Mike Nichols

OK, we all know what will win, but I'm throwing a vote towards Wit. It made sob uncontrollably for 10+ minutes.

OK, we all know what will win...

Yeah, Primary Colors FTW! (j/k)

ugh, some of these films are shit - Biloxi Blues, What Planet Are You From?, Regarding Henry

i vote Day of the Dolphin for purely nostalgic reasons.....

I'd say Wit too, but I give Emma Thompson and the play more credit.

Working Girl holds up pretty well, if you scream obscenities while Carly Simon lets the river run on and on and on.

In some order, Woolf?, Angels, first half of The Graduate, Silkwood, Carnal Knowledge. and Catch-22 isn't a disgrace.

and what about Nichols & May Examine Doctors?

http://comedycollege.publicradio.org/images/nichols_may.gif

Ha - I was going to ask why Dr. M was repping for WOLF, but then I noticed the 2nd O.

Wolf is better than the second half of The Graduate.

Agreed! One of Jack's more underrated performances too.

Silkwood is shit though, except for Kurt Russell and dikey Cher.

I love Postcards From The Edge, Silkwood, and Virginia Woolf.

I like but don't love Carnal Knowledge, The Graduate, and Catch-22.

Day Of The Dolphin is...just...man, it's something.

The rest i can live without.

although Gilda Live is good if you like Gilda Radner.

I do own all N&M original vinyl. love that stuff.

meryl streep is great in silkwood!

there is such a great vibe/atmosphere to silkwood. i can't explain it. but i hardly ever see it in other movies.

and when i say i can live without the rest, i mean, i'll watch them on t.v., you know? they aren't horrible. okay, the birdcage is horrible, but if regarding henry or wolf was on t.v. i'd probably watch it. primary colors is pretty horrible too.

Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest in The Birdcage dinner scene = gold.

didn't N&M have a tv show, or at least bits in other tv shows? i would buy a CD of that in a second.

as far as I know, they just appeared in that extinct form known as variety shows. I keep meaning to go to the Museum of TV & Radio Paley Center to watch some o' that.

I'm throwing a vote towards Wit. It made sob uncontrollably for 10+ minutes.

Yup.

what, no Designated Mourner?

PBS did an episode of American Masters on N&M back in 96-97 that had three complete skits (The Funeral Home one, the First Date, and another that I forgot). AFAIK, they offered the show for sale on video, but I imagine a copy is pretty hard to find these days.

Thank god for Youtube The three skits from the AM ep are present and accounted for, plus some other bits and pieces.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC8lNIS3Hq8&feature=youtu.be

i watched 'the fortune' - really bad, & lol @ the wiki that nichols took a lot of the screwball out of it! theres still way too much. is a little fun to watch bumbling, disheveled nicholson; beatty doesnt add much imo

First, a fact checker working on a biographical piece for Time discovered the woman Nicholson believed was his sister was actually his mother, and the woman who raised him was really his grandmother

wtf

yeah i knew that

I like The Fortune alright, too

apparently this guy has ZERO reputation in france; no cult, no auteur recognition, nothing. a movie of his (can't remember which one, maybe it was "closer") came out while I was there, and the general response was "who is this guy again?"

I posted about Primary Colors somewhere, but it wasn't here or the Travolta poll-thread, so I'm not sure where. Gets better every time for me. I don't think there are any less-than-good performances--Travolta's fine--but I'll single out three especially: Billy Boy Thorton (not for the little bit of broad comic stuff, but rather things like his true-believerism putdown), Larry Hagman, and John Vargas (one scene as Lorenzo, Hagman's inconvenient past). Kathy Bates, too--a little obvious at first (could do without her big gun scene), more shaded as the film goes along. And the last ten minutes, I don't think it cheats or simplifies.

couldn't IMAGINE watching that film a second time

cuz i prefer narration in films about predatory insects

It's okay, and when it's on cable I'll watch a few minutes: Nichols is good with sketches, therefore the actors stand out. Although I haven't read the book, I have a problem with the movie at last embracing Stanton as a Good Man.

