Mike Nichols RIP

Cardiac arrest:

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/entertainment-icon-mike-nichols-died-age-83/story?id=27047342

sad

not especially

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xvOiEQNGbk

One of my all-time favorite movie debuts.

His run of work between 1996 and 2004 was his peak: The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Wit, Angels in America, despite garish touches. Wit especially.

^challopsy

and probably the closest he came to making a great film. (ie, he didnt make any) xp

Wit? Yes.

i.e. closest he came to a great film

Admittedly, VA is about 90 percent Albee 10 percent Nichols, but it's about as cinematic an adaptation as is imaginable for the material.

I guess what I meant, tho, was he was one of the few famous directors who I think you could say turned in his very best work right off the bat.

Bogdanovich nipping at his heels.

I remember enjoying Catch-22 but wld need a revisit

xpost
VW? Screenplay by Ernest Lehman fwiw

screenplay ratio is closer to 99 percent Albee, 1 percent Lehman

anyone seen The Designated Mourner?

The Mark Harris book is good on Nichols' early films - his Broadway success obviously gave him much greater power/freedom than most young American film directors were likely to get at that time, and Nichols was smart enough, or stubborn enough, or arrogant enough, to use that freedom to his advantage.

His output was pretty erratic, but each decade had its nuggets, and each film had its reasons to see it. Like, is "Wolf" a good movie? Not really, but there's a lot to like, especially Spader! Is "Charlie Wilson' War" good? Can't remember, but i liked PSH and ... Amy Adams? Is she in that? Weaver is tons of fun in "Working Girl," Nichols was smart enough to cast Kurt Russell in "Silkwood," one of his few non-genre dramatic roles.

when Robin Williams died I mentioned The Birdcage often. I hated it at the time but now I admire how well he modulates the comedy in that last half hour (he still needed to throw Nathan Lane out a window though).

anyone seen The Designated Mourner?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 20, 2014 9:37 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, wish I had a designated viewer 4 this piece of garbage tbh iirc

Carnal Knowledge isn't a favourite of mine, but it is memorable--one of the nastiest mainstream films of its era. Virginia Woolf, definitely worth seeing for the cinematography and performances, don't think its reputation is anywhere close to what it was when it came out. I like Primary Colors and Angels in America a lot, and parts of Wolf. Didn't care for Catch-22. I really haven't seen that many of his films.

Screenplay by Ernest Lehman fwiw

His job was to bowdlerize (albeit less than they would've any time earlier) and shorten the play just a bit, and "open it up" (the roadhouse setting that still feels forced). btw some of what was cut is imho near-crucial to understanding George and Martha's relationship. Too bad he couldn't do it more or less intact a la Angels in America.

Last look at The Graduate found Bancroft and Hoffman still hilarious in their scenes together, the rest of the movie not all that special, aside from the cutesy appropriation of some nouvelle vague grammar (which Richard Lester probably did better). Kudos on the last two minutes on the bus, though.

He was probably more notable for the work with actors on film than other aesthetics, particularly in drawing performances out of womwn people didn't think could act (Taylor, Ann-Margret, Cher).

His pre-Woolf Broadway directorial career, btw, consisted (aside from the Nichols & May long-running sketch night) of two monster Neil Simon hits and one Murray Schisgal comedy. Then after he gets chased out of the film profession by the failure of Charlie Wilson's War (morally bankrupt even for a Sorkin script), he goes right back to Broadway:

http://ibdb.com/person.php?id=7767

(I saw the cash-in that was Spamalot -- and saw Nichols in the lobby when I bought my ticket, too soon to demand a refund alas.)

Primary Colors is fucking crap, Alfred.

He basically had two tricks, right? Long tracking shots (openings of Working Girls and Angels) and tight close-ups. It's like he turned a lack of visual imagination into a style. Not a huge fan of his filmmaking, but I think his movies do have a lot of good performances -- probably again the Broadway background, I get the sense he was good with actors. (xpost!)

Working Girl, I mean.

You can see in the casts of his '60s Broadway stuff he worked w/ primo Chicago/improv peeps (Arkin, Barbara Harris, Alan Alda) that shared his and Elaine's background. Along with making Walter Matthau a star via Oscar Madison.

Also wow, The Little Foxes w/ Bancroft and George C Scott. I wonder if it was any good.

