spectacle.” “Ishtar” was plagued by production problems, studio meddling, cost overrides, and increasing friction between all involved. The advance buzz was not good. Sound familiar? As has been reported in these pages, Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” is undergoing its own kerfuffle, this time exacerbated by that bastion of ill will, the internet. Eyebrows and ires have been raised by industry diversity stratagems in its casting. Brickbats are being wielded by viewers hankering for even a modicum of authenticity. Still, we shouldn’t underestimate the artistic torsions that can be set into motion by celebrity. Which brings us back to “Ishtar.” “Ishtar” was, upon its release, weighted by Hollywood hubris. The two leads, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, were in their commercial heyday and had public profiles to spare. How were they going to pull off a venture that was, at its core, an homage to the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road” pictures? Casting a randy glamour-puss and a cinematic grandee as Schnook 1 and Schnook 2 was an odd, if presumably money-making, call.Messrs. Beatty and Hoffman had proven themselves adept at comedy, but playing against type even as they coasted on their fame pointed to an unsavory strain of noblesse oblige. “Ishtar” was intended as payback for Ms. May’s contributions, both credited and not, to “Heaven Can Wait” (1978), directed by Mr. Beatty and Buck Henry, and Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie” (1982). She was to be given carte blanche for what turned out to be, in the words of her former partner-in-comedy, Mike Nichols, “the prime example that I know of in Hollywood of studio suicide.”Elaine May receiving the 2012 National Medal of Arts and Humanities from President Obama. Wikimedia CommonsThat was then and this is now. The film’s two stars no longer claim the cultural hegemony they once took for granted, and the same goes for the auteur. “Ishtar” effectively put a halt to Ms. May’s efforts behind the camera. What is to be made, then, of a loudly castigated disaster almost 40-years after the fact? Reappraisals have, in recent years, started rolling in. The New Yorker dubbed “Ishtar” a “wrongly maligned masterwork.” Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese think the world of it. The cartoonist Gary Larson, back in his “The Far Side” days, issued a public apology for having depicted the video store in hell being stocked with shelf-upon-shelf of “Ishtar.”Film at Lincoln Center is hailing “Elaine May’s fourth directorial feature . . . as a major, culminating work by one of comedy’s sharpest, most inventive minds.” Godspeed to the litterateur responsible for that morsel of fingers-crossed nonsense. Ms. May’s tale of two hapless New York City songwriters who are drafted into international intrigue is, though peppered by moments of haphazard comedy, burdened by smarm. All the while, Ms. May distinguishes herself not at all as a director: “Ishtar” wanders, maunders and otherwise fritters away the best of its intentions. Would that Ms. May had the workaday flair of Hal Walker, a journeyman who helmed a number of Hope and Crosby pictures, including their best, “Road to Utopia” (1945). The received wisdom is always worth testing, but sometimes the truth is as plain as the nose on Bob Hope’s face. “Ishtar” deserves its reputation. Now let’s see how well Matt Damon and company fare as Hellenes of yore.

Elaine May’s Long Road to Cinematic Redemption Leads to ‘Ishtar’

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