Refocus the Films of Elaine
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The Films of Elaine May ReFocus: The American Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer and Gary D. Rhodes This series produces new critical volumes from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing influential, yet neglected, American directors to the attention of a new audience of scholars and students in both Film Studies and American Studies. ReFocus ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May The Films of From Destination Tokyo (1943) to The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), Delmer Daves was responsible for a unique body of work, but few filmmakers have been Elaine May as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature. Often regarded as an embodiment of the self-effacing craftsmanship of classical and post-war Hollywood, films such as Broken Arrow (1950) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957) reveal a filmmaker concerned with style as much as sociocultural significance. As the first comprehensive EDITED BY ALEXANDRA HELLER-NICHOLAS study of Daves’ career, this collection of essays seeks to deepen our understanding AND DEAN BRANDUM of his work, and also to problematise existing conceptions of him as a competent, conventional and even naïve studio man. Matthew Carter is Senior Lecturer in Film, Television, and Cultural Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Andrew Patrick Nelson is Assistant Professor of Film History and Critical Studies at Montana State University. ALEXANDRA HELLER-NICHOLAS ALEXANDRA AND DEAN BRANDUM EDITED BY Cover image: Albert Brooks and Frances Lee McCain in Real Life (1979). Directed by Albert Brooks © Paramount Pictures Cover design: Stuart Dalziel ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May ReFocus: The American Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer and Gary D. Rhodes Editorial Board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell, Claire Perkins, Christopher Sharrett, and Yannis Tzioumakis ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture—its myths, values, and historical precepts. The series ignores no director who created a historical space— either in or out of the studio system—beginning from the origins of American cinema and continuing up to the present. These directors produced film titles that appear in university film history and genre courses across international boundaries, and their work is often seen on television or available to download or purchase, but each suffers from a form of “canon envy”; directors such as these, among other important figures in the general history of American cinema, are underrepresented in the critical dialogue, yet each has created American narratives, works of film art, that warrant attention.ReFocus brings these American film directors to a new audience of scholars and general readers of both American and Film Studies. Titles in the series include: ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff ReFocus: The Films of Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall ReFocus: The Films of William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder ReFocus: The Films of Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refoc ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organization Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum, 2019 © the chapters their several authors, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Monotype Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4018 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4020 2 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4021 9 (epub) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Who’s Kidding?—Approaching Elaine May 1 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Part 1 Beginnings 1 Teenagers on Stage—The Comedy of Elaine May and Mike Nichols 23 Mark Freeman Part 2 Critically Situating Elaine May 2 Hollywood Can’t Wait: Elaine May and the Delusions of 1970s American Cinema 41 Maya Montañez Smukler 3 Dangerous Business—Elaine May as Existential Improviser 63 Jake Wilson Part 3 Elaine May’s Films as Director 4 Kneeling on Glass—Elaine May’s A New Leaf (1971) as Screwball Black Comedy 85 Samm Deighan vi contents 5 “Don’t Put A Milky Way in Someone’s Mouth When They Don’t Want It”: A Contemporary Feminist Rereading of Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) 104 Clem Bastow 6 Mikey and Nicky (1976)—Elaine May and the Cassavetes Connection 119 Jeremy Carr 7 Cartographies of Catastrophe—Elaine May’s Ishtar (1987) 139 Dean Brandum Part 4 Collaborations/Revelations 8 In/Significant Gestures—Elaine May, Screen Performance, and Embodied Collaboration 165 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas 9 Otto É. May(zo)—Elaine May’s Screenplay of Otto Preminger’s Such Good Friends (1971) as Affirmation that Hell is Other People 181 Paul Jeffery 10 Spectral Elaine May—The Later Mike Nichols Collaborations and the Myth of the Recluse 202 Tim O’Farrell Conclusion 11 When in Doubt, Seduce: An Interview with Screenwriter Allie Hagan 221 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum Bibliography 234 Index 244 figures and tables vii Figures and Tables Figures I.1 Director Elaine May, A New Leaf (1971) Aries Productions (PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy Stock Photo) 9 1.1 Elaine May and Mike Nichols 1960 (Historic Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo) 24 5.1 We see what Lenny refuses to see (from The Heartbreak Kid, 1972) 112 5.2 The claustrophobic May mid-shot (from The Heartbreak Kid, 1972) 113 5.3–5.4 Female onlookers gazing at the gaze (from The Heartbreak Kid, 1972) 114 5.5 One last gaze at the gazer (from The Heartbreak Kid, 1972) 116 6.1 From Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) 124 6.2 From Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) 132 6.3 From Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) 134 6.4 From Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) 135 11.1 Screenwriter Allie Hagan 221 Tables 7.1 Box-office takings in Ishtar’s opening week 154 7.2 Box-office takings in Ishtar’s second week 156 7.3 Takings in the first seven weeks of Ishtar’s U.S. cinema release 157 Notes on Contributors Clem Bastow is a screenwriter and award-winning cultural critic from Melbourne, Australia. Her work appears regularly in The Saturday Paper and The Guardian. She has written about film for journals including The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings and Filmme Fatales, and books including Copyfight (2015), Fury: Women Write About Sex, Power and Violence (2015); she has also worked as a film critic for various publications including The Guardian since 2009. In 2017 she wrote and co-presented the ABC First Run podcast Behind the Belt, a documen- tary “deep dive” into professional wrestling. She holds a Master of Screenwriting from VCA, and teaches screenwriting at the University of Melbourne. Dean Brandum gained his PhD at Deakin University (Australia) in 2016 for analysis of historical box office takings. He has taught at a number of universities in Melbourne and has written for various publications, generally on the topic of film distribution. His first book,Technicolouryawn: Melbourne Drive-ins in 1970, is forthcoming. Jeremy Carr teaches film studies at Arizona State University and writes for the publications Film International, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, MUBI/Notebook, Cinema Retro, Vague Visages, The Moving Image, Diabolique Magazine, and Fandor. Samm Deighan is Associate Editor of Diabolique Magazine and co-host of the Daughters of Darkness podcast. Her book on Fritz Lang’s M is due for a 2019 release and she is the editor of Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017), an edited collection written by women critics published by Spectacular Optical. notes on contributors ix Mark Freeman is a lecturer in the Department of Film and Animation at Swinburne University, where he teaches and convenes a range of film theory classes. He has published widely in film journals such asSenses of Cinema, Metro, and Screening the Past, and published commissioned articles through publications such as If Magazine, Metro Screen Education and Insight. He also published a chapter entitled “An Uploadable Cinema: Digital Horror and the Postnational Image” for the anthology Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon edited by Linnie Baker and Xavier Aldana Reyes. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is an Australian film critic. She has written five books on cult film with a focus on gender politics, and has published for fifteen years in many magazines, journals, edited collections, and home entertainment releases, including a booklet essay on Elaine May’s A New Leaf on the 2017 Blu-Ray release by Olive Films. Her forthcoming books 1000 Women in Horror and Eyes Without Faces: Masks in Horror Film are scheduled for an upcoming release.