Updated, redacted, whatever…different clip.

Given the general…well, at least marginal view that Elaine May‘s Ishtar (1987) is better than its rep and is actually hilarious in portions, it seems odd that today, 22 years after its catastrophic release, there’s no domestic DVD available. (A tape was released in 1994, but no DVD was ever pressed.)

Think about that for five or ten seconds. A major event movie that cost $55 million in 1985, ’86 and ’87 dollars (which would be what by today’s dollar? $120 million or so?) with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman and miles of sand and a rich supply of dry underplayed humor (including some of the stupidest song lyrics ever written), and you can’t buy or rent it. And yet it’s available on home video in Europe.

Obviously Columbia TriStar Home Video execs still regard this legendary flop (which made only $14 million and change) as some kind of mongoloid child that needs to be kept chained in the basement, even though they had nothing to do with its production. This is residual corporate cowardice in action. Over 15 years since it came out on VHS and not one home video executive has had the courage to say, “Hey, let’s put out an Ishtar DVD! Infamy makes for a kind of fame, and maybe it’ll sell if we put some effort into the marketing. Times have changed, tastes have evolved.”

Ishtar was one of the first “no-laugh funny” films ever released. That was a completely new concept back then, and people didn’t know what to make of it. Beatty and Hoffman played a pair of profoundly untalented New York-based songwriters — I remember that much clearly. I also recall that the first half hour or so played pretty well, and that the film’s troubles didn’t start until they travelled to Morocco…Ishtar, I mean. I remember that the best no-laugh humor happened when Beatty and Hoffman were compulsively composing awful songs.

Ishtar costarred Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston, Tess Harper and Carol Kane. It was shot by the great Vittorio Storaro. The intentionally awful songs were written by Paul Williams.

“Come look, there’s a wardrobe of love in my eyes / Look around and see if there’s somethin’ in your size.”

Ishtar is a Sony asset, a decent (some would say inspired) piece of entertainment, a legendary Hollywood debacle that, like Heaven’s Gate, gradually found a measure of respect. Okay, among people with a slightly corroded and perverse sense of humor but still, no one today thinks of Ishtar as a film to be shunned. I haven’t conducted a poll, but I’ll bet very few critics would put it down, and that most would probably say “not half bad.”

So why not put out a no-frills DVD? In fact, why not a DVD/Bluray with a documentary about how one of the biggest bombs in history came to be made (I’ve been reading the tragicomic story in Peter Biskind‘s Warren Beatty biography), and how, after time, it came to be seen as a half-decent, curiously off-funny thing, and in some circles as a kind of misunderstood gem. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

“Life is the way / we audition for God / let us pray that / we all get the job.”

Here‘s Janet Maslin ‘s moderately positive N.Y. Times review. And Roger Ebert‘s pan.

David Carr‘s N.Y. Times profile of Mo’Nique (up today but dated 1.10) oozes admiration for her stand-offish attitude about making the rounds and doing the Oscar dance. “I got my talk show to take care of,” “My performance is my campaign,” etc. She stands her ground, he down wit dat.

If Carr was a tad more squinty-eyed he might ask Mo’Nique about (a) those stories that she’s demanded to be paid for showing up at Precious promotional events, or (b) that “what does it mean financially?” question she asked Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson on her BET talk show, or (c) why she’s blowing off the N.Y. Film Critics Circle awards event next Monday. (Nobody believes that she can’t make it due to her taping schedule or a family vacation.)

At the very least you’d think he’d raise an eyebrow about why, during his interview with her, she was “accessorized by a bathrobe, a headband and the Precious director Lee Daniels.” Trust me — Daniels sat in because this was an important interview, and he and the Lionsgate publicists don’t trust what Mo’Nique might say on her own. He was there to positively augment and steer her comments in the right direction. You’d think that Carr would at least take note of this, but no.

