MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: Jack Nicholson Turns 80

OT: Jack Nicholson Turns 80

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

On April 22, 2017.

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His last full-length part was almost 10 years ago -- The Bucket List.

His last part of any sort was 8 years ago -- as about the only good thing in a very bad movie by his pal James Brooks: "How Will I Know?" Brooks had made Terms of Endearment and As Good As It Gets with Jack. Oscars both times. But not this time(and Jack looked alarmingly overweight in body and face -- a movie star no more.)

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We're getting him back next year in a remake of Toni Erdmann(yay). And Michael Caine and Clint Eastwood have acted well after 80.

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But whatever the future holds, its Jack's illustrious past that matters today.

After over a decade in Roger Corman indies(horror, biker movies, LSD movies), Jack hit it big in Easy Rider and became the "hippie superstar of the counterculture," with a historic run in the early seventies:

Easy Rider(1969, but still; Oscar nom)
Five Easy Pieces (Oscar nom)
Carnal Knowledge(classic and US Supreme Court obscenity case)
The King of Marvin Gardens (Paired with Bruce Dern , as brothers)
The Last Detail(Oscar nom; cussing sailor classic)
Chinatown("A star becomes a superstar"; Oscar nom
The Passenger(foreign film partially based on an unmade Hitchcock)
Cuckoo's Nest(Oscar WIN)

That stretch "made" Jack. He could have stopped there as one of the greats. But he kept going, encountering the usual slumps that hit all stars, and the "attack on the seventies" that sank a LOT of seventies stars in the 80's(Gould, Segal, Dreyfuss, Voight.)

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Hitchcock wanted Nicholson for Family Plot. Nicholson turned it down and the part went to his pal Bruce Dern(that happened a lot.) Irony: INSTEAD during this period, Nicholson made such bad movies as The Fortune(with Beatty), The Missouri Breaks(with Brando) and Goin' South(as director.) Family Plot was better than those three(if a bit old fashioned and slow) but...Nicholson went with the "hip crowd."

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Nicholson's "middle-aged career savers" were classics in which he got to pour on the character. With weight gain, he shifted to using his great voice and his expressions to get sex appeal and character. He wasn't averse to playing villains. He wasn't averse to p playing mad men. So we got:

The Shining(for the great Kubrick, who rarely worked; a real lucky break.)
Batman(The best possible superstar casting for the Joker; Jack knew it and cashed in.)
The Witches of Eastwick(The Devil was the role Jack was born to play.)
Wolf(A werewolf was the role Jack was born to play. Hey, wait a minute.)

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Jack wasn't averse to playing supporting roles either:

Reds(Oscar nominated)
Terms of Endearment(An Oscar winner, and he saved the entire female-based tearjerker, you ask me, the reticient man who keeps coming back into the story just when he needs it.)
A Few Good Men(well, its a star role...but in only three scenes. And the last one is the best one.)

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A surprise Oscar in 1997 for playing a racist homophobe misogynist misanthrope in As Good As It Gets(it turns out we NEEDED that guy to say a few things even if we hated him.)

...and all sorts of good stuff for "the devoted fan." (Me.) I love Blood and Wine(Jack and Caine as dangerous old crooks) and The Departed, for instance. And Jack advanced one of my favorite causes -- sex for the aging couple -- in the otherwise just OK "Something's Gotta Give"(Jack and Diane Keaton get a charming sex scene in which they realize birth control is unnecessary.)

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A helluva career.

And how nice that "How Will I Know" won't be his last film.

[–] Mr_K_Pratt (11) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Another one of his later films that I really enjoyed was "The Pledge" from 2001.

It was criticised by a lot of people for being slow, and it is indeed a slow burner, but it held my interest all the way through.

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It was the second of two films in which Nicholson allowed Sean Penn to direct him...and the best one. Gripping, disturbing, with one of Jack's "late paunchy and brooding" roles.

Nicholson's very high up there in my personal like column, and one reason, I think, is that once you get past his acknowledged classics(Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, Cuckoo's Nest) and his huge hits(Batman, As Good As it Gets)...one still finds all sorts of "personal works" and small films that all benefit from the power of his voice, his face...his innate "sad sense of loserhood behind the wise guy."

Ironweed. Heartburn. (Both with Meryl Streep.)

The Postman Always Rings Twice(hot clothed sex between young Jessica Lange -- and a rather already paunchy but still raunchy Jack.)

Prizzi's Honor(a New Yawk Mafia man with a hint of Bogart's immobile lip.)

...and on and on and on

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

Since this thread has become a general tribute to Jack N. I thought I'd add a couple of fims that haven't been mentioned so far:

About Schmidt (2002) - an honest to god triumph really. It kind of gets forgotten between Payne's Sideways and Election that followed and preceded it respectively. Payne would later make the similar and almost-as-good Nebraska with Dern, thereby continuing his lifelong role as Jack's shadow!

