Dangerous Business: The Effect of Misogyny on the Counterpart Careers of Elaine May and Mike Nichols
Note: The following is an excerpt of a 57-page research paper titled Dangerous Business: The Effect of Misogyny on the Counterpart Careers of Elaine May and Mike Nichols.
Introduction
Filmmaker Elaine May once said, “If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.” This was in reference to her infamous 1987 box office catastrophe of a film, Ishtar; the last feature film she has ever directed, continuing to work in the industry but never again being provided the support to lead a project (Film Comment). Meanwhile, no matter the number of subpar films her counterpart and frequent collaborator, Mike Nichols, directed, he still became one of the most prolific filmmakers of the 20th century. The pair began their careers together as the legendary improvisational comedy duo Nichols & May, in which they changed the scope of sketch comedy, their career culminating in their own Broadway show (Stephens, 50). Following their split, both went on to become filmmakers, though to varying degrees of success. May’s career was stunted in a substantial way that still goes largely unapologized for by the industry, widely guessed to be a result of her gender. In comprehending Hollywood’s rejection of Elaine May, we can better support contemporary female filmmakers when faced with such obstacles. This study uses an exploratory approach to answer the following question: To what extent do the career trajectories of counterparts Elaine May and Mike Nichols correlate with the systemic misogyny of the Hollywood film industry?
Misogyny in Hollywood
Misogyny, the prejudice against women, has run rampant in Hollywood since its origins and remains prevalent today (Kendall). Gender-based divisions of labor exist across a number of fields but are especially prominent in the film industry, in both creative lead and additional crew positions. Feminist film theorists Louise Wallenberg and Maria Jansson describe how women work most frequently as script supervisors, costume designers, and makeup artists. In the rare circumstance that the writer and/or director of a project is a woman, she wouldn’t be considered as capable as a man in the same position (Wallenberg and Jansson, 1991). This is proved in San Diego State University’s annual “Celluloid Ceiling” report, where it was found that in 2024, only 16% of the 250 highest grossing films were directed by women (Lauzen, 4). This imbalance is the result of major disparities between films directed by men and those directed by women. Films directed by women, especially centering women’s stories, are typically held to a lower standard than those by, for, and about men, which creates a predicament beyond inequality. It causes women in film to receive less financial support, therefore leading to them making films that do not exceed the standards set (Smyth, 24). The industry then refuses to acknowledge the original injustice, and under the guise of inclusivity claims these mediocre films to be ‘feminist masterpieces’ simply because they were made by, for, and about women. Director of the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Claire Perkins, builds on this, explaining how in recent years there has been a rise in the quantity of high quality feminist films, but they become tainted by films previously mislabeled as feminist, the meaning being lost, spiraling the entire movement into a cluttered mess (Perkins, 232). Between these corresponding accounts, the systemization of misogyny into Hollywood conventions is shown, a detrimental normalization that has continued to shift opportunity away from women.
The Acclaim of Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols was a legendary Hollywood figure in many respects, from his countless Broadway productions, his pioneering work in improvisational comedy with May, and of course, his 20+ feature films. According to Variety film critic Robert Koehler, “Nichols won an unprecedented six Tonys for directing–some while he was also nominated for Oscars–and, in 1966, had the country’s number-one box-office hit, while four of his shows were running at the same time on Broadway” (Koehler, 22). Nichols contributed immensely to Hollywood, with his directorial debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), also helping to catapult the end of the restrictive Hays code era. Due to the inappropriate content of the film, adapted from the classic play, he negotiated a release with an 18+ age limit, an unheard of practice until that point (Doherty, 12). This film and his other early works truly did earn him the title of ‘auteur,’ though the label did not stick. A believer of this, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, Kyle Smith, described Nichols’ later works as “betrayals of his talent,” stating that “[Nichols] never made a film that mattered again” (Smith, 47). While this could be seen as a harsh statement, there is a truth to it revealed in Mark Harris’ biography, Mike Nichols: A Life, which chronicled the highlights and lowlights of his career, including a number of nugatory films, such as The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and What Planet Are You From? (2000). These are projects unacknowledged by Hollywood when awarding Nichols with honors like the prestigious AFI Lifetime Achievement Award (Harris, 569). In today’s industry and popular culture, his legacy has been reduced mostly to his most famous work, his sophomore film The Graduate (1967) (Koehler, 24). This disregards both his instrumental and less impactful contributions to the industry, leading to a widely shared blind praise that is an injustice to Nichols’ career.
