Elaine May: A Woman Scorned But Not Defeated
Elaine May was born right here in Philadelphia in 1932. Her family was part of a Yiddish Theater company and that performative and storytelling culture would mark her for the rest of her life. As a young woman, she went to Chicago and joined the Compass Players, a forerunner of the Second City Troupe. There she met Mike Nichols and the two brought improv comedy out of the shadows and into the spotlight for America. They weren’t a duo with a straight man and an idiot like other famous comedy duos. Both Nichols and May were incredibly intelligent and witty.
By the 1960s, Nichols and May had split up and he had started his directing career with a bang. His first film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won 5 Oscars and his second film, The Graduate, became a cultural phenomenon. During that time May was working on becoming a playwright in New York. After a couple of years, she decided to adapt Jack Ritchie’s short story into a movie not a play. That movie was A New Leaf and though it didn’t create the same enthusiasm as Nichols’ films, it is certainly just as important and well done.
The film stars Walter Matthau who got paid far more than May — who acted, directed, and wrote — simply for starring in the film. He plays a wealthy playboy whose family has stopped giving him money so he seduces a bookish scientist played by Elaine May in order to marry and kill her for her money. However along the way he falls in love with her. It may not have been a blockbuster hit, but it was a huge critical success that showed May was capable of a type of darkly comedic humor that was not common at the time. Her next film, The Heartbreak Kid, would become a critical and blockbuster success; following a similar tone and storyline of a bumbling fool of a man trapped in marriage he doesn’t know if he wants.
With that hit, May decided to challenge herself. She made a crime drama called Mikey & Nicky with John Cassavetes and Peter Falk which was largely improvised. Although not as financially successful, it has since been lauded as one of the best films of the 70s due to its re-release on Criterion. Unfortunately for May, her insistence on financial and artistic autonomy made her few friends in Hollywood. May even stole and hid reels of her film, Mikey & Nicky, all over Los Angeles in order to stop the studio from editing the final cut. Her last film’s fate seems like an orchestrated revenge from the many powerful men she stood up to.
Her final film, Ishtar, may not be as smart or revolutionary as her other work but it is by no means bad. It is a well crafted and fun update to the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road movies for the Reagan era. It unfortunately bombed at the box office, in no small part, because of rumors — which May has denied — stating that while shooting in Morocco, she made insane requests such as that the crew move sand dunes in order for her to get a shot. These rumors destroyed the film’s legacy and led her to leave directing behind; a sad ending to her directorial career — something her colleague, Mike Nichols, never faced. Staying true to her wit, May would later go on to joke that “If all the people who hated Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”
Still, May's story is not one of defeat. She never really stopped working. She became known as one of the best script doctors in Hollywood for her work on the Oscar-winning films Tootsie and Reds. She even snagged Oscar nominations for Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors (which was directed by Nichols). May might have been mistreated and cast aside by Hollywood’s most powerful, but she always had the strength to get back up and make us laugh.
One of Elaine May’s greatest triumphs is having filmed one of the grittiest and most realistic looks at male friendships and organized crime with Mikey & Nicky. Nicky (John Cassavetes), a paranoid and childlike bookie, who believes he is about to be killed by the mob, enlists his friend Mikey (Peter Falk) to help him evade the mob. Mikey seems like a caring and patient friend but we soon realize that he is not trying to get him out of town, but keep him in one place so the hitman can get to him.
Contrary to what one might think, this was a very personal film for May. She grew up in a family that was connected with the mob and the characters are based on people she knew growing up. It is also interesting to note that Mikey & Nicky are so called because of her friend and partner, Mike Nichols. Friends recall seeing drafts of the film as early as the 1950s; the film itself was shot in her hometown, Philadelphia. Because of her personal connection to this dark criminal underworld, it stands as one of the first American films of the era to demystify the mafia — something Scorsese would later solidify with his film, Goodfellas, in 1990.
None of May’s characters seem worthy of the operatic importance her contemporaries give mobsters in movies like The Godfather. This is especially true for Ned Beatty’s hitman character. He is not a cool, calm and collected samurai figure. He is a sweaty idiot, to put it bluntly. Throughout the film, he can’t get close to Nicky because he keeps getting lost and having to ask for directions. The entire chase to kill Nicky ends up meaning Mikey will have to babysit Nicky all night as well. This is certainly far from the glamorous world of political bribing and honor killings. Nicky’s just a baby, Mikey’s a nanny, and the hitman is a fool.
Moreover, the men seem to be at their worst when they are around women. Throughout May’s career, she was dogged by feminist critics who believed that her focus on masculinity and her mistreatment of women in her movies was a major issue. This film certainly got heat for that reason, but one could argue that May uses this spotlight on abusive male-female relationships to examine toxic masculinity. In Mikey’s and Nicky’s interactions with a young woman, Nell, May shows the two sides of male manipulation. Nicky brings Mikey to his girlfriend, Nell’s, apartment and immediately has sex with her. He plays on his situation and uses his desperation to convince her to just let him do what he wants.
He later invites Mikey to do the same and he starts off by condescending to her and pretending to be a nice guy. When she rejects him, both he and Nicky react violently. This scene is certainly hard to watch, but it should be differentiated from the many other depictions of violence against women. This is not depicted with a perverted thrill as many others are; instead we are made to feel real sympathy for this woman. The scene is not about showing how much women can suffer but how low some men are willing to sink. This event even serves as a turning point in the story as Mikey leaves Nicky and declares he does not want to be friends anymore.
The film is a wonderful, but dark, look at the often overlooked complexities of male friendship. Again, the two represent two opposing yet equally destructive aspects of friendship. Nicky is extremely angry and often without reason; at one point taking a principled stand against a bus driver who won’t let other passengers on, yet at another point he racially antagonizes black people at a bar for no reason. Nicky’s unkempt male rage is often expressed to those who least deserve it and leaves him quite isolated. Mikey, on the other hand, keeps his emotions buried.
At the end of the film, he reveals quite calmly that his father had always liked Nicky, maybe even more than himself. At that point you realize, this hit is the culmination of all of Mikey’s hatred and jealousy towards Nicky, which was birthed when he was a child. Like their friendship, Nicky reaches a pathetic end. He bangs on the door endlessly as Mikey listens and waits for the hitman to get him. These dynamics of overwrought and underexpressed anger cannot stand. The film stands as one of the few of its era to condemn and understand this kind of masculinity, which is too often celebrated as stoic and courageous. May pokes holes in all of these male fantasies and does so with the great style that only she could pull off.
