DIRECTED BY ELAINE MAY: A FERAL FILMOGRAPHY
A comedy innovator, a pioneering female director, accomplished screenwriter, trusted script doctor, and seasoned actress, Elaine May is one of the film industry’s most notorious and celebrated renegades. As the only woman directing for a major Hollywood studio in the 1970s, she is the original badass female director, having incited the wrath of Hollywood executives with her unrelenting commitment to her own process. Her ‘70s directorial works are masterpieces, and one–The Heartbreak Kid–is considered one of the most notoriously unavailable films of all time. NOT ANYMORE! To mark the occasion of The Heartbreak Kid’s long-awaited re-issue, the Revue celebrates a living legend with her four incomparable directorial works every Sunday in August!
Retrospective generously sponsored by Hollywood Suite
Nicknamed by the press at the time of its release as “The Road to Ruin,” Ishtar—one of Hollywood’s most cited financial disasters—does not deserve its label as one of the worst films ever made. Nor did its director, Elaine May warrant the fault that was attributed to her. Produced and starring Warren Beatty, as well as Dustin Hoffman, the Saharan Desert set comic odyssey is a lighthearted, daffy updating of the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road movies of the 1940s. Beatty and Hoffman play untalented troubadours who journey to Marrakesh to work as lounge singers. Having arrived, the two get caught up in a CIA-backed plot to overthrow the Sultan of neighboring country Ishtar. Filmed on location in Morocco and New York with celebrated Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro behind the camera, Ishtar, despite its reputation for excess is a lush, zany, madcap screwball farce that deserves a big screen celebration.
Digital Presentation courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment
Generously sponsored by Hollywood Suite