I don't think it does, though--Henry stays on, but you have to decide for yourself. I know the basic subject isn't anything new--political trade-offs--but it lays it out there and you have to decide for yourself. Only 10 minutes earlier, Kathy Bates was contemptuously hissing at him for having slept with his 17-year-old babysitter.

i've read the book and from what i recall the stuff in the film that comes off as 'stanton' being a good man that truly understands and cares about the people is more 'this fraud really knows how to work a room', the admiration for him that there is comes from observing his in depth policy wonkness. the book is funnier and a good bit more cynical. i remember there was a tsongas proxy and there was a cuomo proxy but i can't really remember much beyond that aside from the obv 'o the narrator is stephanopoulos, this guy is carville, this guy is ickes, she's supposed to be dee dee myers', etc. no idea who hagman's character is supposed to be, wikipedia is guessing at some amalgam of jerry brown, harold hughes, reubin askew, and ross perot, which...ok, if you say so. florida character seems to exist as mainly a late entry to create some drama for stanton (so there is some perot there definitely) and as a contrast of a the type of good, honest men that scandal prevents from becoming president while ruthless scoundrels like stanton skip over there scandals right into the white house.

The Cuomo proxy (Ozio--wants to snipe from his ivory tower; we only see his son) and Tsongas proxy (Harris--a heart attack stands in for Tsongas's health issues) are in the film. Wasn't sure if the Daisy Green character was Myers or Mandy Grunwald. I couldn't match Picker (Hagman) either. He's more like Fred Thompson a decade too early. The film doesn't have a Perot...never read the book.

cuomo's an interesting figure, it would be ridiculous to start a thread about him but curious about how ppl who are old enough to have 'been there' (both of you lol) remember him or felt about him at the time. most of my memories of him are tied to his possible presidential campaigns and hamlet like agonizing over them, that he was against the death penalty when this was not popular, the enmity w/ koch, that he from the 84 convention speech at least on this last best hope for liberalism, that his running/not running meant something different than the other hamlets of the time (nunn, bradley) who were more new democrats, and that he was enough of a titan in 92 that his running would've somewhat cleared the field but by 94 he was able to get swept out of office by the likes of george pataki. plus phil hartman in this - http://snltranscripts.jt.org/91/91edebate.phtml

My aunt, conservative to her toenails, admitted a couple years ago that his '84 convention speech was the greatest she'd ever heard. "I didn't believe a word of it," she said, "but it was powerful." It's on YouTube; maybe I'll watch it later. I wonder if its reviews reflect voter dissatisfaction with Mondale or hearing a Democrat in the Reagan era air his liberalism for the last time without apology.

Pretty sure I watched that speech, but only a dim memory. I remember the party and media getting a little impatient with the Hamlet evasiveness in '92. I found him somewhat intrusive in Ken Burns baseball film two years later--his visibility as a politician seemed to be the sole reason he was there (he had a bit of minor-league experience).

Joe Klein, who wrote that book, was a NY Mag columnist notorious for predicting that Do the Right Thing would cause riots.

The late great Doug Ireland said, "Mario Cuomo is the only politician who hides behind his own candor.”

Such a lotta jabber over a mediocre movie; I guess destined to be Elaine May's last writing credit.

Stayed up till 2 to watch Carnal Knowledge last night. I've seen it four or five times over the years. I think most of it's pretty good; not much to look at, and talky, but I like the performers--even Garfunkel's non-acting and Kael's bête noire, Candice Bergen. The last two scenes, Nicholson's slide show (and Carol Kane's reaction) and Rita Moreno's scene, are amazing and depressing.

