As a new retrospective opens, collaborators of the Mikey and Nicky film-maker explain how she blazed a trail for female directors in Hollywood In 1975, after more than two years of sifting through footage, Elaine May was still in the weeds editing her deeply personal gangster film, Mikey and Nicky , and Paramount Pictures and its CEO Barry Diller were losing patience. In a desperate move to retain control, the director sold the film out from under Paramount to Alyce Films, a phoney production co