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The movie Hollywood wants you to forget...
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BEAKS: Before I get out of here, I want to tell you that there is a small but dedicated cult building up around a film of yours that I love unapologetically. It's ISHTAR. (Hoffman laughs.} I know Quentin Tarantino is a fan. And, recently, the filmmaker Edgar Wright screened it at The New Beverly--
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: I wish I'd been invited!
BEAKS: Paul Williams was there earlier in the evening.
DH: I would've come in a minute!
BEAKS: Really?
DH: I love the movie.
BEAKS: I do, too. You and Warren are great together. The songs are wonderfully awful. Charles Grodin is a slow-burning genius.
DH: He's brilliant. Brilliant. Um... (Smiling) that's a whole other subject. Jimmy Breslin was a friend of mine in those days, and... we made that movie and went through all kinds of horrible press for all different reasons during the making of it. So by the time it came out, it had been buried. We premiered it in Toronto, Canada, and, at that point, they were oblivious of the press about the making of it. And we got a standing ovation at the end of the movie. We then come back to this country, and we are destroyed. So I said to Jimmy Breslin later, "Okay, this isn't a great movie, but my god it didn't deserve the thrashing!" And I'll never forget what he said in that New York accent of his. He said (Doing Breslin), "Dustin, when the press has a contract out, they have a contract out." And they honored that contract. But the hit was out for different reasons.
But it's funny you bring up that movie, because that movie has something to do with this movie believe it or not. The thing I love about [ISHTAR] - and I love it with all of its flaws - is that it has a statement to make. And that is: It is far, far better to spend a life being second rate in something that you're passionate about, then to spend a life being first-rate at that which you are not passionate about. I thought that was worth making a movie about. These guys want to be Simon & Garfunkle, but they have no talent at all. They're middle-aged guys, and at the end of the movie they wind up singing "That's Amore" at a Holiday Inn in Morocco. It's fair. It's fair to make a movie about that.
BEAKS: Well, if we ever do another screening.
DH: Let's make a screening. The first half-hour is flawless.
With the publicist justifiably staring stilettos at me for getting Mr. Hoffman off on a tangent five minutes past the scheduled end of my interview, I turned off my recorder as a gesture of contrition. Big mistake. Hoffman proceeded to tell us about how musicians like Paul Simon and Sting love ISHTAR because it gets nails that struggling, open-mic subculture. We then ran through some of our favorite songs from the movie (Hoffman's faves: "Love in My Will" and "That a Lawnmower Can Do All That"), and even sang a few bars. I didn't want it to end, but I also didn't want his publicist to end me.
But we will make a screening. Soon. And there may be another wrongly maligned movie pulling double-header duty with it. Stay tuned.
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'TALK OF THE NATION' Interview On NPR (National Public Radio)
U.S.A., December 4, 2003 • HEAR IT... HERE!
TRANSCRIPT submitted by N8.
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HOST: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, coming to you from NPR News & our guest is Dustin Hoffman. And now let's go to Lori, & Lori's with us from Westlake, Ohio.
LORI (Caller): Hi there.
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: Hi.
LORI: I, like a lot of people, didn't see "Ishtar" because of the critics. And my friend Ro Moser(ph) was bugging me, they'd bought it, she said, `You have to see it.' So finally, I went over, it was probably 11:00 at night, & I saw the movie & I was quietly weeping laughing. I was laughing so much. I hadn't laughed like that since reading "Catch-22." It had that kind of an effect. And I wanted to thank you for that? that movie & ask you if you guys had as much fun, you & the camel, of course--no, no, I mean you & Warren Beatty & the camel--had as much fun as it seemed like watching that movie? It seemed like you had a blast.
DH: You know, that's--I think everyone in their lifetime has something they don't? haven't quite figured out. I liked that film as much as you do. Almost--well, just about everyone I've ever met that makes a face when the name is brought up has not seen it.
LORI: Has never seen it.
DH: That's right. And, you know, I've bumped into people like--certainly, Simon & Garfunkel & Sting & Bruce Springsteen & people in the music business have a fondness for that film, because they know middle-aged guys who have been struggling to become one of them since they were 18, 19 years old, still struggling, still at it. You know, second rate talent. There's an underlying message to that movie, you know, that I think made it worth doing, & I would do it again in a second--that Elaine May had, & that--'cause if you remember, the beginning of the movie, they're singing "That's Amore," & at the end of the movie they're singing it again in Morocco, like, in a Holiday Inn.
LORI: Uh-huh.
DH: And I think what she was talking about in that film is that: `Isn't it better to be second-rate & love what you're doing...'
LORI: Yeah.
DH: ??than be first-rate & have no passion for it?' And that--you know, as we were talking about before, we said comedy's a serious business & that was underneath the comedy, I think.
LORI: Well, it was just mentioned on the "Tavis Smiley" show. And every time I hear anybody refer to it, I think, `Did you even see it?? I mean, I didn't give an opinion about it, but I'd say, `Well, I heard how it was,' but then I saw it & I knew how great it was. And there's even --on a local Cleveland NPR show, they have film critics every once in a while. One of them--I can't remember the guy's name--had the courage to come out on the radio & say, `I really loved "Ishtar."
DH: Wow.
LORI: Yeah.
DH: Well, you know, it cost too much money, it was $40 million, I think, which would--today, God knows what it would be.
LORI: Uh-huh
DH: And that was the first time, I think, the cost of a film ever got to the public. It was around the time that the public suddenly was aware of how much films cost, how much they made on a weekend. And it's a comedy. And to me, I remember at the time thinking, `I wouldn't want to be a comedian trying to get a laugh from an audience that had paid, like, say, $5000 a ticket at a benefit.'
LORI: Yeah.
DH: You know, they would turn to each other & say, `That's not a $5000 joke,' you know. And I think the audiences that did see it, or certainly the critics--I would say basically the critics, went to that movie, you know?
LORI: Yeah.
DH: ...with an agenda before they even saw it.
LORI: Exactly.
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DUSTIN HOFFMAN:
How can you open any movie when the audience has heard so much negative stuff about it first. 'How dare they spend that kind of money?' And who's saying it? Siskel & Ebert, God bless 'em, who are probably the highest-paid film critics in history. But it's all right for them to make millions while kicking the shit out of us.
I don't mind saying that I like that movie. I don't think it's great, but I'm not sorry I made it, or even of the experience I went through. In many ways I can't even evaluate it, because it's the only movie I've ever been on that was attacked like that. Before ISHTAR, I never realized there was this desire to kill a film. That was sobering.
And it's all OK, because ... it's not cancer & it can only hurt you so much.
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DUSTIN HOFFMAN:
The toughest aspect of the shoot was psychological. We were being shredded by certain people that had access to the media, even before we started filming. David Puttnam was head of (Columbia Pictures) and one of the first things he said when he got the job was, '"Ishtar" isn't my film.' That was before we even started shooting! The media were antipathetic because Warren hadn't given an interview in 10 years. It was odd. Later, when the film came out, we couldn't understand (why the media savaged it). For Warren, it was just befuddling. We were trying to do good work, and they were lying in wait.
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All original content ©2006-2014 LDD. All Rights reserved.
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