VF has this oral history of him in its October issue — I thought it was good.
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/09/remembering-director-mike-nichols

No idea why I went to see Virginia Woolf at the Lightbox. It's like a Pavlovian response--things like that turn up on the schedule, I order a ticket. I'd already seen it two or three times without really warming to it, and tonight it especially seemed like an ordeal. Impressive, I guess, but possibly the blueprint for a number of grotesque films I've hated over the years.

a landmark of American theatre

so Nichols and Richard Avedon had a running thing. I guess MN was the guy to adapt Albee and Kushner after all.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/avedon-biography-provides-sex-art-beauty-and-the_us_5a32b6bbe4b028728a884b1b

from Criterion Current

Last month, when theater and film critic John Simon died at the age of ninety-four, New York magazine’s Christopher Bonanos wrote that “John was, in his prime, probably the most notorious critic alive.” And if you’re at all familiar with Simon’s work and reputation, you’ll appreciate the understatement. Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a review—a rare upbeat one—by Simon of the oral history Life Isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends. “Ash Carter, a writer and editor, and Sam Kashner, the author or co-author of several books, have skillfully handled things in fourteen chapters and a coda,” wrote Simon, who admired Nichols and his work.

Carter and Kashner talk about their book on a recent NYT Book Review podcast: “Elaine May was the dangerous genius that entered Mike Nichols’s life and changed him,” says Kashner. And Carter adds: “She was kind of the combustion engine, and he was the steering wheel.” A few weeks ago, Michael Schulman gathered Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski, Glenn Close, and Whoopi Goldberg, all of whom are interviewed for the book, to reminisce a little more about their time with Nichols for the New Yorker.

links here

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6741-december-books

So I got the oral bio Life Isn’t Everything (ment'd above) from the library, and it's a v breezy read if you like showbiz stories.

Gene Hackman was fired from playing Mr Robinson after a week of shooting!

A key episode of Mad Men, the first one of the second half of the last season, is dedicated to Nichols. Just timing--it aired right after his death.

Closer is on HBO Now, Natalie Portman still completely unbelievable as an erotic dancer.

George Segal said that on the Woolf set, some guy would bring a pair of Bloody Marys for the Burtons every day at 5pm, and that meant shooting was over. And Liz would not show up til 10am. "Those were the days!"

There's a new biography by Mark Harris, who wrote the excellent Pictures at a Revolution--will buy this for sure, as soon as the price comes down a bit.

https://images3.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9780399562242

Fantastic extract here; I wasn’t expecting the ‘happy ending’ as I didn’t know much about him and Diane Sawyer. Harris is such a great storyteller.

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

Read a chunk at the bookstore last week -- quite entertaining

I know someone who actually interviewed Nichols at his home for some television program. I never saw it when it aired but I remember talking about what that was like and Nichols sounded wonderful. Apparently he hadn't lost a step since his Nichols & May days because he turned everyone into his straight man - that is, you'd say something innocuous and he'd respond with his quick and hilarious wit every single time. (Like one person would say "you have a beautiful home" and he'd say "I had a beautiful home!" referencing the mess they made to set up his interview. He made a similar joke again when he had to do something like flip a switch, not realizing they had torn it out for some weird electrical reason, and he told them "look at this! It's like rape!") When someone told him the air date, he replied "oh good, I'll be dead by then." (He was more or less healthy but already quite old.)

Anyway, he used to appear at a lot of screenings around NYC, and when I managed to catch a few, he really was like that, not to mention intelligent and articulate. To be brutally honest, I'm not the biggest fan of his films - they're not bad at all, but a lot of them are underwhelming to me - and it's frustrating because I feel like he was capable of much better work given how sharp and insightful he was in person. If you can find them, look for his Lincoln Center talk with Elaine May on Ishtar (I think it was from the late '00s) and also his MoMA talk with Judd Apatow (from the '10s). The transcript for the former was on Lincoln Center's website for a long time, and a recording of the latter was available somewhere on MoMA's site.

He also made an appearance for a Lincoln Center screening of Carnal Knowledge around 2011 - except for one joke, what he had to say wasn't as memorable as the other appearances. (He insisted that New York City had become a much nicer town. "You should have seen it before! It was like PARIS!" The way he emphasized "Paris" was hilarious.) But Jason Reitman moderated and a ton of filmmakers like Noah Baumbach and Lena Dunham (before Girls) were all in the audience. (Which reminds me, Paul Rudd and some others were at the MoMA talk as audience members.) I'm not exactly a fan of every one of those filmmakers, but it kind of says a lot when you have these young, high-profile figures dropping by to listen to someone in his 80's who hadn't made a film in 5 years and never would again.

