Ishtar (film)

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Ishtar

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Elaine May
Produced by Warren Beatty
Written by Elaine May
Starring Dustin Hoffman
Warren Beatty
Isabelle Adjani
Charles Grodin
Music by Bahjawa
Dave Grusin
Paul Williams
Cinematography Vittorio Storaro
Editing by Richard P. Cirincione
William Reynolds
Stephen A. Rotter
Studio Columbia Pictures
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release dates May 15, 1987 (1987-05-15)
Running time 107 min.
Country United States
Budget $55 million
Box office $14,375,181[1]

Ishtar is a 1987 American comedy film written and directed by Elaine May and produced by Warren Beatty, who co-starred with Dustin Hoffman. The story revolves around a duo of incredibly untalented American lounge singers who travel to a booking in Morocco and stumble into a four-party Cold War standoff.

Shot on location in Morocco and New York City by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the production drew media attention before its release for substantial cost overruns on top of a lavish budget, and reports of clashes between director, producer, and cinematographer. A change in studio management at Columbia Pictures during post-production also led to professional and personal difficulties that undermined the film's release.

On top of its problems, the film opened to very mixed reviews,[2] and became a notorious failure at the box office. An example of its polarization, Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "The worst of it is painless; the best is funny, sly, cheerful and, here and there, even genuinely inspired,"[3] while The Chicago Sun Times' Roger Ebert called the film "truly dreadful".[4]

The film was originally released on DVD only in Europe. It was released in Blu-ray Disc format in North America on August 6, 2013.[5]

Plot

Lyle (Beatty) and Chuck (Hoffman) are inept songwriters who dream of becoming a popular singing duo in the mold of Simon and Garfunkel. They call agent Marty Freed (Weston) to represent them and attempt playing their songs at a local open mic night. They play songs—with titles such as "Dangerous Business," "Hot Fudge Love," and "The Echo Song"—badly and are poorly received by the audience and Marty.

Marty books them as lounge singers in a hotel in Morocco to entertain troops stationed there. Lyle and Chuck go into a bar to mull over taking the gig as they are running low on money. While in the bar, a series of flashbacks shows the audience how Lyle and Chuck met and partnered together to write music. They ultimately decide to take the gig in Morocco and unwittingly become involved in a plot to overthrow the Emir of the fictional neighboring country of Ishtar. A mysterious woman named Shirra (Isabelle Adjani) has a map that she needs to get to the leftist guerrillas opposing the government of Ishtar. A CIA agent (Charles Grodin) gets involved when Shirra contacts Lyle and Chuck.

Both Shirra and the CIA attempt to use Lyle and Chuck to further their own agendas, resulting in Lyle and Chuck getting lost in the desert, and unwittingly exposing the CIA's top secret operation in Ishtar. To keep them and the rest of the situation quiet, the CIA ends up having to back an album written by "Rogers and Clark" with a tour kicking off in Morocco. At the kickoff show, Shirra is in the audience and cries at how good the duo are at playing their music. Meanwhile, a military officer orders the rest of the men in uniform that make up the audience to "APPLAUD!" when songs are finished.

Cast

Production

Pre-production

Beatty felt indebted to May who, in addition to cowriting his 1978 hit Heaven Can Wait, had done a major uncredited rewrite on the script of his Academy Award winning Reds and helped immensely with its postproduction. He began looking for a project that she could write and direct. She had never, he believed, had a sufficiently protective producer, and by starring in and producing her next film he could give her the chance to make the film he believed her to be creatively and commercially capable of making.[6]

At a dinner with Beatty and Bert Fields, their agent, May said she would like to do a variant on the Road to... movies of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, set in the Middle East. Her idea would feature Beatty and a costar as a mediocre singer-songwriter duo who would go to Morocco and get caught in the crossfire between the Central Intelligence Agency and a local left-wing guerrilla group. She thought it would be funny to cast Beatty against type as the Hope part, the bumbler of the duo, while the costar, possibly Dustin Hoffman, would play the self-assured ladies' man that Crosby usually portrayed.[6]

Hoffman, who was also indebted to May for her extensive uncredited rewrite on Tootsie, initially turned it down due to "misgivings". At Beatty's request, the two met with May and Hoffman's creative confidant, playwright Murray Schisgal. The latter two felt that the action plot in Morocco overwhelmed the rest of the film and that it "should not leave New York". Hoffman was finally persuaded by Beatty's assurances that he would provide May with the room she needed to work.[6]

