“Miss May does not exist” declared the one-sentence bio on Elaine May’s debut comedy album in 1958. But exist she does, magnificently so.
Born into a traveling Yiddish theater company in Philadelphia, May attended fifty schools before she was ten, and dropped out completely at age fourteen. She married a toy maker at sixteen, had a daughter at seventeen, then hitchhiked to Chicago, where she pioneered improv comedy alongside Del Close. May then went on to release two Grammy-nominated albums with comedy partner Mike Nichols, direct four fascinating movies, smoke copious cigars, and marry twice more.
Now ninety-two, she’s still treading the boards on Broadway, where she recently bagged a Tony for her role in Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery at the John Golden Theatre, the very stage she and Nichols debuted on almost sixty years ago. As if that weren't enough, rumors suggest she may soon return to filmmaking after a thirty-year hiatus, with Crackpot starring Dakota Johnson.
But despite May’s sparkling achievements, many aspects of her life remain clouded in chaos, controversy and mystery.
“Elaine is the exact opposite of everyone else in Hollywood,” Charles Grodin once said in an interview. “She’s always fighting to get as little credit as possible, to keep her name off movies, and to not be invited to parties. She’s happier without any of that.”
Unhappily for May, the recent surge of interest in her filmmaking, along with the arrival of an acclaimed biography by Carrie Courogen, means she is finally getting the long-overdue recognition she’s so carefully avoided.
Since the early 70s, Elaine May has given us only four films. The most recent was Ishtar (1987), the unfairly maligned adventure comedy starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman that bombed at the box office and torpedoed her directing career. A decade earlier, she directed John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in the bruising crime drama Mikey and Nicky (1978). Prior to that, she made the superb Neil Simon-penned dark comedy, The Heartbreak Kid (1972).
And then there is her debut film, A New Leaf (1971), a pitch black screwball comedy starring Walter Matthau and May herself. Matthau plays Henry, an aging playboy who’s squandered his trust fund on race cars and boats, and suddenly finds himself broke. Lacking ambition or any discernible skills, he hatches a plan to marry a wealthy woman, murder her, and live off her fortune. His target is Henrietta (May), a painfully awkward, fabulously rich botanist. But Henry’s plan hits a snag when he inconveniently falls in love with her.
Production of A New Life was fraught, to say the least. May’s uncompromising approach to directing irked Matthau, who later quipped that she “makes Hitler look like a little librarian.”
The shoot went forty days over schedule, two million over budget, and the resulting rough cut stretched to three-and-a-half hours in length. After ten months of editing, producer Robert Evans wrestled the film from May and butchered it down to 102 minutes. May sued Paramount in an attempt to block her own movie’s release. But at the trial, when the producers screened their cut for the judge, he is said to have declared: “It’s the funniest picture in years. You guys win.”
Fifty-two years later, the verdict stands. Even in its trimmed-down form, A New Leaf remains one of the funniest American comedies ever made - albeit one of the least known. Though both a critical and commercial hit in its time, the movie became nearly impossible to see for over three decades. Whether due to the rank sexism that plagued May’s career or her own disinterest, it nearly faded into obscurity.
A New Leaf is a ferociously witty, surprisingly tender tale of two demented, self-absorbed misfits finding out they need each other. In these demented, self-absorbed times, its relevance endures.
A New Leaf (1971)
Here is a brief video essay:
Where To Watch A New Leaf
Currently available to rent or buy on Google Play, Amazon Prime and others.
Or, if you’re cool and have a zest for the finer things, Kino Lorber has a 4K Blu-ray disc with a few bonus features.
“A.I. has demonstrated that it can do semi-compelling screen savers. That’s essentially that. The value of art is not how much it costs, and how little effort it requires, it’s how much you would risk to be in its presence.
“How much would people pay for those screen savers? Are they going to make them cry because they lost a son? A mother? Because they misspent their youth? Fuck no.”
- Guillermo Del Toro at BFI this week
News Reel
Pickleball and zip-lining, coming to a movie theater near you. National Association of Theatre Owners announced plans to spend $2.2 billion to “upgrade the moviegoing experience.” It feels a bit like when Barnes and Noble pivoted from selling mostly books to mostly Harry Potter merchandise, but it’s a win for movie lovers nonetheless.
Newsom signed two bills into California law at SAG-AFTRA headquarters giving actors more authority over the use of their voice and likeness. HELL YEAH.
Hours later, Lionsgate inked a deal with Runway AI to mine its entire film and TV library. Their noble goal? To develop “capital-efficient content creation opportunities.” Hopefully this capital-efficient content pairs well with capital-intensive pickleball and zip-lining.
Let’s Get Physical
On Notes this week, I threw down the gauntlet and asked readers to flex their physical media collections. Brother, did they ever. Feast your eyes on these magnificent “shelfies” (apologies to no one).
Thanks for playing,
, , , , , , , and .… Looking for more tales of twisted love? I’ve got three great ones you may not have seen in today’s bonus segment, BAD ROMANCE. We also have a bonus bonus segment - Not a Nice Girl: Ten Top Quotes from Elaine May. See you next Friday, free subscribers!
Not a Nice Girl: Ten Top Quotes from Elaine May
“The only thing experience teaches you is what you can’t do. When you start, you think you can do anything, and then you start to get a little tired.”
After seeing the movie E.T.: “All around me, people are sniffling, and I keep thinking, ‘When is this fucking puppet gonna die?’”
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