What did you think of “Ishtar”?
Roger Ebert called it “A truly dreadful film”, Janet Maslin (NY times) called it “genuinely inspired”, while Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) referred to it as “The most underestimated commercial movie of 1987″.
What did you think of “Ishtar”? Leave your comments here. Who knows? We might just use them in our movie.
February 5, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I was delighted to hear the last part of your interview on CBC this morning as I was waking up! I am the only person I know who enjoyed Ishtar, and could never understand why it was the butt of so many jokes. Dustin Hoffman joked about a sequel on the Golden Globe awards tribute to Warren Beatty (you may have mentioned this in your interview before I woke up!). I thought the movie was very funny, and I loved the interaction between the two stars.
It’s been many years since I’ve seen the film, so I don’t remember specifics, which is why lately, I’ve been thinking about watching it again. Having heard about your documentary, I’m definitely going to see it again. It must be on DVD by now, or, if not, I’m sure I can find a VHS copy at Videoflicks.
I’ll look forward to seeing your film. Best of luck!
Marilyn Maxim
February 5, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I heard your interview on CBC this morning and was delighted to hear there is another fan of Ishtar. Unfortunately for you I am not on the Library’s list of waiters.
I enjoyed the movie so much that back in 1988 I made an 8mm video from a rented VHS tape (for personal use only) and over the years have watched it several times. I have always told friends that it is an entertaining movie and well worth watching. They all appear skeptical and still believe it would be a waste of their time.
I thought Grodin turned in an excellent performance as did Beatty and Hoffman. I believe the bad reviews were due to the fact that for $44M people were expecting to see out of this world special FX. Instead I suspect the two leads were very well paid for a well made movie.
February 5, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Dear Ms. Maxim,
Like you, I never understood how such a funny and inoffensive movie became a punch line.
Unfortunately, “Ishtar” is not yet out on DVD in North America, although it might be released later this year. You can get the VHS at Queen Video in Toronto and a few other places around town.
Thank you for the words of encouragement. Check back from time to time, as we will post updates and plan to put some clips from our movie on this site.
February 5, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Dear Mr. Hidderley,
The budget was mentioned in every review that I have read. It seems to me that “Ishtar” was/is infamous for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with the movie itself. Janet Maslin (NY Times) wrote a great article about “Ishtar” from the time entitled “Excess Baggage and The Movies”, which might come in handy when dealing with skeptical friends.
It’s nice to hear from a fellow “Ishtar” fan.
February 6, 2007 at 6:53 pm
We saw your article in the Sunday Sun on Feb. 4. My husband and I saw Ishtar at the theatre when it first came out. We have never laughed so hard! We thought the movie was brilliantly written and acted and was the best tongue in cheek we had seen in a long time. We told all of our friends to go see it but obviously not many of them did. Too bad for them.
I hope they do release it on DVD as we will buy a copy for our movie library.
February 13, 2007 at 11:56 pm
lol you know its funny i loved that movie as well and for some reason i was thinking about it a couple of months back.that movie reminds me of those ugly small Toyota vans from the mid eighties that were horrible to look at but somehow were very appealing (also have discovered recently there are sites devoted to it as well on the site).i call it the ugly duckling syndrome
February 16, 2007 at 2:29 pm
“OH, IS THAT RIGHT!”
Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Crombie, I would like to offer you both a HUGE ‘THANK YOU’ for taking this on! As one of the most maligned movies of all time, ISHTAR deserves a fair shake and I believe you will see your efforts successful in getting the movie it’s proper widespread POSITIVE acceptance. As it’s available on DVD in Europe, it MUST have a similar fan base here in North America.
Our website, http://www.ishtarthemovie.com, and many others, have been created to support the same interest as, it seems, both of you have. Please let me know if there is ANYTHING we can do to help with your plans… need a grip???
Jef Leeson
March 9, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Late one night, a few years ago now, I was curious to see Ishtar being shown, I endeavoured to stay up and watch it – having heard the tales of a production out of control, of Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty tormenting their producer, and of it’s status as one of the biggest flops of all time; I also remembered that it featured in Empire’s 50 worst films of all time feature back in 1997. I was confused though as the film began, as I found myself laughing hysterically – not at – but with the film as we are quickly, effortlessly sold to Hoffman and Beatty as Clark and Rogers a Simon and Garfunkel wannabe duo with all the talent of an X-Factor cast-off. However, it was late, I didn’t make it far into the film, I nodded off.
