Nicholson

by Marc Eliot

  THE TWO JAKES opened on August 10, 1990, nine months after its originally scheduled Christmas 1989 holiday slot, a decision made after Paramount execs viewed the film in its rough-cut form of two hours and forty-eight minutes, and decided it was too long to release in its current form. To try to save its original place in the schedule, Jack personally cut the negative to 2:24, in a small cutting room at Paramount, wearing a tie-dyed Hawaiian shirt, white jeans, and white saddle shoes, an outfit he didn’t change once during these sessions. Paramount held firm on the August release, despite Jack’s and Evans’s furious resistance, insisting that nobody goes to the movies in August.

  Paramount proved prescient in dumping The Two Jakes. Not surprisingly, to them, it opened to mostly negative reviews. From a budget of $19 million the film grossed only $10 million and quickly disappeared, despite valiant last-minute attempts by Jack to promote the film in the press. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change the essential truth—that the passage of time, the loss of its original director, Polanski, and original cast members Huston and Dunaway, had fatally diminished The Two Jakes. Paramount quickly canceled Evans’s plan for the third film in his proposed trilogy, thus putting an end to Jack’s directing career.

  On December 25, 1989, People named Jack one of the “25 Most Intriguing People of the Year” and put his face on the cover, in costume and mask as the Joker, along with Michelle Pfeiffer, Madonna, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Mr. and Mrs. George H. W. Bush.

  At the end of 1990, the New York Times wrote an assessment of where the money was in the film industry and declared Jack Nicholson the wealthiest actor in Hollywood. Batman alone made him $60 million and counting. He later told the same paper that nearly all his post-Corman films had turned a profit (except for The Border and The Fortune), and that he had received back-end money for every film since Easy Rider.

  His biggest indulgence remained the acquisition of new art and he took great pleasure from his two (acknowledged) children. He continued to search for a new project to star in, which was not all that easy, as the younger moviegoing generation knew him only as the Joker. He could do dozens of those types of roles if he wanted. He didn’t. What Jack was looking for was a script that would give him what all the money in the world and colorful makeup couldn’t—the return of his relevance as a serious actor.

  And then, as if on cue, Bob Rafelson came knocking with a script by Carole Eastman called Man Trouble that was tailor-made, Rafelson insisted, for Jack and Meryl Streep. The script had gone nowhere with the studios, but before Jack could make up his mind, Streep pulled out of whatever commitment she may have made to the project and was replaced by Ellen Barkin. The project lay dormant until Jack decided to do the film anyway. Rafelson had made only two movies after 1981’s The Postman Always Rings Twice—1987’s Black Widow, a modest box office hit, and 1990’s critically well-received but little-seen Mountains of the Moon. What helped Jack make up his mind was that the film was written by Eastman, who, after a long hiatus, had started writing under her own name again. She hadn’t had a script of hers produced in sixteen years, since the failure of The Fortune. Either she couldn’t get work because of it, or it had unsettled her to the point where she didn’t want to or couldn’t write anymore. Rafelson, who at the time was considered nonfundable by the studios, had somehow found Penta Pictures, a small Italian company that agreed to back the film to the tune of $30 million, but only if Jack agreed to be in it.

  The plot of Man Trouble revolves around the misadventures of the ironically named Harry Bliss (Jack, sporting a ’stache). He is the operator of a professional guard dog service and is going through marriage counseling in a last-ditch effort to save his failing marriage to Adele (Lauren Tom). A beautiful married opera singer, Joan Spruance (Barkin, in real life fifteen years younger than Jack), begins to receive death threats, and hires Harry’s service. All too soon they become romantically involved and all the inevitable (and predictable) problems ensue.

  Jack made sure the film was packed with friends, grateful for the work—Harry Dean Stanton, who was always looking for acting jobs, and not one but two girlfriends: Veronica Cartwright, and, in a small role as a hospital administrator, Rebecca Broussard.

  Little more need be said of the film beyond what Stanley Kauffmann wrote about it in the New Republic: “Jack’s appearance in this scrawny turkey can be seen as an act of loyalty to old friends.” Man Trouble grossed just $4 million and all but ended the careers of Eastman and Rafelson, and marked the last time Jack would attempt to play a leading man in film.

