Entries in musicals (686)
ISHTAR. Are There Second Winds in the Desert?
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 11:50AM Elaine May at the 92Y
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to see Ishtar (1987) at a special event with writer/director/actress/funnywoman Elaine May. She's been out of the spotlight for some time. The last major hurrah was her hilarious supporting role in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks (2000). Ishtar, for those that are unfamiliar, is an infamous big budget flop in which Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman star as a talentless musical duo who get mixed up with middle eastern politics via "terrorist" Isabelle Adjani and CIA agent Charles Grodin during a gig in Morrocco.
Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Isabelle Adjani in ISHTAR (1987). © Sony Pictures
If you lived through the 1980s you probably feel like you saw Ishtar even if you didn't it because it became an easy-target for comedians and the basis of a lot of schaudenfreude fun (look how the mighty fall!). The strange thing about seeing Ishtar two decades later is that it's actually really funny and it's hard to see exactly how it inspired such pop-culture hatred. Other than, perhaps, its prophetic satire about how fucked up the USA is whenever they're dealing with Middle Eastern dictators. In the movie the CIA sides with the dictator who wants to snuff out the apolitical singing Americans, before they accidentally inspire his overthrow by "left wing terrorists" (aka those who want democratic reform and human rights.)
The movie clues you in to its satirical naughtiness early on when Beatty & Hoffman try to write a song "Telling the truth can be dangerous business". May repeatedly praised Paul Williams for the song score of the movie -- 'even the crummiest songs had perfect music!' -- but she wrote "Leaving Some Love In Your Will" which is one of the movie's funniest bits as Dustin Hoffman sings a totally inappropriate song about death to two senior citizens on their wedding anniversary.
The movie was born in the imagination of Elaine May and Warren Beatty. They wanted to do a Bing Crosby Bob Hope "Road to" type of movies and US 1980s politics determined the setting. "We were of course in Afghanistan as we always are. We were all over the Middle East," Elaine May explained when she came out for a sit-down interview to talk about the rarely screened film.
She seemed quite pleased with the response to her director's cut.
Either you liked the movie or i'm very sick...
I thought it was funny which is a terrible thing to admit about your own movie. I think of those people who try out for American Idol and how sure they are of their own talent.
She wasn't very sick. The audience clearly liked the movie; there was consistent and at times raucous laughter. Sure, it was a self-selecting crowd. Chances are if you're showing up to see an infamous flop from a famous comedian you're probably either a member of the movie's cult following or a curious cinephile and either way you're a better audience for the movie than the audience it originally received. Or didn't as the case may be.
May shared a bizarre story about the movie's internal sabotage. There was a change at the top of the studio before the movie's release. The new head of Columbia Pictures was David Puttnam. He'd previously competed against Warren Beatty for the Best Picture Oscar (He won with Chariots of Fire beating Beatty's Reds) and he was no fan of Beatty's. He badmouthed both Beatty and Dustin Hoffman publicly, equating them with spoiled brats, but didn't stop there.
Hoffman and Beatty have very real comic chemistry
May explained how they went from future hit to press target right before the movie opened.
We had three previews and they went really well. Thumbs up. On the day the press came an article came out in the LA Times in which Puttman wiped us out. 'We should be spanked. There was too much money.' He was going to reform Hollywood. It was really sort of unforgivable what he did. He attacked his own movie. Mike Nichols said it was like watching an entire studio committing suicide.
After that article in the Times nearly every press piece about the movie focused on how much it cost and attacked the movie for being grossly expensive, rather than focusing on the movie itself.
May was very funny in person, telling stories about her career (I'll share a few more quotes soon) and discussing this movie which killed her directing career (she hasn't helmed a feature since). The studio has told her that they will be releasing Ishtar on Blu-Ray in the near future. Perhaps it'll be rediscovered?
Earlier today someone said that they had read on the net that the impending DVD release of Ishtar had been delayed by 'my people'. I was so thrilled to think that I had people! They're going to release this on blu-ray! If they don't you'll be the last people to have seen this movie.
If half the people who had made cracks about Ishtar had seen it, I'd be a rich woman today.
The Blind Camel is the film's comedic MVPThough much of the film's humor feels loose, character-oriented and improvised (it reminded me a smidgeon of Bridesmaids actually -- but maybe because I'd just seen the latter -- in the way it allowed its jokes to roam around and spring from the nuances of the performers and their chemistry) May says it wasn't and that great actors always appear to be spontaneous on the screen. She did note that much of the humor with Beatty's blind camel was improvised because there's no way to tell what a camel will do in a scene.
May joked that the camel was very hard to cast. He wasn't really blind. He just acted like he was. They chose well. They say you should never act with animals but two running gags about camels and vultures pay off big in the movie when the movie stars interact with them.
Given the movie's terrible reputation did the director just think Ishtar was a victim of itself, a movie that was too far ahead of its time? Elaine May had the last laugh at this special event in her honor.
I've never said that a movie of mine is ahead of its time. How is that even possible? Even with string theory.
Dustin Hoffman, Elaine May, Isabelle Adjani, Ishtar, NYC, Oscars (80s), Warren Beatty, interview, musicals April Showers: South Pacific
Monday, April 25, 2011 at 11:00PM Tonight I thought we'd cover one of the most famous showers in entertainment history. It's not famous for the showering but for the singing. Raise your hands if you've ever sung this song in the shower.
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
and send him on his way.
Nellie talks herself out of love "before i go any further i better not get started."
