Blank Check with Griffin & David - Ishtar with Clint McElroy

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

Telling the truth is a dangerous business - but movies and podcasts can go hand-in-hand! We conclude our Elaine May series with one of the biggest bounces in Hollywood history - the unfairly maligned Ishtar. Clint McElroy (The Adventure Zone) joins us as we discuss blind camels and the “liberal feminist” Warren Beatty. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

podcasting can be bad pod podcasting can be bad new podcast podcasting can be bad. Podcasting can be bad. Podcasting can be good news. Podcasting is a bad idea. Podcasting is a difficult problem. Podcasting is a dangerous tunnel. When you get out of that tunnel, you've got bitter herbs. This is good. Forget herb, David. I never heard a hit podcast that had the word herb in it. Herb. You know, I say herb sometimes

because that's what the Brits say. Yeah. And that, I get raked over the coals any time I accidentally say herb. That one really amuses people. Anyway, that was great, Griffin. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I practice it with even more stammering

and I got nervous. I didn't want to get too self-indulgent right but this is for me get ready i'm not gonna argue this is a perfect film it is hard to argue this is a perfect film but this is a movie i would be that that's your no one's no one needs to be saying that you can love the movie right yes this is a movie i adore uh so deeply in so many ways and one thing i will say about it, a hyperbolic statement right off the bat. I think this is one of the funniest openings of any movie ever. I don't think there is another movie that arguably gets this many laughs in the opening credits. Here's my only problem with the opening.

It's so good. I agree. That you're like, what do you mean people don't like this thing and then like by the middle you're like okay well i can see how maybe this movie threw people a little bit no you know i'm not i like the movie but you know what i mean like the opening you're just like oh baby it made me think of stripes it is yes you know what i mean it's got that same kind of problem where you like it sets a certain tone or pace yeah or feel and then it's like oh actually we're gonna pivot to a completely different movie this is my thing like

you guys know i talked about it a lot maybe someday we'll cover it sydney lamette's the whiz is one of my 10 favorite movies of all time it is also another deeply imperfect box office fiasco that was raked over the coals when it came out right sure and i love it despite the fact that i think about conservatively 50 minutes of it are unwatchable right because it's like the stuff that works in it for me works in such a unique way that's different from any other film that i'm willing to forgive the parts of it that just like actively repulse me and there's nothing in ishtar that like feels as catastrophic as the 12 minute let's change what the color in emerald city sequence is in the whiz but similarly

the first 22 minutes of this movie i like as much as i like uh any stretch in any comedy film ever and it sets the bar so high that then the ishtar stuff which i defend it's just inarguably not as good as just rogers and clark fucking writing songs together yeah yeah just just we'll talk about it we'll tell him that but that's the yes podcasting can be dangerous no no no and just anytime they do that i'm such a sucker for the like no no no no you know what it is it's it's a it's not it could be good it could be bad news it's bad predicament uh folks we're here this is this is one of those movies i've i've dreamed of talking about since we started this podcast yes this is a movie we have talked about right since the podcast started, basically. The whole time.

Because it is obviously just one of the biggest blank checks in Hollywood history. And one of the most famous sort of like example movies in terms of its reputation. But also is a movie that I have always defended since I saw it 10 years ago for the first time. And was astonished because I thought it was just going to be garbage. I just assumed it was going to be straight garbage. And then... You knew it as the Far Side cartoon. Yeah.

The video store from hell where they only have Ishtar. It was the butt of joke you learned. Right. Like when you're five years old and you learn how to tie your shoes, you also learn like an Ishtar is a famously bad movie. And you're like, oh, okay, Ishtar, I get it movie like and you're like oh okay okay ishtar i get it i was talking about it with my sister romley the other day and uh she was like elaine may made movies and i was again she's like what movies did she direct and i just said like

heartbreak kid mickey and nicky mikey and nicky uh new leaf just dead silence on the other end of the phone i said ishtar she goes oh i know Ishtar. The word she knows. Even a 23-year-old understands that Ishtar is synonymous with fiasco. Yes. But I saw this, Elaine May, we'll get into this, because let's say what this is. It's a podcast about filmographies. I keep on making

this mistake, where I say the one thing before the other thing. It's a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Tightening up that response time a little bit okay look i think it's mostly the just a slight zoom delay but griff did you see this meme in the reddit it's so funny one of the funniest things our reddit has ever done i i and cut this out if it's embarrassing that i didn't get it who who who is i couldn't put't put it together in my head who I'm supposed to be here. Is it about Schmidt?

I couldn't identify what movie it is. Okay, but you just thought it was funny anyway. It is funny. The meme is like a four-panel comic strip of the Joe Bowen, David cartoon face superimposed over the body of a live action man in three different casual positions he's like sitting on a bench he's walking down a street and then the fourth panel just says and i'm david yes and i take too long it's you taking your leisurely time to get to your name okay that's it i was just like i were like okay i was just trying to figure out if there

was some deeper reference that's all okay carry on i'm sorry for slowing you down we need to david you were trying to take that meme down ishtar style you were like the press you had your knives out it was an assassination attempt it was attempted coup and the fact that it was unsuccessful doesn't mean we shouldn't be taking it seriously it was the most upvoted post of all time on our subreddit that's a great joke it's perfect joke it's the red of ishtar jokes uh it's a great joke. It's a perfect joke. It's the red ish jar of jokes. It's a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want

and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. Here's a perfect case study of that exact phenomenon. It's the most famous bounce. Yeah. A huge, big career.

Huge career before making films, makes two hits, and then makes two colossal failures. But like, Mikey and Nikki is a financial disappointment, but this is a world-famous bomb. This is one of the most famous bombs. This is at a whole other level.

If it weren't for Ishtar, we would say like, oh, Mikey and Nikki is a huge bounce. It's just Ishtar redefines what a bounce could be. We're, of course, talking about Elaine May, the great Elaine May. We've gotten to what is, unfortunately, as of this moment, her fourth and final film, although hopefully she makes, I keep on forgetting what it's called. Crackpot, supposedly, is what her final or her next, sorry, movie will be called. But Shrug, who knows?

Fingers crossed. It, of course, is a miniseries called The Podbreak Cast, but it was almost called Podcastar, because today we're talking about Ishtar. Now, our guest is being so polite. So good. Almost too good. We, our guest is being so polite. So good. Almost too good. We don't want him to be good. We want him to be bad.

We want him to be a bad boy. Do you know how hard it is to not jump in? That's why I want you to interject. That's a Travis McElroy move. There's no way that Travis sat quietly before you said his name and introduced him. No, absolutely not. That's the whole thing.

Just burst on in. I don't want anyone feeling pent up. Okay, good. Then I can say, do you know Gary Larson apologized? I do. It's the only time he's ever apologized for one of his comic strips. Of all the things he's done, he said, that's the one I regret because I did it without

ever seeing Ishtar, which I think plays to the whole... I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Get into it. I'm in. I'm in the water. I'm in.

Our guest today is Clint McElroy. Let's just say Clint McElroy from the Adventure Zone. Yay. Oh, wait. Sorry. I say Clint McElroy from the Adventure Zone. Yay! Oh, wait, sorry. I cheered myself. Hey, you deserve it. I had one of those, you know, Farside anniversary books

where, like, Gary Larson offers commentary, right? You know? And I remember him apologizing. He apologizes where he's like, I watched his show. It's good. Can I read his apology? Yes, it's good like can i can i read his apology yes it's very good read it read it properly yes so it's just it's just hell's video store and the

entire store is stocked with nothing but copies of ishtar right that's the whole the whole joke it's not his best work i'm gonna say this actually beyond not liking ishtar or liking ishtar i love gary larson that one's a five. Not enough cows. But he writes, 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.

I do think that's kind of at the root of the entire thing, as you were saying, Clint. Yeah, that's so relative to it, because just like you were mentioning that your sister, oh yeah, Ishtar, I know Ishtar, and I think that was what it was. To me, it's the first time I can ever remember because I mean obviously I was alive when the movie came out I was alive um I wasn't con you

know cognizant of what was going on no and it's the first time I can ever remember reviews that started ended and in the middle of focused on the budget. Oh, it costs so much money to make. Oh, it's, you know, it wasn't until, you know, like reviews of Titanic that I can never remember. But this was early on. Waterworld, maybe? That's about it. It's that rare thing where it becomes the public discourse for ordinary people walking into the theater.

It's like, I heard this thing cost a fortune. And I get, if you watch this movie being told it cost a fortune you might be like it did yeah like what why did this cost a fortune i get that they went to the middle east but i mean to north africa but like what the fuck the whole story about that framing is so fascinating but let's also just say david water world comes out like eight years after this, right? Nine years after this? It's 95 or 96? Sure, yeah. Mid-90s, what is it? Yeah.

And when the press was writing about Waterworld going over budget and over scheduled, they called it Fishtar. Well, that's funny. It's great. I gave them five comedy points, but the shadow of Fishtar was so large. They did also call it Kevin's's gate of course no no that was dances with wolves they called kevin's gate right because costner was in a similar position to baity one could argue where they were like we're just ready for you to fucking fail you egomaniac yeah you you hot asshole you think you can make movies and star in them and win oscars

we're coming for you buddy yes and then Dances with Wolves is a huge hit. Then they're like, well, all right, you got away with that one, but we're still watching you, buddy. And I think one of the great crimes of Ishtar and the way it was handled and the way it was treated was that to me, a lot of, and like you, I love this movie. There are things about this movie that are some of the funniest gags some of the funniest scenes i have ever seen um but the fact that the

failure was was laid on elaine may and that she paid the price for it, it seems, when I think a lot of the problem should have been dolloped on Warren Beatty. Yep. And so that's what makes me a little crazy. I think that she made some mistakes. Yeah. I think that, you know, but the whole, and I'm sure we're going to get into this, but the whole concept of the movie, to me, the first half an hour of it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Agreed.

Agreed. Agreed. That's exactly what I say to people. Let's also just say, Clint, this might be the longest we have had an episode with a guest on the spreadsheet because it was uh new york comic-con 2019 oh i remember those days yeah i think it was it's fully like 18 months ago that we like figured this out right it was like september or october 2019 i think september and uh i i had done the adventure zone uh panel with you guys and then uh travis threw like a little party afterwards and it was your first time meeting david that's right um and you came up to us at the bar and said guys you've had all

three of my sons on when am i gonna get to come on blank check and we said here are the things we have planned for the next, whatever, whatever we had on the books at that point in time, we thought we were going to do a lane. May, April, 2020.

What happened? Two things happen. We've gone over too many times. One, we wanted to do this March madness bracket where it was Razzie winners versus Oscar winners. And Elaine may was the only female who fit into either bracket who we hadn't covered already.

So we had to take her out. Wins a Razzie for this here movie. For this movie, right. So we were like, we have to put her in competition. Otherwise, it's going to be even more of a sausage fest than it already is.

And also, there was this announcement, or not even announcement, this whisper, maybe she's going to make a new movie with Dakota Johnson. And we said, maybe let's wait and see if she makes this new movie.

Then a global pandemic happened and we were like, maybe let's not wait. Who knows when movies are going to make a new movie with Dakota Johnson. And we said, maybe let's wait and see if she makes this new movie. Then a global pandemic happened. And we were like, maybe let's not wait. Who knows when movies are going to be made? There was a global pandemic? Clint, I'm sorry. Spoilers. I know. I need to break this too.

I forgot that you're behind. Yeah. I mean, I live in Ohio, so we don't know what's going on. This movie, absolutely. I can remember when it came out, and I am going to own up to my own guilt. I have had a sense of guilt about this movie because I did not go see it in theaters.

Oh, boy. Now, here's the thing. I was hooked, and I was ready because I loved the Hope Crosby road pictures, loved the road pictures. After the Marx Brothers, my favorite series of movies were Hope and Crosby, Road to Morocco, Road to Singapore, Road to Utopia, all that. Absolutely loved them. And then I hit a red, she's doing a road picture. And I thought, this awesome and i am owning up the fact that i saw those reviews and i i caved i was i was a coward i was don't cry it's okay

come on i'm trying to be sincere here no No, no, no, this is working, this is working. But I mean, so, you know, I was fortunate in the fact that I, you know, because it did not run on DVD for years and years and years and years. I mean, they didn't reissue it. It was never released on DVD. It was barely on VHS. It was almost never played on television. And VHS is where I saw it. Yeah.

And so, and it was a revelation to me. And it really, the effect that it had on me at that point was, you know, saying, God, movie reviewers stink. That's terrible. Tell me about it. Let me tell you a quick anecdote, a quick story. Is it about how all movie critics are scum because i'm ready to agree with you no but i will tell you this we had a local guy this is when i was going to marcia university and um the uh the wrath of khan came out great movie and so i you know I had to go see that opening night.

And so there was a local reviewer who hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it. And so I couldn't go opening night, but I was planning on going on that Saturday. So I picked up the Saturday morning paper. And you talk about spoilers. And so I opened this guy's column, and he says, here's how much I hated Star Trek Wrath of Khan. Spock dies.

