by Marc Eliot
Jack then decided he still wanted Buell and sent her roses every hour on the hour to try to persuade her to hook up. Not surprisingly, word of Jack’s pursuit hit the trades, and by the time he returned to L.A. to finish Postman, Anjelica was furious, not about his dalliance with Buell, but Jack’s being the secret father of Susan Anspach’s love child. Anspach had revealed it to the press in terms that were quite convincing. Despite the fact that Jack and Anspach’s affair had ended with the completion of production on Pieces and she had married someone else (whom she later divorced), Anjelica, who wanted a child more than anything, was out of her mind with anger.
After Anspach’s announcement, Jack was asked by the press where his relationship stood with Anjelica, and he was unusually frank with them, if not entirely honest, perhaps in an attempt to mend some fences and soothe some wounds. Of their seven-year-on-and-off and at times tumultuous relationship, he declared, “I certainly would say she’s the love of my life … we’ve striven for a straightforward, honest, yet mature relationship … she has had to do the hardest work in that area because I’m the one who is so easily gossiped about … there are other women in my life who are simply friends of mine. Most of the credit for our wonderfully successful relationship has to do with her flexibility. I ask her to marry me all the time. Sometimes she turns me down, sometimes she says yes. We don’t get around to it …”
Despite The Shining’s disappointing reviews—Pauline Kael in the New Yorker described Jack’s performance as “cramped, slightly robotized,” and David Denby in New York Magazine called the film “stiff and pompous”—only Andrew Sarris, a critic not overly fond of Kubrick, liked the film enough to place it at number twenty on his best-films-of-the-year column in the Village Voice. The Shining earned $44 million in its initial domestic release, from the studio’s original investment of $19 million. Good, not great. It was the fourteenth-highest-grossing film of the year (Irvin Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back was the highest, with a $209 million gross), but not the blockbuster that Warners, Kubrick, or Jack had hoped for. That put even more importance on Postman to be the big hit he needed it to be.
BACK IN L.A. to finish filming and his scenes, Jack, still smarting over his reviews for The Shining, and trying to adjust to his latest clash with Anjelica, was contacted by director Tony Richardson about being in The Border, to be filmed in El Paso and Guatemala that summer, co-starring Harvey Keitel and Warren Oates. Jack said yes, making it his fifth film in three years following his vow to take it easy after he won the Oscar. He chose The Border over an offer by Miloš Forman to be in his Ragtime. Although he had loved working with Forman on Cuckoo’s Nest, he didn’t want to be in another large-cast ensemble movie. Because Forman was a friend, Jack did agree to make an unbilled appearance in the film as a pirate at the beach. But his focus was on The Border.
Jack had never worked with the British-born Richardson before but loved The Border’s script, which was why he wanted to star in it. It was Richardson’s twenty-second film, on a résumé sprinkled with a fair number of jewels that included the 1959 movie version of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer (1960—another Osborne adaptation), A Taste of Honey (1961), and Tom Jones (1963).
The Border, with its modest budget of $4.5 million (that escalated to a whopping $22 million before the film was finished), was originally conceived as a small film about the personal and professional problems of INS patrolman Charlie Smith, a part (and a film) originally written for actor Robert Blake, Jack’s onetime love rival. Blake, however, had a habit of always seeming to alienate the money people, part of his bizarre personality that for most of his career made him his own worst enemy. When he said the wrong thing to one of the executives at Universal during preproduction (reportedly “Go fuck yourself”) and then angrily criticized the studio during an outburst on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, not only was he summarily fired from the film, but Carson, then the most powerful entertainer on TV, who abhorred anyone who brought controversy to his show, barred him from ever again appearing on it. Richardson then called Jack, who had had no love for Blake and agreed to do the film if its budget was increased to include his asking salary of $6 million. Universal agreed, believing, correctly, that Jack was a much more bankable star than Blake.
With the delay caused by Blake’s firing and Jack’s hiring, the producers tried to rush into production so that filming could begin two weeks before a threatened July 1980 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike. Any film that went into production before the strike started was allowed to finish. Unfortunately, they didn’t make the deadline and the film was delayed.
Jack welcomed the break. The back injury he had suffered during the making of The Shining was bothering him again. The day after the work stoppage, he flew to St. Tropez and spent the remainder of the summer recuperating in France on Sam Spiegel’s yacht.