The jokey framing/costuming of Mrs Robinson as a wildcat is an obvious joke but still a good one. Also, all those long-lens shots that were chic at the time.

the graduate seems to divide folks who were around at the time. i mean 90% of boomers love it for seeming to capture a certain attitude, and the other 10% hate it for the same reason. i think it's easier to have a more ambivalent attitude toward it if you're younger. i basically like it, and i think the stylistic innovations (or at least bravado) still feels fairly fresh. but at the same time i think virginia woolf is just overstated and curdled in a way i can't tolerate. i have no idea how to summarize his career. he seems like he was an interesting, thoughtful guy.

still love the scene of benjamin in the pool in his diving gear in The Graduate.

i think the montages in that film are really effective--very adroit, very slick. also along with a few other films of that era the film really transformed how pop music functioned in a feature-film context.

and young folks still like it a lot!

some friends are complaining that nichols's other films are getting short shrift in the obituaries and i understand that but i think the graduate is far and away his most satisfying movie (of the ones i've seen).

Second place.

But basically yeah.

I never liked The Graduate :(

Bancroft, Nichols and perhaps Buck Henry get credit for giving Mrs R a tragic dimension, which Benjamin is too young and stupid to possess.

one of the few famous directors who I think you could say turned in his very best work right off the bat.

Some guy named Welles. (Brought to you by Fuck the Revisionists.)

every nichols film i haven't liked, i didn't have a strong distaste for his work as a director. e.g. with "closer" i think he did a credible job with horrible, horrible material. that doesn't mean his work was particularly distinguished.

in the case of virginia woolf i suppose his overheated style (for which haskell wexler should get at least half the credit, or blame) is very much in keeping with the tone of albee's play. but i hate that play, so for me the style just makes the whole thing all the more unpalatable.

the film really transformed how pop music functioned in a feature-film context.

This is arguably a worse legacy than giving us 30 years of Neil Simon as the Goliath of Broadway.

Primary Colors is fucking crap, Alfred.

― things lose meaning over time

would rewatch over The Graduate.

the film really transformed how pop music functioned in a feature-film context.

This is arguably a worse legacy than giving us 30 years of Neil Simon as the Goliath of Broadway.

― things lose meaning over time (Dr Morbius), Thursday, November 20, 2014 10:53 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i knew you were going to write something like that! yeah, the graduate's influence hasn't been all to the good (to say the least), but i don't think you can blame it for that.

Some guy named Welles. (Brought to you by Fuck the Revisionists.)

I vehemently disagree but will submit an Alford plea nonetheless.

well, he extended S&G's lifeline well into the next century.

I saw a clip of Good Morning America on the ABC News site where they played Carly Simon's dopey river song from Working Girl as an intro to talking about Nichols. So some producer said, "Simon & Garfunkel too fucking ancient -- Carly, that's our demo."

LEEEEEEEETTTT

THE RIVER RUUUUNN

I'm kind of dubious that any morning shows not on Mrs Nichols' network did a stand-alone segment.

Two of my friends were screamed at by MN; touched by greatness.

I'd argue the success of the Bridge Over Troubled Waters did more to maintain S&G's career than the soundtrack to The Graduate (which is not very satisfying as an S&G album, though I lovelovelove April Come She Will)

All those S&G songs were a year-plus old when they were put on the soundtrack! Except for the nascent version of "Mrs Robinson," which was a fragment that Paul just slapped some new words onto.

he was completely hairless! where did i read that? nichols and may are all-time for me. and his good movies are good. and, needless to say, the day of the dolphin is one of the funniest movies ever made.

Yeah, he had a disease in childhood that took all his hair.

really, what was the pitch for Day of the Dolphin? Loosely based on a French scifi novel described as "a stark Cold War satire."

the one I should rewatch is The Fortune. It can't be as bad as its reputation suggests (or as bad as Heartburn).

I liked it; Stockard Channing got the best reviews, and Warren & Jack do a sort of Abbott & Costello & Laurel & Hardy thing.

silkwood and postcards from the edge are my faves. although virginia woolf is obviously all-time awesome. especially if you are an old drag queen like me.

Kind of annoyed at the way Woolf has made people think the play is camp, which no doubt comes from Taylor. Come over and listen to my 4 x LP original cast album w/ Uta Hagen.