What? Oh, my God. You can't do that. Spock dies was the second line of his freaking review. Wow. Was that why he was so mad at the movie? He was just like, you can't do this. He just went on to talk about

the bad performances and how hokey it was and the overacting and obviously not getting it but that's fine if a reviewer has an opinion that's fine but that to me was criminally irresponsible yeah that's mean you can't do that and i think fitting that that fits in with i mean how my reaction to when i finally saw ishtar was man why did why did people destroy this movie the way they did that that was my same reaction and i'll say when we at at that bar 18 months ago when society was still standing uh gave you before the before the fall before the fall uh gave you a bunch of... Before the fall. Before the fall, gave you a bunch of options of like, would any of these movies jump out to you? You kind of like said like,

ooh, Ishtar. Like when we said Ishtar, you went like, Ishtar. And I went like, Clint, if you want to do Ishtar, Ishtar is yours. And you kind of looked like both ways around the bar and then said like,

but I'm going to defend it like you you were already sort of like feeling guilty of just like are you guys looking for someone to shit on inchtar and i was like clint you're booked it's official if you're ready to defend ishtar even if it takes us 18 months the episode is on the books sold i'll do that and i can remember when you asked me that and i can remember my you asked me that and i can remember my reaction to it yeah and i will be brutally honest are you on the level no yeah go ahead as much as i know elaine may and love elaine may i thought really a blank check did she get a blank check for heartbreak kid and for you know and and so i think that was me trying to fit that into you know knowing about

the premise of the of the show too but she absolutely deserved it and and i hope she does make another movie because i would hate to think that ishtar is the thing that you know canceled her blank check so it was undeniably yeah a very long hold this movie came out when i was one year old uh and she's but i mean obviously she did she recovered her career with ease not with ease but with you know like she obviously she keeps writing she gets another oscar nomination she acts she gets a tony like right there's lots of stuff that she does but she yeah it's her it's the last movie she made and it is it is too bad in a way as much as i like the movie let let's lay out some of the the formation of this movie she sort of lays low after mikey and nikki that kind of wipes her out and i think that was the

first time she had the attitude of it's just not worth it movie making is such a pain in the ass not worth it to direct right so she's you know still doing plays i think that's always been her sort of safe space of they don't fuck with my words here i can get stuff up the overhead is much lower you know i have less egos to deal with uh she's got julian Julian Schlossberg who helps her with those. And then she does a lot of rewrite work. And sometimes it's credited and very often it's uncredited. But one of the big ones was Having Can Wait.

Having Can Wait is the only one that is credited. And she gets an Oscar nomination, of course. She's also in California Suite, I will point out, which she's very funny in. It's not a movie that I love, but she is very funny and her and Walter a movie that i love but she is very funny and her and walter matthews section of california suite is the best section uh hard agree um but she's she's this sort of like whisperer of you know the elites of hollywood who are still kind

of keeping her employed because they have so much respect for her ba Beatty chief among them. So Beatty also has her do a pass on Reds. He has her sit in the editing suite with her with him a lot during post-production. He really credits her with helping that movie come together, helping him figure out the structure of that movie and everything. She also does a heavy uncredited rewrite on Tootsie. So Hoffman has this sort of sense of owing her a favor. You know, there are a lot of stories like that of movies that were kind of teetering on the edge, could have collapsed into madness, where Elaine May comes in and fixes them at the last second. What was the movie we were talking about where she came in and she was like, this movie's good? A Swing Shift. They wanted her... Swing Shift shift that's

right to write the reshoots for swing shift and she had her famous line that is so good where she said if you reshoot this movie in this way you will disrupt the entire ecosystem of the film right which we just think about all the time she's someone and i think it speaks to what makes her good as a director where it's just like all of her movies have a very well-maintained ecosystem. They are very much in tune with themselves. On one hand, I understand people dislike Ishtar because it's just like, if you're just not in on the first page,

it's never going to win you over, right? Yeah, I think also, apart from the fact that people were going in and being told, boy, is this thing a stinker? Like she has her famous line. If everyone who hated Ishtar had actually seen it, I'd be a rich woman, right?

Like, you know, like a lot. But I do think you can boil it down as like, hey, they're these dumb lounge singers who are, you know, they get caught up in like a CIA. Like you can try to explain what ishtar is about but i do think the movie takes a long time to reveal itself in and like so you're just sort of puzzled by it for so much of the running time yes maybe i'm trying to i'm just trying to understand why it was so noxious apart from we will talk about all the sort of like press stuff

that yeah helped yeah um but but another key detail is that uh at this point in time in particular both baity and hoffman work very infrequently especially baity this is an era where a major movie star cannot make a movie for seven years and still be considered one of the biggest movie stars you know the world is just waiting for them to return baby is the king of that the right the the biggest one of all right yes right but but also this is the period where hoffman takes his longest leave of absence he doesn't make anything between tootsie and ishtar which is 82 to 87 he just does death of a sales death of a salesman which which i guess was pretty major and was on broadway and all that but yes he it much like pacino took a break like that in the 80s i don't know if deniro ever did i guess he's the sort of he kind of kept working

but yeah james conn took that long break hoffman pacino baby baby is the king of it in that baby baby had that kind of almost Daniel Day-Lewis thing where like whether or not he was actually making the movie he felt like the engine of the movie. Him being in a movie was just kind of a big deal. I mean that's still true obviously. If Warren Beatty did a movie today

it would be unusual. He's only done two this century. Three if you count the Dick Tracy special. You look at his uh filmography right and he like you know gets started in tv in the late 50s he starts making movies in the 60s he does a normal amount of movies in the 60s and 70s even if perhaps he does less than other stars who are working four or five movies a year, right? Yeah. But then you go into the 80s, and it's like Red's 1981,

Ishtar 1987. He doesn't make a movie for six years after making a film, a giant blockbuster for which he wins best director and stars in it and everything. Then after Ishtar, it's three years till Dick Tracy, Bugsy's the next year,

Love Affairs three years after that. The weirdest one. Four years to Bullworth, three years after that the weirdest one uh four years to Bullworth three years until Town and Country Town and Country and then it's 15 years until rules don't apply well right right I mean he's he's essentially retired now but yes but starting with the parallax view or whatever you know like that's where it's just like warren baity is the auteur of his career of his stardom of his screen image ishtar is very much wrapped up in that and he's using that to get elaine may a directing job and then he's meddling because he's a meddler the man's a meddler he's a famed meddler he's he's an obsessive perfectionist meddler

and an incredibly vain man who never feels happy enough with anything. Who happens to be devastatingly handsome and charming. Like, I mean, unfortunately, the man was dealt a full deck. Right. But also deeply insecure and sort of neurotic. All that. All that joy.

And then you combine that with Hoffman, who's also a perfectionist. Yes. And Hoffman, who's also a perfectionist, and Elaine May, who was also a perfectionist. Didn't she shoot something like 120 hours? I mean, I read one place where they said only Kubrick

shoots more. Mikey and Nikki is the most film that anyone has ever shot. Is that still true? It was certainly true at the time. I think it still is.

And she did a three-hour cut on that, right? And then the studio cut it down to an hour twenty? There's like a three-hour cut on all these, but this is the big factor. I mean, you're talking we were talking about this in Mikey and Nikki, like director, sorry, movie stars who have the reputation of sort

of also functioning like directors if they sign on to a film, right? Their tendencies, their star power, their brand is so strong that they become a major voice in the whole shaping of a movie. The big thing is that Beatty, after Reds, goes to Columbia and says, Elaine May is a genius. She has helped me out of a difficult situation twice, and both of those movies became beloved, you know, Oscar-winning hits. She deserves to get to make her blank check movie. He essentially says she's never been given the space to actually make a movie properly. She always is surrounded by the wrong people. She has never produced or supporting her.

I want to produce her next movie. It's whatever she wants to do. I will star in it. So I will lend my star power to it. And the terms are, she gets whatever she wants, no questions asked. I mean, that's literally what he says to the head of Columbia,

who was a friend, you know, who's like, I want to be in the Warren Beatty business, whatever. But he goes, the deal is, anything Elaine May wants, no questions asked. At that point, Warren Beatty has only directed Reds and Heaven Can Wait. He's only produced four movies total.

So aside from how controlling he is on every movie he's in, there's four movies he's produced. They're Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, and Reds. So inarguably, his track record was perfect as a producer all four of those movies are nominated for best picture make a ton of money shampoo wasn't but you know shampoo was a hit shampoo wasn't nominated for best picture no but it got us you know it was a big hit it was still a it was a big movie uh but anyway he's like i know how to I'm going to keep this thing on rails. So he goes out to dinner with her and the Columbia guy and goes like, what do you have? And she essentially says, I was watching those Road to movies the other night. They're funny.

Someone should try to do a modern one of those. But is that an idea? And they were like, yeah, keep going. Keep going. And she was like, well, I don't know, like Reagan intervening in the Middle East. And they were like, sure, keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Right. like reagan intervening in the middle east and they were like sure keep going keep going keep going right well also i think she's the one thing she does pitches and it would be funny if if warren if you were the bob hope if you were the the goof rather than the suave guy like you know rather than the crosby right hoffman was the suave ladies man because that for that was the first thing forky said when i put this on she was like wait a second baity is the the doofus and look at he's like a foot and a half taller than like and i'm like yeah that's the joke that's what's funny what's most incredible about this movie to me not get ahead of it but like there is a certain odd strain of sincerity and feeling she ingests into this whole thing where i genuinely just buy baity being a doofus and hoffman being a ladies man even though it defies all logic

like i think i think baity is so good in this movie he's so funny he's so fucking funny in this that's why it works but it's also like despite the fact that this guy is so good looking he he plays such a dope that you're like well yeah no one would go out with him it's true like despite the fact that this guy is so good looking he he plays such a dope that you're like well yeah no one would go out with him it's true there's he he just like it's that kind of christopher reeve or whatever thing where like he manages to get tap into the sort of big galoot yeah you know like that he does not really have but like you know he can use his body and the way they dress him and style him but also it's just's just, it's a very, I think it's a very, very funny performance. Hoffman is the suave guy.

You know, Hoffman played suave guys in that weird way. But like in All the President's Men, like, you know, he's arrogant. He's an arrogant guy. Lenny, All the President's Men, you know, like, so that's more believable. He's good. He's good too. But there's also just, there's that famous story that when Pakula asked him to do all the president's men, he said, which guy was better looking in real life? I want to play that one.

You know, I do think Hoffman had this chip on his shoulder of being the least attractive of that generation of leading men. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, and he was. Yeah. You would make fun of his big nose, I guess, right? Like that was sort of a butt of jokes in the day, yeah. Right.

And I think he was an actor. Yes. When I teach acting class, I always bring up the story about, especially when we talk about sense memory, and the story about Dustin Hoffman being in the hospital room when his dad's dying. It's the last moments of his dad, and his brother looks at him, and everybody's sad, and Hoffman's looking around the room, and he's staring at this, and he's staring at that, and his brother said, Dusty, what are you doing? And he said, shh, no, no, no. I want to remember this. And what he was doing was taking in the smell of the antiseptic, the coldness. That's hardcore acting.

And I've always considered Beatty to be more of a movie star. Yeah. Natural, camera loves him type movie star. Yeah. Natural, camera loves him type movie star. Yeah. And so you've got to admit that May, you know, balked the trend by having them switch things. But are either one of you fans of Elaine May and Mike Nichols? Big time.

Okay. So the whole thing was awkwardness. Yeah. Everything was based on discomfort. I can remember reading a story, and this was years and years and years ago, but it might have been in The New Yorker, and they were reviewing Nicholson May and the show that they did for nine, ten months on Broadway,

and the show that they did for nine, 10 months on, on Broadway. And how at the end of the first act, they do this Pirandello sketch that it just left audiences mystified and went right to a blackout, but they achieved their purpose because it was so awkward and so discomforting. I think that plays a lot into what she thinks is really funny because there aren't joke jokes in this movie. There are funny lines. The only joke joke that I even wrote down was the thing with the buzzards.

Was it being surrounded by buzzards, even though they're still alive? And he says, you mean they're here on spec? That, you know, but it almost stood out in the fact that, oh, hey. No, you're right. Here's a gag, everybody. The scene on the ledge of the building is so, I mean, Elaine May could have played that mom part.

That was the kind of stuff in the classic bit they did where Mike Nichols called his mom. Yes, where he's the rocket scientist. Right, where he's the rocket scientist and he says, oh, I feel awful. And she said, oh, darling, if I could believe that, I'd be the happiest woman on the planet.

There's not a joke in there, but there's brilliant observation in there. Well, also, I mean, one of the funniest lines in the entire movie to me is when they're complaining, they're stuck in the middle of the desert, and it goes like this and this and that, and our camel is lying down,

and he goes, well, you know, I mean, I kind of respect him for that. Yeah. I think this is, you are getting at something that, again, probably baffled audiences, right? They may have expected a madcap, you know, with Elaine May attached, even if, as you're saying, that's not really her style. Right.

Like, where is the fizzy dialogue? What's all this mumbling and cros talk and like weird kind of tangents like i don't get it i thought this was a a high stakes high concept comedy you know we have a saying in our family use sports don't let sports use you hi it's jeff merrick from 32 thoughts the podcast are you a sports parent rep sports travel sports whatever call it. If you're like me, you know that one of the great joys of having your kid or kids play sports is travel. You know, our families use sports to see different parts of the world, meet new people, and stay in a number of different places. Recently, we've started using Airbnb. The kids love it because it feels like a sleepover at a new friend's house, while my wife and I enjoy more space, a proper bed, and mostly a washing machine.

That really comes in handy for baseball trips. Trust me. In fact, it was on a baseball trip last summer when my wife sent me a text after the first night saying, Do you think we could do this? Look, if you've ever stayed at an Airbnb, you've probably wondered the same thing. Could our place be an Airbnb? And now that our kids have also discovered the joys of skiing, in addition to travel hockey and travel baseball, we're on the move even more. Well, our house just sits there. Why not make a little extra money to cover some costs, right? We have friends who travel south every winter

and they Airbnb their place. Why not? Look, if you want to make a little extra cash, and who doesn't need that these days, maybe your home could be the way to make it happen. Find out how at Airbnb.com. Well, here's another thing. It's like she was part of this legendary comedy duo.

You know, they played a lot of characters, but very often their dynamic was the same. Elaine May often played the high-status characters in Nichols and May's sketches. As an audience, you very quickly understood how to watch them or how to listen to them, how to get on their rhythms. Hope and Crosby, those movies were based around what those guys' public personas already were. They were very defined. were based around what those guys' public personas already were. They were very defined. When they sold, hey, it's Hope and Crosby on the road to blank,

the audience could do the math. And then when they showed up in the theater, that movie delivered exactly what they wanted to see in their head. You are exactly right. And one of the differences was, and I admired her for doing this, and I wonder, I haven't seen the director's cut, so I don't know. I realize it's shorter. Yeah, well, let's talk about this.

It's a couple minutes shorter. It's two minutes shorter, and I have seen no account of what the difference is. I really don't know what the difference is. What I've read said that there is very little difference. Yeah, yeah. It's the only version that's available to watch now. I also don't think it's an actual director's cut i

think it's branded as a director's cut yeah but i don't know if elaine may like was like i've been sitting on my cut for years it's more that they finally like mastered the movie yeah for blue you know like they got it all spruced up and yeah maybe she like trimmed you know but like it's not like a fucking blade right as we as we said, it was out of circulation for like 20 years. The VHS had long been out of print. It was never released on DVD. It was rarely shown on TV.

