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.
Shot on location in Morocco and New York City by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the production drew media attention before its release for substantial cost overruns on top of a lavish budget, and reports of clashes between May, Beatty and Storaro. A change in studio management at Columbia Pictures during post-production also led to professional and personal difficulties that undermined the film's release.
Ishtar polarized critics and became a notorious failure at the box office. Many initially considered it to be one of the worst films ever made, although critical support has increased significantly since release, to the point where it received two votes for the greatest movie of all time in the 2022 edition of the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound decennial polls. Its 2004 DVD release excluded North America, where a director's cut, running two minutes shorter, was released on Blu-ray in August 2013.
Plot Chuck Clarke and Lyle Rogers are inept songwriters who are down on their luck, but dream of becoming a popular singing duo like Simon and Garfunkel. Though they are poorly received at a local open mic night, agent Marty Freed offers to book them as lounge singers in a hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco, explaining that the last act quit due to political unrest in the area. Nearly broke, both single, and without any better options, Lyle and Chuck decide to take the gig.
When they arrive in the fictional neighboring country of Ishtar, Chuck agrees to give his passport to a mysterious woman who claims her life is in danger. She promises to meet him in Marrakesh. Unfortunately, Chuck learns at the U.S. Embassy that it will take longer than expected to get a new passport. Lyle goes to Morocco in a bid to save their booking while Chuck stays behind. Alone in Ishtar, Chuck meets CIA agent Jim Harrison. Chuck agrees to be a mole for the CIA and, in return, Harrison gets Chuck to Morocco by the next evening.
Now together again, Chuck and Lyle unwittingly become involved in a plot to overthrow the Emir of Ishtar. The mysterious woman, Shirra Assel, sneaks into Lyle's room and tries to steal his luggage, mistaking it for Chuck's. At the airport, she had stuck some of her items into Chuck's luggage, because that was her only way of smuggling them out of Ishtar. She later breaks into their room and goes through Chuck's luggage, but she fails to find an ancient, prophetic map that her archaeologist brother Omar had found. Shirra needs this map in order to command the loyalties of the left-wing guerrillas who oppose the government of Ishtar.
Shirra later confronts Chuck and accuses him of working with the CIA, and Chuck accuses her of being a communist. Meanwhile, Lyle attempts to find a camel salesman named Mohamad and gives him the secret code of "I want to buy a blind camel," as per Shirra's instructions, but Lyle finds the wrong Mohamad and ends up actually buying a blind camel. Chuck and Lyle receive instructions from both the CIA and the leftist guerillas to go into the desert, and both parties actually intend for them to die there.
In the desert, Chuck pulls his jacket over his head to shield himself from the sun, and Lyle sees that the legendary map is sewn inside of the jacket. The jacket was originally Omar's, but Shirra took it, and then Chuck and Shirra traded jackets. The CIA sends helicopters to finish off Chuck and Lyle, but Shirra and a cab driver arrive in the desert and defend them.
Chuck and Lyle mail the map to their agent Marty, who blackmails the CIA with the map. The CIA ends up having to support Shirra leading social reforms in the country, and back an album written by Rogers and Clarke with a tour starting in Morocco. At the show, Shirra is in the audience. Meanwhile, a military officer orders the rest of the men in uniform that make up the audience to "APPLAUD!" when the songs are finished.
Cast
Dustin Hoffman as Chuck Clarke Warren Beatty as Lyle Rogers Isabelle Adjani as Shirra Assel Charles Grodin as Jim Harrison Jack Weston as Marty Freed Carol Kane as Carol Tess Harper as Willa Rogers Aharon Ipalé as Emir Yousef Fred Melamed as the Caid of Assari Fuad Hageb as Abdul David Margulies as Mr. Clarke Rose Arrick as Mrs. Clarke Julie Garfield as Dorothy Bill Bailey as General Westlake Christine Rose as Siri Darma Warren Clarke as English Gunrunner Arthur Brauss as German Gunrunner Matt Frewer as a CIA Agent Alex Hyde-White as a CIA Agent Ron Berglas as a CIA Agent (as Ron Berglas) Nadim Sawalha as Rug Shop Owner / Camel Seller Haluk Bilginer as the Guerrilla Leader Dylan Baker as Aghast Nightclub Patron
Production
Development
Pre-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. She never had a sufficiently protective producer, and by starring in and producing her next film he could give her the chance to make the film he believed her to be creatively and commercially capable of making.
