As a new retrospective opens, collaborators of the Mikey and Nicky film-maker explain how she blazed a trail for female directors in Hollywood
In 1975, after more than two years of sifting through footage, Elaine May was still in the weeds editing her deeply personal gangster film, Mikey and Nicky, and Paramount Pictures and its CEO Barry Diller were losing patience. In a desperate move to retain control, the director sold the film out from under Paramount to Alyce Films, a phoney production company reportedly set up by May, the film’s star, Peter Falk, and a number of other co-conspirators. But the sale was halted, and May was ordered by a judge to deliver the film to Paramount, which she did, except for two essential reels which mysteriously went missing until the studio agreed to let her supervise the editing of the final cut.
Set in the flophouse hotel rooms and diners of Philadelphia, Mikey and Nicky is one long, panic-inducing hangout between two gangsters, one (Nicky, played by John Cassavetes) is on the run for robbing his boss, while the other (Mikey, played by Falk) is torn between hiding his best friend or handing him over. Nicky wants to evade the contract killer he knows is on his trail, but he also wants to drink beer, go to the movies and play hot hands with Mikey on the bus. Mikey wants to care for Nicky; you get the sense he’s been doing it for a long time. He wants to feed him antacids and milk to treat his ulcers, but he’s also got a family and has outgrown their dynamic. They go back a long way and their relationship, though full of love that is apparent in every look and gesture between the two, is also fraught with a history of small betrayals, the kinds of slights and indignities that only stay with you when you really know and love someone. Right at the heart of this unglamorous gangster film is one of the most beautiful and bleak portrayals of male friendship ever put on screen.
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