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Elaine May is finally getting the big-screen tribute she deserves in New York.
From June 26 through July 2, Film at Lincoln Center will celebrate the legendary comedian, writer, actor and director with a weeklong retrospective devoted to her criminally small but enormously influential directing career. Titled Elaine May, the series will screen three of May's four feature films, including newly restored versions of A New Leaf and Mikey and Nicky. The Heartbreak Kid is not part of the series.
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The centerpiece of the retrospective is undoubtedly Mikey and Nicky, May's bruising, brilliant 1976 drama starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. To mark the film's 50th anniversary, May herself will appear alongside producer Julian Schlossberg for a June 26 Q&A following a screening of a new 4K restoration that the filmmaker personally supervised.
Though May is often discussed alongside former comedy partner Mike Nichols as one-half of the groundbreaking Nichols and May duo, her directorial output remains astonishingly slim: just four features over more than 15 years. Yet those films—including the dark romantic comedy A New Leaf and the once-maligned, now-beloved Ishtar—have become touchstones for generations of filmmakers and comedians.
The series kicks off with A New Leaf, May's 1971 directorial debut starring Walter Matthau as a broke socialite plotting to marry and murder a wealthy botanist played by May herself. The film, screening in a new 4K restoration, remains one of the funniest (and strangest) American comedies ever made.
Then there's Ishtar, the 1987 Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman comedy that was famously savaged upon release before undergoing one of cinema's great critical reappraisals. If you've only encountered Ishtar as shorthand for Hollywood excess, here's your chance to discover why filmmakers from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino count themselves among its champions.
All screenings will take place at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Regular tickets cost $19, but the Mikey and Nicky Q&A screening is priced at $25. Considering the chance to spend an evening with, that feels like a bargain.
The Elaine May series runs June 26 through July 2 at Film at Lincoln Center. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.