She was one half of a legendary 60s comedy team. She's a brilliant comic actress (California Suite, Small Time Crooks). She's a playwright and a screenwriter (Heaven Can Wait, The Birdcage). Most mysteriously, she's a member of that exclusive secret society of script doctors (Tootsie, Reds). But the multitalented Elaine May is above all the director of four masterpieces: A New Leaf, in which she also starred opposite Walter Matthau; the devastatingly funny Neil Simon adaptation The Heartbreak Kid; the legendary Mikey and Nicky, starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk; and the wondrous and unfairly maligned Ishtar, co-starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. Join us to meet a genius of modern American comedy, here in person to talk about her career.
Please Note: There is a limit of TWO [2] tickets per customer to this special event. Ticket prices: $75 FSLC members, $85 non-
members.
Why was this hilarious film, one of the only ones to reflect the loopiest aspects of the otherwise unfunny Reagan era, judged a debacle of world-historical dimensions? How could someone as reasonably intelligent as Roger Ebert deem it "a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy," a description that fits about 80% of the movies that Hollywood now turns out on a regular basis but that is a million miles from this deft, spirited movie? First of all, everyone was on the lookout for the next Heaven's Gate at the time. Second of all, the object of May's satire was so rarefied that it went all but unnoticed: that peculiar mixture of cluelessness and narcissism that afflicts many show business creatures, including the then-sitting president. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty are Rogers and Clarke, a transcendentally awful musical comedy team who find inspiration in the unlikeliest sources. Their stalwart manager (Jack Weston) secures them a hotel gig in the fictional nation of Ishtar, where they are quickly embroiled in the local revolution when they fall for a local revolutionary (Isabelle Adjani). Did it cost loads of money? Of course it did, and it was well spent, because every comic moment, from the musical numbers to the blind camel to the vultures arriving "on spec," is perfectly realized. It also looks terrific, thanks to Vittorio Storaro. With Charles Grodin as the CIA agent who enlists one of the boys, and rationalizes the low salary with this upbeat qualification: "You can't really put a price on democracy, can you?"
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