10 Movies That Changed Because Of A Director’s Bad Behaviour

This one is pretty legendary, and for good reason. You don’t end up with the title of “one of the worst films ever made” by accident, after all.

In 1987, Ishtar arrived in cinemas to audience indifference and critical drubbing. An unfunny and overlong rehash of the classic “Road to” comedies of the forties, it starred a badly miscast Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty as a pair of hapless songwriters who become embroiled in some Middle Eastern political upheaval. How did such a wrongheaded project ever even come into existence?

Well, Warren Beatty felt he owed screenwriter Elaine May a favour thanks to her uncredited work on his recent hit Reds. He gave her free rein to create a dream project… And the result was Ishtar.

A movie shot in the Moroccan desert, despite none of the Moroccan crew having experience with large budget film making.

A movie whose director was prone to shooting countless takes of minor shots, resulting in over one hundred hours of footage for this flop.

A movie where the director had her crew bulldoze an entire square mile of actual desert because she changed her mind about wanting dunes in a shot.