Ishtar

Ishtar (1987)

Telling the truth can be dangerous business.

Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.

Date of release
1987-05-15
TMDB
4.6 / 10 (173)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Comedy, Adventure
Director
Elaine May

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New York City and Morocco
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 3. Including: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director

Ishtar is a 1987 American adventure comedy film written and directed by Elaine May, and produced by Warren Beatty, who co-stars opposite Dustin Hoffman. The story revolves around Chuck Clarke and Lyle Rogers, a duo of talentless American songwriters who travel to a booking in Morocco and stumble into a four-party Cold War standoff.

Production

Warren Beatty felt indebted to Elaine May, who, in addition to co-writing his 1978 hit Heaven Can Wait, had done a major uncredited rewrite on the script of his Academy Award-winning Reds and helped immensely with its post-production. He began looking for a project that she could write and direct.

At a dinner with Beatty and Bert Fields, their agent, May said she would like to do a variant on the Road to ... films of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, set in the Middle East. Her idea would feature Beatty and a co-star as a mediocre singer-songwriter duo who would go to Morocco and get caught in the crossfire between the Central Intelligence Agency and a local left-wing guerrilla group.

Hoffman, who was also indebted to May for her extensive uncredited rewrite on Tootsie, initially turned it down due to "misgivings". At Beatty's request, the two met with May and Hoffman's creative confidant, playwright Murray Schisgal. The latter two felt that the plot in Morocco overwhelmed the rest of the film and that it "should not leave New York".

Beatty went to Columbia Pictures production head Guy McElwaine, who years before had been his publicist, instructing Fields, "Bert, anything she wants. Period. That's my negotiating position." Despite the prospect of having two major stars on the same project with a well-regarded writer, McElwaine did not immediately approve it.

The two bankable stars and May received $12.5 million (equivalent to $38.7 million in 2025) in salaries before principal photography began. Beatty and Hoffman offered to defer theirs, but Columbia declined; Fields said that an agreement the studio had with HBO covered most of that cost. Beatty, Hoffman, and May all had final cut input as well (although Beatty has denied this). The film's original budget was set at $27.5 million.

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