In October 1985, Elaine May, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, and a battalion of film techs marched out into the deserts of north Africa to make some magic. Their mission was a far cry from the stone-faced epic sweep of Lawrence of Arabia; comedy had brought them to Morocco, a buddy farce about two bumbling singer-songwriters who get caught in the crossfire between a local militia and the CIA. With a few respected, if little seen, films, May had proven herself an expert director of small-scale comedies, and the time had come for her to move up to the next level, working on a more ambitious scale with movie stars at the top of their game. Ishtar was to be her Sistine Chapel of pinheadery; what could possibly go wrong?

Avoid the soup – and don’t glue your eyes together: how to survive a movie shoot Read more

As fate would have it, just about everything. Real-life political tensions threatened to disrupt the film’s fake ones, the budget mushroomed, and May struggled with health issues exacerbated by the harsh conditions, growing easily frustrated and uncommunicative. Despite constant squabbles with her cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, and inclement shooting weather, May managed to cobble together a final print. Back in the US, critics and audiences dealt Ishtar the lethal one-two punch of dismal reviews and death-on-arrival at the box office, with the film making just $14m from a $51m budget. If Hollywood cliche is to be believed, the phrase “you’ll never make a picture in this town again!” was most likely bellowed at May; the sandy Waterloo brought her career as a feature director to a permanent end.

Today marks thirty years since May’s last stand premiered in stateside theaters, and a few decades’ worth of perspective have provided some flattering clarity to the film. While Ishtar has not appreciated into a stealth masterpiece in the mold of Showgirls’ long road to reappraisal, its stature as the definitive cinematic failure has been outed as undeserved. May’s final film was flawed but idiosyncratically so, hardly the ruinous quagmire suggested by its legacy. It survives today as a curious artifact of film history, more fascinating than entertaining, deserving of study rather than popcorn.

The film’s problems begin and end with its heinously miscast central duo of Beatty and Hoffman. Both actors owed May big time – she had contributed extensive uncredited rewrites for Beatty’s Oscar-nominated Reds script, and paid the same courtesy to Hoffman for his award-festooned Tootsie – and they overlooked some misgivings about the script because they trusted the director.

But for the cardinal sin of failing while female, May couldn’t get another film project off the ground

Her plan was to cast the pair as a sort of reverse Crosby/Hope pairing, with the debonair Beatty portraying the perpetually clammy-palmed Lyle and the living neurosis Hoffman as the smoother of the two operators. Ishtar affords audiences the rare opportunity to watch a pair of highly skilled actors completely hurl themselves into roles that could not clash more harshly with their established types. Right on through to the finale that sticks both men in hideous bedazzled vest combos, they bring absolute commitment to their performance. If it’s entertaining, it’s due to the sheer surreal factor of seeing two accomplished thespians floundering so intently.

But the ultimate fate of Ishtar and its creator yield the most illuminating insights. Before production even got up and running, May’s reputation as a take-no-guff dame in a male-dominated industry preceded her. It doesn’t take much sleuthing to deduce the cause of her disproportionately extreme punishment relative to the mildness of her folly. Plenty of male directors have survived flops of far greater magnitude (adjusting for inflation or not, Ishtar’s losses pale in comparison with those of Joe Wright’s Pan and Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, both of whom will release new films in 2017) and critical vitriol (some writers have already begun to soften the consensus on May’s earnest goofiness). Rob Cohen lost a fortune with Stealth, was afforded a chance to redeem himself with a third Mummy film, and then faceplanted again with Alex Cross. He, too, has another film set for release this year.

But for the cardinal sin of failing while female, May couldn’t get another film project off the ground and instead wrote intermittently, including well-received scripts for The Birdcage and Primary Colors. As ever, temperamental men get vaunted as tormented artistes, while temperamental women get labeled as “emotional” and cast aside.

A significant footnote in the ongoing story of showbiz misogyny, a perfect storm of misjudgment made possible through called-in favors, Ishtar’s place in its time and industry has more meaning and value than the content of the film itself. It’s an odd orphan, not howlingly bad enough for ironic adoration at midnight screenings, but not competent enough for enshrinement in the canon. It survives today primarily as a testament to the audacity of Elaine May’s ambition as a humorist, and a look at the potential future that showbiz wrongfully wrested from her. Far from a landmark, it’s a part of Hollywood history all the same.