Richard Brody wrote an article in The New Yorker on the event of the movie is being aired this Thursday at 4 a.m. It's the first time it will have been on TV in three years. And that was seen as a historic moment well the road pictures the the big difference especially in storytelling the road picture started where bing and bob whoever whatever characters they were playing

had history together yes yeah we're in the middle of their relationship. This movie makes the choice to start and then flash back to how they came together, which she makes it work in the fact that they're sitting at the bar and, you know, and they're flashing back to how it happened. But that emphasizes the big difference in the fact that you're right, Griffin, Bing and Bob were always playing Bing and Bob. And you knew it, you knew who they were separately.

You knew who they were together. And this movie is not only giving you a new comedy team. You don't know, but the comedy team is made up of two incredibly self-serious and vain movie stars, Oscar winning, right? Movie stars who are playing against type right massive reputations

that precede them and are also playing the opposite of what they actually are which i think is an immediate moment of like pushback from audiences and also neither of whom are singers whereas they're both piano players yes right yes they're both piano players but but those scenes god almighty the scene that you were quoting whether and and then that trope that that thread continues through the movie because just when they get in the worst trouble when they get in the most danger when they get they start making a song up about whenever they riff a song against me any single time oh that's good repeat that what did you just say when they're like it's always bad right the slowest part of the movie they don't do it yes there's like a half an hour yeah with all the intrigue and and that's where it kind of

bogs down because i think and and again i'm i'm you criticizing, although I've already established what I love about this movie. You've got this whole section in the middle where they hand the storytelling off to Charles Grodin and to Isabella Johnny. And you don't have those scenes where they start riffing a song. And I don't know how they kept from cracking each other up. Can we talk about the songs for a minute? Well, I want to get to it in a second because this is the last bit of business I

want to set up and then we can get into those first. Then there's two bits of business I want to do. Do your two bits. Give me your two bits and I'll give you one bit. Okay. There's two things. One, I forgot that there is one piece of rat-a-tat dialogue that I do love,

which is when the CIA agents are talking, they're like, the KGB are here, I recognize them. The one's dressed as Texans. No, the one's dressed as Arabs. The one's dressed as Texans or Arabs. And the guys from Turkish intelligence are here. Oh, the ones in the Hawaiian shirts. No, the Bermuda shorts.

The Hawaiian shirts guys are tourists. That's so fucking funny. To put some punctuation on that, David, the fact that they go through all these they said what about the guys in the hawaiian shirts is that they're they're tourists the people that pull guns on them are the guys in the hawaiian shirt they're so stupid right their appraisal is also wrong um the other thing is uh richard brody you mentioned he wrote that great uh account of her presenting ishtar at the Jacob Burns Center

up in Pleasantville. And I just want this quote that he transcribed from her where someone asked, like, do you like writing best, acting best, or directing best? I just have to read her line. It's so good. Here's Elaine May. They're really different parts of the brain. Writing is close to acting. In directing, you control. Acting, you can't control how good you are and you can't control how good you are when you write you can try to be good directing you can't really control either but you can think about it that's her take on what do you prefer the most she's essentially like uh yeah you really have no control in any of them but directing you're supposedly in control that's that's how she feels about the creative process. And she's a terrific actress.

She's great at everything she has ever done. But here's my point. They get over there and they start shooting. It seems to me that that section that we all love so much, that first 20 minutes, 30 minutes, it just has such an Elaine May feel to to it and then when it goes to the desert that's where it feels like she loses control okay so let me the picture let me give you some bits of business here clint because i did some digging i made a little more sense of a lot of this sort of

timeline development production stuff on this movie so the original pitch is as i was saying to baity and the head of columbia over dinner she starts spitballing stuff she goes it would be baity he's the dope the other guy's a womanizer will cast someone against type maybe it's hoffman right but baity is on board columbia they go like i don't know if this is a movie but also warren baity doesn't miss. Right. Let's see if he can get a second big person on board. They go to Hoffman. After she goes away, they give her some money to write the script.

She writes it. They bring it to Hoffman. They do a table read with Grodin as well. And Hoffman's got his like big mentor, who's a playwright. I forget the name of, but who was like his consultant on everything you know the name right um schlist schlister it's something like that yes um murray shiskel yes yeah his guru more or less yeah right and there's so many stories of a hoffman considering making a movie and then coming in with Shiskel and having so many notes that eventually people threw their hands up or movies that Hoffman did end up making four different directors go through it because no one wanted to play the Franklin Jell-O role.

Right, the owner. The owner of the team. And Ivan Reitman's response is, life is too short to work with Dustin Hoffman, which is pretty incredible because most of Ivan Reitman's career was based on him being able to wrangle incredibly difficult movie stars. Right, you're Bill Murray's. And he did a Redford movie.

He did like three Bill Murray's. He did a fucking Costner movie. And he just like dustin hoffman absolutely and hoffman like wanted to do it and he wouldn't but he yeah but the reitman is probably long enough in the biz to know there's a difference between him wanting to do it and him being ready to do what the script is and like show up on the right like it's like no there's gonna be a whole thing that follows right um so they bring it to hoffman and hoffman comes back after they do the table read with his uh uh shiskel or whatever his name is and um says here's my thought i think the first 25 pages of them in new york are great I think the movie should never leave New York. That's the real thing you have here. I know you conceived

this as a road to riff, but I think these characters that you've landed on this dynamic, this sort of exploration of people who have everything but talent, you know, these sort of marginal figures on the sidelines of the entertainment industry who no one ever considers, and if they do, it's in such a

mocking way, doing it with such compassion this is the movie here and elaine may pushes back and i think it's a little bit just because it's like we're in too deep now like well the whole thing we sold was the road to thing and i i'm interested in america and interventionist politics and i want to do all this stuff and they push back a bunch and eventually baity says look i have her back whatever she wants to do if she wants the movie to take place in ishtar it's taking place in ishtar and they assume that hoffman's gonna walk and he signs on instead right and his playwright friend asked him why and he said look i just don't know at this point i can't go another five years without making a movie right i i can't try to control this situation i'm gonna sign on because it's good

people in a vault and hope that it works he has a great quote that he gave to what jeremy uh mr beaks you know like where he's like it has a statement to make i love that movie it's far better to spend life being second rate and something you're passionate about than to spend life being first life being first rate something you're not passionate about. He just loves, as you're saying, he loves these guys. He loves the concept of these no-talent guys trying their hardest to be the next Simon and Garfunkel. So, right, that backs that up.

In interviews when people shit on it, he always goes like, look, it's a perfect movie, but I have no regrets about making it, and I would argue that the first 30 minutes of Ish are stacked up against any American comedy ever. And I agree. Right.

Yeah, I agree. So it's one of the rare cases where, especially in his leading man days, Hoffman just kind of throws his hands up and goes, let's see how this goes. The three of them get $12 million combined, which in today's dollars would be over 30 million dollars before any other costs of the movie are put down it's a lot of money columbia has the exact same uh sort of trepidations that hoffman did about the story and especially how difficult and expensive it was going to be to shoot but the head of columbia at that time despite uh you know on top of being uh you know feeling like he owed it to baity is also just like i'm gonna look like a fool if i say no to this someone else is gonna pick it up because it's

baity and hoffman and that's huge and i'll look even dumber if the movie ends up being a hit i guess i should just take the risk coca-cola owns columbia at this point in time they have some big deal with hbo where like their movies the financing for the movies is pretty much pre-sold by the HBO deal. So Columbia offers the three of them $12 million combined. I think it's like five for Beatty, five for Hoffman, two for Elaine May. And as the movie starts pre-production and they can see it's going to get big and expensive, you know, they have a hard time finding the right location to shoot and all this shit they offer to defer their salary and put it into back end points and columbia and coca-cola more importantly says no as like a status thing no we're a big studio we're coca-cola we own a movie studio now right we're not skimping we insist on paying you too much money it is it's

so wild that these fucking companies buy movie studios they're like so many guys do here you make movies uh we we make soda is that any is that similar to making movies we probably will figure it out right it's just the same with the fucking at&t guys coming to warner brothers and they're just like have you guys seen netflix you should do that you should do one of those do you have a netflix like get that going okay all right i'll be over here. Call me on the phone. I invented the phone.

Much like Coca-Cola, I expect that in two years, AT&T will go, this is so not worth it. Yeah, 100%. They'll be like, can we offload the fucking Warner Media? What is that?

Yeah, no, definitely. But this is the last thing I want to say before we get into the actual body of the movie itself, especially talking about that first New York chunk. The way they structured the shoot, Clint, which I think plays into what we're talking about, is that they shot all the Ishtar stuff first. It was supposed to be eight weeks in Morocco

shooting the Ishtar, then they go to New York and shoot all of that stuff and focus on the songs and everything else. And instead, of course, the Ishtar portion of the shoot ballooned out of control. Elaine May, who is incredibly neurotic, was terrified of the sun. So I think a big part of her not being hands-on directing actors was, by all accounts, she wrapped herself from head to toe in gauze and wore a giant hat and sunglasses. They always said she looked like a stormtrooper on set and had a horrible toothache and wouldn't go see a dentist yes was like hiding in a tent the whole

time far away from them but the other part of it is so much of her process i think is just like this kubrick you know fincher-esque just do a hundred takes i'll know it when i see it i don't want to tell you what to do i want you to keep doing until i see the thing i want to see and i think like especially baity but you know they're just baffled they're just like what are you talking about just give me some direction over here i've done you know i'm a fucking movie star like this is where the like well she's not doing anything i'm in air quotes is coming from i feel like yeah because baity's saying like she doesn't know how to direct i mean i don't know what to do i think performance wise i always have heard that baity is a guy who obsessively demands 100 takes for every single shot he's in well sure all these movies take fucking forever to make yeah right i think his frustration came from i don't know if

elaine is directing this properly i think hoffman wanted more hand holding as an actor um but the new york stuff was shot last uh that's you know what that blows my mind right right you'd think that was the good early days yeah because the reason it blows my mind is because if they were going to disassociate and if they were going to say let's just let's just you know go through the motions and get this over with, it would have happened, you know, when they were shooting in the desert. And then because the first 20 minutes, 30 minutes, God, they're so into it and they're so on it. Oh, that really does amaze me. That's amazing.

It's fascinating in terms of energy, but let's get into this because this is, I think, so often about if I ever were to direct a movie in my life, especially if it was a comedy, but not only if it was a comedy. I think so much about the structure of this film and the structure of the first 30 minutes as its own mini movie almost and what it accomplishes and how it accomplishes it in such an unconventional way. almost and what it accomplishes and how it accomplishes it in such an unconventional way. The opening of the movie is hearing them riffing the song lyrics over just black titles, right? Yep. So funny. So you're getting this tone setting. It's like listening to a Nichols and May album. You're just getting into the rhythms of the patter, right? And the comedy. And, you know, as you were saying, Clint, like, I don't think it's coincidental that all of Elaine May's movies are about duos. And they're about duos with incredibly unhealthy relationships and the awkwardnesses that existed between them.

You know, it's two couples in the first two movies and two male friendships in the last two movies. But it's always about her mind comes back to sort of i think the same genesis that created the nichols and may sketches right the dynamics of two people driving each other crazy who also can't get away from each other um and you just set that up with that opening and then you have like six lightning fast rocket sled minutes where you see them writing you see them performing you see them outside the tower records complaining about the fact that they could be as big as simon and garfunkel the dangerous business is as good as bridge over troubled water and all of it quick quick cuts very short scenes yes boom snippet boom snippet oh now we're over here now we're over there like like sentence

fragments a thing i feel like people don't even attempt to do in movies that much. I mean, we talked about it a little bit recently. Castaway sort of does a similar thing where you're just getting these little glimpses, fragments, and knowing that it's spanning much longer time. And Lady Bird did it well recently. But this is just like, you're getting these snippets.

The way three minutes in, the film is already canonizing dangerous business as this important work right do you not understand we could be dangerous business is as good as any of those songs so then they do the show they that's the single right they call up jack weston right they cold call this so funny oh god so fucking good in this movie hysterical in this obviously he's in a new leaf he's he's a long time elaine may collaborator yes but just like curious pouring alcohol into his coffee right his hands shaking trying to take notes he can't distinguish between what the name of the band is and the name of the location is and all that sort of stuff and then he goes there sees their show kind of doesn't give a shit and says the only place i

could get you booked in is like northern africa right yeah well no wait there's one other thing here i can't remember what it is honduras oh honduras honduras right it's honduras right and they say northern africa is safer that all happens but i can only give you the airfare from the canary islands right right you have to get yourself the rest of the way out there right that all happens in six minutes of the movie, right? So that's a really efficient six minutes of the movie. Then they walk into the bar and the flashback starts six minutes in. They walk into the bar. He goes, I need some time alone to think. They're having this depression moment of, is it not going to happen for us? If this is the best deal we can get, is it not going to happen for us?

You already feel like you know these guys really well, right? So they walk into this bar. Beatty follows him in because he's such a dope. He fundamentally doesn't know how to let his friend be alone. Yeah, I want to be alone. Oh yeah, well, it's the only bar that's open. He's so funny

when he's just standing there. That's what cracks me up go on sorry so then you do the wayne's world flashback to how they met and now you have like 15 minutes of table setting of just we're going to make you feel like you have lived an entire lifetime with these guys and i will say right i love this this is probably the first point of which audiences were like i thought we were going to morocco what's happening here which i will say in a bad way no seeing this movie at the 92nd street why knowing so little about it other than the poster and that it was always called a disaster when i'm watching the film at this point i go was i getting this confused with another movie

is this not about them going to the middle it just feels like there's no way this movie ends up with them in some like uh espionage caper um but yes in terms of how it was sold this is incredibly confusing audiences why is it taking so long to get to the point um but i think what it does is unlike a lot of fish out of water movies it really makes you feel like you've seen an entire movie's worth of these guys' normal life before you put them out of water. Whereas a lot of movies, it's like, you're already caught up in the plot machinations. When you're establishing the characters, you're so aware of the fact that the status quo is going to get disrupted. This movie lulls you into a sort of false movie that it's not actually going to be. Even if that is probably the movie it should be.

