Robert Sellers

by Hollywood Hellraisers

  Maybe to let off steam, Warren tore around Mulholland Drive daily on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Annette said that, since he’d passed the age of sixty-three, perhaps he should give up the Harley. ‘No way,’ came the reply.

  As is the way in Hollywood, their senior citizens are suddenly deluged with awards, lest they peg it. Warren was no exception. In 2007 he got a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Golden Globes. ‘What balls this man has,’ said host Tom Hanks. ‘And by balls, I mean artistic vision.’ In 2008 it was the big one, recognition from the American Film Institute, with the whole of Hollywood turning up to salute him: Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Quentin Tarantino, Faye Dunaway and Halle Berry; political friends too like George McGovern, Bill Clinton and Gary Hart. Don Cheadle amusingly related the sometimes torturous direction he was subjected to by Warren on Bulworth, saying that, as directors, Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty typically require 140 takes per scene – Eastwood does one and Warren does 139.

  One notable absentee was Jack, over at an important Lakers championship game a few miles away. ‘Rumour has it that he might have been sitting courtside in a tuxedo,’ joked Hoffman. Of course he showed up later, rather bedraggled, and pitched in with his tribute, saying Beatty had, ‘Received eight times as many awards as he’s made pictures. You get all these honours because of your passion and your dedication to excellence. This is why I’m crazy about your work.’

  I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth.

  After years away it was Sean Penn who finally lured Jack Nicholson back onto our screens. Since The Crossing Guard the two men had forged an affectionate and admiring friendship. Penn called Jack one of the greatest gifts to American culture. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like at 6 a.m. in some distant location and out of the car comes that face, and says, “Morning, boys, let’s go to work.”’ Penn’s latest project was The Pledge (2001), a dark and dour psychological thriller, a big risk at a time when commercial escapism dominated the multiplexes of the world. But then going against convention has always been a great attraction for Jack.

  By the summer of 2001 Jack was keen to get some kind of semblance of normality back into his private life. Still seeing Lara Flynn Boyle, he invited Rebecca over to London for Wimbledon and took her along with him to the Moscow film festival. In Russia Jack took time out to meet President Vladimir Putin, who was quite lost for words before confessing that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was his favourite film. Back home Jack was one of the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual prize for excellence in the arts. Old pal Warren was on hand to host a collection of clips from Jack’s movies, telling the audience, ‘He’s everyman; he’s us.’ To which one media commentator added the postscript, ‘Well, let’s hope not.’

  Jack deliberately looked like shit in his next film About Schmidt (2002), playing the ultimate grumpy old man, a completely depressive old git. Worried about his appearance, he never once looked in a mirror throughout the whole of filming, thinking, What if I get stuck in this character? What if I can’t get back to me? It was genuinely shocking. But Jack isn’t averse to looking kind of extreme up there on the screen. He’s not the most vain person anyway, ‘But getting older has certainly made me less vain.’ Jack’s never been particularly fond of birthdays, signifying as they do the marching of time. He ignores them. ‘I started in 1972 to simply eliminate the calendar.’ He may feel inside like the gallivanting Jack of old, but he knew that person was buried long ago. As he admitted to Newsweek in 2002. ‘There are a lot of crazy nitwit things that I can’t do any longer. I can’t work on a movie for twelve hours a day, then go out and burn the streets down to the ground all night and get wild. I don’t have the energy for it. I don’t have the same libido.’ It used to be that Jack couldn’t go to sleep unless it involved some amorous contact. ‘If I was alone two or three nights in a row, I’d start writing poems about suicide.’ Now, shock horror, most nights he slept alone, and he’d found it rather liberating. ‘My fear is that I’m beginning to prefer it.’

