VanityFair: The Missing Years

As excavated by David Kamp, staff archivist

ELAINE: So you're directing pictures now, Mike. MIKE: Yes, Elaine. I've moved on from the ignoble limitations of stagecraft. I've completed a film with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

ELAINE: You finished Cleopatra? It's about time someone did! MIKE: No, no, no, Elaine, it's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Adapted from Albee.

ELAINE: Albee darned.

MIKE: Hahaha!

ELAINE: Hahaha!

MIKE: Yes, I find that, by comparison, performing onstage with you was one-dimensional. ELAINE: Agreed—Liz Taylor has at least two more dimensions than I do.

MIKE: Hahaha)

ELAINE: Hahaha! You know, Mike, I didn't think you had it in you to direct a picture.

MIKE: That's funny, my

analyst said the same thing, relating it to my doubts about the size of my ...

[Taking note of tape recorder.] Good God! What am I saying? This will be in Vanity Fair! Oh, God, I, uh ... Elaine, let's put the act back together! ELAINE: Sorry. Can't.

I've got this movie of my own I want to direct. See, Warren Beatty plays this lounge singer in the Arabian Desert—

MIKE: B-but, that could become our new routine!!! [Improvising a song.] You betta win this Bedouin's heart, bay-beee...

ELAINE: Hahaha! MIKE: Hahaha!

—From "Together Again! Elaine May Interviews Mike Nichols," May 1966.