92Y Features ISHTAR Screening, 5/17

In 1987, Elaine May's comedy Ishtar, with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as an incredibly untalented singing duo deployed to the Middle East, was the movie the press was ready to pounce on, even before it came out. May later commented, "If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today."

Since then, a cult has grown around Ishtar. The film has many devoted fans - among them Martin Scorsese, who calls it "hilarious," and The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who wrote recently that Ishtar "is among the most original, audacious, and inventive movies-and funniest comedies-of modern times." Seen now, it's clear that this "movie about the idiocy of America blundering its way through the Third World and about the conflation of show business with foreign policy" (as critic Jonathan Rosenbaum described it) was ahead of its time. As Charles Grodin, in a brilliant supporting role as a CIA agent, tells the duo about their low wages, "You can't really put a price on democracy."

The elusive Elaine May has agreed to make a special and very rare appearance in New York at 92nd Street Y. Following a screening of this rarely seen film (not available on DVD in the US), Ms. May, a highly admired and much loved writer and comedian, will be interviewed by Museum of the Moving Image Chief Curator David Schwartz about the film, the strange Hollywood backstory behind its reputation as a flop, and about her brilliant and singular career.

The evening has been programmed by film curator Miriam Bale.

WHAT: Screening of Ishtar followed by Interview with Elaine May
WHEN: Tuesday, May 17, 7:15 pm
WHERE: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave at 92nd Street
TICKETS: $29 at www.92Y.org or 212.415.5500.