But you go into this extended sequence and what is essentially like a love story, right? This platonic love story between these two men, these two guys who don't understand that they don't have it. Right? They have everything else. They have the work ethic. They have the determination. They even have a wife and a girlfriend. Yeah. The brilliant Carol Kane and Tess Harper. Carol Kane's so funny. You have two Academy Award-nominated actresses playing their completely ignored partners. Right. Without a joke

between them. Yeah. There's not a joke between them. And when it's establishing him as an ice cream man who's making up songs and is thinking so hard about song lyrics that he completely blows by these kids wanting to buy ice cream. And then I know we're summarizing, but I've got to point this out because my hardest laugh in the entire movie, and this is the God honest truth, is Hoffman has made up the song for the couple that had been coming to the restaurant for 60 years. And the song lyric says, I'm leaving some love in my will. I swear to God, if I'd been drinking milk, it would have shot out my nose. I would have done a Danny Thomas thomas uncle panus is coming that to me was and that is so brilliant it's it's a great gag and i love i absolutely love that that whole sequence of him him playing the piano and even their first couple of gigs highlights a threat. The musical numbers in this movie are brilliant.

Are incredible. I don't mean good, but they are not so bad. They're not good, and they're not so good that they're not bad. And it's Paul Williams. It's Paul Williams. It's Paul Williams. We should mention it's Paul Williams, who is a pop star in his own right, is a very successful songwriter for others at this point,

has become also a bit of a public figure, is acting in things, is doing Battle of the Network stars or whatever. Has created a persona yes for himself and also is the main songwriter for the muppets which has a very similar attitude of these odd balls trying their hardest to put on a show and that that was another big cost for this movie where every song you hear in this film and you almost always only hear a line or two he wrote the entire song right and baity and uh and they made them learn the entire song play the entire song yes right i mean they

shut down production for weeks so that they could learn the songs one of the things that i have always said about this movie and my sons will blast me when they hear this because I have been assured they listen. This would make the funniest damn Broadway musical that ever was. Because the songs wouldn't take themselves too seriously. As long as you never had a song that was a serious love song. never had a song that was a serious love song or a, you know, if you just played those little snippets,

the, the movie is at its most brilliant when they're performing. I mean, there's, there's the one wardrobe of love where I think the lyric is. I said, honey, don't you know, there's a wardrobe of love in your eyes.

I said, why don't you come inside and see if there's something your size. And it's Hoffman playing the piano and Beatty out of focus, just eating an apple and tossing off lyrics. And Hoffman just turns to him and he goes, man, when you're on, you're on. They're very supportive of each other. This movie is all about partnership and collaboration. This is the healthiest relationship she's ever depicted. And you get to that that

sequence i mean it's right it's like tess harper and uh uh cocaine uh no i'm sorry it's it's harper and baity at that restaurant and he's complaining about the fact that he was fired as the ice cream truck driver right because he failed to notice that kids wanted to buy ice cream he was too busy singing his rum Raisin song. Then Hoffman is singing this song for this old couple who he promised, if you come back for your anniversary, I'll write you this song that ends up being about their death, right? And their faces!

Right. Oh, it's such a good Elaine May, like, the camera just slowly pans across the table, and you know what everyone's reaction is going to be, and you're just waiting to see what's the next face you know what are the different variations of surprise and fright and what have you um but then hoffman goes into this fight with carol cain where he refuses to marry her because he's so caught up in his career right yeah and then the waiter passes him the note from baity saying i'm also a songwriter I love your song and Hoffman just lights up he knows nothing about this guy he doesn't know this guy's

credentials right and it's like the prettiest girl in high school just asked him out and he sees Beatty waving to him from the back of the room like a big galoof and then it just cuts to them the place is closed all the the tables are turned over and we have another half hour can we have just another oh that's good that's good so give me one half hour like the last hour yeah the power oh god and and it's just kane and harper sitting at the table just watching like probably six drinks in and you're like these women are done they're done it's it's they're never gonna get as much love from these guys as these guys have for each other uh because they they indulge each

other's dreams and then just all this songwriting is so fucking good leading to harper dumping baity and hoffman having to give him the the talk of encouragement that great scene of them walking down the street i mean all these scenes are like 30 seconds long. They all feel like three panel comic strips, right? Like you're just getting these little glimpses, but they both have to talk each other through breakups. There's the scene where they go to the bar and Beatty is like,

well, it's easy for you to pick up a girl. You know what I mean? You walk in, you got the looks, you know? He's the hawk, man. He's the hawk. You know, you got that face, you know? He's the Hulk, man! He's the Hulk! You know, you got that face, you know? Real mean-looking, but with character. Bar and Beatty just with, like, a fucking Mount Olympus-ass chin.

Like, the most beautiful marble-cut face. And these, like, crystal blue eyes. But that scene where Hoffman is, like, improvising a song for this random woman at a bar and baity's just standing behind them with her friend and he just doesn't know how to say anything they're just staring at each other uncomfortably and then you know he's saying like it doesn't matter she never understood you it doesn't matter and then of course when carol kane dumps hoffman he's suicidal he goes off on the ledge and that scene is so sweet uh i didn't i didn't think i could get here in time that's why i called the cops you know and when that's exactly what he wanted him to do he wanted him to call the

cops you know well he didn't even go out on the ledge like he was like uh you know in his sitting in his window saying he's on the ledge like all of that is so like i don't know there's a lot of like truth in the ego of the character he doesn't go out into the ledge until the cops show up to talk him off the ledge until then he's got a pillow waiting uh resting against the windowsill and he carries the pillow out with him on the ledge and then his parents show up and the parents are so telling the rabbi don't forget the rabbi of course the rabbi but his parents show up and the parents are so telling. And the rabbi. Don't forget the rabbi. Of course the rabbi. But his parents show up in like fur, you know, and like the finest wares. And so clear because you've already had the scene where Beatty's talking after his Tess Harper breakup about how like, you know, the plant shut down. They lost all their jobs in the Midwest.

So they moved to New York because he wanted to be a songwriter. That he grew up from a much more modest, you know, family where no one believed in him. And Hoffman has probably been indulged and supported beyond belief his entire life. You know, that ledge scene is so much a May and Nichols. Yes. Sketch. There's the there's the line where he's where he's trying to talk Hoffman in off the ledge. And he says, it's down. It takes a lot of nerve to have nothing at your age.

It's so... That's so... Oh, God. That's such a great... So many great backhanded compliments like that throughout the movie that are just so perfectly inept. I don't mean to be the buzzkill

because I love this. I'm more trying to understand why this thing was so reviled. Are people mad maybe that like baity is playing a dope where they're like don't try and fool us warren like we know you're fucking warren baity like is that part of it that people are just like you can't smuggle this past us you trying to sort of de-glam like i'm just trying to understand i think it is when people walked in maybe with that that but i think it doesn't take long for the two of them to win you over.

I agree. I agree. Yeah. That they really are Lyle and Chuck. I can remember the first time I saw it. I went, wait, why did they make the choice of him being the schmuck? I think there is some resistance there. But I think that goes away.

No, i find it completely disarming but i think it probably also had to do with the whirlwind of press leading up to it and how much this was framed as ego indulgence out of control but is it also just that it's been five years since i'm sorry six years since a baity movie and same you know hoffman it's been a while too but Beatty especially the last time he did Reds he's so fucking hot in that movie he went to like is it just that where they're like excuse

me we've been waiting on a movie where you're sexy and cool this is not what the doctor ordered like I'm just trying to understand I'll say I think that's a part of it I do also think and perhaps it's it's washed away a little bit but I do think there's a bit of it i do also think and perhaps it's it's washed away a little bit but i do think there's a bit of resentment with very serious actors do comedy you know yeah that's right

that's what i'm sort of i guess trying to drill down at is like right is it just that kind of chip on shoulder like stay in your lane baby i think that's right if i wanted a comedy yeah i'd call you know eddie murphy whoever well the pauline kale review is like vicious and she says If I wanted a comedy, yeah, I'd call Eddie Murphy, whoever the big star is. Well, the Pauline Kael review is vicious, and she says, I don't understand why this isn't Steve Martin and Bill Murray. You can imagine Steve Martin and Bill Murray doing this in every scene, and it would actually be funny. But what's funny about it— Go see a movie with them then, Pauline. Right, I think that's part of the magic of this movie is getting two guys who aren't by their very nature comedians and like

baity had done heaven can wait but heaven can wait it's like a light comedy that's about him being a charming guy you know it's about him being a hot doofus right he's hot but but for most of it he's not perceived by people he's in the body you know so i think he's great you know i think he's very funny he's great in that so funny in that i i think the framing of it of the movie not pretending that he isn't warren baity the comedy coming out of he can't be warren baity versus this movie where it's like this guy can't get laid i think was just a bridge too far for people a certain degree i think it's we've talked about the thing where like for so long every time meryl streep tried to make a

comedy the critics all said like meryl can't do comedy stop trying to do comedy you shall not pass do not even try you can't do everything yes yeah definitely that i mean it's it's telling that he doesn't do another comedy for 11 years his next comedy is bulworth which is a bananas movie and performance but like after this he's like fine i'll do dick tracy i'll just be literally a guy whose jaw is drawn with a set square who shoots bad guys who has no internal care like he'll just that you want me to be like a cartoon handsome man that's what i'll do and then he does bugsy which is a terrible movie but But again, it was a big prestige-y, like I'm playing this serious guy, this major figure.

I'm tortured. I'm handsome. I'm a gangster. That movie stinks. He meets his wife and then does a movie about how much he loves his wife. And am I wrong in thinking that Hoffman's direct movie following this is Rain Man?

Oh, that's a good question. That sounds right. That sounds plausible, right? Rain Man's right around there. That he just immediately goes to what everyone wants to see him do, which is just like Hoffman commit too hard to something. You're right. Next year.

Right? So it's just like, I think people didn't like them doing this. And I think the buy-in on it where it's not like, I think people didn't like them doing this. And I think the buy-in on it where it's not, like, I disagree with the Pauline Kael thing of, oh, it's funnier if it's Murray and Martin. No, Murray and Martin means it's less work. You walk into the movie, much like Hope and Crosby, already having their comedic personas, which have been honed for decades, in your back pocket. This movie is asking you to actually engage with them as real people, which is part of the gambit, that you actually need to care about these people

and feel stakes when they're talking each other off a ledge, which can only be done if they're built as characters and not just extensions of comedic personas. And I also think the fact that it's two very self-serious, vain, dramatic actors imbues it with a kind of weight and a seriousness every time they talk about their music and their craft. Which is the main thing that they latch onto in this movie is the weird kind of poetry of people who have everything but talent. But they have the gift of not knowing that they're never going to be good. but talent but they have the gift of not knowing that they're never going to be good i was i've been reading uh john cleese's book on creativity justin got it for me it's it's it's it's not a

very creatively titled book it's just called creativity but there's a point in there where it says you know creativity is not the same as the urge to create. Sure. People may have the urge to create, but heaven forfend that you ever say that somebody doesn't have a skill at this or a skill at that. You can't say that. But the thing that gets me about these guys

is they are successful on a certain level and can't live with it. When they do their performance in Marrakesh at the Shea Casablanca, they kill. People love what they're doing, the covers. They're doing their songs, and they're doing their headbands, and they are really into it. And yet they get this standing ovation this this uh i don't know if he's a sheik or a sultan or a whatever he is wants to book him to come entertain at his house and they say we're a hit they succeed on that level but they want more they right they want to be in the window at tower Records. Yeah, the Simon and Garfunkel thing runs all...

Simon and Garfunkel should have gotten a credit. They get mentioned so many times in this, to the point where I thought, I wonder what this movie would have been if they had hired Simon and Garfunkel to play these two characters. That would be funny. That's the only counter,

and it's not even a counter to what you were saying griffin but whereas i think i think the thing that sunk this movie was the press i think that that was what doomed it and i'm speaking from personal experience i've already owned up to the fact that i let it you know talk me out of it and and every one of those things in the press was the budget. The budget's out of control. And a big, whatever, a third, 40% of that budget went to pay Hoffman and Beatty and Elaine May. Not that that was so unusual.

Having two big superstars in it maybe was. Yeah, yeah. But if that is what doomed the movie what if they had made it with matthew broderick and bruce willis or you know you know sure maybe it would have been uh given a little bit more slack if it hadn't been a 55 million dollar movie if it had been a $25 million movie. Yes. But that wouldn't have necessarily made it a better picture.

Let's also say the deal structure and the salaries are pretty similar if you map it onto modern numbers as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where it's like, here is Tarantino and two of the biggest stars in the same movie. You're going to have to pay for it. You're going to have to give them creative freedom. But no one questions that because the movie worked right if it doesn't work people say how dare you pay hoffman and beatty to be in this i will right that's right

that's fair that's fair i will say i mean there's the other context that when they get the deal guy mcgillawane is in charge of columbia and he was warren beatty's publicist like in the old yes so he is like like, their pal, and he's like, yeah, okay, sure, give them whatever they want. Right, you know, like, and then while the movie's getting made, he gets fired,

and David Putnam is installed, and David Putnam is like, this thing's a stinker. Let's loop back around to this. Okay. Because the Putnam thing has to be its own sort of chapter. Yeah.

Okay. I think we should go to ishtar because you get the the window so he talks him off the ledge it cuts back to the bar they're out of the flashback let's do it let's go to ishtar and at minute 25 the movie essentially starts for the second time right it's the sequence that most movies would have used as their cold or this could be five minutes in. Like after Jack Weston is like, well, there's this. And then it's like, okay, cut to this.

Yeah. Really, really quickly, I just want to say, because I don't think we get as much of it in the next section of the movie, the fashion, the 80s fashion. Like we've said, the headbands. But like the suit jackets jackets like it is amazing everyone is dressed in this new york section to a t it's so perfect i i was like pausing and taking like pictures with my phone of like looks because i was straight up like this is fucking amazing and

i just wanted to throw that in there i didn't want to derail the bands at the song mart oh that's the what the uh screaming hunkers and the swing and the teachers what was it teacher's daughter those they're they're dressed it is it's hysterically funny that's also such a good cut when you have like montage all these full bands and then it's just rogers and clark with a bongo drum on a stand you know um uh baity's uh uh ear muffs and with the furry like he's got that like furry fedora yeah it's one of the best looks when they're outside in the winter but yes then you do this hard cut to Ishtar, right? Which is like, it feels like the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark or something. Suddenly it's an entirely different movie.