When May finished the script, Beatty, Hoffman, and some other friends including Charles Grodin had a meeting and read-through at Beatty's house. All present agreed that the script needed work, but it was funny and could be a hit.[7]

Beatty went to Columbia Pictures production head Guy McElwaine, who years before had been his publicist,[7] instructing Fields, "Bert, anything she wants. Period. That's my negotiating position." Despite the prospect of having two major stars on the same project with a well-regarded writer, McElwaine did not immediately greenlight it. He worried about the effects of having Beatty, Hoffman, and May on the same set, since they were all known as perfectionists. May, in particular, had a reputation for shooting as much raw footage as Beatty himself or Stanley Kubrick. But McElwaine was also afraid the property could be a hit for another studio if Columbia passed,[6] since Beatty had a solid record of commercial success in his four movies as producer and star.[7]

The two bankable stars and May received $12.5 million ($28.1 million adjusted for inflation[ 1]) in salaries before principal photography began. Beatty and Hoffman offered to defer theirs but Columbia declined; Fields said that an agreement the studio had with HBO covered most of that cost. Beatty, Hoffman, and May all had final cut input as well (although Beatty has denied this).[6] The film's original budget was set at $27.5 million.[7]

Other roles were cast through connections to the three. Grodin was a friend of May and had starred in a successful comedy she directed, the original version of The Heartbreak Kid. Isabelle Adjani, who played the female lead disguised as a boy for most of the film, was Beatty's girlfriend at the time.[6] Vittorio Storaro replaced original cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno when he was unable to change his schedule to accommodate a delay in the shooting.[7]

Paul Williams began working on the songs the lead duo would sing. "The real task was to write songs that were believably bad. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life. I've never had more fun on a picture, but I've never worked harder."[8] May preferred that Williams write whole songs, even if she intended to use only a few lines, and then teach them to the stars and have them perform them, necessitating more time and money.[9]

The studio had wanted to shoot the desert scenes in the Southwest in order to keep costs down and production under control. But Columbia's parent company at the time, Coca-Cola, had money in Morocco it could not repatriate, so the studio relented and allowed production to take place in the real Sahara Desert. It was expected that shooting in Morocco would take ten weeks, after which the New York scenes would be shot.[6]

Principal photography

Ishtar began shooting in October 1985, amidst high political tensions in North Africa. Israeli warplanes had just bombed Palestinian Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis and, seven days later, the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, executing a wheelchair-bound elderly Jewish American, Leon Klinghoffer. The Moroccan military was fighting the Polisario Front guerrillas at the time as well. There were rumors Palestinian terrorists might try to kidnap Hoffman, and some locations had to be checked for land mines before shooting could begin.[6]

There were also production difficulties. The filmmakers appreciated the Moroccans' hospitality and willingness to cooperate, but there was no one in the country with experience supporting a major Hollywood film production. Requests by the producers were sometimes unfulfilled, and calls for local extras led to thousands of people showing up.[6]

Some of the movie's production woes have become Hollywood lore. The film's animal trainer went looking for a blue-eyed camel in the Marrakech market, and found one he considered perfect. But he chose not to buy it right away, expecting he could find others and use that knowledge to bargain with the first trader for a better price. He did not realize that blue-eyed camels were rare, and could not find another camel good enough. He returned to the first trader, who had since eaten the camel.[6]

Another frequently related incident, related by production designer Paul Sylbert but disputed by others on the film, concerns the dunes where scenes with Beatty and Hoffman lost in the desert would be shot. Sylbert had scouted dunes in the United States and Morocco but none seemed to fit the vision of May, who was very uncomfortable in the desert environment. She suffered from toothaches that she refused to have treated locally, and took extensive measures to shelter herself from the harsh sun, not only spending much of her time under a large parasol but wearing large sunglasses and wrapping her face in a white gauze veil, to the point that her appearance was compared to a Star Wars stormtrooper. After one unsuccessful search for dunes, Sylbert says, May suddenly announced she wanted a flat landscape instead.[6] It took ten days to level an area of a square mile (2.6 km²).[7]