And no one voted for Angels in America? I finally caught up with it and was really impressed - it may be a TV series but it's probably the best film directing he's ever done.

I posted positively about it in a thread for the movie. (I said I loved the music in one post; honestly don't remember anything about the soundtrack a few years later.)

When I looked up Giuseppe Rotunno, who died a day or two ago, I noticed he shot Carnal Knowledge. Another film I like, though I remember it having kind of a dingy, washed-out look.

Good man. Yeah, Rotunno shot a few others for Nichols too. I actually wasn't a fan of Carnal Knowledge. The acting was good (usually is in Nichols's films), but I found the whole thing off-putting.

I'm reading the bio. This killed me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJtUtF2gxK4

enjoyed seeing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? again

much acting drunk

Impressive stretch for Taylor & Burton

Segal and Dennis were also pretty good

What is the best opening title sequence you've seen in a movie?

WORKING GIRL is a great one. https://t.co/Uiq8pTNhob pic.twitter.com/NhJlCgiUAC

— Jackson Boren (@JacksonBoren) February 21, 2024

"Working Girl" seems to have been forgotten, but boy, not only is this opening title sequence great, it reminded me of all the shit *I* forgot about, especially the cast. Besides Griffith and Weaver and Ford (in one of his best performances), there's Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Nora Dunn, Kevin Spacey (?), Olympia Dukakis, Ricki Lake, songs by Carly Simon. Michael Ballhaus was the DP. (And Griffith was reportedly gacked out on cocaine the entire shoot.)

Its gender politics and reliance on screwball conventions were naff even in 1988, but, yes, I saw it again last summer and the Griffith-Ford and (especially) Griffith-Weaver exchanges are gold.

yeah I watched it for the first time last year and there's a lot to like about it

I wish Weaver had played more comedy.

Yeah, she works really well in ensembles, like in "Ghostbusters" or "The Ice Storm" or "Galaxy Quest."

This is great

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/harrison-ford-melanie-griffith-working-girl-oral-history-1164247/amp/

WEAVER Sam O’Steen came in every day to see Mike. He was his editor and would tell Mike what shots he needed for each scene. We were never there agonizing or spending a lot of time on how to shoot something. One of the most fun things I got to do was speak German when I’m calling Helmut about the reservation, standing there in my little ski boots. Mike had given me the German a couple of nights before. The accent was so over the top and outrageous. One of my lines was, “Did you tell him it was me?” That’s sort of Katherine’s MO through the whole thing, you know? Separate rules for me, please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nyba4TMiJk

The Whole Credited Cast of Carnal Knowledge Is Still Alive!

I would've voted for Angels in America.

(not that it would've changed the winner, but at least it would've saved it from zero-vote purgatory)

(And Griffith was reportedly gacked out on cocaine the entire shoot.)

You really get the impression from the Mike Nichols book that he was sad for Melanie Griffith, not for ruining her health or anything, but because she was too spaced to notice that Weaver, Ford and particularly Cusack were stealing what should have been her star-making film right out from under her.

She holds her own.

I haven't read the book, but it's surprising to hear him say that - Griffith did get an Oscar nomination (IIRC her only one to date) and she is really good. I don't think she loses the film at all, not unless he wanted this to be more of a STAR vehicle rather than a more balanced cast where everyone else gets to shine.

if by "the Mike Nichols book" you mean the Mark Harris bio, trishyb, I don't remember his dismissal.

It wasn't a dismissal, it was more along the lines of a plea to stop taking so much cocaine. I can try and find the bit I'm thinking of, but it was an audiobook, so it might not be so easy.

ah!

Ah, OK, I found it. So the cocaine and booze were so bad that at one point they fined her for holding up production for several hours. Then Nichols dressed her down in front of people because she wasn't showing respect for the work and he was worried he wasn't getting the best she could give and that the picture would suffer as a result. After that she pulled herself together. The line about Cusack and Weaver "walking away with their scenes" is not connected. I obviously just put the two things together.