Today, milling about HMV in London, I stumbled upon a copy of Ishtar on DVD for £5.99 and just had to buy it, it was too tempting, I had to know if my enjoyment of the film had been a product of the early hours or not. So this evening I watched Ishtar again, and this time I saw it all the way through.
Yes, the plot is a bit of a muddle, yes.
But, this is a film about two inept songwriters thrown into a confusing conflict where they’re confused for communists and CIA agents – at varying times – whislt bemoaning that they’re going to miss their gig at Chez Casablanca, it’s a buddy-movie, and what a great partnership it is. Hoffman and Beatty play off each other gloriously, really enjoying acting like a pair of idiots in way over their heads, their sheer mindless belief that they are supremely talented is wonderfully funny and painful at the same time. This film sits firmly on their shoulders and they carry it beautifully.
Though it makes no sense the film is consistently laugh-out-loud funny with a glorious array of set-pieces all neatly strung together and played out with gusto by our tone-deaf heroes. Essentially, and almost spookily, the film seems like a Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson movie, with Hoffman (he played Stiller’s father in Meet the Fockers) delivering delusion and angst like an all-singing, all-dancing cross between Zoolander and Stiller’s character in Meet the Parents, whislt Beatty is all Texan charm, even sounding incredibly reminiscent of Wilson throughout. I said to my girlfriend half way through as we were laughing our heads off, “They should remake this” and she replied “Why? I like it like this.” She was baffled when I told her that it was regarded, by Empire, as one of the 50 worst films of all time, and I was too… it may not have the greatest plot known to man, but it is a comedy, and I haven’t laughed this hard at a comedy since ‘Anchorman’…
I may sound like a mad fool, but I think this film is due a reappraisal, and Rogers and Clark need to release an album…
March 13, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I liked Ishtar when I first saw it in ‘86. The film was rarely reviewed: it’s price tag usually was. But it’s not like the critics universally loathed it: Newsday on Long Island gave it a good review, and Vincent Canby of the New York Times said in December that it just missed his 20 best list.
The first 20 minutes are hilarious, but the deadpan humor put off people who came in with a chip on their shoulder. And there are slow spot. It’s not a great movie, but it’s definitely a good one. I’ve commented on it further on my web page.
I’m looking forward to seeing your film.
March 25, 2007 at 7:53 am
Good luck with your documentary.
It is interesting how some movies that seem so good are overlooked, not known or panned by so many people. There are movies like that in Australia such as the road movie Spider and Rose (c. 1995 and not available for sale on DVD in Australia) and the helium balloons-powered adventure movie Danny Deckchair (c. 2003 and available on DVD, but often in large numbers in the bargain bin at Target). I guess you hear this sort of thing a bit about other movies from people, but they are classics, just like Ishtar is. Hopefully more people will watch the movie after seeing your documentary, and remember it well.
The workings of the library should also be interesting (esp. for people who don’t use the library much to get information). While the Internet and email are great technology for things like ebay, looking things up and downloading movies, I don’t see how they could be as interesting as real people and dealing with the library. However, perhaps looking at the availability of Ishtar movies and assoicated material on ebay and bidding and purchasing that way could still be interesting. At least the odds are better that you will actually get to see the movie, even if you have to pay for it (though one of the beauties of ebay is who knows how much you will pay for it – depends on other bidders and your bidding skills etc!)
April 13, 2007 at 12:26 am
My copy of Ishtar is without a doubt the most watched movie in our collection. Being big fans of both Hoffman & Beatty my husband & I went to see the film as soon as it was released. Like other Ishtar fans, we told everyone that we knew how great it was. I guess we were the only ones that got it! In fact it became such a joke (our liking it so much) that to this day when we suggest a play, a book or a movie to someone, my sister-in-law warns them that we thought Ishtar was great. This is a fact that we’re proud of & when my husband received a copy of Ishtar in 1990 for his birthday it became required viewing for anyone visiting us @ the cottage & is often taken to friend’s cottages by my three grown children who have known from a very young age “that if you play the accordian” you can’t be in a rock & roll band. Good luck with your film, we look forward to seeing it. PS As a follow up project, you might consider “The Fortune” with Warren Beatty & Jack Nicolson. Now there’s a film that’s even harder to get a copy of than Ishtar!
