Trailer
Plot summary
Lyle Rogers and Chuck Clarke are songwriters in New York who form a duo, devoted to work they are not good at. A poor showing at an open mic night does not stop their agent, Marty Freed, from booking them as lounge singers at a hotel in Marrakesh, where the previous act left because of political unrest. Nearly broke, they take the job. Their route passes through the neighboring country of Ishtar, and there Chuck hands his passport to a woman who says her life is in danger and promises to meet him in Marrakesh. A replacement passport will take longer than he hoped, so Lyle flies on alone to save the booking. Chuck meets the CIA agent Jim Harrison and agrees to act as a mole in exchange for passage to Morocco.
Cast
- Fijad Hagebas Abdul (as Fuad Hageb)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ishtar (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The production's animal trainer found a perfect blue-eyed camel in the Marrakech market but held off buying it, hoping to bargain. Blue-eyed camels turned out to be rare, and when he went back to the trader the animal had been eaten.
- Columbia wanted the desert scenes shot cheaply in the American Southwest. The studio gave way because its parent company, Coca-Cola, was sitting on money in Morocco that it could not get out of the country, so the unit went to the Sahara instead.
- Production designer Paul Sylbert scouted dunes in America and Morocco without satisfying director Elaine May, who then announced she wanted flat ground instead. Levelling a square mile of desert, about 2.6 square kilometers, took ten days.
- When the climactic battle scenes came up, far outside Elaine May's improvisational theater background, she told Warren Beatty during a confrontation, "You want it done? You shoot it!" Crew members said any other director would have been fired.
- Back in New York, Warren Beatty told Columbia chief Fay Vincent that Elaine May could not direct, but refused to let him fire her, saying he and Dustin Hoffman would walk out. His alternative was to shoot every scene twice, his way and hers, effectively doubling the cost.
- Ishtar generated 108 hours of rushes, more than three times the usual amount for a comedy, in uncut rolling takes according to editor William Reynolds. Three separate teams of editors cut it, one each for Beatty, Hoffman and May.
- Songwriter Paul Williams had to compose numbers that were convincingly terrible, calling it one of the best jobs of his life. Elaine May made him write complete songs even when she meant to use only a few lines, then teach them to Beatty and Hoffman.
- Gary Larson drew a Far Side panel called "Hell's Video Store" stocked with nothing but copies of Ishtar, then publicly apologized years later after watching the film on a plane and being entertained by it, the only cartoon he ever felt compelled to apologize for.