  * * *

  1 But not all of it. According to the Los Angeles Times (June 28, 1991), Jack had cut an extraordinary merchandising deal to play the Joker that included all Batman merchandise, present and future, regardless if it was the Joker or not. It was estimated at the time he stood to make $15 million from the deal. Rumors spread that along with John McEnroe and Johnny Carson, he might buy a piece of the Lakers with the money. That deal never happened.

  CHAPTER

  “I’ve only borrowed money once in my life and I have a very fearfully conservative idea about when I’m fine. One of my early quotes in this area was I don’t care how many zeros are on the check, if you’re working for the check, you’re living at subsistence level …”

  —JACK NICHOLSON

  IN 1989, A SYRACUSE GRADUATE WHO HAD STRUGGLED FOR A COUple of years trying to make it as an actor wrote a play for Broadway that got produced and became a huge hit. His name was Aaron Sorkin and his play was A Few Good Men. After graduating with a BFA in musical theater, he then moved to Manhattan hoping to break into the business.

  His sister, an attorney for the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps, or JAGC, had been assigned to defend a group of Marines accused of participating in a hazing incident. It was through conversations with her that Sorkin came up with the idea of writing a play that tested the logic and the morality of those in charge of the military-industrial complex.

  When he finished his courtroom drama, he sent it to producer David Brown, whom he had met during the production of a one-acter Sorkin had written that impressed Brown and inspired him to ask to see some more of his work.

  Brown read A Few Good Men and wanted to make it into a movie but acquiesced to Sorkin’s demand that it be done first as a play on Broadway. After a successful run, Brown took it to Hollywood, showed the film script version to several production companies, and was turned down by all of them. He then went to Rob Reiner, a producer/director at Castle Rock Entertainment, a film production consortium of which Reiner was one of the partners. Reiner optioned the script with the proviso that he would also direct. The son of famed comic writer and performer Carl Reiner, Rob had directed a slew of hit movies, including 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap (which he also partially wrote and appeared in), 1986’s Stand by Me, 1987’s The Princess Bride (written by one of Sorkin’s idols, William Goldman), 1989’s When Harry Met Sally …; considered a lightweight, he longed to be taken seriously as a director, which, in Hollywood, means directing important films about big subjects. Reiner was certain that A Few Good Men was the one. (He reportedly hired an uncredited William Goldman to work with Sorkin to “open up” the stagy courtroom drama for film by expanding the role of the prosecutor, LTJG Daniel Alistair Kaffee, JAGC, USN, for Tom Cruise to take the role, which he did.) Demi Moore was cast as LCDR JoAnne Galloway, JAGC, USN, a more experienced lawyer to help Kaffee, thereby adding some hoped-for sexual heat to a story involving the trial of two Marines accused of inadvertently killing a third Marine who died while being hazed by them. Unfortunately that heat never emerged.

  The key role in the film, that of Colonel Jessup, was originally played on Broadway by Stephen Lang, who hoped to repeat his performance on film, but too many bigger names wanted it, among them De Niro, James Woods, and Pacino, but Reiner wanted Jack, even when his asking price for the four scenes Jessup was in, which amounted to ten days’ work, was $5 million, or $500,000 a day. Cruise received
$12.5 million for a much larger part.

  During production, the word on the set was that Cruise and Jack did not get along, mirroring the tension between the two characters that heightened the level of both performances. Colonel Jessup’s character is more than a little reminiscent of The Caine Mutiny’s infamous Captain Queeg, the flawed commander of the Caine, right down to a self-incriminating loss of temper, wit, and ultimately, sanity that was the climax of both Edward Dmytryk’s film and Reiner’s A Few Good Men. Jack’s German shepherd performance as Colonel Jessup, right down to his teeth-baring monster of a breakdown on the stand—“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”—is the film’s memorable highlight.

