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EightEight years ago, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, something previously unthinkable happened: A theater full of people shelled out $30 a ticket to see the director’s cut of Ishtar, one of the most notorious flops in movie history. Or maybe they were shelling out to see the director herself, Elaine May, who makes roughly as many public appearances as Bigfoot and who is so notoriously press-averse that once, in the late ’60s, to promote a film she was appearing in, she asked The New York Times if rather than sitting for an interview she could just profile herself under a pseudonym. (They obliged; see: “Elaine May: Do You Mind Interviewing Me in the Kitchen?” by one Kevin M. Johnson.) Peering out into the sizable and rapturously applauding crowd that had gathered that night at the Y for a screening and Q&A, May—one of America’s sharpest living wits—quipped, “Either you like the movie or I’m very sick.”