And I feel like a lot of comedies that are fish out of water start with the serious thing like this. Then they go like, but where were those two men come from? And then you do the comedic cut to here are two goofuses yeah or or another one's we're never going to ishtar right right cut and they're getting off i'm not 100 bucks there's no way yes after that you could do that right this is like 20 minutes of presenting two pathetic guys to you making you care for them and then saying now never mind they going to go get caught up in an international espionage case.

Right. But now it's like dead serious, sweeping score, these beautiful vistas of the desert, and there's the map that could help liberate the people of Israel. Yeah, it's, right, it is maybe one too many things to keep track of, you know between the the map and the fbi the cia i mean you know what i mean like i don't know i think the convolutedness is the

point that's part of the joke but i maybe that's kind of you know you do you do kind of just have to be like i don't know who cares you know like rather than trying right track yeah the the i mean i i feel like the groden character is where they most successfully set the audience expectations for this because he's sort of like jk simmons and burn after reading comparison i was saying like the point right the point is i don't understand any of this the the ending of this movie burn after reading is the same ending where he's like explaining it on the guys like what and he's like look it doesn't matter anyway we have to uh close the book yeah and and has become a big supporter that's the single yeah that's the same yeah yeah right but now this movie is like whereas before the movie has been moving so fast but with like backstory and character development movements

yes now it does slow down it's slowing down but it's also loading us with a lot of plot information you know they get to the airport they get their passport stamped immediately isabella johnny's there pulls up her shirt to reveal that she's a woman i a bit that i never fully get that they're all like this is obviously a teenage boy. I'm like, is it obviously a teenage boy? It kind of looks like a lady to me. Yeah, it kind of looks like international superstar Isabel Bichon.

And of course, she's like dating Warren Beatty at the time. That's another thing that'll hurt you in the press, obviously, is like, oh, he's got his ingenue girlfriend in the movie. Like, you know, all right, Warren. Right, who at this point

has already been nominated for two Academy Awards and held the record for 30 years as the youngest ever best actress. Is it Winslet that knocks that off? Or someone? I think it's Kate. No, it's for lead. It's Keisha Castle-Hughes, I think, is the youngest. Oh, she's the youngest

first-time nominee. Oh, that's crazy. Fair enough. Weird bit, though. Wow. Yes, very weird bit. It gets that's crazy. Fair enough. Weird bit, though. Wow. Very weird bit. It gets repeated later on. Later on, except it's Warren Beatty wrestling with her. Are those breasts?

Yeah. She kisses him, and it reminded me of the Black Adder scene. Well, Bob. You're a boy, right? Bob. But she plays an important part if you're still trying to make the connection to the road pictures.

Because she's basically Dorothy Lamour. She's the woman that comes between the two of them and kind of drives a little bit of a wedge between them and doesn't get resolved until later in the movie, which was pretty typical for the Hope and Crosby movies. They were always buddies, but they're always kind of competing for the same woman. And while they don't really, and that's a big part of this relationship too.

I think you've got Hoffman saying, you know, and later on where he says, oh, she chose him, you know, and he's obviously jealous. My girl. No, I think, you know, that that whole my girl. No, she's my girl kind of thing. I do like watching it. I feel like, you know, this bit you go like, what kind of gay panic shit are they gonna get into but both times i think they thread the needle pretty well yeah right i mean as weird as the boob in the airport moment is hoffman's response is i'm not gay look i i'm not apologizing i'm not

proud of it that bit murders me i'm not judging he's a bear he's embarrassed like look i wish i was gay that'd be very cool of me right he's embarrassed that he's straight but then he corrects it with like but i'm not gonna apologize right and then and then with baity it feels like he's having like sort of like a moment of self-discovery yeah he doesn't rebel against it and he has a thing where he's like you're're such a soft combatant. Your body's so soft. Your complexion. I mean, what do you do to your skin? You know, but it's an odd double beat, just especially because Isabella Johnny reads very feminine, despite the fact that she's wearing male clothes. And they talk a lot about how they had her redub most of her dialogue to lower her pitch.

It doesn't really convince you. She's a very famously beautiful actress. close and they talk a lot about how they had her redub most of her dialogue to lower her pitch it doesn't really convince you she's a very a famously beautiful actress yes very striking yes it's also just another strange element of this movie obviously her and baity are together as you said david but like if you're if you're looking at her as as the dor Lamour of the movie, Clint, to cast this very serious, art-house French ingenue, who is mostly known for her tragic pathos in the role, and play it entirely straight is an interesting calculation. And it's not until the end where she says, I think they're amazing. You know, she's fallen for both of them. Which I think is a lovely moment. Yeah.

But it's also, up until that point, I mean, there's that scene where she's talking to the guys and they're saying to her, like, you need to take these two guys out. And she has that sort of pause of, like, I understand the correct choice is to let two men die instead of a thousand. But that doesn't make it any easier. Right. You know? Yeah. And I think she plays it. She plays it well.

Yeah. Yes. But but it's not giving a comedy performance, which I like, but is another thing that probably makes people go, what the fuck is this movie? Yes, definitely. But yes, she she has askedffman for his passport so she can travel uh to try and gives him the backpack which he doesn't realize is the map um is that that's the thing you should do at airports right even still to this day right just swap backpacks with the stranger give a stranger a passport yes absolutely that's just

like that's just the thing we all should do but then groden comes in almost immediately after that right because they and steals the movie yes i mean she convinces them she convinces hoffman it's gonna be very easy to get new passports then you cut to the embassy which is surrounded by armed guards and the guy's like absolutely not absolutely not by monday what have we done oh and then there's such a good like three panel comic strip gag where hoffman gets up and performatively because he's still pretending like he was mugged punches the wall he punches a hole through the wall because the ishtar embassy is so bad then you see a guy poke his head out and then when they go into the shot reverse shot of their

coverage you see the guy in the other office trying to repair the wall yeah and the reaction to the guys in the background while all this important stuff's going on yes kills it kills so funny so funny but now they think like oh hoffman's gonna be stuck baby's gonna have to do the show without him baby is in over his head i mean it's one of those things that that uh hoffman says to carol kane when they're breaking up of just like you don't understand i need to be there for him he cries like once an hour he's so protective of this guy. But so Beatty goes off. Hoffman feels like I'm just going to be stuck in Morocco

for the next week or whatever. But then Charles Grodin finds him at this bar and circles him like a hawk. Yeah. Grodin's so funny. Handles him so brilliantly. So good. I could watch a whole movie about the Grodin character.

Like, not that I need to to but you know what i mean just him being a bumbling cia agent is another that's great let me watch that too it is it is the only reason the ishtar section of the movie stays afloat as far as i'm concerned yes you're exactly right he's the he they give him the best gags. Right. And he basically is the plot driver. And he frames it perfectly. I mean, his reactions are the right comedic grounding for these two guys shouldn't be in this movie. His befuddlement, his anger, his sort of like sliminess. fact that uh you know he understands the ego of a failed entertainer so badly that he knows the play is to make hoffman feel like he is important right that he's a major figure even though to everyone else he's saying these guys are pawns the guys don't matter they're just the two guys who happen to be in the place at the time. And the scene where he meets him in the restaurant

and all the waiters are spies. And as soon as Hoffman walks past them to get to the table, they're like, you know, holding up radioactive Geiger counters and trying to find Lin on him. And then they snap back into character. It's something like you would see in a Mel Brooks movie. I mean, it's hilariously funny. And the thing with the pen

well i was gonna say he gives him the pen because hoffman says he really likes it groan says like take it take it fine take my pen i don't care and then in that second dinner scene he starts repeating the things back to him word perfect he's like how do you know he goes the pen the pen the pen was a microphone i was fine to you and it doesn't do him again but the casualness of which he does it is so funny it's very offhand and that's a brilliant way for him to handle him and the fact that oh no no it's you know standard operating procedure you know but you're a spy now you know but but i mean even beyond the isabella johnny of it all i feel like that's one of the things that really drives the wedge in between the two characters,

is that Grodin takes him seriously, quote unquote. Which makes Hoffman feel like, am I better than him? Could I be a major player? Is he holding me back? I will say, I understand that this is crucial to the Hope and Crosby thing, right? They do need to have their second act divide. But because the first act is so good at selling me on them, I don't like it.

And maybe that's my problem with the second act. It's not a huge problem. You want them to be friends. I want them to be friends, but also I'm so in on their dynamic. Them disrupted is less interesting to me. I wanted more of their dynamic. The concert scene is great.

I mean, like, just Beatty floundering with his pre-scripted crowd work, even if they don't respond the way he wanted them to, you know? And it was like the Bugs Bunny cartoon where the crickets, you know, shh, shh, shh. Yeah. Yes. Well, he says, I'm going to play some songs by a couple guys you might have heard of named Simon and Garfunkel. Oh, you like them too and there's nothing in between some enchanted evening right smoke on the water the fact that people won't stop yelling out suggestions like it's some shitty improv show those are some good

ideas but then as you as you said clint hoffman comes in, saves the day, and they kill. Like, this should be enough for these guys. It's such a sweet moment. They killed, but that's not what they wanted to do. And to be honest with you, if you look back, Hoffman's performance in the piano in the Italian restaurant, I mean, if you look, he's got a tip jar full of money. Yeah. And people are liking him and responding to him maybe they're not loving

him and the waiter keeps crashing into him with silverware and shit um but you know they especially hoffman has met with a certain level of success if they would just be happy with that you you get the feeling that they would have killed it at shea casablanca for the whole whatever it was nine weeks eight weeks whatever it was they're gonna do right but it's it's this thing where it's like they don't want to be entertainers they want to be artists and they want to be looked upon with awe you know um so let's talk about that for a second because this to me is a very important point about this movie is the fact that you know i i admire the thing that makes them admirable is their passion they are passionate about this they are this is what they want

and it also stems into that whole lane may awkwardness thing is you are sure they're never going to be right. Big stars will not be realized. Yes. Right. But at the end of the movie, well, I don't want to give away the end of the movie.

Well, go ahead. It works. It works. They, and so I think it's a comment also on getting deep here on popular entertainment. I think it's, it's, it's a comment on the music industry, um, which is obviously in the 30, whatever, some years since this movie came out has just turned on its ear four or

five different times. But the fact that, you know know that nobody's ever going to say that they are incredibly talented and that they're brilliant performers uh and yet they do succeed i can remember the first time i saw the movie afterwards i said i don't know if they'll ever make a sequel but by god i'd really like to know what happened to them after this. I think that's part of her sort of like her edge in this movie is recognizing there's not a major difference between the American government and the American entertainment industry. Yes. That they are both just about big money bluffs, right?

They're people faking their way and convincing people they know what they're doing to higher and higher levels of power. The ultimate joke that they finally get a record deal and the record deal is with the CIA is just so deeply funny to me. The only way these guys can get an album released is through like a government overthrow yes yeah and david the the photograph of the the tower records window it maybe that was elaine may follow up because isn't there a sign on there that says something about now at a reduced price yes it's so funny i i was trying to find an image for for my background but this movie is not

yet here's this huge display in this in this tower records god bless them we miss them so r.i.p yeah um so obviously they're still the the government pushing it but they've got it at a reduced price so you know um well and it's placed place in the back in the discount rack like another can of peas we're jumping to the end but uh you know it's like you you start close up on oh here they are in the window the exact thing they dreamed of and then when you pull out you see the reduced price sticker but you don't see them and that's the last shot of the movie the credits roll over that and part of the beauty is you just imagine they don't care that the album isn't selling yeah they wanted that what they care about is that it got in that window yeah

yes right sure yes they don't care that they didn't get it through talent right that they got it through essentially blackmailing the american government they don't care that it didn't sell and no one likes it they don't want money they have no no they don't seem to they don't strike me as people who would know what to do with a lot of money anyway right like it's not like if they were suddenly rich they would be like oh great i want to buy this big house they just as you say they want the the ineffable cultural credibility of of a simon and garfunkel they want to be seen as big deals and that's why ho Hoffman is so susceptible to Grodin's conversations. But that drives the wedge in them.

I agree that this is the least exciting part of the movie. You get some fun bits like the Frewer Bermuda shorts thing. Like the finale of Casino Royale when they're running through the marketplace and there's cowboys and there's you know people in fezes and just the thing of like okay i'm spying on you oh but i'm not right yeah back and forth of that like oh i'm doing something normal always funny crushes it it's so funny it's so funny my god ben so funny. My God. Ben liked Ishtar. I liked Ishtar. I never saw it before.

I mean, it was weird as hell. Sure. I was like, what is this thing? And I knew it was bad going into it, or at least that was the... Right, you knew the rap. That's what everyone said about it. But there's so much great stuff in there.

It's just... And I... It's's challenging it doesn't hold your hand at all it doesn't so i so i saw this in this it was going to be released on blu-ray after being unavailable for 20 plus years and then sony canceled the blu-ray release like two months before it was supposed to come out then el Elaine May went and screened it a bunch of places. I think like that Jacob Byrne Center screening that Richard Brody wrote about, this nice Second Street Y screening that I

went to, and then it finally ended up coming out on Blu-ray a couple years later. And now it's back in, you know, the cycle of availability. I've got it. I bought it. But at this Q&A, someone asked Elaine May, because this is the next main section of the movie them with the blind camel right right warren baity is told you have to get

a blind camel which is probably code that he takes literally and so he ends up with this camel that can't see and you watch the camel performance in this and you just go like how did they pull this off she's not a director who relies on editing a lot other than in montage you're mostly having unbroken two shots where they're moving through a marketplace or an open desert and you're not cutting around the camel and the camel is somehow always doing the funniest possible thing at every moment looking at the wrong direction pulling them the wrong way. They're reacting to the camel perfectly.

And someone in this Q&A asked her, how did you get that performance out of the camel? And she went, I don't know. I don't remember. Cool. And whoever was interviewing went, wait, but no, but the camel hits like all these specific marks.

