Парадордағы Ай (Parador daǵy Ay)

1988 film by Paul Mazursky

Moon over Parador is a 1988 American romantic comedy film directed and produced by Paul Mazursky, who co wrote the screenplay with Leon Capetanos. The film is based on the short story "Caviar for His Excellency" by Charles G. Booth and is a loose remake of the 1939 film The Magnificent Fraud. It stars Richard Dreyfuss as a little known actor hired to impersonate a deceased Latin American dictator, with Raul Julia and Sônia Braga in supporting roles. The film had its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on September 4, 1988, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 9, 1988, by Universal Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the performances of the cast, and was a box office bomb. For their performances, Julia and Braga earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.

The film follows the exploits of film actor Jack Noah, who is filming in the small, fictional South American country of Parador when Paradorian President Alfonse Simms, a dictator, invites him and the cast and crew to the film at their palace. Simms seems delighted at Jack's imitation of him. Suddenly, Alfonse Simms dies of a heart attack. Not wanting to lose his position in power, the president's right hand man, Roberto Strausmann, forces Jack to take the 'role of a lifetime'—that of the dead president, as the two men look so much alike. Jack accepts, eventually winning over the people and even the dead president's mistress, Madonna (Braga). For over a year, the two bond, and she shows Jack how the people are suffering under the dictatorship, particularly at the iron hand of Roberto (the real power behind the scene and who continues the charade in order to become president himself) against the rebels. Jack creates a plan where, in the middle of a show featuring Sammy Davis Jr., he (as Simms) is apparently gunned down by an assassin. Before dying, "Simms" accuses Roberto as the true enemy, leading to his lynching at the hands of the crowd. Inside a van, Jack escapes. Months later, he is telling the story to his friends, who do not believe him. Jack is happy to learn that Madonna led a revolution and is now the elected president of Parador.

The basic plot of Moon over Parador came from a B film titled The Magnificent Fraud (1939), in which Akim Tamiroff played the actor turned dictator. The screenplay was written by Paul Mazursky and Leon Capetanos, who had previously collaborated on Tempest (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), and Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). Mazursky had also worked with Richard Dreyfuss in the lattermost. Mazursky and Capetanos invented the fictional country of Parador as the film's setting after traveling through Guatemala, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica and researching "all the Latin American dictatorships" in April 1986. Mazursky said that the country could be "Paraguay or Ecuador or whatever you want it to be." Mazursky dressed up in drag to portray Momma, "the haughty, disdainful mother of a Caribbean dictator." He was credited as Carlotta Gerson, his mother's maiden name. Judith Malina had been hired to play the role, but was unable to make it due to another engagement in Germany. while Mazursky's wife and daughter, Betsy and Jill, appeared as woman at buffet and assistant director, respectively. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post stated, "Moon Over Parador wants to be a political satire, but it has more to say about Broadway and Hollywood than about totalitarian dictatorships" and "The political situations in the film are too generic, and too facile, to have any resonance. As a result, the film's satire appears toothless and its politics, in general, a fashionable pose. In Moon Over Parador, Mazursky is shrewd about the superficiality of show people without realizing that he has left himself open to the same charge." The staff at Variety wrote, "Mazursky's elaborate farce about the actor as imposter has moments of true hilarity emerging only fitfully from a ponderous production" and "Dreyfuss' panache carries the film most of the way, ably played off Braga's lusty and character."