May feuded with others on set, as well. She and Storaro frequently differed over camera placements, since she was looking for the ideal comic effect while the cinematographer, who had little experience making comedies,[7] sought the most ideal composition. Beatty often took Storaro's side in disputes between him and May. "She probably felt ganged up on by the two of them," Hoffman observed later on. Eventually Beatty and May began quarreling, and Hoffman sometimes served as the mediator. He claims there were times when the two weren't speaking to each other. May also didn't get along with Adjani, which adversely affected the latter's relationship with Beatty.[6]

The director remained aloof from the film's editing staff, taking copious notes during dailies but refusing to share them. As a result, the production began to run low on paper and pencils. As Columbia had feared, she shot lots of film as well, reportedly in one instance calling for fifty takes of vultures landing next to Beatty and Hoffman.[10]

Expenses continued to grow. "This was the kind of film where nobody would say 'Sorry, we can't afford that,'" according to Mac Brown, who monitored the budget. When a replacement part was needed for a camera, it was sent over to Morocco with a New York based location coordinator instead of just being shipped, out of fear it might get lost or held up at customs. The coordinator's airfare and a week's hotel stay were paid for by the production.[7]

Privately, both Beatty and May began to confess they had made a mistake. "I was going to give this gift to Elaine, and it turned out to be the opposite," Hoffman recalls Beatty telling him. Matters came to a head when it came time to shoot the film's climactic battle scenes. They were far outside her background in improvisational theatre, and during a confrontation with Beatty, May said, "You want it done? You shoot it!" Many crewmembers said that, on any other film, the director would have been fired. Beatty knew that if he called the bluff, he would have had to finish directing the film himself, which would have been a major embarrassment given that his main objective in making the film was to give May the chance she had never had. He compromised by scaling back the battle scenes.[6]

When the film returned to New York, Beatty told Fay Vincent, then Columbia's chief executive officer, that May couldn't direct. But he demurred another suggestion to fire her, citing his image as a liberal supporter of women's rights. Vincent said he would do it, but Beatty said if he did then he and Hoffman would leave the uncompleted film as well. He proposed instead that every scene be shot twice, his way and May's, effectively doubling the movie's cost.[6]

After a monthlong break, the New York scenes were shot in early 1986, at Kaufman Astoria Studios and various locations. Due to union work rules, Storaro's Italian crew had to be doubled by a local standby crew, who were not needed much but drew full pay for the entire shoot. It was also necessary to stop production for several days so Beatty and Hoffman could rehearse their songs.[7] In April 1986, a month after principal photography wrapped, Vincent fired McElwaine.[6]

His replacement as head of production was David Puttnam, producer of Chariots of Fire and a longtime critic of Hollywood budgetary excesses. Among those films he had specifically criticized in the latter category was Reds, singling out Beatty in particular. He had also publicly criticized Hoffman for allegedly using his star power to force rewrites to the 1978 film Agatha, which had relocated his minor character to a lead. After quitting as a producer of that film, Puttnam called Hoffman "the most malevolent person I have ever worked with".[6]

Post-production

Due to his history with both stars, the new studio head promised to stay out of Ishtar's post-production. But Beatty and Hoffman felt that was subtly intended to undermine the film, by suggesting it was a failure for which he wanted to avoid responsibility. They worried it would hurt the film when it was released before Christmas 1986.[6]

Interpersonal difficulties from Morocco continued in postproduction. May was supposed to direct actors when they looped their lines in a recording studio, but sometimes left the job to Beatty or one of the editors. Most of those absences were in sessions with Adjani, who was required to lower her voice since her character had to pass as a boy for most of the film. This strained her relationship with Beatty even more.[6]

The film's raw footage came to 108 hours, more than three times that typical for a comedy. Three teams of editors, one each for Beatty, Hoffman, and May, worked almost continuously to produce cuts of the film to each principal's liking. Since McElwaine, whom he had tried to please as a friend, was no longer in charge, Beatty eventually relented to letting May cut the film her way, partly because he detested Puttnam and believed he was leaking negative information about Ishtar to the media. "Just tell the asshole to keep paying the bills," he is reported to have told another Columbia executive. The costs, which Puttnam had believed would come under control in postproduction, instead continued to mount.[6]

Eventually it became clear the film would not be ready in time for Christmas. When the release date of late spring of 1987 was announced, later than that which had been expected, stories in the media about the film's troubles increased. Industry insiders began to refer to it as The Road to Ruin[7] and Warrensgate, after the expensive 1981 flop Heaven's Gate. Beatty, who had kept the media off the set during production, took these gibes personally. He and May began to fight more frequently in the editing room.[6]