April 15, 2007 at 7:46 am
In college in 1992, a friend and I went to the laundromat. Bored, we began to write lame little couplets, then decided to do what we called a tag team poem. This began a strange, creative friendship that over the next several years included writing and taping song parodies, serial radio soap operas, and commercials, writing tag team letters to family members and ex girlfriends, and generally spending our free time doing odd, pointless, but creative things. We had no real talent, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. When we were feeling less creative, we would do things like movie marathon theme nights (Like trying to watch all 6 (at the time) Star Trek movies back to back, or find every movie Mark Hamil made after Star Wars, or once, watching in one night what we had heard were the worst movies of all time. This is what led us to Ishtar. Needless to say we loved it. Add in the fact that I had an ex girlfriend named Willa and had once when drunk said something very similar to Beattys “mean looking but with character” line to my friend, and this was a movie that described us if we stayed in the lifestyle of dorky college students into middle age. We loved Ishtar because it described us, and inspired us. I am 36 now, with a respectable job and 3 kids, but Ishtar takes me back to college and writing those cheesy songs and poems. It rocks because for a small segment of society, it is us. The songs were great, the songwriting scenes were outstanding, and the Morocco portion of the movie was like Peter Sellers classic Pink Panther scenes. It was great fun, and still is when I pull it out and watch it. Hope the documentary gets made, I’ll be looking for it.
June 1, 2007 at 6:56 am
i loved ishtar! my parents were fbi agents and we would watch that movie over and over and laugh like crazy, especially at charles grodin’s character. i just never got why people thought the movie was so terrible…there is some really funny stuff in there…’i wanna buy a blind camel’! C’mon, or any of their ridiculous songs (which get in my head every now and then). And I love the scene in the end when you hear the military guy yell ‘applaud!’ after their song. i don’t know, i guess the movie makes me kind of nostalgic too…i wish they would release it on dvd with lots of extras. best of luck with your film; i’ll look out for it:)
July 7, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Ishtar has always been one of my all time favorite comedies. Not just because it stars my all time favorite actor, Warren Beatty, but because it is hysterically funny and way ahead of its time. The way the shady practices of the various intelligence agencies like CIA and FBI are shown and mocked became so relevant in the first war in the Middle East, dubbed “Desert Storm”, let alone in the current disaster that has lasted a full 4 years already, “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Beatty and Hoffman obviously had the best time creating the lovable misfits Lyle Rogers and Chuck Clarke and totally abandon any fear of self ridicule. I watch the (European) DVD regularly and no matter the fact that I can almost recite the entire dialogue, the movie still has me on the floor, laughing, at each viewing.
July 11, 2007 at 2:41 pm
A buddy of mine hounded me for months trying to get me to watch Ishtar in the early 90’s. I had only heard the typical negative rumblings, and would have rather suffered through An American Tale 2 to see how Fievel was doing.
One night, I agreed to shut him up by watching the damn movie (he actually owned a copy on VHS, the moron. I must have been drunk. Holy crap, it turns out to be one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I now own a copy on VHS and DVD (I had to order it from Europe.)
Why was Ishtar such a flop? I think we have to look at the time. Ishtar took two of Hollywood’s top leading men and cast them as very grounded and realistic idiots. In 1987, this would be like casting Bo Derek as a fat chick. It didn’t make sense to moviegoers. They arrive expecting one thing, saw something else, and misunderstood the movie as being stupid (instead of its lead characters being stupid.) Had Ishtar been made in the mid 90’s, they heyday of stupid buddy comedies (can anyone say Chris Farley and Jim Carrey?), it would have clearly been the king of them all.
If you are clever, and you like comedy, you will love Ishtar. It’s as simple as that.
September 28, 2007 at 3:12 am
Hello and let me extend my thanks to you for working on such an amazing project. First you may want to hear my “Ishtar” story and how I got completely sucked into this great movie. I had heard about “Ishtar” about a decade ago (I was born two years after it came out) when I was watching a biography on the A & E channel about Dustin Hoffman. One of the areas they covered was “Ishtar” and how Hoffman defended the film from critics and poor box office returns. A few years ago “Ishtar” resurfaced when my dad commented on how terrible the film was. I was intrigued since I am a bad movie fan so I launched my quest to find “Ishtar” and see what it was all about. My neighborhood video rental store closed around the time of my obsession to find “Ishtar” and the store was selling video tapes and a few DVD’s to get rid of their stock. I looked all over for “Ishtar” and much to my luck, there stood on the shelf a lone VHS copy of “Ishtar” in excellent condition. I instantly grabbed it and payed my three dollars for it. I spent the whole evening watching the movie with my mom whom herself always wanted to see it. I was blown away! My dad was not only completely wrong about the film, but I had never seen such a movie that entertained me and made me laugh so hard. My mom loved it as much as me so I spread the word out to my friends and one of them responded saying that he loved Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty. We watched it together and he too fell in love with “Ishtar!” It was like an illness, but a good illness because we all had “Ishtar” fever. My friend bought his copy from Amazon and cherishes the film to this day. I love this film and I wish you good luck on your documentary. I am now a big “Ishtar” fan and I have been lobbying for the DVD version of the movie to come out here in the U.S. Thanks to you the whole “Ishtar” community is pleased. Thanks again for your time!
