Mike Nichols and Elaine May:
Show biz revolutionaries, from stand-up comedy to Hollywood
Jan. 15, 22, 29, Feb. 5, 12
On-Campus – Thursday 1:10 pm – 2:50 pm
A look at the revolutionary careers in comedy and movies of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Starting as a stand-up duo—who offered a new style of comedy—Nichols and May would go on to become major forces in Hollywood.
- Week 1: Comedy pioneers – Nichols and May moved stand-up from gags to recognizable human behavior
- Week 2: Mike Nichols conquers Broadway – 1960’s hit maker in partnership with Neil Simon
- Week 3: Nichols’ first two movies—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate—heralded a new era of film in Hollywood.
- Week 4: Elaine May travels a harder road as a female filmmaker in the male-dominated Hollywood: Neil Simon’s scripted hit The Heartbreak Kid followed by two legendary flops, Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar
- Week 5: Old masters: Elaine May triumphs as script doctor; Mike Nichols soars to new heights with film, TV and Broadway hits.
Joe Meyers is Director of Programming for the Focus on French Cinema film festival in Connecticut. He is co-host of the Spotify podcast Now a Major Motion Picture! Meyers wrote features about movies, theater and books for more than 30 years for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and other publications. In the late 1970’s, Meyers ran the first (and only) art house on the Delmarva Peninsula—the Lewes Cinema. In 2012, the Mystery Writers of America gave Meyers the Ellery Queen Award for his writing on crime fiction.