“Mo’Nique and Mr. Daniels are a pair,” he notes, “cracking each other up into near helpless laughter at the smallest provocation, and are particularly amused by the keening of the Oscar press because she hasn’t paid proper tribute to the needs of the Oscar-industrial complex. ‘Deny her a nomination and teach her a lesson,’ harrumphed Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere.” I wasn’t harrumphing. Not in my head, at least. I was saying “Yo, why not? Smack her down for the fun of it. Give like you get.”

I was looking forward to a great Jack Abramoff double-header at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival with George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack showing in the premiere or dramatic competition section alongside Alex Gibney‘s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a 120-minute doc about the disgraced Republican wheeler-dealer.

(l. and center) Kevin Spacey as Abramoff; (r,) the real thing.

Alas, Hickenlooper didn’t want his film getting into a tit-for-tat game against Gibney’s so only the latter will in fact screen two weeks hence in Park City.

I for one feel Hickenlooper should have definitely brought his film to Sundance because of Kevin Spacey‘s lip-smacking performance as Abramoff, which delivers much better entertainment than the Real McCoy. (Or so I’ve decided after watching a couple of Abramoff clips.) I was rubbing my hands with glee at Spacey’s raging Republican blackhat when I caught a rough cut four months ago. This is the kind of role that Spacey was put on the earth to perform — an unrepentant madman with a serpent’s tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, like a bullfrog’s.

The summit of Spacey’s peformance is a mirror-in-a-bathroom moment that recalls Edward Norton’s classic “fuck you New York” rant in The 25th Hour. What Spacey does (and it’s right smack at the beginning of the film) is give us his rationale for being a swaggering Republican pig — and it’s brilliant! Life is brutal, homie. You have to get what you can any way you can, and fuck those candy-asses who wave the rule book around. I will do what I can to provide for my family, and pity those poor saps who don’t understand the game.

I mean, I almost wanted to abandon my leftwing pinko political beliefs after hearing it. Well, not really but almost. I hate righty greedheads but I kinda like them at the same time. Spacey’s Abramoff reminded me why I feel this way. Because they’re honest about who and what they are, I suppose.

Another good thing about showing at Sundance 2010 is that audiences there would get Casino Jack in the right way. You don’t have to be highly educated to have fun with it, but being at least vaguely familiar with Bush-era shenanigans in the nation’s capitol from ’01 to ’09 (which includes the offenses of Jack Abramoff) can’t hurt, and one thing that’s really great about Sundance filmgoers, apart from the fact that many of them seem literate and semi-educated, is their enthusiasm for films with adult brainy scripts.

I for one feel that Casino Jack is a kind of popcorn film because it “really stinks” in a Damon Runyonesque sense. I’m thinking particularly of Paul Newman‘s line in The Sting when he’s talking about how the O’Shea mob paid off the cops and the feds in 1920s Chicago, and how “it really stunk, kid,” which he says with a grin. Either you enjoy this stuff or you don’t.

Here’s an early-bird rave from Movieline‘s Seth Abramovitch.

This scene from Spike Lee‘s The 25th Hour is one of the greatest looking-in-the-mirror soliloquies of all time, right up there with Robert Downey‘s in James Toback‘s Two Girls and a Guy and Kevin Spacey‘s in Casino Jack. Here’s a transcript on Chuck Palahniuk‘s site.

I feel the ghost of Radley Metzger in this German-produced Liaison Dangereuse ad aimed at corrupting Muslim values by portraying traditional Middle-Eastern women as smokin’ hot mamas under their head veils (a.k.a. “niqabs.”) I was also thinking of the Catherine Deneueve-Susan Sarandon sex scene in Tony Scott‘s The Hunger. Terrorist reprisal countdown in Berlin….three, two, one.

Sexiness for everyone from Glow Berlin on Vimeo.