  The success of About Schmidt showed that even in advanced middle age and in a youth-obsessed culture Jack continued to be one of the most bankable stars in the American film industry. ‘Why has Jack lasted so long?’ asked friend Danny DeVito. ‘You know what I think it is? You always like him. What can you say? The guy played the devil! You gotta love him!’ For many the movie’s most memorable scene had the rather rotund actress Kathy Bates climbing starkers into a hot tub with our Jack, who was far too bashful at this time of life to remove for real all his clothes. ‘Come on,’ urged Kathy. ‘You don’t need to wear those boxer shorts. I won’t look, I promise.’ Away from the cameras Jack wasn’t so bashful, stunning neighbours at the home he rented in Nebraska during the location shoot by strolling around the place nude, obviously not giving a shit whether the curtains were drawn or not. Locals were thrilled when the star moved in. ‘I mean, we wanted to see Jack in person,’ said a spokesman. ‘But this was ridiculous.’

  Away from Hollywood, Jack was coming to terms with being dumped once again by Lara Flynn Boyle, this time for good. It hurt him badly and friends were worried that he was losing weight and looking haggard. Some relationships certainly seemed to shatter him for longer than the average person. He once admitted that at some point he’d asked every woman he ever lived with to marry him. ‘But they knew me too well.’ As did Jack himself. He knew he’d always roam, so wisely never married again in order that he wouldn’t have to cheat on his wife. And, like Warren, he holds affection for every woman he ever loved and regrets her departure, without entirely regretting whatever he might have done to hasten it. ‘I know I’ve caused pain to some of the women I’ve loved, but I won’t defend myself because I’ve never pretended to be something I’m not.’ On bleak nights, though, alone up on Mulholland Drive, a little part of him envies the family men who have spent their lives with one woman. But not for long.

  Now in his mid-sixties, Jack, it seemed, had at last come to terms with the fact it was probably unattractive for him to be seen fawning over young bits of crumpet, but joked he’d still like to whisk young women away for a night of passion if the prying paparazzi couldn’t identify him. ‘If I could slip them out the back entrance wrapped in a blanket, that’s a different story.’

  But his role in Something’s Gotta Give (2003), a romantic comedy for the Viagra-popping generation, sounded all too familiar: an ageing playboy who enjoys chasing young girls and is scared of commitment. But there’s a neat twist in that he ends up falling in love with the mother of his current girlfriend. As his female foil, director Nancy Meyers pulled off a perfect piece of casting with Diane Keaton. It was Annie Hall versus The Joker. Who would come out on top? The two were old colleagues, of course, having made Reds, but Meyers got the feeling they hadn’t seen each other in many years and were catching up. ‘This was a reintroduction into the world of Jack,’ said Diane. ‘This time, I really did get to know him.’ So well, in fact, that rumours flew around of impending romance, something Jack did little to discourage. When one journalist asked, ‘Are you seeing Diane?’ Jack smiled and gave a leering look. ‘She turns into a screaming banshee every night. I couldn’t shut her up.’ Of course, all this love-affair stuff was deliberately stoked up to sell the movie, but the Oscar-winning actress did admit to having the biggest crush on Jack for twenty years. ‘How can you not, even now? He’s irresistible. He’s a once in a lifetime guy.’

  Nancy Meyers enjoyed her Jack experience too, impressed particularly by the fact that he read the script every week from beginning to end, just to keep it fresh in his mind, something that she’d never seen any other actor do. It wasn’t the first time they’d met either. Twenty years before Meyers and her sister were eating in a small restaurant when Jack came in and sat right next to them. ‘My sister and I couldn’t eat. She was rummaging through her purse looking for something to calm her down. It was so thrilling to be next to the Big Guy.’


  Jack had been working non-stop for almost three years with scarcely a break when Martin Scorsese asked him to play mob boss Frank Costello in his brutal crime drama The Departed (2006). Nicholson couldn’t say no and was out ‘to kick this movie in the ass’ by making Costello even more evil and seedy than he was in the script, keen to explore the sexuality of a powerful villain. ‘He’s a mad, bad nut job, so he’s evil sexually too. Fuck ’em, kill ’em, you know.’ In other words, he was out to spice things up a bit – Jack style. That meant in one scene dusting the arse of an actress with cocaine and waving a strap-on dildo poking out of his trousers towards a suitably bewildered Matt Damon. Jack was having a great time, but pity poor old producer Graham King, whose job it was to report back to the studio executives every day. ‘Yeah, shooting is really going well. Oh, and Jack wants to wear a strap-on.’