While there, Jack was contacted by John Huston, who wanted him to play Rooster Hannigan in the film version of the musical Annie. Jack liked the idea and a deal was in the making until Carol Burnett, the film’s Miss Hannigan, a well-known anti-drug crusader, rejected him because of his casual dismissal about all the concern over drugs in an interview that appeared in the July 28, 1980, issue of People, where he was quoted as having said they were no big thing. In its August 18 issue, the magazine published an open letter to Jack from Burnett: “Dear Jack, Drugs ‘Ain’t no big thing?’ Maybe not in your home. With love and hope, Carol Burnett.” His part went instead to Tim Curry.
That fall, with the strike settled, Jack returned to Mexico to shoot The Border. As production proceeded, Jack became increasingly convinced The Border was not going to be the film he had hoped it would be.
By the March 20, 1981, New York premiere of Postman, Jack had lost twenty pounds by enlisting the services of Judy Mazel, of The Beverly Hills Diet book fame; she was known throughout Hollywood as the “dietrix to the stars.” She told W magazine that she did most of her work with Jack by phone, talking to him as often as eight times a day. She said she had uncovered his biggest problem: “He can go only so many days without enchiladas.”
Still, the weight came off, his latest round of transplants were taking, and he looked and felt better than he had in years. He began to recover his old swagger, until Postman opened to mixed-to-poor reviews that were particularly hard on his portrayal of Frank. Richard Corliss wrote in Time: “Nicholson’s performance as Frank is studied … the dashing star of a decade ago has dared to inhabit the molting seediness of the character actor …” Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote: “The [film’s] problems may be traced to the miscasting of Jack Nicholson … [who] is a bit too old for the part …” Stanley Kauffmann wrote in Commentary: “[Jack] looks a good deal of the time as if he hadn’t recovered from the Cuckoo’s Nest lobotomy.” And this came from Pauline Kael: “[Jack’s] performance could have been given by a Nicholson impersonator.” Others attacked what they claimed were Jack’s overly imitative 1940s Bogart style of acting. The consensus: in this version, the postman only rang once.
The film earned only $12 million in its initial domestic release, less than its negative cost, a blow to Jack’s desire to remain relevant in a business where he had once been king of the hill. Only six years after his bravura performance and Oscar win for Cuckoo’s Nest, the hard truth was that Jack’s name was no longer enough to automatically guarantee the financing of a big-budget film. He signed on for something called Roadshow that would reunite him with Mary Steenburgen, but when several directors passed, including Martin Britt and Richard Brooks, MGM, despite Jack’s commitment, canceled the project.6
JACK WAS LOSING it and he knew it. He went to see John Huston for a heart-to-heart. Huston and Jack had remained close, despite Jack’s bumpy ride with Anjelica. Huston told Jack to stop making films for a while and try to do a little rose-smelling. The last thing he wanted to do, Huston warned, was to turn into an actor whose films didn’t matter.
THAT JUNE, THREE months after the disastrous open
ing of Postman, Jack boarded a plane bound for Hawaii to visit his daughter, Jennifer, now seventeen and graduating from Punahou High School with plans to attend USC. Jack wanted to be there to see it. He had missed so much of her childhood in the years when traveling back and forth from Hawaii was prohibitive.
When he returned to Los Angeles, he was determined to crawl out from underneath the weight of Jack the movie star and try to rediscover Jack the man. To do so, he took another extended hiatus and didn’t make a movie for two years. Between 1981 and 1983, whenever Jack was asked why, his stock answer was that he simply hadn’t found anything good enough, or that he was holed up in Aspen working on a screenplay.
In January 1982, Jack briefly emerged from his self-imposed semiisolation to do some minimal contractual promotion for The Border, a fruitless task he hadn’t wanted to do but he was committed to when he signed on. The film received mostly negative reviews, which, like those of Postman, once again centered on Jack’s performance more than they did on the movie as a whole. Typical was David Ehrenstein’s piece in the L.A. Reader: “Even if we were given an explanation [to the film’s Clint Eastwood–like shoot-’em-up denouement] that washed, and the film were a success from start to finish, it wouldn’t alter one basic fact—with The Border, Jack Nicholson’s career has come to an impasse.”
