Plot
Lyle (Beatty) and Chuck (Hoffman) are inept songwriters who dream of becoming a popular singing duo like Simon and Garfunkel. Their songs, with titles like "That a Lawnmower Can Do All That" and "The Echo Song," are performed badly and poorly-received. Their agent, Marty (Weston), books them as lounge singers in a hotel in Morocco to entertain troops stationed there. They unwittingly become involved in a plot to overthrow the Emir of the fictional neighboring country of Ishtar. A mysterious woman named Shirra (Isabelle Adjani) has a map she needs to get to the leftist guerrillas opposing the government of Ishtar. A CIA agent (Charles Grodin) gets involved when Shirra contacts Lyle and Chuck. He attempts to prevent the overthrow.
Read more about this topic: Ishtar (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)