A master of subverting tropes with surgical precision, Elaine May forged a career in 1970s Hollywood with films like The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey and Nicky. Elizabeth Alsop explores the director’s non-conformist and uncompromising vision while looking at May’s films against trends in classic and post-classical Hollywood. Shaped by her background and success in the theater, May brought the biting humor of her improv comedy to her filmmaking. But unfriendly media and a system hostile to both her methods and sensibility consigned her to “director’s jail” after the failure of Ishtar. As Alsop moves through the filmmaker’s four movies, she tracks May’s inventive treatment of favorite themes like hapless male characters and the inanities of American culture. She also considers May’s work in relation to her multifaceted career as a writer and performer.

A compelling reconsideration of an iconoclast and original, Elaine May reveals how a surprisingly radical auteur created her trademark cinema of discomfort.

Elizabeth Alsop is assistant professor of communication and media at the CUNY School of Professional Studies and a faculty member in Film and Media Cultures at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction.

Acknowledgments

An Unsentimental Education: The Films of Elaine May

A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid: Unromantic Comedies

Mikey and Nicky: Digression and Masculine Dysfunction

Ishtar: Trolling Hollywood

Flopping and Feminist Film Historiography

An Interview with Elaine May

Filmography

Bibliography

Index