The month before, Beatty’s Reds had finally opened to rave reviews but disappointing box office.7 Reds was nominated for twelve Oscars, including Best Actor (Beatty), Best Actress (Keaton), Best Picture (Beatty, producer), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Maureen Stapleton), a nomination for Jack as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and several additional technical awards. Jack’s nomination signaled a possible uptick in the direction of his career. When he learned of it, he told friends he was sure he wouldn’t win and retreated once more, this time to Colorado, taking along only his personal cook. He spent his days skiing, eating, biking, and sleeping late. His typewriter sat there quiet and still. As much as he wanted to, whenever he tried to write, nothing came out of him and instead, he put food in.
All too soon, much of the weight he had worked so hard to lose came back, as it usually does with crash dieting. He allowed only a few friends to visit, among them Bert Schneider, Harry Dean Stanton, Bob Rafelson, Hunter S. Thompson, and Lou Adler. Adler watched Lakers games with Jack via cable hookup. One of Jack’s few forays to Los Angeles was to attend the single most important event in Hollywood, one of superagent Sue Mengers’s ultralavish affairs in her Beverly Hills home. Jack, one of her “Twinkles”—her name for her pet movie stars—arrived more than two hours late, a no-no at a Mengers bash, which, in her time, was considered the most difficult invite to get. He’d figured as long as he was in L.A. he would attend a Lakers game first with Adler. His priorities were crystal clear.
Also, in January 1982, Anjelica, very possibly at the urging of her father, who had always hoped she and Jack would wind up together, and despite her anger over the Anspach baby, simply couldn’t stay away from him. She began flying back and forth from L.A. to Aspen, to make sure he was okay and had everything he needed. At first she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be, but when he said how happy he was to see her, she decided to stay through Christmas and see what happened.
Aspen during the holidays is one long party, and to get Jack out of his house and his own self-imposed isolation and funk, Anjelica dragged him to as many as she could. At one of them they ran into Andy Warhol, who flaunted Margaret Trudeau’s just-published memoir to both of them, pointing out in typical Warholian deadpan what she had written about her affairs with Ryan O’Neal and actor Tom Sullivan. Jack bristled at Warhol but said nothing. Everyone knew that Warhol loved gossip. Jack hoped Warhol wouldn’t ask him in front of Anjelica about his affair with actress Winnie Hollman. The big talk in Hollywood, un-proven, was that she had recently given birth to a daughter fathered by Jack.8 Warhol didn’t, and for the moment, Jack dodged another bullet.
In March 1982, Jack flew back to Hollywood to attend the Academy Awards, held on the twenty-ninth, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, hosted that year by Johnny Carson. Jack was certain he was not going to win for Reds, but he wanted to support Warren in what looked as if it could be the biggest night of his life. Beatty showed up with Keaton on his arm (although word was their relationship had cooled during the making of the film), and Jack arrived with Anjelica. The four sat together in the same row. When Beatty won for Best Director, the camera caught a shot of Jack, his eyes covered with sunglasses, looking quite satisfied.
Jack kept smiling even when he lost Best Supporting Actor in an upset to Sir John Gielgud for his performance in Steve Gordon’s decidedly minor comedy Arthur.
* * *
1 The film had a censorship battle prior to release. In order to receive an R rating, some of the hottest scenes—and there were several—were cut out of the theatrical version and restored for the videocassette and DVD versions.
2 The original 1934 novel was remade three times: Luchino Visconte’s 1942 Italian Obsessione, Tay Garnett’s 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Rafelson’s 1981 version, starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
3 The film’s title originally had nothing to do with the plot of the novel. According to Cain, the title came from his anxiety waiting for the postman to bring him news of whether he had sold a manuscript. He knew when the postman arrived because it was his habit to always ring twice, in two short pushes on the doorbell.
4 Double Indemnity was written nine years after The Postman Always Rings Twice. It is essentially an updated version of Postman, filmed two years before Garnett’s 1946 adaptation. The decision to film Postman was based, in part, on the enormous success of Double Indemnity.
5 Many believe “Alison” and “Party Girl” were written about Buell, but Costello has always denied this.
6 Jack would make six out of seven unsuccessful films after Cuckoo’s Nest: The Missouri Breaks, The Last Tycoon, Goin’ South, The Shining (which underperformed but managed a small profit), The Postman Always Rings Twice (also eventually produced a minimal profit), the forth coming Reds (whichx would be a modest hit), and The Border, the latter yet to be released.
