About

Among the sharpest minds and most vicious wits in American comedy, Elaine May has forged a landmark career as a Grammy-winning comic, an Oscar-nominated writer-director and a Tony-winning actor for stage and screen. Best known for the four feature films she directed — A New Leaf 1971, The Heartbreak Kid 1972 (not presently available for public exhibition), Mikey and Nicky 1976 and Ishtar 1987 — May is celebrated for her ruthless and ruthlessly funny dismantlings of friendship, romance and male ego. This program brings together a selection of her screen work, along with rare documentary portraits of her and her longtime collaborator Mike Nichols.

Born in 1932, May (née Berlin) began her life in show business as a child performer in her father's travelling Yiddish theatre revue. Upon moving to Chicago for university, she made a lifelong creative partner in Nichols, whom she met while taking improv comedy classes. The two soon found national acclaim as the duo Nichols and May, skewering inane social mores and tapping into the latent neuroses of the Silent Generation. Their success culminated in a blockbuster residency on Broadway that ran for more than 300 performances and resulted in an beloved, award-winning comedy album.

At the peak of their popularity, May pulled the plug on the pairing, setting out on her own to pursue the worlds of theatre and cinema. After several minor acting roles, she secured a contract to write, direct and star in the black comedy A New Leaf, the first film directed by a woman at Paramount since the early 1930s. Despite a tumultuous production involving budget blowouts and legal fights, the film was successful enough that she quickly began work on her second picture — this time with playwright Neil Simon. The Heartbreak Kid, a searing portrait of a weaselly husband attempting to leave his wife on their honeymoon, was another triumph, earning two Academy Award nominations, including one for its co-star and May's daughter Jeannie Berlin.

An acrimonious battle with the studio over the protracted post-production of Mikey and Nicky led to May stepping back from directing, focusing instead on credited and uncredited screenwriting work on films such as Heaven Can Wait 1978, Reds 1981 and Jim Henson's Labyrinth 1986. Her return behind the camera came with the globetrotting musical-comedy Ishtar, a film now reclaimed by a new generation of cinephiles but at the time regarded as one of the most calamitous flops in modern Hollywood. Its disastrous reception led to a refocusing on acting and writing, including adapting the play 'La Cage aux Folles' as The Birdcage 1996 and earning a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination for the political dramedy Primary Colors 1998, both reunions with Nichols.

As restorations and reappraisals of her work continue to expand her influence, May's timelessly caustic humour and spiritedly shaggy films affirm her legacy as one of the key voices in cinematic comedy in the twentieth century.

QAGOMA acknowledges the generous assistance of the American Genre Film Archive, Austin; the Revival House, Perth; the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem and Julian Schlossberg in providing materials for this program. Program curated by Robert Hughes, Australian Cinémathèque.