Ishtar (film)

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Ishtar
Ishtar movie poster.
Directed by	Elaine May
Produced by	Warren Beatty
Written by	Elaine May
Starring	Dustin Hoffman Warren Beatty Isabelle Adjani Charles Grodin
Music by	Bahjawa Dave Grusin
Cinematography	Vittorio Storaro
Editing by	Richard P. Cirincione William Reynolds Stephen A. Rotter
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	May 15, 1987
Running time	107 min
Country	USA
Budget	$40,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Ishtar is a 1987 motion picture comedy, directed by Elaine May and starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty as "Rogers and Clarke", a duo of incredibly untalented lounge singers who stumble into a political conflict in the fictional North African nation of Ishtar. It also starred Isabelle Adjani and Charles Grodin and was shot by Vittorio Storaro. The songs in the film were written by Paul Williams, with additional help from Hoffman and May.

The movie ran significantly over budget (some sources say $55 million^{[citation needed]}) in production, due largely to unanticipated problems with desert filming, and was a financial flop, generating under $13 million in revenue. Its high-profile disastrous performance at the box office is part of the film's enduring bad reputation. Ishtar was nominated for Worst Picture in the 1987 Golden Raspberry Awards. The movie received overwhelmingly poor reviews, and holds a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[1] For several years afterwards, "Ishtar" became synonymous with "box office flop."^[2]

1 Support
2 Quotes on Ishtar
3 Trivia
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Support

Despite being widely panned by critics, Ishtar has managed to gain some supporters, and its notoriety as a box office flop has helped it reach a cult film status.^[3]

Negative buzz about Ishtar and its outrageous budget was widespread in the press long before the film ever reached theaters, despite three successful previews. In an interview with Elaine May, Mike Nichols describes the bomb as "the prime example that I know of in Hollywood of studio suicide"^[4], implying that Columbia's new chief executive, David Putnam, (who took over at Columbia halfway through Ishtar's shoot) sandbagged the project by leaking negative anecdotes to the media because he held a grudge against executive producer and star, Warren Beatty and antipathy towards Dustin Hoffman.^[2]

Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum surmised that the media was eager to torpedo Ishtar in retaliation for instances of Beatty's perceived "high-handed way with members of the press"^[3].

Contrary to Ishtar's overwhelming infamy, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Charles Grodin, and Elaine May continue to strongly defend the film's quality. When Ishtar was released, Vincent Canby of the New York Times listed it as a runner up to his top films of 1987.^[5]

[edit] Quotes on Ishtar

Elaine May: If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.^[4]

Warren Beatty: There was almost no review that didn't in the first paragraph deal with the cost of the movie. That was an eye-opener — about the business, and the relationship of the entertainment press to business. Ishtar is a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman. And I think it's funny.^[6]

Dustin Hoffman: I liked that film... just about everyone I've ever met that makes a face when the name is brought up has not seen it. ...I would do it again in a second.^[7]

Paul Williams: The real task was to write songs that were believably bad. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life. I've never had more fun on a picture, but I've never worked harder.^[8]

[edit] Trivia

In one episode of The New Adventures of Casper The Friendly Ghost, Ishtar is shown in the Hell's theater continuously as a torture method.^{[citation needed]}
In one of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic strips, captioned "Hell's Video Store", the entire store is stocked with nothing but copies of the movie Ishtar. Larson has apologized, saying "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."^[9]
In the movie Freaked, when a frightened, screaming crowd runs for the exits during a freak show, an old man comments, "I haven't seen a crowd run away this fast since the opening night of Ishtar."
In an episode of Animaniacs, a video copy of Ishtar is used as a weapon, an exploding 'bomb'.[2]
In one episode of Growing Pains, Jason and Maggie had plans to spend a romantic evening together, but Maggie got stuck covering some big event for her job as a television news reporter. Unfortunately, that event got rained out, and the whole family was left watching Ishtar, being run in its place.^{[citation needed]}
At several points in Ishtar, Hoffman's character references Simon and Garfunkel as a benchmark for musical success. Simon and Garfunkel contributed to the soundtrack of The Graduate (1967), in which Hoffman made his breakthrough performance.
The brown helicopter used to attack Hoffman and Beatty at the end of the film (called a "Bell Gunship" by Grodin) is a Bell 222 with cannons and rockets mounted on its landing gear side "wings." This same series of helicopter was used in the tv show Airwolf. The other helicopter (white) was a German MBB BO 105.
Ishtar premiered May 13, 1987 at the Century City Plitt Theater in Los Angeles, California.