The Rejection of Elaine May
Elaine May is known most commonly for the failure of Ishtar, a view of her that is majorly incomplete. Before it was even released, negative press came out based on oddly specific rumors about the production, including that May had allegedly flattened sand dunes in the Moroccan desert where they shot (Courogen, 219). However, in her biography on May, Miss May Does Not Exist, Carrie Courogen’s investigation revealed that the studio itself had been sabotaging the project, triggering a domino effect of bad reviews and box-office failure where many of the film’s most vocal critics hadn’t even seen it (Courogen, 231). In contrast to Nichols’ glorified experience, May’s otherwise brilliantly unconventional career has been overshadowed by this one incident. Following her comedy days with Nichols, May pointed her quirky, clever, and very dark sense of humor, largely influenced by her Jewish upbringing, to screenwriting (Baron, 225). She directed a few of her own scripts, but her hyperfixated and perfectionist nature, often going over-budget and over-schedule, built her a reputation of infamy among her peers. However, May eventually became known in the underbelly of Hollywood as a “script doctor,” revising screenplays for a number of classic films, peculiarly refusing to take credit for her work (Acker, 60). With such elusiveness, she has shied away from the spotlight and, when rarely having accepted an interview, intentionally twisted facts about her personal life and even past work (Courogen, 8). This has made researching her quite the feat, contributing even more to the lack of knowledge on her. In spite of this, as of winning her first Tony Award in 2019 at age 87, May has begun to creep back into the spotlight. Since 2019, rumors have even swirled of her having one last film in the works, with actors Dakota Johnson and Sebastian Stan tied to the project that has unfortunately not yet come into fruition (Bergeson).
The Present Study
Misogyny in Hollywood has long been discussed, especially in recent years following the “#MeToo” movement, but the surprising lack of change has not been frequently touched upon. While progress has been made, there are still nuances in how we measure this progress; despite a recent ‘resurgence’ of Elaine May’s work, her rejection from Hollywood remains simply speculated upon or even wholly unacknowledged. Her life and career lack thorough academic research other than the aforementioned biography by Courogen and a few book chapters here and there. Within the larger issue of misogyny in Hollywood, Elaine May remains an unfortunately excellent case study, as the parallels of her career with Nichols provide a solid foundation for a scholarly analysis that has yet to be completed. By developing a comprehension of May’s career and treatment by the industry, we can better prevent women in Hollywood from being subject to such obstacles faced by May in the future. This study will assume a few points: that Elaine May was in fact ‘rejected’ from Hollywood, that May and Nichols are counterparts due to their coming up together and frequent collaboration, that the included analysis of content is accurate, and that the gross of a film is a reflection of its success, whereas reviews are a reflection of its quality. The hypothesis of this study is that the results of the content analysis and comparison of the careers of Elaine May and Mike Nichols will prove that May was rejected from Hollywood based more on misogyny rather than her directing style and abilities. In Miss May Does Not Exist, the discrimination faced by May due to her gender is made clear, though the extent to which it hindered her career isn’t solidified. Given the longstanding exclusion of women in the film industry, however, the impact of the misogyny faced by May would correlate with that faced by many other female directors of her era and beyond, including Agnès Varda, Ava DuVernay, and Greta Gerwig, to name a few.
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And if you’ve made it this far, a huge special thanks to Rafaelina Duverge, Taia Reitz, Ava Rabiee-Nowak, Holly Van Buren, Irene Antoniou, Katherine Partridge and of course, Elaine May herself. If you’d like to read the entire paper, contact kantoniou725@gmail.com.