Producer Don Murphy has written an affectionate obit about manager Cathryn Jaymes on his site, and in so doing has dinged Quentin Tarantino, with whom he has a well-documented history (including fistifcuffs at Ago in the late ’90s). He doesn’t refer to former partner Jane Hamsher with much affection either. Here‘s the piece:

(l. to r.) Don Murphy, Cathryn Jaymes, Quentin Tarantino, Jane Hamsher

“I met Cathryn way the hell back in 1992. She was managing my friend Quentin Tarantino and my friend Roger Avary. She was nice. Almost too nice. I would forever tease her for being so nice. She had good taste and passion. She would fight hard for her clients, sometimes even when they weren’t all that talented. Because she was nice and because you therefore couldn’t be sure what to believe, she was a hard bird to figure out. This was Hollywood after all.

“In 1993 Quentin decided to betray our friendship. It’s a long boring story that doesn’t belong here, but he sold me and my ex-partner the rights to Natural Born Killers, acting friendly to our face, while stabbing us in the back. It was really nasty and just plain wrong. During this whole process, at considerable risk to herself, Cathryn helped us navigate the waters behind the scenes. She never once betrayed her client. She would never do that. But she knew what was right and what was wrong. She stuck up for us and was a better friend than her client and made sure we ended up okay. I’ll never forget her kindness as long as I live.

“Cathryn could be tiring, but that was because she cared passionately about what she believed in. She had a wit, a sense of fun, and what more can I say, she was just freaking nice. She was often disrespected because she was this eccentric, small lady, but she never let it stop her. She believed in people.

“And I was there, also, when she finally got dumped by the ‘successful’ Tarantino and she was destroyed by it. Here was somebody who lived on her couch and was nurtured by her and gradually attained his dreams, and then took a giant shit on her. Nice. In Sharon Waxman‘s Wrap article it is pointed out that she never recovered. She didn’t.

“When my former partner wrote “Killer Instinct,” her book about Natural Born Killers, it was important to me that Cathryn read it to make sure the details were right, and also to make sure she was comfortable with how her support of us was portrayed. She took her time, was very helpful and fastidious, and when she came back with her notes my then-partner Jane Hamsher lost it on her, I guess this was because she didn’t want to make changes. There are many reasons why our partnership ended soon after that book, but her treatment of Cathryn was a major factor.

“Over the last ten years or so Cathryn and I didn’t interact often enough. She kind of cut back on managing. It appears she was sick. And she focused on actors more than writers. I would see her at events. I think I last saw her at a special CAA screening that Oliver Stone had two years ago. She was always friendly, supportive and cordial. There is no one I have met in this business in 16 years who I can say the same about.

“Death always sucks. But it sucks more when it happens to somebody who was really just a sweet human being. Godspeed, Cathryn. You wanted to be remembered as someone who was fair. You were all that and more.”

I should have linked right away to Sharon Waxman‘s 1.7.09 report on the sad passing of Cathryn James, the ex-manager of Quentin Tarantino. I spoke to James three or four times in the mid ’90s about her Tarantino history, and I remember that she was intellligent and frank and, as far as I could tell, a nice person (if a bit frail).

Cathryn Jaymes, former client-friend Craig Hamman in photo copied from The Wrap.

Waxman’s piece recounts the story of how Tarantino dropped Jaymes as his manager after his career began to take off. She took it extremely hard, and it may be true, as Waxman suggests, that her health suffered as a result. “Although many knew that Tarantino fired Jaymes abruptly on the brink of his greatest success with Pulp Fiction (a story I recount in “Rebels on the Backlot”), few knew that she contracted virulent breast cancer in the year or so after her brutal separation from the director.

“She chose to have a radical mastectomy but slowly bowed out of the business. I know that Cathryn believed, and it didn’t take much to convince me, that what she considered a shocking betrayal by Tarantino contributed to her illness.”

What Tarantino did was cruel, but stuff like this happens. All is fair in love and war and talent management, and anyone will tell you that kind and decent people sometimes take it in the neck in this town. Hollywood is filled with electric eels, and sometimes your Boy Scout (or Girl Scout) merit badge won’t get your client where he/she needs to go. Watch Kirk Douglas fuck Barry Sullivan in The Bad and the Beautiful — not pretty and in fact pretty cold, but the heat in the Hollywood kitchen makes people sweat 24/7. The more money, power and glory there is to be had, the worse people behave. Especially those who aren’t terribly nice people to begin with.