I said on the obits thread, we watched Heartburn at the weekend, as my other half had just finished the novel. So so awful. I mean, I guess Bernstein's mostly to blame for meddling in the script, but a) Nicholson seems to think he's still on the set of The Shining and/or a massive coke binge; b) is Streep's character meant to be so intolerable and unlikeable? and c) holy fuck working Itsy Bitsy Spider into that lovely Carly Simon tune is even more annoying than the trailers for Avengers 2 interpolating 'I Got No Strings' into the script.

and again Channing is the highlight (Richard Masur too to a lesser degree)

is Streep's character meant to be so intolerable and unlikeable?

well, she's Nora Ephron.

Mandy Patinkin was fired, and Nicholson came in without anyone noticing he was completely wrong for it I guess.

along with a few other films of that era the film really transformed how pop music functioned in a feature-film context.
― I dunno. (amateurist), Thursday, November 20, 2014 11:41 AM (1 hour ago)

In terms of narrative film, I think it's the breakthrough (the Beatles films are different). Warhol and Anger and some other non-narrative people were doing lots too, but I can't think of a narrative film before The Graduate where pop music was so crucial. All for the good, for me.

i like the fortune ok: Dumb Jack, like prizzi's honor. i watched catch-22 like 5000 times in high school (it's a doomed project i guess but martin balsam, jon voight, bob balaban are all totally otm) but a rewatch a few years ago didn't rly live up. staggering scale tho. enjoy travolta+bates in primary colors. rip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l4zhoHMe0Y

from this roundup:

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-mike-nichols-1931-2014

There is such a thing as "valid" camp, Morbs.

with valid weenie roasts

primary colors is terrible and a reminder of those dark days when someone let emma thompson into all our movies.

Good tribute from Jon Robin Baitz:
http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/11/mike-nichols-jon-robin-baitz

scott!! what the fuck?!

the graduate seems to divide folks who were around at the time. i mean 90% of boomers love it for seeming to capture a certain attitude, and the other 10% hate it for the same reason. i think it's easier to have a more ambivalent attitude toward it if you're younger. i basically like it, and i think the stylistic innovations (or at least bravado) still feels fairly fresh.

i wasn't around at the time and i like it quite a bit. everything amateurist says here is otm.

i was always more of a You're A Big Boy Now kinda guy.

some of the choices for camera placement strike me as WHOO LOOK AT ME in a flashy way that complements the script's easy zings, and the movie just stops after Mrs Robinson fades

That's true, even w/ the toast popping up after Ben leaves his parents openmouthed in the kitchen. Shooting through the fish tank i didn't mind.

Oh I saw his staging of Stoppard's The Real Thing with Jeremy Irons in '84, that was a good one.

re camp:

At the University of Chicago in the 1950s, the young Susan Sontag considered him her best friend.

also

I once talked to a well-known character actress who worked with Nichols on a comedy on stage in the 1980s. On opening night, she said, he came to her dressing room and indicated several places in the script. “Those are your laughs,” he told her. “And if you don’t get them, you’re fired.” I asked if Nichols might have been kidding her. She didn’t seem to think so.

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/mike-nichols-1931-2014

i always figured he was gay. even though he was married 4 times. diane sawyer is gay isn't she?

I loved this guys movies from the 60s/70s. The movie adaptation of "Catch-22" is much better than "MASH" imo.

punting this over from the Obit thread:

Carnal Knowledge... its sexual politics are pretty horribly dated imho

probably best discussed in the Nichols thread, but i'm curious why you think so? the film surely views the Nicholson character as a cretin.

― things lose meaning over time (Dr Morbius), Thursday, November 20, 2014 4:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wld really need to rescreen CN, but I didn't get as much of the loathing as you and others found in the way that the Nicholson character was presented - or at least, I found admiration and celebration there, too. It seemed to me very much the work of a middle-aged cartoonist seduced by the sudden glamour/money/fame of young Hollywood, and by "the new sexual freedoms" of the times - see also: harvey kurtzman's delight at being invited into the Playboy Mansion. But it could also be a reaction to, or memory of, Jack's charisma, and his subsequent reputation as a hipster-libertine, which seems increasingly distasteful in light of pal polanski or countless other swinging 70s dude's unpleasantness. Man, I only watched this film a couple of years ago and I'm slightly chagrined by how little of it I recall other than a general atmos; I remember the ending being very trite.