-Jon H. from Wisconsin
January 11, 2008 at 2:37 am
I saw Ishtar in the theater with my brothers and sister. It was like falling in love. We were teenagers, trying to figure out our place in Reagan’s America, a world that seemed absurd to us. This movie, aside from being side-splittingly funny, provided some sense of comfort for us by portraying on screen all the absurdity that we saw around us. There is something magical about this movie. It has since become part of our family language. I show this movie to people whom I love, as a way of explaining who I am. I am someone who loves “Ishtar”.
March 1, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I have to say that I just watched the ending of Ishtar on tv today! As always, I completely love love love this movie. I’m sorry, but people just didn’t get this film and how wonderful it is, especially the remarkable songs. Actually my favorite scene is “Left A Little Love in my Will” in the Greek restaurant. Priceless.
“Wardrobe” is absolutely hilarious, and I know the words to “Telling the Truth”, though no one gets the joke when I impromptu break out in song!
There is a cult following for this film, and I will never forget my mother and I laughing so hard we cried while watching. Okay, so Dustin and Warren were unexpectedly being absolutely ridiculous. That’s the beauty. “Oh my, I can still start laughing thinking of Beatty singing “How small am I”. God how I love this movie! Now if I could just find a blind camel!
March 22, 2008 at 11:28 pm
The first 20-30 minutes of Ishtar are brilliant and I never understood why people were so negative about it. I think it’s a treasure. Good luck with your film.
May 21, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I don’t care what anyone says, Ishtar is one of the best comedies ever produced and definitely the most underappreciated. Whenever I think about it, I can’t help but smile and chuckle a little. Along with the film’s hilarity, it’s also very uplifting. Rogers and Clark, for all their foibles and comic stupidity, never quit and never let the naysayers get them down. And in the end, relying on their strong friendship and a little help from the CIA, their dreams come true. What a great story.
As for my favorite line in the movie…
“We didn’t need a pencil!”
But seriously, best of luck with the film. Can’t wait to see it.
June 25, 2008 at 12:22 am
Ishtar was a great comedy. Right up there with Animal House, The Pink Panther, The Out of Towners, Inlaws, Planes Trains and Automobiles, The Jerk, Dumb and Dumber, Christmas Vacation, etc. If you’ve ever written a song or had any desire to be in the music business, Ishtar connects with your soul instantly. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate it is a smuck.
July 2, 2008 at 4:03 am
Well now! This is a funny thing. I never, EVER thought I’d see the day when Ishtar would get an honest treatment. You can measure the integrity of a person in whether they form their own opinions or dance along with group-think. Ishtar is an excellent yardstick in this respect, though I never liked to use it very often as it was sort of depressing most of the time. We live in a world filled with many frightened sleep walkers, and this is a horrible, uncharitable thing to consider.
I saw Ishtar when I was seventeen, and I had no expectations whatsoever because at the time I was a sleep walker of my sort who was incapable of plugging into the notion of hip and cool at any level of society. I didn’t know that there was a public opinion with regard to movies, or that one was subtly required to adopt these attitudes. I quite enjoyed Ishtar, but I didn’t REALLY REALLY enjoy it per se. That came later as my awareness of the world expanded and I started meeting these wonderful, beautiful creative people who had tons of passion but only moderate talent. People who would never make it big, but who were valid, vital humans nonetheless. Ishtar is bitter-sweet, sad and encouraging and funny and gentle, honest and delusional. It has all the qualities of positive, fragile yet un-stoppable humanity. Chuck and Lyle weren’t the sort who would ever write a Simon & Garfunkel song, but I realized at some point that they *were* the sort of people who Simon & Garfunkel might very well have written songs about.