But I don’t think that even a fragment of a case has been made that Quentin Tarantino hurt or weakened Cathryn Jaymes to such an extent that her body wasn’t strong enough to fight off breast cancer. Are all illnesses psychological? They seem to be in some cases, but people get sick for all kinds of reasons, and it’s really not fair to draw linkage between a hurtful but common practice (i.e., manager-shucking) and a person’s illness or passing. If a person psychologically gives up — if they don’t have the fight to keep moving despite hurtful setbacks — that is their decision alone.

Still, it’s not helpful to be thought of as a prick. I don’t know how this episode will play among Academy members (who know, after all, how this town works politically and how some have clawed and back-bitten their way to the top), but I can’t see how the recent articles about Jaymes by Waxman and Don Murphy aren’t at least a slight problem as far as Tarantino’s Best Director chances are concerned.

Earlier today I posted a flattering Sean Penn quote about The Hurt Locker. He called it one of the all-time great war films, comparable only to Elem Klimov‘s Come and See, a1985 Russian film, and Hal Ashby‘s Coming Home (1978). In response to this a director friend wrote the following:

“I don’t know if it’s fair to categorize Coming Home as a war film,” he began, “but Elam Klimov‘s Come and See most certainly is. Furthermore Penn’s assertion that it’s one of the greatest of that genre is precise and fair. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the final hour of the film, much of it a second-by-second depiction of an atrocity in a Belarusian village, may be the finest filmmaking in the history of the art.

“Anybody who has devoted any study to Operation Barbarossa and is aware of the behavior both of the Einsatzgruppen and the partisans who fought them will tell you that it is about an accurate a depiction of these events as is possible. The ending of the film is magical. The title of this film (it was once called Kill Hitler) comes from the Book of Revelations, and the film has interesting Christian undertones throughout. Bizarre, since the film was the product of an atheist regime.

“Have you seen it? If not, you should hang your head in shame. It is mandatory viewing for anybody calling themselves a film scholar of any kind.”

No, I haven’t seen it. I will soon enough. I obviously have Penn to thank.

Peter Jackson doesn’t look small sitting next to Quentin Tarantino (who’s big but not huge) and Kathryn Bigelow — he looks like a Hobbitt. He looks so small it almost seems like a visual effect. And yet he doesn’t seem that runty in the shots in which he’s framed alongside James Cameron and Jason Reitman. (Lee Daniels is at Reitman’s left.)

Here’s part two and part three of this hot-shot director discussion produced by the Hollywood Reporter.

I’d like to see Tom Thurman‘s Nick Nolte: No Exit because I’ve always enjoyed Nolte’s brutish charm. I don’t care for this trailer, frankly — I hate it when actors joke about other actors in a too-chummy way, trying for light banter as they go along — but Nolte is one of the great madmen. I’ve been told that a disc of Thurman’s doc is arriving via snail mail

My admiration of Nolte began with his legendary performance as “Samurai Ray” Hicks in Who’ll Stop The Rain. Except the only available DVD of Karel Reisz ‘s film looks awful in parts. It’s nearly unwatchable for the first ten or twelve minutes.

So now four Sundance 2010 films will be quickly available on VOD following the festival’s end. Linas Philips‘ Bass Ackwards, which New Video and Zipline Entertainment will offer on multiple platforms starting on 2.1.10, was the first to be announced. Today IFC’s Sundance Selects revealed three more VOD quickies — Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross‘s Shock Doctrine, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie‘s Daddy Longlegs (formerly known as Go Get Some Rosemary), and Daniel Grau‘s Les 7 Jours du Talion (7 Days).

Longlegs, a character-driven drama about becoming an adult, and 7 Days, a torture-revenge piece, will debut on VOD on Friday,1.22, after they first screen at Sundance. I don’t know when Shock is being VOD’ed but you’d have to figure sooner rather thanb later.