They're very like impeccably timed jokes around the camel. You don't remember. And she went, I don't know. I probably just did enough takes until it ended up doing what I wanted it to do, which is a great explanation of how this movie costs so much money. Yeah. Elaine May in the middle of the desert with two of the biggest movie stars alive and a camel just saying like, I don't know, we'll just keep shooting film until the camel gets one take right. The camel that they had so much trouble finding because you had to find a blue-eyed camel. You had to find a blue-eyed camel.

So they sent whoever it was, the production guys, to go find a camel. They go to this one. Wait, you can't put contacts in a camel? They're big. They're really big. It would be like a teacup. So they go to find a blue-eyed camel. And this guy, I don't remember what the amount was, but he says, yeah.

And they say, well, we're going to keep looking. You know, like they're in New York. They were trying to hardball a guy. Right. Yeah, so well, we'll come back. And so they can't find another blue-eyed camel. And they come back and say, okay, we'll take him. And they say, ah, it's too late.

We ate him. They ate him they ate him they did not realize how scarce blue-eyed camels are and in the four days they went looking for other camels the original seller ate him i will say bad move by the original seller if they're rare eat another camel why are we the blue-eyed one absolutely hey all right also maybe they're hungry well they might have been hungry and if so that you know that's how the cookie grumbles i mean that makes but that that whole scene where they're haggling for it um he's supposed to ask for somebody named muhammad so he goes to the the used camel dealership and says muhammad and like six guys say yo i i'm

muhammad they said uh i want to buy a blind camel yeah i can get you a blind camel do you want a lame camel and then the joke would you like a dead camel what kind of stock do they keep at this place that moment where the guys huddle with each other and they're like wait this guy likes shitty camels like we're gonna make a million dollars can i just read an excerpt this is from um peter biskin's uh warren baity biography a star which has some of the best writing on ishtar i i've ever read and there's a good vandy fair piece from 2010 where they excerpt just kind of the ishtar section of it um they they wanted to shoot the film in los angeles coca-cola had frozen assets in morocco that had to be spent there so coca-cola forced the movie

to be shot in morocco so they could spend that money right to be clear this is elaine may has made three small budget movies that are basically set in New York City. Like there is, I love her and she's so incredibly talented, but she's never made a movie this kind of scale. No. So I'll just read this verbatim. It's supposed to be 10 weeks in Morocco, right? But at the time Ishtar began production in October 1985, Morocco was not the most hospitable location for a major Hollywood film, especially one that featured a rich Jewish movie star.

On October 1st, Israeli warplanes had bombed the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization close to nearby Tunis. seized a cruise ship, the Achille Loro, and dumped passenger Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American overboard into the warm waters of the Mediterranean after shooting him dead as he sat in his wheelchair. To make matters worse, the Moroccan government was involved in a protracted struggle with guerrillas at the Palisaro Front. The air was alive with frightening rumors. We heard there were armed Palestinians headed our way, recalls Silbert, who was on board as the production designer. There we were with Dustin, who sort of stuck out.

According to one source, we had been looking for locations when this extremely agitated Moroccan general came rushing up. You have to wait for the minesweeper, he shouted. There are mines all around here. You could lose a leg. We had been walking for three days at that point everyone went white can you imagine if you're shooting the morocco section of the movie first and that's pre-production that happens what the mood must be like on the film yeah and she wasn't getting along with her stars the cinematographer and or or vilma Schickman, right, yes.

And, I mean, in some accounts I read, she, you know, her relationship with Beatty was starting to fall apart. Beatty started pushing back and trying to, I think, kind of defensively to cover his ass, wrestle control of the movie away from her. But it's the classic Beatty thing where the studio's like,

well, do you want to fire her? We'll fire her. And he's like, no, no, that would make me look terrible. No'm a feminist i'm a feminist yeah i'm a liberal feminist right i'll just try and ghost direct the movie kind of while the movie's happening which is what he does with bugsy it's like he and he has this line it's i think it's on bugsy where he's like yeah no i mean if i'm in the in front of the camera so much, I don't want to direct. That's too much work. And it's like, he obviously does all the work anyway. Like, he just wants to boss everything around.

He had a line before Rules Don't Apply when people asked him why it took him so long to make a movie, and he said, making a movie for me is like vomiting. You don't want to do it. You try to put it off for as long as you possibly can, and then when you actually do do it it's restorative and you feel better but yes i mean that's that's that's i just think i think he refused he does everything he can to avoid having to officially

take that job title even if whenever he stars in a movie he's going to end up doing a lot of the work. But the story of this movie is really, it's like you have these two massive egotistical perfectionist stars. This writer-director who's famous for kind of being very finicky on set and clashing with the studio and all that. And Columbia's like, I don't know, guys. And they're like, yeah like i don't know guys and they're like yeah we don't know either and like it just sort of happens without with everyone kind of knows it's going to go wrong it feels like yeah well you know while it's all coming together right you have a major company who are neophytes in the entertainment industry who have bought this studio and want to bigfoot everyone and be like no we make big movies we give our stars what they want that thing where

hoffman's like well maybe don't pay me as much and coca-cola's like we're gonna pay you more just for saying that like you know right just all that well maybe we shoot it in la absolutely not the the the plane is gas get to morocco now who cares if there's international conflict brewing across the entire world like and and it's just like ah they they they should have seen this coming they see it coming and then the minute it starts being tense the studio's like well this thing's a fucking disaster like we got to bury this thing right uh and this final section of the movie where it was supposed to be a much larger action sequence and baity essentially went to elaine may and was like I really don't know if

you know how to handle this you should let me direct it and she pushed back so they just shrunk the sequence to essentially one bazooka yeah apparently the the battle scene confrontation was a huge yes breakdown and yet they were still able to go back to New York and shoot the best shit ever! And shoot the best part of it ever! Everything about the production stories, it has to be that the Sahara was last, and that's where everyone's not talking to each other anymore. Fuck you.

Elaine May's like, can we move this sand dune? And people are like, what is she talking about? Camels are getting eaten, and you're like, oh my God. And instead they're like, anyway, let's get back to New York and knock out beautiful material. But I think something about the tensions being that high by the time they get to New York gives it this weird depth of feeling. You know, there's nothing flippant about it. But, I mean, Grodin is so much of this last chunk of the movie is just saved by the cuts to Grodin in that one office set. So good.

I mean, he's at like a phone console that looks like it's out of a laughing sketch. Right. Exactly. It does. And you imagine a lame ape just being like, more, more, just do shit. Just be funny. He's so funny. Well, they give him some of the best lines.

I mean, the thing about the tell the camel to move one foot thing about the, tell the camel to move one foot to the right. Tell the camel to move one foot to the right. Why? It's standing on my foot! You know, that, which is, I mean, kind of an expected thing, but it's still a great joke. And I have to go back because there's one thing we skipped over, and this was one of Hoffman's funniest lines. And I have to go back because there's one thing we skipped over. And this was one of Hoffman's funniest lines when we were talking about Isabella Chalney's character.

And he said, she's a suspected terrorist. And he says, well, granted, but that doesn't mean she sleeps around. Yes. God, so many of those little lines are just so good. But yes, I mean, this section, them being stuck, surrounded by vultures with a blind camel in the middle of nowhere, at least you're getting the magic back of these two guys together riffing songs, right? Yeah, yeah.

And that's when it starts working again. When they're out in the desert and they're crawling along, they just had this big fight and this is where they're starting to bring the, they're getting the band back together and they're crawling around in the desert and they start songwriting and i don't remember which one of them says it but they say it sincerely which is how all of their good stuff works he says this is some of our best work yeah yeah and there's that whole exchange with

hoffman telling uh baity to stop wearing the wrap around his head because it will dye his face and his face is gonna turn who cares no one can see us out here they constantly in the middle of being caught up in this geopolitical nightmare they keep on saying like god if the press gets wind of this it's gonna take our careers that kills me anytime they do that yeah just that the idea that the press is hounding them like that is following their every move waiting this kind of reputation can really sink some guys you know it's can we talk about the the auction scene sure yeah yeah absolutely i mean i want to know what you guys thought of the auction scene I mean I love it I love the idea

of shady like affairs happening in a sandy hot desert like yes I think that rules it's funny but it also is a thing that hasn't aged well

the gibberish thing doesn't age that well right because I would say weirdly the rest a thing that hasn't aged well the gibberish thing doesn't that's what i would well yes right right because i would say weirdly the rest of this movie aged pretty well for a movie about middle eastern relations and in the era of reagan i think it's in certain ways was very on point and i feel like there's because it's so scathing about America, partly. And, you know, yeah, it's about blundering idiotic Americans on every level, the CIA, but also these guys. Right. And the fact that it's on the side of a downtrodden people trying to overthrow an oppressive government, you know, it doesn't just sort of paint with a wide swath that's sort of like everyone there is a scoundrel you know and and i think i think you're

right ben i don't know if they could get away with that scene if it was a movie that came out today but you know there's that that is not condemnation because there's a lot of movies that are so close to my heart that wouldn't wouldn't you know couldn't get made today i don't think so it's also thematically them coming together again and doing a double act again is crucial. That's what's fun about that scene. But this is my point. In the auction scene, they do that.

They work together. That's why this insane insanity of Hoffman pretending that he speaks Arabic or all these different... But Beatty is working the crowd as an of Hoffman pretending that he, you know, speaks Arabic or all these different, you know, and, but Beatty is working.

The crowd is an inside shield. Cause he's still in disguise and it works on a comedy logic level, which I think saves it, but it's the two of them working together. That's why it's crucial. Right. Yeah. What I think is so telling is what was on

paper designed to be a big action sequence gets reduced to one bazooka and one helicopter and charles groden stressing out behind a phone right marty freed has now gotten the map in the mail he's negotiating the terms just that moment is so incredible when he says like these are the terms can the the government will be handed over to uh whatever isabella johnny's sweeping social reforms sweeping social reforms uh led by uh shira a cell also rogers and clark want a live album with a full promotional support and just grunt going easy easy we can do that we can do that then hanging up the phone and going it's a disaster i don't know what to tell you they're trying to get us to release an album

and then he picks up the red phone i love that yes so good yes sir well no sir yes uh-huh yes sir and and the reagan picture in the background but then it's like what should be the big action sequence that would be where most of the money got spent and for audiences would be like who gives a shit instead is like an afterthought and then the movie essentially ends with like another eight that would be where most of the money got spent and for audiences would be like, who gives a shit? Instead is like an afterthought. And then the movie essentially ends with like another eight minute concert. Yep. Which is good.

Which is, I love. Perfect. It lets them do a victory lap. It's exactly what we want. That's where our bread is buttered, you know? And you know what? I think that, I think it works.

The battle scene or lack thereof works because for the most part, um, there's not, there's a threat of violence. There is a threat of death. I mean, even, even in the, the, the, the gunfight when they're running through the marketplace and stuff, I don't know if it ever shows anybody getting hit. I don't remember. That's why for me, one of the,

one of the shots that didn't work that I think they could have done without was, um, uh, Johnny's brother being basically eviscerated, you know, early on. Um,

but the fact that, you know, if they had fired off the rocket launcher and blown the helicopter out of the sky, it wouldn't have worked tonally with the movie. And I mean, I don't know what else would have been in that big battle scene. It really helps that they had to scale it down.

And Lyle has the great line I'm reading here verbatim. Nothing ever happened to us. And now we're going to die out in the desert shooting at helicopters. Yeah. And what is it? That ain't that ain't poverty. That ain't poverty. And they're laughing together and the team's back together.

Yes. The entire American military station in Ishtar in morocco having to come to the concert so that they get the best audience response of their entire life right uh and the groden sitting at the table constantly trying to sell his like cia higher-ups that they've made a good deal i also just i i think that like someone making like a cop or a soldier coming up behind you being like, applaud, applaud. I just think that's always funny. So fun.

Yeah. It reminds me of, I've always been interested in just the history of our government trying to break up the mob. And in Florida, the FBI ran a restaurant that the mob bosses but like they had to like order supplies they had to hire chefs they had to design a menu you know just like to me that is just so funny uh like getting ringers to show up and like be really into this like live performance like that's hilarious and then what i find genuinely pretty poignant the the shot of isabella johnny crying and marty freed asked her what's wrong and she says i just think they're wonderful and to a certain degree despite the fact that the

movie's gotten a little disrailed by the two of them fighting over her right and like well i have to bring this back to her can i be there when you bring it back to her and all this shit? What they really wanted is what she's giving them there at this table, which is someone looking at them as if they're important artists, right? The movie ends on this note

that maybe the three of them are going to end up just being a throuple together, or maybe they'll just cash in on the fact that she liked their music for the rest of their lives that she's now a big fan right that's all that matters they got one person who looked at them the way they looked at each other and then yes and then you just have that beautiful transition from them singing dangerous business to the the tower records oh god now let's let's talk about david putnam baby this movie sort of got sandbagged by david putnam do

you want to leave this david putnam of course i do david putnam so david putnam in britain a legendary uh film producer uh he's i believe he's a lord now he's he was you know he's a sort of a you know he produced what did he produce different bugsy malone obviously chariots of fire that's his biggest hit midnight express a lot of like big british movies in the 70s yeah yeah alan parker lord now he's a lord now yes what does that mean well lord of what what is he a lord of classically ben in britain like lords were like you know aristocrats like they were landowners and you would pass the title right you know you're like truly your classic aristocrat right uh-huh that has mostly been done away with that's kind of that's gone i should hope so so now lords are basically just it's it's just like you're like a fancy person who's done well in life it's decided

and you get to be you get to sit in the house of lords and like it's it's like lower than being knighted being a sir but it's like one of the honorifics right well it's a political role you you you have a role in government you're in the house of lords it's what's above being knighted being knighted is just like you're great congrats because this guy's probably also been knighted oh he has a cbe okay he didn't quite make knighted but close um but being a lord is like that means you are politically involved enough that you want to sit in the house of lords and like listen to people read laws and be like yes yes oh no you know anyway okay he's a lord well this is my question for you then not to get to get off track, but I need clarification on this.

Yeah. How would you know all of this? No, I'm not doing that bit. I'm not doing that bit. I'm not doing that bit. It's a serious question. It's a serious question. Okay.