Carnal Knowledge is pretty bad. but, yeah, funny/interesting in a kitschy way now. you get to look at the clothes and decor anyway.

sure the style of "the graduate" is flashy, but i think that flashiness (which is very indebted to the european new waves, as everyone knows) was a somewhat healthy development in American cinema at the time, even if its effects down the line have been mixed. people whose idea of cinema is aligned with the stylistic economy of Classical Hollywood (always more of an ideal than an actual thing) seemed to recoil at the excesses of the New Hollywood but like I said above that debate feels very dated now that the New Hollywood is Really Old. for example the animosity that Sarris and his acolytes showed toward Kubrick has always perplexed me. I'm not Kubrick's biggest fan (just like I'm not Nichols's biggest fan) but the dismissals of his work from a vocal minority of cinephiles are a little hard to fathom nowadays.

anyway.

not that Kubrick is "New Hollywood", since he precedes that phenomenon and was working in the UK by the time it came around. but he was perceived as a kind of "new" filmmaker whose work somewhat travestied the Classical moment in American cinema that was seen to have just passed.

btw there are like 200 "New Hollywoods," from the 1940s up through the 1990s, but I'm speaking of the media phenomenon (and to a lesser extent actual film-production phenomenon) heralded by The Graduate/Bonnie and Clyde.

btw the Woolf commentary track up there is fascinating -- Ernest Lehman's biggest idea at the time Nichols was hired was making the child REAL (and dead). What a maroon. Also around 36:00 Nichols has a nice observation about Wyler and a scene in The Heiress.

I loved this guy. You're all nuts.

Ernest Lehman's biggest idea at the time Nichols was hired was making the child REAL (and dead). What a maroon.

hahahaha oh dear - i need to listen to this commentary

you see, the play's ending had been criticized!

We studied the play at high school, can still remember when the TWIST was revealed in class and actual cynical 14 year olds *gasped* aloud

it was spoiled for me by the SCTV K-Tel version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yIMAowxy_A

1999 FC interview:

Carnal Knowledge is the darkest movie I ever made. It's the only one I ever see again. I'm very impatient, and in looking at it I'm very annoyed by its pace. Because I was so hung up on not cutting and doing everything in one, I just think it's slow. In the beginning especially, I just think, C'mon, let's go, let's go. And then indeed it does get moving, in the middle, and then I think it works—I like it very much. It's a mannerist film, and that's both what I like and don't like about it. It was written as a play, and I said I thought it wasn't a play, actually it was a movie. I think without planning to, it was in some ways reminiscent of Feiffer's panels, when he draws his cartoons....

People thought it was an anti-woman film. I never thought that was true. It was a film about the underclass and what its members suffered. The main thing to remember about Carnal Knowledge was it was about a specific generation of men. I don't think those men exist now, and I think feminism has changed everyone to some extent. But what you said is absolutely true, that we all think of men as the liars. Well, of course, women, like any underclass, are liars, too—they're just better liars, because their lies are part of a necessary strategy. I think some of that is in the movie; we probably could have used more of it.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/of-metaphors-and-purpose-mike-nichols-interview

I wonder if he changed his mind about "those men" no longer existing in the last couple weeks...

Good observations in thread. While finishing Mark Harris' bio, I watched The Fortune and Silkwood again. The latter held up quite well; the houses feels lived in, and Streep, Kurt Russell (meow), and Cher interact as if they've known each other for years (one of Streep's most acceptable fussy performances too).

Apparently he and Susan Sontag might've hooked up when younger. Makes sense: she was the New York intellectual version of Mike Nichols.

Commentary on The Graduate with Soderbergh; properly fascinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WqjLzi5a8A

I forgot that it was him who did Silkwood actually, probably my favourite Meryl performance ever, she just vanishes into it so completely. Russell, Streep and Cher is such a great little gang.

The Mark Harris book sounds great; especially the stuff about Heartburn;

https://www.vulture.com/article/mike-nichols-a-life-mark-harris-excerpt.html

I had no idea -- silly me -- to what degree he remained a theater director.

To learn that Silkwood (a) hit #1 (b) hit #1 in its sixth week of wide release is a peek into another world.

Heartburn is an odd bad film. The rhythms are slack as hell, the material's disgraceful (e.g. an early sequence in which members of the family take turns urging weepy Streep to leave her bedroom to get married), and the leads are miscast; yet it has a rumpled lived-in-ness with which Nichols has often succeeded (it's streaming on Prime).

Tried it a few months ago and gave up during the wedding.