Finally, with the new release date looming, Bert Fields was called in to mediate between the director and stars. Beatty denies this, but Fields and others say he was actually present in the editing room. The agent has been described as having final cut, although he claims that was May's. Tensions continued as Beatty was trying to placate Adjani and lobbied for more footage of her. When they were finished, the editors were furious as no one had gone over the complete film.[6] Beatty refused to show Puttnam the final cut.[7]

Reception

Commercial

Three previews went well. Beatty described one in Toronto as the best he'd ever had, and he and the studio considered striking more prints. Those discussions ended after the opening weekend, May 22, 1987. Ishtar, on more than a thousand screens across the country, took in $4.2 million ($8.63 million in contemporary dollars) in receipts, winning the weekend and #1 at the box office. But it beat The Gate, a low-budget horror film with no stars, by only $100,000.[6] Ultimately it grossed only $14.3 million in North American box office receipts against its $55 million budget.[1]

Negative buzz about Ishtar and its outrageous budget was widespread in the press long before the film ever reached theaters, despite three successful previews. In an interview with Elaine May, Mike Nichols described the bomb as "the prime example that I know of in Hollywood of studio suicide",[11] implying that Puttnam sandbagged the project by leaking negative anecdotes to the media because of his grudges against Beatty and Hoffman.[12]

Before release, market research led Columbia to believe the film would fail. Its head of marketing, Peter Sealey, advised the studio to minimize its losses by cutting the film's advertising budget. Instead, Columbia spent even more to promote the film, afraid of alienating Beatty and Hoffman. "Ego trumps logic in Hollywood," said Sealey.[13]

Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum surmised that the media were eager to torpedo Ishtar in retaliation for instances of Beatty's perceived "high-handed way with members of the press".[14] The film had been completely closed to the media, with no reporters at all permitted on set during production, a restriction greater than Beatty's previous productions.[7]

Critical

The movie was poorly received, and has a 27% 'rotten' rating on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes.[15] Ishtar has since become synonymous with "box office flop".[12] The sentiments of most critics were summarized by The Today Show critic Gene Shalit who opined, "Ishtar ish terrible."

Not all critics were hostile, however. Vincent Canby of The New York Times listed it as a runner up to his top films of 1987.[16]

Warren Beatty defended the film, and despite all the severe trouble and misery he went through making it, is quoted as saying, "There was almost no review that didn't in the first paragraph deal with the cost of the movie. That was an eye-opener—about the business, and the relationship of the entertainment press to business. Ishtar is a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman. And I think it's funny."[17] Dustin Hoffman also defended the film, stating that he would "do it again in a second".[18] Elaine May responded to the intense negative reception by stating “If all of the people who hate ‘Ishtar’ had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”[19]

Aftermath

As a result of the losses it suffered from the film and negative publicity, Coca-Cola re-evaluated its decision to enter the business. It spun off its entertainment holdings into a separate company called Columbia Pictures Entertainment, with Coca-Cola holding 49% of the stock. Two years later, it sold Columbia to Sony.[20]

The film's failure didn't affect the friendship between Beatty and Hoffman, who both liked the final cut of the film; Beatty later cast his co-star in the more successful Dick Tracy for Disney.

Beatty and May barely spoke for two years afterwards, and friends of hers say she remains slightly bitter about the experience.[6] It was nine years before she took another screenwriting credit (for The Birdcage). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Primary Colors, but has not directed another film since Ishtar.

On December 20, 2010, Dustin Hoffman appeared on Late Show with David Letterman alongside Robert De Niro. When Letterman asked De Niro if there are any films in his oeuvre that make him "wince", Hoffman answered that he, "speaks on behalf of De Niro" in saying that he (De Niro) regrets Ishtar, obviously referring to himself.[21]

Legacy

In one of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic strips, captioned "Hell's Video Store", the entire store is stocked with nothing but copies of the movie Ishtar. Larson later apologized, saying, "When I drew the above cartoon, I had not actually seen Ishtar. . . . Years later, I saw it on an airplane, and was stunned at what was happening to me: I was actually being entertained. Sure, maybe it's not the greatest film ever made, but my cartoon was way off the mark. There are so many cartoons for which I should probably write an apology, but this is the only one which compels me to do so."[22]

Since its release, the film has gained a substantial cult following,[23] with some of its more famous admirers including directors Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright, who have both gone on record as stating that they liked the film.[24] Acclaimed filmmaker Martin Scorsese has also claimed that the film is one of his favorite movies of all time.[25]

Home video

Ishtar was issued on VHS globally in late 1987 (and once more in 1994), eventually generating over seven million dollars in rental fees in the United States alone. In 2004, the film was released on DVD on every continent but North America and Antarctica.[26] Sony Pictures Home Entertainment had announced that the film would be released only on Blu-ray Disc (and finally in a digital format in North America) on January 4, 2011, but it was pulled from the studio's release schedule just prior to that date.