Anyway, some years later I rented Ishtar with a friend, telling him, “You should see this. I remember that it was quite good and I’ve never understood why it has become so shunned by popular opinion.”
–In retrospect, it seems to me that it was more than just the huge budget which turned public opinion against the film. I think instead that it might have had largely to do with the fact that in some ways, High school never really ends for many people. –That is, geeky people like Chuck & Lyle, who are not as talented and not as hip or savvy. . , for some reason those are exactly the kids who are punished by the purveyors of popular acceptance. The popular kids killed Ishtar.
So we watched the film. It has it’s flaws, but Oh My GOD! I realized then, (at that point I was in my twenties), that it had some points of utter genius which are almost NEVER seen in film. I didn’t realize it as a kid, but it its message was powerful; “Follow Your Bliss.” It had Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts and Ray Bradbury written all over it. –And not in that sickly Feel-Good Disney manner which doesn’t work. –If you follow your soul, it will carry you to magnificent places of great value, but unlike the false Feel-Good message, those places will often not conform to the narrowly defined, popularly accepted version of success of American Dream fortune as seen on magazine covers. –One’s true journey might stop at such places, (why not? Happy, powerful people are often paid attention to), but that is never the goal. Instead, the true journey will take you to incredible, unexpected places, through terrifying challenges, and will teach lessons of much deeper value.
I think that is what horrified many viewers and reviewers of Ishtar. –The popular kids really are the ones who dictate that which is considered proper and ‘cool’, and the idea of breaking with popular acceptance in order to make difficult journeys for non-material reward is anathema to their mind-set. Abandon slave-hood to popular rule in order to grow spiritually? Argh! Of course it must be shunned! The slaves must not grow strong, must not escape! –And especially when you connect the psychological dots to those 44 million 1980’s dollars spent in making the film. . .
Oh, god, Ishtar was an awesome movie!
For anybody who liked Ishtar, there’s a less accessible, but in my opinion, even more powerful movie with a similar message. –Also critically panned, also written by a praise-sung genius, and also featuring an otherwise blockbuster cast, (Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.) Go watch, “Joe v.s. the Volcano”.
July 30, 2008 at 7:09 am
“Hello, my name is Jim, and I’m an Ishtar addict.”
“Hello, Jim”.
It all started back in 1987. I remember waiting for this film to come out, even though I had heard some negative things about it in the press. When it was released, it was panned more than DeVito in an endless loop from Throw Mama From The Train. Everyone hated it.
Everyone, that is, but me.
I laughed out loud in the theater, when no one else got a single joke.
I laughed out loud at home, when the VHS came out, and my family hated it.
And truthfully, I’ve laughed out loud for lo these many years. At this point, I don’t even have to watch the film to laugh. All I have to do is think about it.
Rogers and Clarke. Hot Fudge Love. I’m hooked.
How could no one crack up when Beatty is driving the ice cream truck, trying to write a song, while the kids are in the background, screaming at him to stop the truck?
How could no one crack up at Beatty’s “smuck”, or Hoffman’s Anniversary Ballad to the old couple, when he kept looking at the waiter stumbling past him?
There is so much to love about this movie.
“Look what YOU have!”
“Kareem Abdul! Kareem Abdul!……Abdul Jabbar!!!”
“Shit, man…when you’re on, you’re on!”
And so on, and so on.
I’m so happy to hear about your documentary. I look forward to it as much as I’m looking forward to the domestic release of the Ishtar DVD and soundtrack.
I wish you well with it, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of this brilliant film.
December 3, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Ishtar is a staple in our family. We obviously were not intimidated by the “biggest box office flop of all time” moniker that was maliciously attached to this film upon release. We used to rent this film relentlessly growing up, and my brother can sing pretty much every Paul Williams song in the flick.
“You can play at my worthless mansion!”
I have converted many people over the years from the dark side, and they love it.
While living in Japan, I bought a VHS copy with Japanese subtitles for roughly $2 bucks USD.
We tried to have someone in California “in the biz” take the original 35mm film and transfer to digital format for personal consumption.
I guess I will just do it with my Japanese version.
Still one of the all time funniest movies of all time.
I’ll defend it to my death!
December 4, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I was so jazzed after typing that response above yesterday, that I went home, popped in the Japanese subtitled VHS copy of Ishtar into the VCR, hooked that up to a Canopus ADVC 100 Analog/Digital Video Converter and plugged it all into my Mac.