Broadcast News (1987) - Jack only has a small role but it's a vital one and he's incredibly funny in it. We spend the whole film with a DC TV News team of presenters, reporters and producers. Jack plays the super-high-paid and powerful Network News Anchor up in NYC who drops in periodically to lay down the law and bestow and withhold praise....almost as some kind of unjustly rewarded degenerate!

Holly Hunter had a very good, star-making 1987: out of nowhere she was the lead in Broadcast News and co-lead in Raising Arizona. Good career move - be brilliant in near-great films nearly simultaneously. Worked for Jack in the late '60s and it still worked for Holly H. in the late '80s. Might be harder these to do these days with blockbuster dominance - maybe a one-for film one-for-TV two-fer is the way to go now. Kidman's having her best year for a while with acclaim for her supporting role in Lion and her (lead?) role in Big Little Lies (which I've not seen).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Since this thread has become a general tribute to Jack N.

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I found his turning 80 to be a real landmark..how sad that the same week we lost Jonathan Demme at age 73. We can salute artists "during" and "after" great careers.

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I thought I'd add a couple of fims that haven't been mentioned so far:

About Schmidt (2002) - an honest to god triumph really. It kind of gets forgotten between Payne's Sideways and Election that followed and preceded it respectively.

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Its a great movie, and proves again how great an actor Nicholson could be. The characters stiff WALK told volumes about him. I found it interesting how, in early scenes with peer-age oldster Len Cariou, Cariou looked like the handsome movie star, not pudge-faced Nicholson. And yet Nicholson was the star -- because he made the right career moves when he was young and had the talent to burn when he got old. But here is another movie that Nicholson sold with his great VOICE, reading letters to an unseen starving African orphan he has "adopted by letter and check in the mail": "Dear Ndugo," Jack's voiceover intones. Clearly these letters are therapy, the little boy won't ever read them. Or....maybe he will...

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Payne would later make the similar and almost-as-good Nebraska with Dern, thereby continuing his lifelong role as Jack's shadow!

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Yep, as with Hitchcock on Family Plot, the offer was made to Nicholson and he recommended Dern. When Dern cadged an Oscar nomination, Jack hosted a screening of Nebraska at the Academy in Dern's honor.

Payne offered the role first to Gene Hackman. The attempts continue to lure the 80 something Hackman out of retirement. Doesn't look like it is going to happen. As it just has with Nicholson.

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Broadcast News (1987) - Jack only has a small role but it's a vital one and he's incredibly funny in it.

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I recall seeing that film with a full house. There's an early scene of news staffer Joan Cusack running a time-limited obstacle couse to get a tape into a machine in time to broadcast over the air. She only has seconds; she hits her head on something running there. She succeeds, gets the tape in, it broadcasts just in time...and the camera swings up to a TV monitor to show the anchor reading the news: Jack Nicholson. (Unbilled.) The first time we see him in the movie. I can still remember how the audience gasped, laughed, and then applauded just SEEING him. That's a star.

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We spend the whole film with a DC TV News team of presenters, reporters and producers. Jack plays the super-high-paid and powerful Network News Anchor up in NYC who drops in periodically to lay down the law and bestow and withhold praise....almost as some kind of unjustly rewarded degenerate!

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Ha. Yes. He did it as a favor to his Terms of Endearment writer-director James L. Brooks.

I love this exchange between a TV executive who is TRYING to sarcastically insult the arrogant narcissist(but nice gal) Holly Hunter:

Executive: Isn't it hard on you to always be the smarter than everybody and right all the time?
Hunter: (Earnestly, she took him seriously.) Yes, it IS hard. You don't KNOW how hard it is.

Or later, when that same executive has just told a guy he is fired:

Executive: Now, if there is anything I can do for you...
Fired guy: Well...you could DIE.

Ha.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

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Holly Hunter had a very good, star-making 1987: out of nowhere she was the lead in Broadcast News and co-lead in Raising Arizona. Good career move - be brilliant in near-great films nearly simultaneously. Worked for Jack in the late '60s and it still worked for Holly H. in the late '80s.

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Yes, they tend to hit with a "clump" of movies. Irony for Jack: in the 1969-1970 corridor that found him in Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces...he also had a small role as Barbra Streisand's hippie half brother in "On a Clear Day." Jack really needed that role in that movie for that money, but he was embarrassed to be in it as the other two films were "clicking" or about to.

These stories match up with Cary Grant's advice to young movie actors: make a LOT of movies, get them all released, until people know your face and your voice and your name and you're like an old friend when you turn up on screen. Or (said Grant) you're like an identifiable product(he suggested like a Heinz ketchup bottle.)