  ON FEBRUARY 20, 1992, twenty-two months after the arrival of their first baby, Broussard gave birth to a second, an eight-pound, six-ounce boy they named Raymond. A beaming Jack told Variety he was “sky high” and that “the baby looks like Rebecca—thank goodness. But he’s got my big dick!” Continuing on that theme, Jack told Us that “the only trouble Ray will have with women is an over-abundance!”

  That made five offspring for Jack: his daughter from his first and only marriage, twenty-eight-year-old Jennifer, whom he had become close to since she moved to Los Angeles; Caleb, twenty-one, whom he had never met; Lorraine and Raymond, his two children with Rebecca Broussard; and the child he had with Hollman.

  In April, Jack was photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the April 1992 issue of Vanity Fair, with Jack on the cover holding his and Broussard’s twenty-two-month-old daughter and two-month-old son. He was fifty-five years old. Inside the magazine, Jack gushed about fatherhood, and how great it was to have someone around to take care of the kids and him, that Broussard wanted to be a mother and loved being with Jack. On the surface they seemed idyllic. Below, it was going to be difficult to sustain this children-enduced euphoria.

  According to one friend, “Rebecca’s number one, but they live in separate houses in L.A. and he does see other women.” According to another, “Jack really loves [Rebecca] a lot. How could he not? But Jack can’t give himself to one woman. He loves them all. I’m sure he still loves Anjelica, and always will … it hurts Anjelica to deal with Jack now … and it’s hard on Jack too. I don’t think they speak privately, not even on the phone …”

  “It’s an unusual arrangement,” Jack conceded, “but the last twenty-five years or so have shown me that I’m not good at cohabitation …[With Rebecca] I look at it as a two-bedroom apartment—[my] house and her house.”

  As for Rebecca, when asked about Jack’s well-known inability to remain monogamous, which he freely admitted, she said, “I’d really rather not talk about my relationship with Jack. I think that should be private.”

  MAN TROUBLE OPENED that summer, 1992; it was made for $30 million, but crashed and burned to the tune of a $4 million gross. It was another costly setback for Rafelson, who would not make a feature film again for four more years. Eastman would write only one more movie in her lifetime, and that would be for TV. Jack felt bad for them, but by now he was used to Rafelson films failing. He knew he was a better actor than Rafelson was a director, so the blame wouldn’t be put on him for anything except trying to help a couple of friends.

  After spending the summer on the Mediterranean with Rebecca and their two children, Jack began to itch to get back in front of the cameras. A Few Good Men had been a happy experience. Here he was drowning in fatherhood, and decided the best thing to do was to get back to land and make a new movie.

  Although Jack wasn’t crazy about the playwright David Mamet after Postman, a new Mamet screenplay came along about the life of Jimmy Hoffa that he really liked. Plus, his good friend Danny DeVito was set to direct. He had heard DeVito was having trouble casting the lead and thought it might be interesting to escape his own reality for a while by playing a gangster who couldn’t escape his. Jack offered his services, and DeVito instantly accepted.

  As DeVito began filming, Hoffa quickly found itself mired in budget trouble. The distribution studio, Warner Bros., had set it at $35 million, including Jack’s salary. It soon escalated above $45 million, with no end in sight.

  Jack filmed on location in Pittsburgh for four grueling months, and the result was one of his least interesting portrayals. Mamet’s script never came to life. As a result, Jack’s acting came off as generic, a central casting bad guy with a bulldog face. Despite all the cost overruns, DeVito believed they were justified because he was making a film about someone he perceived as a national hero—another major problem with Hoffa, a character description that was similarly unexplored, leaving Jack’s performance on the cardboard side of character.

  Jack spent his off time in a $1,500-a-night hotel suite, paid for by the production, where, whenever Lakers games were broadcast, Jack stopped any scenes he was in or stayed awake deep into the night to watch the West Coast satellite feed of the Lakers, something he was far more interested in than the movie he was making. The poor script, the slow pace, and the production’s consistent money problems forced DeVito to rethink his schedule, and the general boredom of the excessive downtimes managed to kill Jack’s interest in the film.