Opened up iMovie, and transferred the whole thing to digital. Now, I am burning DVD’s for the family to watch over Christmas.
Columbia needs to re-release this movie on DVD for the USA with director’s and actor’s commentaries.
This thing is filled with gems:
“We didn’t NEED a pencil!”
December 10, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Ooh. I butchered that line above.
This is the correct line:
“l am Ahmad bin Ali. l’m the caid of Assari. lt was l that called out ”The Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Perhaps you would care to entertain at my worthless palace?”
That exchange is freaking PRICELESS!
December 24, 2008 at 4:39 am
The blind camel. Loved the blind camel.
In an interview on “ain’t it cool news” Dustin Hoffman says he likes Ishtar and would like to participate in a screening.
January 2, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I saw Ishtar in 1987… and bought the VHS tape when the movie store went out of business. I unabashedly LOVE that movie! It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.. Hoffman and Beaty and Grodin are absolutely brilliant. It is rich with quotable lines that make me laugh out loud just thinking about them..
And, it also reminded me of the innocent/naive time in my teenage years (even though Rogers and Clarke were grown men) when my best friend Freddie and I used to sit at the piano and write songs.. he wrote music and I wrote lyrics.. some of the most awful songs you’d ever believe.. and we thought they were really great!!! so when I saw Hoffman and Beaty writing songs together in “Ishtar”, I was immediately transported to that time when two kids in the 1970s, who thought they were brilliant, had the best time of their lives writing terrible songs together. We were going to be famous!
It’s totally about how much more rewarding it is to be really terrible at something you love with all your heart, than to be good at something you really don’t like doing. “It takes a lot of nerve to have nothing at your age.”
February 16, 2009 at 3:55 am
I loved Ishtar. My wife loves it too. The songs are very funny, and the vulnerability of the lead actors is endearing. When I saw the movie in the theaters I was 21 years old, and was unaware of the smarmy Hollywood press and the critical crowd. I see enjoy entertainment that I like and I don’t care what others say about it. I have always believed that the bad press about the cost overruns by a press eager to slam Oscar worthy heavyweights was persuasive to many who didn’t have the nerve to see it anyway.
My wife and I have many many many memorable lines that we constantly quote from the movie. I quote these from memory with the confidence that I recall them accurately:
“We did not shoot at two Americans in the desert. We did not. Who told you that? The Secretary of State? How would he know?”
“That ain’t poverty.”
“We didn’t need a pencil.”
“I’m leaving some love in my will.”
“I remember them NOT glowing.”
I could go on for days and days. Please release this film on DVD, with your documentary on a bonus disc. I heard a rumor that a DVD was planned with Siskel & Ebert’s review attached. This film, and the reaction to it, is a perfect example of a Hollywood that is too taken with itself. I read a rumor about the business side of this film and the goings on with the people behind the film. I’m curious to see this explored. I’m looking forward to your film as a validation of everything I’ve believed for over twenty years: Ishtar is a funny movie with some great comedic acting, vulnerability by the lead actors, and excellent music that purely captures the awesome unawareness of truly bad singer-songwriters.
What’s not to love?
March 11, 2009 at 2:46 am
I rented Ishtar purely out of morbid curiosity. As a songwriter, I thought it was hilarious. And culturally, it fascinated me to discuss this movie with people who, because of a review, considered this movie to represent the epitome of bad even though they hadn’t seen it!! I can recall having a twenty minute discussion with a guy, who I thought was arrogant to begin with, about the movie. I was playing along with him as he trashed this movie and then, when the time was right, I asked him, “Well, how many times have you seen this movie?” “Oh, I haven’t seen it. I just know its bad.” That’s his loss. There is a guy in Denver who does a conservative talk show mornings 9am to noon named Mike Rosen. I usually agree with most of his opinions about politics and movies but he used to use Ishtar as a litmus test for bad movies until I called his show one time and asked him how many times he’d seen it? He hadn’t seen it and stopped using the reference. I pride myself on that little piece of cultural impact.
March 11, 2009 at 2:51 am
I think future filmakers should watch this movie purely as a reference for how many ways movie can be cut. If you are able to procure a copy of the script, you will see how Elaine May was originally going to introduce the movie with the passport stamping sequence. You can sense how the producers felt the movie had to be recut, probably because of review cards after a preview. I don’t think it makes much difference in the overall presentation. Its signifigant in that you can visualize a movie in different forms.
March 12, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Oh, I do believe it is time to watch it again.
I can’t take it anymore.