I watched Working Girl again after reading the book, and it struck me yet again what an underrated film it is. But I was also struck by the thing that someone says in the book about Nichols's theatre directing, how everyone always has some business to do, there's always a beer can that fizzes up, or cards drop on the floor, or something. Nobody ever just walks into a room and starts talking. I'm not saying he always does it in Working Girl, but it's funny when you notice it.

It has a major implausibility at its center: Tess can use Catherine's office and no one notices? And no one at all notice that major decisions happen without Catherine's say-so?

Silkwood is so awesome. a brilliant movie. Postcards might be my fave though. i love that film to death. WAOVW? is a work of art that can hold its own alongside all the amazing movies coming out around the globe in 1966 though.

i’m sure i’ve said this elsewhere on ilx but harrison ford is so absurdly charming in working girl, he should have played more magic yuppie dream boys

The meet-cute where they take a shot of tequila.

Finished Mark Harris's biography--long, definitely worth the time. Great last sentence, just after he dies, that sums up the book well: He left behind an appointment book for the coming week that was completely full.

Going to make the effort to watch Wit--a subject I generally avoid in films--and Closer. Hope to rewatch Catch-22 and Silkwood. No interest in Biloxi Blues, The Birdcage, or the Gary Shandling film.

Of what I've seen, the four I like best are The Graduate, Angels in America, Carnal Knowledge, and Primary Colors. I've seen another half-dozen that I think are either pretty good or made no impression. As mentioned above, Virginia Woolf is a bit of a slog for me, although I realize it's an important film.

Didn't know he had a major drug problem through the '80s and '90s: cocaine, crack, Halciaon.

Watched Closer the other night. Found it absorbing, even though I was aware of the contrivance. Helped, no doubt, by having just read the Harris book, and also because I like Julia Roberts so much.

The problem is Portman, who's unconvincing saying human dialogue or any dialogue.

Watched _Closer_ the other night. Found it absorbing, even though I was aware of the contrivance. Helped, no doubt, by having just read the Harris book, and also because I like Julia Roberts so much.

Portman’s Alice is meant to have been played by an older actress, because the character is definitely meant to come across as more savvy and streetwise

otm. And she IS beautiful here.

Deer decoration? Should be set decoration. Thanks autocorrect.

Also, I left out how much I dislike the character of Dan and how much I think Law (who I also don’t care for outside of this and The Talented Mr Ripley) really fits this role; kind of this surface level charm but a character who is so utterly hollow and cowardly. It works! As above, him being drenched in the rain and arriving at the office of Owen’s Larry is a great, great scene.

YES - I saw her naked
NO - I did not fuck her

Owen being so matter of fact in this scene and taking the short cut he knows Dan is already racing towards is just really very funny to me

Nice to hear you like this so much...I thought all four leads were excellent, and I had a certain amount of bias to get past with Law and Owens. My feelings about Jude Law are, irrationally, so tied in with Chris Rock's funny dismissal of him at the AA, followed by Sean Penn's embarrisingly self-righteous rebuke of Rock. With Owen, it's just that he comes across as so smug, but obviously that was perfect for this character. The biography talked about how protective Nichols was of Natalie Portman; she balked at some nudity, and he made sure that that never happened. I was thinking also that, in general, Nichols seemed to belong to a generation that was skittish about on-screen nudity and sex scenes, but sublimated that with language--which in Closer is pretty graphic. I thought the direction overall was very not-flashy and assured.

Indicator putting out Carnal Knowledge on 4K & Blu: https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/products/carnal-knowledge-4k-uhd-le

...and Criterion handling it stateside: https://www.criterion.com/films/28109-carnal-knowledge

Yikes:

New audio commentary featuring filmmaker and playwright Neil LaBute

"I'm talking about the heroes, right?" "Uh."

Imagining a updated remake that ends with the Nicholson character becoming a revenge porn Blogger/Podcaster, and Rita Moreno gets replaced with ChatGPT.