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Might be harder these to do these days with blockbuster dominance - maybe a one-for film one-for-TV two-fer is the way to go now. Kidman's having her best year for a while with acclaim for her supporting role in Lion and her (lead?) role in Big Little Lies (which I've not seen).

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Kidman was box office poison for awhile(hard for me to take, I think she's talented AND gorgeous) but this new career strategy seems to be working. The part we don't know: is she getting paid a lot less for this work than for her old star turns?

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

Executive: Isn't it hard on you to always be the smarter than everybody and right all the time?
Hunter: (Earnestly, she took him seriously.) Yes, it IS hard. You don't KNOW how hard it is.

Or later, when that same executive has just told a guy he is fired:

Executive: Now, if there is anything I can do for you...
Fired guy: Well...you could DIE.

That's good stuff! (Carson voice optional)

I rewatched Broadcast News about a year ago and *some* of the 'anguish of the professional woman' stuff felt a little overdone and possibly dated, and the argument about news vs. entertainment (one that assumed that network TV is very important) felt historical (news lost, nobody cares about network TV anymore). But it was still *very* funny, very well cast and acted, very well-structured story-wise, and has quite a few good visual ideas too (which I'm pretty sure Brooks stole wholesale from Truffaut and others, but good on him for that... Brooks's subsequent films could have used more Frenchy influence in my view).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Or later, when that same executive has just told a guy he is fired:

Executive: Now, if there is anything I can do for you...
Fired guy: Well...you could DIE.[/quote]
That's good stuff! (Carson voice optional)

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Really, really good stuff!

The screenplay is by James L. Brooks(also the director) but Albert Brooks is in it, too, and perhaps helped write some of the material...his material especially. Albert has at least two classic scenes: (1) In which he tells William Hurt what to say(via earphone) so that the more handsome Hurt will sound as smart as Brooks on TV("I say it here, it comes out there" he says from his home) and (2) When Brooks finally DOES get a shot at an on-air performance, he flop sweats his way into oblivion(LITERAL sweat, WAVES of it pouring out of him.) Ha.

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I rewatched Broadcast News about a year ago and *some* of the 'anguish of the professional woman' stuff felt a little overdone and possibly dated, and the argument about news vs. entertainment (one that assumed that network TV is very important) felt historical (news lost, nobody cares about network TV anymore).

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We'd had Network before it, but that had a fantastical, oratory bent that Broadcast News eschewed in favor of "this is how it really works" realism.

Its also one of only a few movies I can think of("North Dallas Forty" is another one}, that deals with people getting fired and losing their jobs. Its painful to see on the screen, painful to think about. In Broadcast News, the firings force the "family" of broadcasters to spread out across the US and away from each other for new employment in other TV markets, which is also sad.

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But it was still *very* funny, very well cast and acted, very well-structured story-wise,

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I think this was Brooks' first film after his big box office/Oscar win with Terms of Endearment, and both films share this: neurotic, pampered and very aggravating characters who exasperate us and make us laugh AT them. Terms stunningly took these people into tearjerker land(kililng one of them and forcing everybody to grow up and get serious); Broadcast News kinda/sorta tries to do the same thing with the mass firings, but can't get the same emotion , of course. The two films stand as a pair to me, representative of a very eccentric worldview.

Some years later, Brooks did it again with As Good As It Gets, which got away with this in Nicholson's hilariously nasty reading:

Ditzy young female fan: I have to ask you: how do you write(as a novelist) female characters so perfectly?

Nicholson: I think of a man...and I take away reason and accountability.

Ouch. Try THAT one on a woman(I have, "Just kidding" of course -- not smart.) It turns out that Brooks stole that line from the real-life author John Updike. Or was it Philip Roth?

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and has quite a few good visual ideas too (which I'm pretty sure Brooks stole wholesale from Truffaut and others, but good on him for that... Brooks's subsequent films could have used more Frenchy influence in my view).

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I didn't see that...didn't know what to look for. Certainly most all of the American New Wave directors of the 70's(Altman, Rafelson, Coppola, Hopper...Nicholson) swore by Eurofilm as their God...but it kept on into the 80's that's for sure.

How cool of Hitchcock to have the totally-unlike-him Truffaut as his Number One fan. That's probably why the relationship worked. I doubt Hitchcock would have been pals with DePalma. Too close to home...

[–] swanstep (2616) 7 years ago

A late thought... I just looked around online for news about the Toni Erdmann remake (esp. for news about directors/writers, also whether Kristen Wiig has been able to hold her place when Jack will get *exactly* who he wants) and there's literally *nothing* since the basic remake-with-Jack-in-the-title-role announcement back in Feb.. 10 weeks with no news. I hope that doesn't mean that there's a problem...