  Immediately after shooting ended, he was off to the Berlin Film Festival, where Hoffa was set to be screened. While there, he had a chance to meet up with Roman Polanski and his wife, Emmanuelle. The Polanskis had also recently welcomed a baby daughter, Morgane, and Jack and Roman spent a few hours together talking about the joys of fatherhood. Jack made a halfhearted plea to persuade Polanski to come back with him, but with The Two Jakes history, Jack could only muster up that one half.

  BACK IN THE STATES, Jack had two films released in December 1992. On the twelfth, A Few Good Men opened to rave reviews and was the number one film for three straight weeks. It grossed $243 million, worldwide, off a budget of $43 million, and a slew of Oscar nominations, including one for Jack, that reconfirmed his status as the premier character actor in Hollywood.

  Hoffa opened on Christmas Day and, off a final budget somewhere around $35 million, the film grossed $25 million domestically and another $5 million overseas. It was ignored by the Academy but nominated for a Razzie (Golden Raspberry), given annually to an actor who holds the distinction of giving the worst performance of the year. That year, Jack was nominated twice—for Hoffa and Man Trouble. He lost to Sylvester Stallone for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!

  Jack could laugh off the Razzie, but not the affair that Broussard started soon afterward with a much younger, good-looking man, even as Jack found himself in a brief but intense affair with the blond French actress Julie Delpy. If he was going to do his thing, then she was going to do hers. But his romance with Delpy fizzled, and Jack took the blame for its failure. In a bizarre interview with the Mail Online, Jack said: “I’m still wild at heart. But I’ve struck bio-gravity. I can’t hit on women in public anymore. I didn’t decide this; it just doesn’t feel right at my age … If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women. There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I’m not in that state now and that makes me sad …” The combination mea culpa was half apology, half warning, not just to Rebecca but for his own, personal Miss America pageant: “I’ve been in love in my life, but it always starts with obsession that lasts exactly 18 months and then it changes. If I’d known and been prepared for that, I may have been able to orchestrate the whole relationship thing better … The reality was that I was annihilated emotionally by [this last separation] from Anjelica. That was probably the toughest period of my life.” Nicholson went on to say that his heart remained broken by Huston. It was not something Broussard wanted to hear.

  Jack tried to get Broussard back, and for a while it seemed to work, but their reconciliation did not hold. She would no longer tolerate Jack’s inability to emotionally commit, or his chronic roving eye. Broussard decided after four years, two children, and no wedding ring that she really had had enough. It was time to liberate herself from Jack, and that was exact
ly what she did. He fell apart over it and begged her to come back, but Broussard was unmovable. She sold the house he had given her, and a few years later wed music producer Alex Kelly, to whom she remains married.

  Jack went back to his paintings.

  THE OSCAR AWARDS ceremony took place on March 29, 1993, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, hosted by Billy Crystal.

  This was Jack’s fourth nomination for Best Performance by a Supporting Actor, for A Few Good Men, with Terms of Endearment his only previous win in this category, and his tenth nomination in the combined categories of supporting and leading actor roles, which he had won only once, for One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But everyone’s focus was on Clint Eastwood, who, in all his years on TV and in movies, had never won anything in his long career, despite a number of notable film roles, including the creation of the iconic Dirty Harry and the Man with No Name. This year he was being lauded for his eulogistic western, the powerful Unforgiven, in which he produced, directed, and starred. The Academy nominated him for Best Picture (producer), Best Director, and Best Actor. Gene Hackman, who gave a bravura performance in the film as the personification of Old West evil, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.1

  Unforgiven received a total of nine Oscar nominations, A Few Good Men four. The other unlikely film that year that had any real heat was Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman, with Al Pacino’s over-the-top but audience-pleasing performance as a blind curmudgeon who turns out to be a good guy, a film notable for Pacino’s tango with the beautiful Gabrielle Anwar and the introduction of “HOO-WAH” to the American book of classic movie contributions to the English language, right up there that same year with “You can’t handle the truth!”

  Jack showed up in tux and tails and his signature Wayfarers. His category was announced early in the evening. When Gene Hackman’s name was called, he stood to rousing applause. It was Hackman’s second Oscar. He had won in 1972 for Best Performance by an Actor for his role in William Friedkin’s 1971 The French Connection.