7 In the byzantine shadow world of Hollywood finance, although Reds took in between $40 million and $50 million in its initial domestic run, because of its huge cost ($35 million) and excessive length (194 minutes) that made multiple nightly screenings impossible, the film did not make significant profits. The final accounting is still taking place.
8 She had, but nobody at the time could prove it. The baby was the result of a secret five-year relationship between Jack and Winnie Hollman. Honey Hollman finally confirmed that Jack was her father when she turned twenty-five in 2006. She had been raised in Copenhagen by her mother, who never kept the secret from her. Jack had little or no involvement in Honey Hollman’s life.
The Joker. Courtesy of Rebel Road Archives
CHAPTER
“After Cuckoo’s Nest, I had been so lucky for so long as an actor that I felt overly praised. Well, I said that for two pictures and they got up my ass for five years in a row … the result was that people started applying a different standard to me and thinking, ‘Yeah, this fucking guy is over praised. Let’s attack the living shit out of him.’ And they did …”
—JACK NICHOLSON
IN MARCH 1983 JACK ANNOUNCED HIS NEXT FILM WOULD BE TERMS of Endearment, written, produced, and directed by TV sitcom veteran James L. Brooks, set to begin production at the end of the month. When he first read the script he loved it, believing it was the vehicle that could repair his broken career: “I can think of only a couple of other pictures where I’ve read the part and said, ‘Oh shit, I’ll be great in this.’ ” He was not at all bothered by taking a supporting role. He had done it before, in Reds, with much success. “My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I’d hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my bi
lling.” Jack wanted the role so much that despite Paramount’s nervous $10 million budget that left no room for Jack’s $3 million salary, he agreed to do it for nothing up front and a healthy slice of the back end.
He flew to Houston, Texas, where much of the film was to be shot, while Anjelica stayed behind in Los Angeles to continue the pursuit of her own career. He spent most of his down time at a luxurious spa, the cost of which was paid by the production.
Jack received third billing above the title, after reincarnationist/actress Shirley MacLaine and super-hot Debra Winger, coming off two big hits in a row, playing Sissy opposite John Travolta in James Bridges’s 1980 Urban Cowboy and Paula opposite Richard Gere in Taylor Hackford’s 1982 An Officer and a Gentleman, for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (she lost to Meryl Streep for Sophie’s Choice).
Brooks was a singular talent. He had begun TV’s second Golden Age of situation comedy in 1970 with the arrival of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, starring Moore as a single, career-minded independent woman, at the time a role unthinkable on television (as it still was to a large degree in real life). The show was a smash hit and ran for seven seasons, making stars out of Moore and her supporting cast of characters, and established its creators, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, as major TV sitcom players. Burns formed a partnership with Brooks when they were approached by Grant Tinker to create a show for his wife, actress Mary Tyler Moore.
Two years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, in 1979, Brooks, without Burns, broke into film producing with Starting Over, from his own script (co-written with Dan Wakefield, adapted from his novel) directed by Alan J. Pakula. The film, starring Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh, did well enough to get Brooks a deal to produce, direct, and write Terms of Endearment, based on the Larry McMurtry novel of the same name. Despite Brooks’s stellar credentials in TV, the leap to the big screen proved harder than he thought and he had difficulty getting Terms funded. Jennifer Jones, one of the biggest stars of the 1940s and 1950s, had bought the film rights to the novel, seeing the middle-aged character of Aurora Greenway as the perfect comeback role for her. Jones then approached Brooks about producing. He read it and liked it, but not for Jones. He asked Paramount to buy the rights from her and give it to him. Jones resisted but eventually agreed, as no studio was willing to touch the project with her attached to it. Then, in classic Hollywood form, Paramount got cold feet, telling Brooks it was too different, too unlike anything else out there that was making money. That much was true. Hollywood films had fallen into the grip of big, hollow spectacles, the Spielberg/Lucas style of filmmaking that had overtaken the more personal movies of the early seventies. Brooks confronted Paramount by saying, “You mean, we’re in danger of doing some original work?” He shamed the studio into funding the film, but only for $9 million; he picked up another million from MTM, bringing him to the $10 million he needed to go ahead.1
