>Why did the movie Ishtar fail? > Well, yes, prepared to be beratted now. I will jump in before this however and provide you with an industry answer. Ishtar had what people call, "bad momentum" EXACTLY like Waterworld. When people in the industry start to hear about BIG problems with a film this creates a bad initial impression which, unfortunately, quickly carries into early comments about the film through reviewers who follow industry talk. The only thing audiences were ever really told about Ishtar was that is was WAY WAY WAY overbudget and was being made by a first time director (I think that is correct). Then they tested the film with sample audience (a horrible practice) and made some assumptions which, as they often are, were incorrect. I agree about the sophisticated humor in the film and I think the people who were advertising the film were selling the wrong movie. They did not target the right audience and they did not tell people what they were going to be getting AND it was too high exposure with the stars and the budget and all to reinvent easily. However, I also think the filmmakers were making the film on the wrong budget. It wasn't meant to be a huge blockbuster film, it wasn't a mass-audience appeal movie. If this screenplay had been made by some new filmmaker out of Kansas who shot it with some friends and a shoe string budget, it would have been received like Orson Welles had returned to Earth. Sincerely, Mark Allen Xantherboy ****XANTHER ****http://www.directnet.com/~xanther/ ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]