Ishtar (1987)

Yesterday, i lightly touched on the matter of directors being relieved of their films by their paternal studio benefactors; Ishtar is also one of the most infamous examples of that but more so for costs spiralling outta control and the movie flopping like the love-child of Marlon Brando and Greg Louganis. (Greg Louganis jokes in 2011. This is why you love me.)
Ishtar became short-hand for a film failure. It will forever be a study in how there are no-sure things in the moviemaking. It facinates and bewilders people how a film starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman and written & directed by Elaine May, one of the most respected female comedy writers of all time, could screw the pooch on such a biblical level...
It's rare, when attributing blame, to point the finger at everyone involved but i have to. Maybe Elaine May more than the others but everyone's culpable.
Really, Columbia Pictures shoudn't have let May, no stranger to studio interference or her films flopping, such a long leash to make this film. They let her go half way around the world, despite her track record, to make this film. And they probably greenlit the film without reading the script based on Hoffman and Beatty, who also probably didn't read it either. I'm sure May, Beatty and Hoffman are long friends and there's a trust element but it's failed here. Part of you wants to blame the faceless studio for mangling May's writing but from plot and story to dialogue, it's ALL pretty half baked. It's goofy and not the cute Disney character sense but more - what the hell IS a Goofy???...
The idea of 2 songwriters becoming embroiled in a cold war of sorts in North Africa is pretty nutso; the idea of these middle aged men becoming jobbing pop songwriters/performers borders on literal insanity. It's cringemaking only Sacha Baron Cohen could salute. I know that May tried to make a broad satire of the CIA's involvement in US Foreign Diplomacy and that's admirable and a suitable target of her talent but she used this inane vehicle to send the message; she can't go forward without going backwards. It's maddening to watch these 2 guys do this bad cabaret schtick and unless you have no idea who Warren Beatty is (A fair possibility, if you were born after 1990) - there's no way you will ever buy him playing a geeky worry-wart with no charisma. You might as well be asking me to believe that Hugh Hefner is playing an unpaid intern for Camille Paglia.
Elaine May never really recovered her confidence to make another film and that's a severe shame and though I get no satisfaction outta seeing greats get knocked on their ass but i have to say that, it's fully justified. There must have been a real air of 'it'll work out in the end'-style denial in the making of this film. It cost people financially and emotionally but these people deserved to be metaphorically poisoned because everthing about this film is undercooked...

I watched Ishtar (1987) on DVD, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Les Diaboliques (1962)...