Let me ask you something: Have you ever seen a film so relentlessly mocked that it became a cultural punchline, only to later be revered as a misunderstood masterpiece? That’s the curious case of Ishtar, a 1987 comedy that should have been a box office titan but instead became a cautionary tale about Hollywood’s fickle nature. And yet, here we are, decades later, with Quentin Tarantino and Lena Dunham championing its chaotic brilliance. What does that say about the industry’s obsession with ‘failure’ and the strange alchemy of time turning turkeys into treasures? Let’s unpack this mess with a side of existential dread.
Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty were no strangers to risk-taking. Hoffman, the Oscar-winning chameleon who could vanish into roles as effortlessly as he could charm audiences, had built a career on defying expectations. Beatty, the director-producer-actor trifecta, had a reputation for grandiose ambition. Together, they signed on for Elaine May’s Ishtar, a film that was supposed to be a throwback to the Road to... comedies of old. But what makes this particularly fascinating is how their collaboration was doomed from the start—not by the film itself, but by the very system that should have supported them.
Here’s the kicker: Ishtar wasn’t a failure because it was bad. It was a failure because Columbia Pictures, under the ruthless stewardship of David Puttnam, decided to weaponize its own production. Puttnam, a man who believed in fiscal austerity with the fervor of a zealot, saw Hoffman and Beatty as villains. He’d held a grudge against Beatty for overspending on Reds and had a vendetta against Hoffman for his antics on Agatha. So, he did what any sane person would do—launched a media campaign to ruin the film’s reputation before it even opened. The result? A movie that was already labeled a ‘disaster’ by the public, despite being a riotous, self-aware farce.
And what a farce it was! The film’s first act alone is a masterclass in cringe humor. Hoffman and Beatty play clueless songwriters who pen ditties like "Wardrobe of Love" and "That a Lawnmower Can Do All That." These songs are so intentionally terrible that they’re genius. Paul Williams, the man behind the lyrics, once joked that writing a bad song is harder than writing a good one. But here’s what I find fascinating: the film’s absurdity is a mirror to the industry itself. It’s a satire of Hollywood’s obsession with selling ‘product,’ even when that product is a glorified joke.
The real tragedy of Ishtar isn’t its financial loss—it’s the way it was buried by a studio that feared its own success. Puttnam’s sabotage wasn’t just a business decision; it was a power play. He didn’t want to risk his reputation on a film that might fail, even if that failure was orchestrated by his own hand. This raises a deeper question: How many other great films have been destroyed by the very people who should have protected them? Ishtar isn’t just a relic of the ’80s; it’s a blueprint for how Hollywood’s internal politics can kill creativity before it even has a chance to breathe.
Today, Ishtar has a cult following, but it’s still a punchline. What many people don’t realize is that this film’s legacy is a testament to resilience. Elaine May, who was once dismissed as a perfectionist ‘problem,’ finally got her due with this project. The film’s chaos, its self-awareness, its refusal to apologize for being weird—all of it feels oddly prescient in an era where audiences crave authenticity over polished perfection. If you take a step back and think about it, Ishtar is a reminder that art doesn’t need to be ‘safe’ to be valuable. It just needs to be unapologetically itself, even if that means getting laughed at by the people who should know better.
