Hey, guys. Quint here to talk a little about the late, great Mike Nichols.
When I think of Nichols the words that pop into my mind are Quiet Giant. Not because he was a big man. Quite the opposite, actually. He was a thin, average-heighted man. No, I mean in his talent as a filmmaker and storytelling. He's made movies every bit as good as Martin Scorsese's best, but isn't quite as well known.
Yes, The Graduate was over 40 years ago, but in the aughts he directed one of the most blistering, honest, entertaining, heart-wrenching dramas I've ever seen in Closer.
Let's go back to his first movie, which is actually the spiritual daddy to Closer. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a natural first film for an acclaimed stage director. It's very stagey, mostly just two people screaming at each other for 2 hours, but the deep end that Nichols was thrown into was that those two people were pretty much the real life George and Martha and they happened to be two of the biggest, most powerful stars of the world: Elizabeth Taylor and her off and on husband Richard Burton.
I'm sure there has been a lot written about the making of this film, but I don't know much of it. All I know is the finished product does not in any way feel like a first time film. It's a focused, tight character drama that deserves every one of the 5 Oscars it won and the 8 others it was nominated for, but didn't win.
His next film was The Graduate. Think about that for a second. His sophomore outing was The Graduate. Attempt at directing film #2 = The Graduate. The problem with some stage directors is they focus only on performance. Film is a visual medium and that's where some stage directors get thrown. The Graduate is a masterpiece on many levels, one of which is framing. There are iconic shots in there that people who haven't seen the movie know. The stocking being put on the leg scene or the wedding disruption for example. Stills from those moments jump immediately to mind, don't they?
Nichols' next few films were great, but not instant pop culture enduring classics. Catch-22 is a great adaptation of the famous book and Carnal Knowledge is a great, but low key drama. Then he did that crazy George C Scott dolphin movie, The Day of the Dolphin and things got weird. It was the '70s, man.
Over the '80s he turned in really solid work with Silkwood, Working Girl and Biloxi Blues.
Wolf was probably the first film of his I saw. I was 13 when it came out and who could forget that trailer? Jack Nicholson as a werewolf?!? Pissing on the dude from Pretty In Pink's shoes and saying “I'm just markin' my territory.” The movie ended up a hodgepodge of successes and failures, but it was an event for me.
The Birdcage was a massive sensation and really ahead of its time and probably part of the reason gay rights have advanced so much over such a short period of time. The homosexuals presented in that movie were more flamboyant, of course, but they were also shown as being more than the stereotype, as real people with real feeling who loves just as purely as their straight brothers and sisters.
He did the okay Primary Colors next and then the “what were they thinking?” flop of What Planet Are You From where Gary Shandling is an alien with a mechanical penis sent to Earth to impregnate an Earth woman. I was working in a theater when this came out and I remember the confused looks on people's faces as they'd come out of that theater.
Since the movie gods are kind and just that wasn't his final movie. No, he was able to land two more flawless victories in the aughts. One is the HBO mini-series Angels in America and the other is Closer.
His last director credit is Charlie Wilson's War, a damn fine motion picture in its own right.
I'm a movie guy, not a theater guy, so I'm not as familiar with his Broadway work, but I do know he was just as accomplished there, if not more so than film.
I do have one theatrical anecdote to share before wrapping things up.
When I was 20 years old I decided to embark on a road trip to the North East. It was an ambitious trip for someone that had maybe $1200 to his name, with stops in New Jersey (Red Bank for Smith's comic shop and then on to the small town where they shot the first Friday the 13th), then up to New York then to Martha's Vineyard for Jaws tourism then up to Maine to check out Stephen King's old stomping grounds.
I packed up my girlfriend at the time and my best friend and we headed out East. Money ran out before we could go to Martha's Vineyard or Maine, but we did find ourselves in New York City staying at a nice hotel we got for cheap on Priceline (remember when Priceline used to be the most amazing thing ever?) that was within easy walking distance of Central Park.
This was August of 2001 and one of the goals for this trip was to see the free show in the park they do every summer. That year it was Chekov's The Seagull. If I'm going to be honest the big draw for me was seeing Christopher Walken act in person, but it was about this time I was becoming pretty aware of Nichols' work. I had for sure seen The Graduate at this point at any rate.
Nichols directed that show, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Walken, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman and John Goodman.
We camped out in Central Park overnight, which was the only way to get tickets to the next night's performance. We were right outside the theater in the park and one of the unexpected benefits of having to be there overnight was getting to see and interact with the cast as they left from that night's performance.
The one time I got to see Nichols in the flesh was that night. He exited the theater with Meryl Streep, waved to the crowd with a big goofy smile on his face and then got into a town car with Meryl and drove off.
The show was, naturally, outstanding, and something I'll cherish even more now that both Hoffman and Nichols have passed.
Nichols was the kind of director every actor wanted to work with and there's a reason for that. He had an innate ability as a filmmaker to cut through the bullshit and show us something real. Nichols protected his actors in a way that few directors can, which let them expose more of themselves they might have otherwise. Like I said, he was a Quiet Giant of his craft.
My thoughts will be with Mr. Nichols' friends, family and fans today.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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