Elaine May’s short resume as a film director is one of Hollywood’s great shames. Stories abound of studios interfering with her work. Her Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman comedy Ishtar, released in 1987, was her fourth and final film, and few ever expected the 87 year-old to get another shot in the director’s chair.
A remark from Dakota Johnson to Deadline’s Pete Hammond suggests that cinephiles and Mayniacs (← I think I just invented that term, but let’s go with it) will get their long ignored prayers answered. Johnson, who was at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards, told the reporter that she was planning work on May’s upcoming film Crackpot.
There’s no other information about Crackpot anywhere on the Internet, but one can only assume that Johnson will be among many top level stars itching to work with the legendary Elaine May, who recently won the Best Actress Tony for her performance of a woman suffering dementia in Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery opposite Lucas Hedges, Michael Cera and Joan Allen.
Considering May’s theater/improv “Nichols and May” roots, Crackpot will likely be a comedy, like her films A New Leaf (1971) and The Heartbreak Kid (1972). But don’t be too sure! Mikey and Nicky, which she wrote and directed in 1976 for Peter Falk and John Cassavetes has some laughs, but is better classified as a gangster drama. (It’s streaming on Criterion Channel and incredible.)
As a screenwriter, she co-wrote (with Warren Beatty) Heaven Can Wait in 1978 and wrote two scripts for her former comedy partner Mike Nichols in the 1990s, The Birdcage and Primary Colors. She is also renowned for uncredited work on modern classics like Tootsie.
Weirdly, May has been more active in her 80s than she has been for decades. In addition to The Waverly Gallery, she directed an American Masters documentary about Mike Nichols in 2016. In that same year she starred opposite Woody Allen in the extremely dismissed Amazon miniseries Crisis in Six Acts. (Though the streamer has apparently ash-canned A Rainy Day In New York, even they have forgotten this thing exists, and it is still viewable for now.)
While we wait for more Crackpot news, let’s spend a few minutes watching some Nichols and May bits on YouTube.