It's so catchy it's like a commercial jingle. (Didn't it get coopted for actual commercial jingles at some point?) The strangest thing about the sequence in South Pacific (1958) is that it's not actually sung IN the shower. I had totally forgotten this. Maybe "Billis Bath Club" charged extra for singing? I mean even "use of soap" is an extra there, an extra 5¢.
No, constantly fretful Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) actually waits until AFTER she's out of the shower to shampoo her hair. And to sing.
Isn't that nuts?
Early Don't Ask Don't Tell signage (?) and Mitzi's backwards shower activities after the jump.
Reader Spotlight: Chris
Friday, April 22, 2011 at 3:00PM 
Continuing the weekly or twice weekly series of reader spotlights. Today's reader is Chris a Midwestern reader with a great sense of humor who started reading TFE in his senior year of high school back in the mid Aughts and never stopped. That's the way we like it, the never-stopping part.
Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience or first movie obsession?
CHRIS: I'm pretty sure it was The Little Mermaid, because I have a distinct memory of Ursula's entrance. I can't remember my first movie obsession, because there have been so many. Probably the biggest was the summer that Moulin Rouge! and Hedwig and the Angry Inch came out. I flipped for both movies individually, but collectively they made me feel like musicals were back for good.
Take one Oscar away and give it to someone else.
I have to go with two on this one (and I'd take them away from double winners actually): First, I'd give Sean Penn's Mystic River Oscar to Bill Murray for Lost in Translation, because Murray gave a career-defining performance and, let's be honest, Penn was light years better in Milk anyway. Second, I'd give Hilary Swank's second Oscar to Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine, because it's her best work and Hilary Swank was the weakest performance in the category by a mile!
You're suddenly in charge of world cinema for a year! How do you you wield this awesome power?
I'd get rid of the whole "Oscar movie" release pattern! I hate that having to wait all year for the quality movies, and then try to cram in far too many movies into too little time. Plus, living in the crappy midwest means most of the smaller films don't stick around and I have to rush to see them ASAP anyway.
Have you ever dressed as a movie character for Halloween? And has a movie character ever dressed as you?
I went as Wall•E. Made it myself, too! On the flip side, Joseph Gordon-Levitt totally raided my wardrobe in (500) Days of Summer.
Chris makes his own costumes. JGL steals his look!
Three Favorite Actresses?
Only 3 is so not fair! I'd have to go with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Laura Linney.
Name your favorite movie in the following five genres: musical, drama, scifi, horror, woody allen. Go!
Aladdin, Boogie Nights, Children of Men, The Shining, Interiors. Most of those are hard to narrow down just to one, but I was half tempted to put The Room as one that fits all these categories. Jokes!
Previous Reader Spotlights: Peter, Ziyad, Andrew, Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Jamie, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Dominique, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, Leehee and BBats
Unsung Heroes: Jim James and Calexico in 'I'm Not There'
Friday, April 15, 2011 at 3:00PM Michael C. from Serious Film here, eager to dive back into a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for ages: Todd Haynes’ whirlwind Dylan collage I’m Not There (2007). All this Mildred Pierce talk has given me Haynes on the brain.
I was the ideal audience member for Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. I am a devoted Bob Dylan lover, a big admirer of Hayne’s work, and am literate in pop culture to the point that when Haynes paid simultaneous homage to Fellini’s 8½ and Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back I had no trouble keeping up. And while I found lots to admire in this hugely ambitious project – and I was grateful Haynes didn’t attempt a traditional linear biopic – the film mostly left me cold. I was too conscious of the intellectual constructs at every turn. Dylan’s music can be pretty cerebral at times too, but I love it because he combines that obliqueness with the ability to absolutely destroy me emotionally on a consistent basis.
And yet –and yet - right at the heart of the Richard Gere section of the film, the section I found most problematic, there is this amazing scene that I haven’t been able to shake since I first viewed it four years ago.
If I’m Not There is a whole movie constructed of tangents then the scenes involving Gere playing a character named Billy the Kid riding a horse around a bizarre Old West town called Riddle may be a tangent too far. I get that it’s supposed to represent Dylan’s self-imposed exile in Woodstock in the late sixties, and that the sequence is wild grab bag of Dylan references, but these scenes still stop the movie cold with their randomness.
Or at least that's the case until all the townsfolk wander to the center of Riddle to hear Jim James of My Morning Jacket sing a hypnotic cover of Dylan’s "Going to Acapulco" backed by the band Calexico.
Covering Dylan is almost a genre of music onto itself and this incredibly soulful take of a relatively obscure track deserves a place along side the all time greats. For a little over three minutes I don’t care about Haynes’s thesis statement. Nor do I care about making sense of the riot of costuming and set decoration I’m witnessing (love the random giraffe). For those three minutes I don’t care about anything but the fact that James, Calexico, and Haynes have managed to tap into that thing I love about Dylan. All those levels of meaning can take a back seat to the visceral experience of the music.
We all have are our favorites movies, the ones we know scene for scene, line for line. But equally valuable are the individual moments, those stand alone gems from those films that otherwise didn’t reach us. The “Going to Acapulco” scene from I’m Not There is such a moment for me. I doubt I’ll ever unravel the mystery of why it made such an impression on me, not that I have any interest in doing so.
Related posts:
all episodes of "Unsung Heroes. Also check out the new songs-in-movies series "Mix Tape"
Bob Dylan, I'm Not There, Todd Haynes, Unsung Heroes, biopics, musicals