Christopher Guest also has lordship, right? He is a hereditary lord. Okay, so that's my question. So some people are given lord as a title because of what they've accomplished in other fields, and other people have it passed down because of family lineage? It used to be the Christopher Guest thing, where it was... But in 1999, if you look up Christopher Guest, it makes it clear that those seats were essentially abolished. So he is no longer... I believe he is still a baron. He still has a title, an honorific title, but he does not get to affect the laws of Britain anymore.

Not that I think he ever made a big effort to do that. But here's the question. Could I be a lord of something? If you work hard enough. I am. You are? You are? You're a lord?

Yeah. I paid 50 bucks. You think I'm kidding? I don't think you're kidding. I'm just amused. I've got this little tiny piece of sod, and I've got my lordship papers that I sent. Actually, it was a birthday gift that my wife got for me. But the point is, Ben, you said, as it should be, they didn't abolish it that long ago up until

recently and a lot of it at least in my interpretation was economically driven because you know they these people had to give up their properties they had to give up their castles and had to give up all the that's how i was able to buy my one square foot of i mean not bad have you ever gone to look at it no why oh well i was going to but then this that pandemic you mentioned earlier yeah i'm sorry spoilers well let's say the two big putnam credits that are important are he does he produces the movie agatha the agatha christie movie which dustin hoffman comes in with a lot of script notes, and he's supposed to play a supporting part, and he makes himself essentially the lead of the movie. So Putnam has a bad experience with Hoffman.

I'm trying to find this exact quote. He said something like... I have the quotes. I have the quote. Dustin Hoffman is the most malevolent person I've ever worked with. Right. That is the quote.

And he hates... So he hates Hoffman, calls him a worrisome American pest. That's the other line he has for him. He also hates Warren Beatty. Because Chariots of Fire went up against Reds that year for Best Picture, and it defeats it. It was the underdog.

It was the underdog. It was the sort of surprise winner. It's not as good a movie, I would say, as Reds. But, you know, it's a likable. And i would say as reds um but you know it's that was ugly too that was an ugly ugly public it was ugly wrote a a an op-ed piece for the la times saying why he thinks reds represents the worst of what hollywood is doing and overbombed budgets and indulgence were you about to say this sorry yeah i mean the line i liked is that he told the press that baity ought to be spanked yes for the budget of reds the thing that is truly staggering is to think about that people at the time were like oh warren baity churning out you know three hour you know over budget

hollywood pap about famous communists like now it would be like, Reds would be impossible. Even fucking Tom Cruise couldn't get Reds made. Nobody could get Reds made anymore. But also, like, for how much people talk about how awful fucking Oscar season politicking has become, in the early 80s, a producer of one nominated movie wrote an op-ed piece slamming another movie without ever identifying

that he was the producer of a film up for the same award yeah and elaine may said in one of those retrospectives you were talking about from just recently that she said he was a putz and she said unfortunately back then because he was british when brit people spoke, we have this tendency to go, oh, he must be telling the truth. That must be really real. Yeah, he sounds so smart. Meanwhile, they're not smart at all. And, you know, meet the new boss, completely different from the old boss, obviously,

because, you know, he'd been buddy buddies with McElwain. And you've got another who, to me, is, and I hope I don't offend anybody in his family, another putz was Faye Vincent, who was over, who was like a VP at Coca-Cola or something and was over. He's the one who fires. I mean, he eventually was the,

he was a famously bad commissioner of baseball. Oh, terrible commissioner, but my least bad commissioner of baseball. Oh, terrible commissioner. My least favorite commissioner of baseball. But he was ragging on it, too. He was not supporting it. The thing is that Putnam comes in. He's only in charge of Columbia for a year because putting him in charge. As the, what's his name?

Biskin piece puts it. It was like making Jerry, making Jerry Falwell, the mayor of San Francisco. Like why, why would you, why would you hire someone who's like Hollywood movies cost too much money and are stupid to run a Hollywood studio? Like it doesn't make any sense.

So he's out of the job within a year. he was coming in to cut budgets. He was coming in to cut budgets and stuff. He also was grandstanding. I mean, he was coming in and saying like, this he also was grandstanding i mean he was coming in and saying like this town is rotten detroit has a crime a cancer that cancer is crime like how are you gonna form relationships with the people who make movies in hollywood if you

call them all assholes like this is not you're not a fucking cop like you know you have to like make movies anyway he comes in and he apparently made some sort of fuss of like well i won't talk about ishtar because i've you know i've had my clashes with baity and hoffman but then that just looks like he's burying the movie because he's essentially saying like well i can't say what i think of the movie he did one thing before that he when he takes over and he's he does a big press conference and he's talking about tightening the belt and how Hollywood should be run, he goes, like, we're going to change things at Columbia. got paid $12 million in the desert. That is out of control. It ran amok. It was overscheduled. We're not going to make movies like that anymore.

That having been said, I will be taking no part in the post-production process. They're on their own. So he sort of said, he pointed it out as this is the poster child of what I'm trying to stop from happening again. That having been said, all the best.

If the movie fails, it's on them because I'm not going to interfere in IOTota. And then he stops talking about it. But it immediately puts a bullseye on this movie's back, which added in with the fact that Beatty had always been very hostile towards the press, wouldn't let press visit the sets of his movies. Just all of it was sort of mounting against this film. He also didn't also say, I haven't seen this movie and I never will. Yes. He, he openly admits he never saw the movie.

That's the whole story of Ishtar, right? Is so many people like, Oh God, that thing stuck. Did you see it? No. Why would I watch Ishtar?

No. What do you mean? Yes. And, and I'm not saying I don't think it's a perfect movie. I don't, it's not my favorite Elaine Moon movie, I guess,

although I love all her movies. So like, who don't think it's a perfect movie. It's not my favorite Elaine May movie, I guess, although I love all her movies, so who cares? But it's pretty terrific and interesting and unusual, and it's got these movie stars that I love. I wish more movies were like it. Yeah. I mean, I wish Elaine May had made 10 more movies. Like, even if the story, even if if i look maybe she just hated it and i i sympathize because yes there's all these stories of oh this was over budget no like you know she was clashing but like as we've talked about on this

podcast and on this mini series like that's the story of so many directors and you know she's being punished for being a woman and for being you know we we've i mean i feel griff we've litigated this to death but you know right like i mean this is this is the oldest news i'll say i i've repeated this in in all four of these episodes at this point but it's a necessary thing to repeat so at this 92nd street why i think someone asked her about the feeling of like being put in movie jail and never being allowed to make another movie again after ishtar and she said i could have made another movie like maybe i could have made exactly what i wanted to make but i got offers after ishtar there are people who offered to produce

things that i had written you know want to take them to screen i just didn't want to deal with it anymore yeah i mean it sounds like a wrenching yeah right maybe i could have had an ideal career but very much i chose to not give a shit about film directing anymore because who cares she's also the exact same person who broke up nickels and may at the peak of their success because she was bored with how good things were so i mean she very much is a difficult person almost every director we've covered she very much is a difficult person. Almost every director we've covered on this podcast is a difficult person. Right, almost everyone who gets to this

level of a career is difficult, eccentric, weird, ornery, antagonistic in some way. I think what is different is how much less it was tolerated with her and how much more it was questioned with her, whereas with male directors it is very often seen as being part and parcel

with their genius. Right. Because there were very few other female... I mean, maybe you could say Streisand, you know, maybe... But Streisand was always, even if her movies were successful, she was always lambasted for she's difficult, she's egocentric, these movies are so big.

So what I'm wondering is this. she was always lambasted for she's difficult she's egocentric these movies are so big yes so what i'm wondering is is this is is is it fair to say that the criterion for being a successful director is part artistic but also part management and that there's absolutely no question about her artistic skills, her creativity, her humor, but how much of the job is management? How much of the job is running the production? And my follow-up point is this, is that the way it's supposed to be is that not the job of producers which gets back to my original point is i think baity's the one that dropped the ball i think it should be laid at baity's yes as funny as he is in this movie he's the villain in that he's coming in saying elaine i'm gonna take all the bullets for you right and then the second they start or

whatever early into filming he's like i don't get what you're doing here uh should i take over like you know like i mean he he fails in that role because he says in interviews it's in the biskin stuff where he's like she's never had a good producer i can be her good producer like she never had someone you know sticking up for her to the studios. And then he fucking blew it. So my question is, does that then also mean that Beatty aired in selecting her to do this movie? Do you know what I'm saying? No, I think. Look, you know, it's movies like a lot of them. I feel like we're a pain in the ass to make, but at least the movie is there.

It's also one of these things like as much as the premise of this show is kind of auteur-driven, I feel like we constantly try to frame the conversations around how much these things are collaborative and how much the best elements of movies come out of friction. People coming in with different ideas than what the director intended or what the script was originally meant to be and all that sort of stuff. That's part of the soup. I think she's an antagonistic person, Elaine May. I think that's part of the friction that drives a lot of her creative work. I think that's tolerated far less from women. And I think in a way that I find personally respectable, but it was absolutely disastrous to her career when you talk about management versus

artistry, Clint, is she just had zero interest in playing the game at every single point in her life. She just doesn't care. She tells people exactly what she thinks. You know, she doesn't finesse things and she will just go to her grave with what she thinks is right. And I think that just made people go like, not worth it. And I think that just made people go like, not worth it. And I hear these stories, you read these stories about Beatty questioning her and Vittorio Chitoro questioning her and all these people. And it does feel very similar to a thing I've experienced a lot on sets with female directors, where I just see them be given a lot less latitude and a lot less faith from their mostly male crews, you know, regardless of what they have or haven't done up until that point.

I just, every time I've worked with a female director, which I've gotten to do a lot on television in particular, I will see those conversations where a female director goes, and here's how I want to break it down. The camera's here, the shot's here. We do this first, we do this second. The director walks off set, and here's how I want to break it down. The camera's here, the shot's here. We do this first, we do this second. The director walks off set, and then I hear two crew guys going, she has no idea what she's talking about, right? That makes no sense.

Okay. And I just never really hear those conversations with male directors. So I think the combination of being so strong-minded in what she wants to do, so unconventional in her process, being someone who doesn't mince words and doesn't suffer fools,

and getting into very unwieldy, bizarre, ambitious productions with big egos, it's just a perfect storm for people to be like, not worth it, you know? I do think she could have made another movie again if she wanted to, but I think it's a combination of maybe I just know at this point it wouldn made another movie again if she wanted to but i think

it's a combination of maybe i just know at this point it wouldn't turn out the way i wanted to or they won't let me make the kind of movie i want to and and life's too short and why not just put on a play off broadway yeah and i i appreciate that about her i admire that about her i i think legend we stand sticking to your guns and not worrying about the commercialism or anything else. And like I said, it's one of the things I love about this movie is the chances, God, what if, that's why you blew me away with the whole sequence of filming thing because I've always said, oh man, what if she had been allowed to or had felt like doing the Ishtar part

as brilliantly as she did the New York part where she had control of a handful of actors in a setting that she's familiar with New York and entertainment and stuff um and you know and the fact that it didn't mean to say what you said absolutely blows my mind yeah I mean the biggest what if for me in the movie is just if she had taken Hoffman's note of, I think it should just be the New York stuff. I think you should rewrite the script and it should just be a character piece about these two guys doing music.

That's the huge what if for me. But she wanted to go to the Middle East. This is her, she's interested in this. Yeah, but Beatty didn't do that. No, no, Beatty supported that being her instinct. Yeah, but I don't think Beatty got it you know she wanted to call it road to Ishtar yeah and Beatty is the one who said oh no no no because then they'll compare us to Hope and Crosby well yeah yeah that's what you're doing

I don't think he got it. I think it's a weird, weird, weird fucking movie that could only come out of this many strong personalities at this very specific point in all their careers having their own motivations and meeting somewhere in the middle in a way that everyone else viewed as calamitous and I think with time

has sort of been reclaimed as you know, if not an entirely great functional comedy, an incredibly interesting one with stretches of absolute brilliance. I will say people are at a loss if they never see it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's... Agreed with that, too. Absolutely worth seeing. Highly worth seeing. If you care about movies, if you care about comedy, it's an important film.

And if you care about any of these actors, and Elaine May, obviously. Yeah. But let's play the box office game, please. Please, Griffin. I. But let's play the box office game, please. Please, Griffin. I'm begging you to play the box office game.

Yes, it was supposed to come out Christmas. It got pushed back because of editing. It comes out in the spring. May 15th, 1987. May was May that year. It was, it was. But it's also, this is long before May is a bustling time at the box office you know the summer has not yet

started so this is kind of a dead time at the box office it should be dominating but the target have been on their back for a long time in the press um then they do a test screening and it kills and columbia debates whether they should double down and try to promote it even harder they kind of split the difference. They do release it pretty wide for that moment in time. It does fairly well the opening weekend, right? It opened to $4 million. No, it did not do well.

No, this movie did not do well. Yeah. It opened to $4 million. It makes $15 million. It's out of theaters in a month, month and a half. And yes, it does open at number one, but it almost was number two to- The Gate! The number two movie at the box.

The Gate. Stephen Dorff, ladies and gentlemen! Right. A Canadian horror movie from New Century Vista. Yeah. You know, that, I mean, like, so, like, you don't want to feel the gate breathing down your neck when you're Warren Beatty and you're doing your first movie in six years.

It was not a good look. If you're Elaine May, you don't want to nearly be best at the box office by Tibor Takas. That is the name of the director of the gate, yes. Tibor Takas. Tibor Takas, who directed the pilot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Correct. Really? Yes.

Yes. He also seems to have done, he did the Gates sequel, the Gate 2 Trespasser. Well, of course. The Gates remake, Electric Boogaloo. Yeah, he did 90s Outer Limits reboot. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, number three at the box office, Griffin. So the Gates number two. Number three is a comedy starring a comedy star of the 80s we discussed him in our Zemeckis series this actor obviously

collaborated with Zemeckis is it a Hanks movie not a Hanks not a Hanks but he did collaborate with Zemeckis he certainly did on a very successful series of films on a very successful series of films. On a very successful series of films? Not Michael Douglas.

DeVito. No. What? Come on now. Oh, oh. A series of films by Robert Zemeckis. Michael J. Fox. What am I thinking?