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. She thought it would be funny to cast Beatty against type as the Hope part, the bumbler of the duo, while the co-star, possibly Dustin Hoffman, would play the self-assured ladies' man that Crosby usually portrayed.
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". Hoffman was finally persuaded by Beatty's assurances that he would provide May with the room she needed to work. When May finished the script, Beatty, Hoffman, and some other friends including Charles Grodin had a meeting and read-through at Beatty's house. All present agreed that the script needed work, but it was funny and could be a hit.
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. He worried about the effects of having Beatty, Hoffman and May on the same set because they were all known to be perfectionists. May, in particular, had a reputation for shooting as much raw footage as Beatty or Stanley Kubrick. However, McElwaine was also afraid the property could be a hit for another studio if Columbia passed, because Beatty had a solid record of commercial success in his four movies as producer and star.
The two bankable stars and May received $12.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) 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.
Other roles were cast through connections to the three. Grodin was a friend of May and had starred in a successful comedy she directed, the original version of The Heartbreak Kid. Isabelle Adjani, who played the female lead, Shirra Assel, disguised as a boy for most of the film, was Beatty's girlfriend at the time. Vittorio Storaro replaced original cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno when Rotunno was unable to change his schedule to accommodate a delay in shooting.
Paul Williams began working on the songs the lead duo would sing. "The real task was to write songs that were believably bad. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life. I've never had more fun on a picture, but I've never worked harder." May preferred that Williams write whole songs, even if she intended to use only a few lines, and then teach them to the stars and have them perform them, necessitating more time and money.
The studio had wanted to shoot the desert scenes in the Southwestern United States in order to keep costs down and production under control. However, Columbia's parent company at the time, Coca-Cola, had money in Morocco it could not repatriate, so the studio relented and allowed production to take place in the Sahara Desert. It was expected that shooting in Morocco would take ten weeks, after which the New York scenes would be shot.
Principal photography Ishtar began principal photography in October 1985, amidst high political tensions in North Africa. Israeli warplanes had just bombed Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis and, seven days later, the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, murdering an American citizen named Leon Klinghoffer. The Moroccan military was fighting the Polisario Front guerrillas at the time as well. There were rumors that Palestinian terrorists might try to kidnap Hoffman, and some locations had to be checked for land mines before the shooting could begin.
There were also production difficulties. The filmmakers appreciated the Moroccans' hospitality and willingness to cooperate, but there was no one in the country with experience supporting a major Hollywood film production. Requests by the producers were sometimes unfulfilled, and calls for local extras led to thousands of people showing up.
Some of the film's production woes have become Hollywood lore. The film's animal trainer went looking for a blue-eyed camel in the Marrakech market and found one he considered perfect. However, he chose not to buy it right away, expecting he could find others and use that knowledge to bargain with the first trader for a better price. He did not realize that blue-eyed camels were rare, and could not find another camel good enough. He returned to the first trader, who since had eaten the camel.
Another frequently related incident, as told by production designer Paul Sylbert but disputed by others on the film, concerns the dunes where scenes with Beatty and Hoffman lost in the desert would be shot. Sylbert had scouted dunes in the United States and Morocco but none seemed to fit the vision of May, who was very uncomfortable in the desert environment. She suffered from toothaches that she refused to have treated locally, and took extensive measures to shelter herself from the harsh sun, not only spending much of her time under a large parasol but wearing large sunglasses and wrapping her face in a white gauze veil, to the point that her appearance was compared to a Star Wars stormtrooper. After one unsuccessful search for dunes, Sylbert says, May suddenly announced she wanted a flat landscape instead. It took ten days to level an area of a square mile (2.6 km²).