In an interview around the time, May said:

"They tell me now—Sony—that they’re going to release this on Blu-ray, and it will really look wonderful and sound wonderful. If they don’t, you’ll be the last 80 or 90 or however many people to see this movie in this particular version. […] If you all clap your hands and believe it! They say they want to and they’ll do it soon, and I have great faith that they’ll do it."[27]

The Blu-ray was released in North America on August 6, 2013.[28]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Ishtar (1987)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  2. ↑ "Ishtar". Metacritic. 
  3. ↑ Maslin, Janet (May 15, 1987). "Movie Review: Ishtar (1987)". New York Times. 
  4. ↑ Ebert, Roger (May 15, 1987). "Ishtar". Chicago Sun-Times. 
  5. ↑ Haglund, David (August 6, 2013). "Ishtar Is Finally on Blu-ray. And It’s Good!". Slate's Culture Blog. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 6.18 6.19 6.20 6.21 6.22 Biskind, Peter (February 2010). "Madness in Morocco: The Road to Ishtar". Vanity Fair: 116–25, 142–44. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 Blum, David (16 March 1987). "The Road to 'Ishtar': How Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and Elaine May Made a Farce in the Desert for Just $40 Million". New York: 34–43. 
  8. ↑ A. Smith, Michael. "The Paul Williams interview". Retrieved 2007-02-10. 
  9. ↑ IshtarTheMovie.com. "Ishtar: The Movie/Film – In Their Words: Paul Williams". 
  10. ↑ Maslin, Janet (May 15, 1987). "Hoffman and Beatty in Elaine May's 'Ishtar'". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved January 15, 2010. 
  11. ↑ "Elaine May in conversation with Mike Nichols". Archived from the original on 2006-10-17. Retrieved 2013-01-27. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Harris, Will. "A Chat with James Robert Parish". Bullz-eye.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  13. ↑ Barnes, Brooks (March 12, 2012). "'Ishtar' Lands on Mars". The New York Times. Retrieved April 2, 2012. 
  14. ↑ "Another look at classic movie bombs". Retrieved 2007-02-10. 
  15. ↑ "Ishtar". RottenTomatoes.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  16. ↑ Canby, Vincent (December 27, 1987). "FILM VIEW: THE YEAR'S BEST; Bull Market for Movies and Screens". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-09-02. 
  17. ↑ "Beatty's 30 years on-screen". Entertainment Weekly. December 20, 1991. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  18. ↑ "A Conversation with Dustin Hoffman". NPR. Retrieved 2007-02-10. 
  19. ↑ Brody, Richard (23 April 2010). "April in May". New Yorker. Retrieved 2013-09-28. 
  20. ↑ Spar, Debora L. (2003). Managing International Trade and Investment: Casebook. Imperial College Press. p. 368. ISBN 978-1-86094-294-5. 
  21. ↑ "David Letterman - Robert DeNiro & Dustin Hoffman Preview". YouTube. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  22. ↑ Larson, Gary, The Complete Far Side, September 2003
  23. ↑ http://www.ishtarthemovie.com/
  24. ↑ "Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news". AintItCool.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  25. ↑ "Watch Movies Online & On Demand". DirecTV. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  26. ↑ lddonline.com. "Ishtar: The Movie/Film". Ishtarthemovie.com. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  27. ↑ VanAirsdale, S.T. (May 18, 2011). "Blind Camels, Idiot Execs, and 5 Other Ishtar Revelations From Director Elaine May". Movieline. Retrieved 2012-09-07. 
  28. ↑ "Ishtar [Blu-ray] (1987)". Amazon.com. Retrieved August 14, 2013. 

Further reading

  • Parish, James Robert (2006). Fiasco – A History of Hollywood’s Iconic Flops. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 359 pages. ISBN 978-0-471-69159-4. 

External links

Films directed by Elaine May
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