Mikey J. This is one of his comedies where he's a wise ass. Is this Secret of My Success? It's Secret of My Success. The Secret of My Success. Herbert Ross. Have never seen. With a great theme song.

Great theme song. Never seen it either. I've been watching a lot of Siskel and Ebert Worst of the Year episodes on YouTube recently. Did they bag on it? They bagged on it. They said they found that film repellent but they also like the entirety of their 1987 worst of the year episode was them just drum rolling up to ishtar it was insane how hard they bagged on that movie but yes yes uh rosenbaum talks about how ebert kind of hated Beatty's whole thing and his reluctance.

The press were just sort of cut off, and maybe that played a role. But yes. Number four at the box office, another comedy with a new star who's coming over from television. A new star coming over from television in 19... Coming over from... Am I allowed to play? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I mean, you were there, Clint. I was a year old. Griffin is a glint in his father's eye. Negative two. Is this a Ted Danson movie? No, no.

This is a guy who next year is about to have a sensational hit. 1988. This year, though, it's like, this is a movie I would say mostly forgotten, was not well-reviewed, but was like a solid hit. And it's this actor and a female star who's like, also, I would say,

kind of on the up and up. And the next year... She just had a big hit. The next year, he blows up. The next year, he has his smash sensation right so it's not robin williams it's not ted danson is it someone whose tv show was in the 80s like are they on tv at this point in time they are i mean people forget of course that he was a big tv star but he was yeah uh what an emmy it's not bruce willis right it is bruce willis blind date it's blind date date you caught me by thinking of him as a comedy star but of course it's the thing but i mean before die hard bruce

willis obviously he's the guy for moonlighting right you know Blind date. You know, first and foremost. Blind date. Never seen blind date. What if there was a blind date, right? Like, that is the premise, right? What if the date were blind? Phil Hartman sets him up on a blind date with Kim Basinger. Like, I don't think there's a lot. I don't know what it's about.

It's Blake Edwards, right? It's a late Blake Edwards movie. Right. Like, Bruce Willis did two Blakewards bombs before he got the life raft that was die hard yeah uh sunset right immediate follow-up right that's another bruce weird uh period gangster comedy right yeah uh willis anyway uh yeah so that's a number five griffin it's one of the biggest hits of the year it's an action movie in 1987 this series comes up all the time in the box it's a rambo maybe we should do it no but maybe we should do this one on the patreon griffin we never talk about it you know

what it didn't premiere this weekend did it no it's been in theaters for uh 11 weeks wow i think i know take your shot clint lethal weapon it's lethal weapon yeah comes up a lot with me wow comes up a lot this or the sequels griff they come up a lot when movies used to be in theaters for longer than four weeks i know you just run and run especially this one this was a march release right like i don't think anyone thought it was going to be such a colossal hit. It made $120 million. It's only made $57 million now. So it's got another...

It's going to double its gross over the next few months. Wild. The argument against doing Lethal Weapon as a franchise is that Dick Donner is kind of coverable. Yes, that's true. Yes, that's true. Yes, that's true. It's a more contained filmography than I thought.

I've been watching the multiple cuts of the original Superman movie recently. Hell yeah. And it made me realize that Donner's kind of an interesting guy to put on the chart for some point in the future. Have you done Blake Edwards? Edwards is too many.

Too many, Clint. Edwards is like 67 movies, Clint. Too many movies. We put him on our March Madness bracket and let people vote for him last year, but we kind of sabotaged him because we were like, we have no idea how we could do it. He made so many goddamn movies. Could you just do the Pink Panther movies? Well, yeah, you could do something like that. But he like quietly just made a bunch of noir movies in the 50s.

You know, like he was just around. Oh, God he'd be he was one of the earlier directors of the earth like peter gunn he was a writer and and director for the peter gunn episodes griff i do think donner would be good it's a bit of a slow middle there in between superman and lethal weapon but like well no actually no because there's the goonies i just don't like the goonies right i want in on that one i'm claiming i want in on that one you want the goonies don't give that to another mackleroy let me have that one i mean there's lady hawk which there's so much oh my god with lady hawk uh yeah no donna it's an interesting career i mean he falls off at the end but i still think it would be funny. Yes. Like, I still think, like... But it's, like, the last two R shrugs. Yeah, but I still think...

Right? I think Timeline and 16 Blocks probably are funny to talk about. Like, objectively. Yeah, yeah. Right. And before they have Lethal Weapon 4, Conspiracy Theory, Assassins. Maverick. Maverick.

Yeah, I mean, like, again, none of these are masterpieces, but fun to talk about, probably. Oh, interesting. Yeah. What's his blank check? I guess it's, like, the toy. I mean's superman obviously yeah yeah i mean i would argue it's kind of the lethal weapons sequels but also right superman is and it isn't yeah yeah and super and him being fired off superman too yeah look i mean let's do it why not let's do it tomorrow yeah tweet at us let us know what you think.

And the only other thing we have to do, Griff, we're wrapping up here, but we got to, I mean, it's short, but you should rank Elaine May. I actually had a lot of trouble with this because I like them all. I do too. Let's just say to Ben's point, if you want us to do a Richard Donner miniseries,

please tweet us hashtag Donner party. And let's do... But bring your own food. Yeah. Let's do our May rankings. I think I can do this. It is difficult. It's difficult because I don't want anyone

to feel bad for being in last place. That's all. Right. The difficulty for me is, I think Heartbreak kid is her most kind of perfect whole film yeah sure but the stuff i like in ishtar i like so much that if we're gonna have a very different list i can right if we're if we're talking about favorites and that's all it is i probably go ishtar, just because I watched the first 25 minutes of this movie

several times a year. It's very good. It's really a touchstone for me. I'd go Ishtar, then Heartbreak Kid, then New Leaf, then Mikey and Nikki. But she's made four great movies. I'm the same, but I flopped the first and last, Griffin. I'm Mikey and Nikki, Heartbreak Kid, New Leaf, Ishtar.

But I don't want Ishtar to feel bad. I don't want Mikey and last, Griffin. I'm Mikey and Nikki, Heartbreak Kid, New Leaf, Ishtar. But I don't want Ishtar to feel bad. I don't want Mikey and Nikki to feel bad. I don't care about the two of them. I would go with Ishtar, number one. Hell yeah. So that breaks the tie. Clint, you broke the tie.

And do you have Heartbreak Kid 2, would you say? Heartbreak Kid 2. Do you remember Heartbreak Kid? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I like New Leaf. I like her acting in New Leaf. She's so good in that. two would you say like do you remember heartbreak kitten yeah yeah and i like i like new leaf i like her i like her acting in new leaf she's so good now um and mikey and nikki i like but i i missed i missed the jokes i mean i mean i agree that's my whole thing i think it's a great movie i just she's so good at comedy that i want her having jokes in her making me forget the goddess well that's fair

yeah um very quickly david you were saying how difficult it was to find a picture of their album cover because you want as your background here's a non-merchandise spotlight the soundtrack for this movie was never released nope drop that soundtrack it's a paul williams soundtrack doesn't dave grueson also do some music on it too? Yeah, exactly. Like, where is this? Yes. And especially because the full songs were written, there have to be full recordings.

They were filmed in full. There's a website I think called ishtarthefilm.com where you can download MP3s that are just the rips of the audio. You own the website? No, I don't. I'm sorry. I structured my sense improperly. I have something that I downloaded from a website called ishtarthefilm.com.

They have a section that's the soundtrack where you can download MP3s that are just the rips of the audio from the film. So I have like a fake Rogers and Clark album where somewhere I got the jpeg of the album cover and put it on my itunes and it's just the 15 second fragments of the songs which i put on as a playlist and listen to those four minutes over and over again it's great i also did just order i found one on ebay there was a promotional 45 cent really oh right back when they were hopeful right but it's not uh dangerous business

it's little darling oh yeah with the closing credits music uh yes and then the other one is let me see what the other song oh god tell me the mecca song is in there i think it isn't it's little darling and the other one is this is saying it it's Little Darling on both sides. That's not correct. I forget what's on the other side. But anyway... It's Portable Picnic is on the other side. Right, right. Which is funny, but like, just...

I'm just saying... Death Waltz Records. Pick up the gauntlet. Release Ishtar on vinyl. Broadway, do the Ishtar musical. I mean, yes. Also do Ishtar on vinyl. Broadway, do the Ishtar musical. Also do Ishtar the musical. It's IshtarTheMovie.com, just FYI. If anyone wants to check this out.

It's a good website. You should remember this. Clint, thank you so much for coming on the show. Clint! What a delight. Very patient. Very patient guest. Waiting so long for this episode to happen.

It was absolutely killing me. It was killing me, I'm telling you. We'll be back for the Goonies. We can talk about the Goonies anytime. Yeah. People should listen to Adventure Zone. If they don't already, you dofuses. You should check out the Adventure Zone books,

which you're very hands-on in helping adapt those um and they're awesome uh with carrie p she's a great artist oh she's amazing and the the adventure zone uh cartoon show will be happening on peacock at some point right so we got fingers crossed we're we're working that that's one of the things that kind of resonated when i was you know doing a lot of the research, you know, and reading about, you know, the process. And I've heard you tell stories, Griffin, just about how stuff gets made. It's really fascinating. It is nonsensical. You can't really talk about it.

But I mean, you know, all the way from, and I love that stuff. It's like, you know, pitch meetings and that. I find that absolutely fascinating. But it's the stuff in between where you just go like,

what? Why does this work this way? Why are these people asking these questions? Oh, I have stories. Next time we're in the new york bar together i will tell you guys that is truly a thing to look forward to um let's also announce our next miniseries that's the last thing we gotta do because at this point we'll know who won march

madness but we got one more miniseries we're gonna do do before whoever wins March Madness. And it is. Which we're so excited that. John Carpenter. One. That's so awesome. I mean, like, are you guys not looking forward to. John Carpenter. That's going to rule. That's going to be so cool.

I have to admit, Ben, I'm pretty. I was surprised that they beat. Gore Verbinski. In the final two. But obviously. Absolutely. I didn't see that coming at all no but but they kind of had the road paved for them because i mean them going up against both spike

jones and ernest dickerson in an historic three-way mega match and the elite eight that was a cakewalk yeah totally yeah totally totally yes uh but let's say someone who is not in the march madness bracket uh but we're covering next is to date still the youngest director ever nominated for an academy award a record he is very likely to hold for a very long time if not i don't know yeah not a 22 year old is going to get nominated for fucking best director yeah definitely you want to talk about major success at the beginning of your career and a career that i think because of yes yeah the weird directions it took later on uh despite the fact that he died far too young and far too soon uh has not

necessarily been reappraised in the way it should we're talking john singleton baby wow another one we've just been long oh man a long mold mini so excited it's gonna be good so excited uh only 90 kids will understand i mean i know that you know he made movies uh 90s but well and one of them finally lets us talk about the fast and furious franchise proper on this podcast um we should mention we have a special one-off next week right do we no do oh yes we do that's right we do we do that's right that's next week we decided this was a short miniseries, Elaine May. We thought four was the shortest miniseries we'd ever do.

And then we said, what if we did an even shorter miniseries? Next week, we are doing our first ever one episode miniseries on an important American director who has only directed one film. Ball's in his court if he wants his miniseries to continue at a later point in time. And we'll have to cover it. We have to. At this point, we are beholden. Next week, we are, of course, talking

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don John with the boys themselves, Sean and Hayes from Hollywood Handbook. I mean, we all knew that this was coming. It was inevitable. David's been pushing it for years. We all knew that this was coming. It was inevitable. It was inevitable. David's been pushing it for years.

I've just been like, when are we getting the boys on to talk, John? And it's going to happen. My boys, my ride, my porn, my girls. That's what David says every night. Everyone loves a happy ending. That's the tagline for Don John. We're going to dig into it, guys. That's next David says every night. Everyone loves a happy ending. Yes. That's the tagline for Don John.

We're going to dig into it, guys. That's next week, though. Hollywood Handbook, blank check, crossover, then Singleton, and then whoever wins March Madness. Yes. But we're definitely doing a Space Jam 2 episode, too. Oh, yes. Space Jam, A New Beginning with James Newman, my brother.

Thank you all for listening. Clint, thank you for being here. It was indeed my brother. Thank you all for listening. Clint, thank you for being here. It was indeed my pleasure. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Joe. I will, Griffin. Oh, I thought you were specifically speaking to me. These are things I want to say to you, Clint.

And it's very important that you process this. Okay. It would mean a lot if you could personally thank Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for our work. Oh, Joe, Pat, you're gods. And Clint, I really think it would hit home if you thanked Lee Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. I would be glad to.

Thank you. And like, it's maybe too much to ask ask but if you want to maybe just start referring me as chain lord like just throwing that out as maybe a new sort of moniker title that would be really cool chain lord chain lord lord okay i'll do that lord of chains yeah just really rolls off the tongue doesn't it's clean it clean. This is 2021 rebranded. Of course, Clint, just a few more things I'm going to just remind you of in passing. Yes. If you're looking for some real nerdy shit, I would recommend maybe going to blankies.reddit.com.

If you're looking for some real nerdy shirts, I'd maybe recommend checking out our Shopify page. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media. And thank you to our editing team, Alex Barron, AJ McKeon. And go over to our Patreon where we're covering the Star Trek movies, where we're voyaging home at this point. Consider me a Patreon. Yeah, what are we doing at this point? It's April 25th.

Yeah, we're about to... Well, we just were on the final frontier. The last one's coming up, Undiscovered Country. Yeah. Wow. Well, let me just tell people this. Spock dies! Oh, he does. Rip.

Just wanted to tell you. That's the kind of guy I am. That's how I roll. That's our episode on Ishtar. Tune in next week for Don John. And as always, there's never been a hit song with the word urban in it. Okay, I'm going to try this. This is going to be perhaps the most ambitious opening I've done yet, but I'm going to try it.

Go ahead. It's going to be ambitious because I'm going to try to do it myself rather than asking you to do it. If you feel like you know how to accompany me, then you can, David. I won't. I mean, not out of grumpiness. I know I can't. I don, I not out of grumpiness. I know I can't. I don't have the words. Ben, I

just want you to place this at the end of the episode so people know the risk I took. Okay? Alright. Okay.