  Damon knew what Jack planned to do. Scorsese had called him the night before. ‘Hello, Matt, it’s Marty, your director. Listen, a little thing about tomorrow, Jack is going to show up with a giant dildo, OK?’ Turning up for work, Damon saw Jack in this trench coat and hat, with the fabled giant dildo. Jack just looked at Damon and said, ‘I just thought the whole thing would be better if I had the dildo on.’

  Scorsese pushed Jack to go further, more extreme, and to improvise during shooting. Before one scene, in which Costello interrogates Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack told Scorsese, ‘I don’t think Leo’s scared enough of me. I have to be scarier.’ DiCaprio came in the next day and immediately got nervous. Jack’s hair was all over the place and he was muttering to himself. One of the prop guys came over. ‘Hey, Leo, Jack’s got a fire extinguisher, a bottle of whiskey, matches and a handgun somewhere.’ Such information didn’t help with the nerves. ‘So I sat down at the table not knowing what to expect, and he set the table on fire after pouring whiskey all over the place and stuck a gun in my face.’ That was the take Scorsese kept in the film. ‘This is what happens when you set me loose,’ said Jack.

  It was back to comedy next with The Bucket List (2007), teaming up with Morgan Freeman as a couple of terminal cancer patients who make a list of things to do before they literally kick the bucket. With the exception of The Departed, Jack had been making largely comedy movies, a deliberate strategy and his personal response to the 9/11 tragedy which knocked him out emotionally. Jack didn’t want to make his living any more by depressing people with angst-ridden movies, he wanted to make them smile and in the process maybe found his true calling. ‘I’m going over there to the clowns where I belong.’

  What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans? That he had wisdom? Bullshit, man!

  After The Score, Marlon Brando became increasingly reclusive, scarcely straying from the confines of his home and seeing only a select group of friends, including Johnny Depp, whom he rated as the finest actor of his generation. His primary contact with the outside world continued to be his beloved ham radio and the internet, often going into chat rooms to start arguments.

  Another close friend in these last years was Michael Jackson. Marlon enjoyed staying at his Neverland ranch and even guested in the singer’s pop video for ‘You Rock My World’. But his appearance at Jackson’s thirtieth anniversary concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden left jaws on the floor. Brando came onto the stage and took a seat, introducing himself by saying, ‘You may be thinking, who is that old fat fart sitting there?’ Instead of a glowing tribute about Jackson, Marlon enlightened the packed crowd by removing his watch and informing them, ‘In the last minute, 100,000 children have been hacked to death with a machete.’

  Such wacko behaviour probably appealed to Jackson, and Marlon’s son Miko revealed that the last time his father left Mulholland Drive to spend any significant time away was at Jackson’s Neverland. ‘He loved it. He had a twenty-four-hour chef, twenty-four-hour security, twenty-four-hour help, twenty-four-hour kitchen, twenty-four-hour maid service.’

  As the end drew ever nearer Marlon’s eccentricities took on sinister tones. According to his long-time make-up man Philip Rhodes, Marlon installed a monitoring system in his home enabling him to record all telephone calls and eavesdrop on conversations in every room. When someone called, Marlon might ask, ‘How’s your sex life? You getting any on the side?’ So he had all these people talking about their sex life and every word was being recorded.

  Marlon Brando once said, ‘I’m going to live to be a hundred and then I plan to clone myself, with all of my talent and none of my neurosis.’ It was a nice thought, but when death came it was inevitable and messy. In October 2003 it was reported that Marlon had told family and friends he was preparing for death after learning that he was suffering from congestive heart failure, along with advanced diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, damage to the tissue inside the lungs resulting from a recent bout of pneumonia. Those closest to him feared Marlon had simply lost the will to live. When doctors suggested they insert tubes carrying oxygen into his lungs, thus prolonging his life, Marlon refused. He spent his last months in a reclusive state, reflecting on a lifetime that had brought him enormous acclaim and wealth but also failed marriages and troubled children.

  He even made his housekeeper pregnant three times. Chatting with Michael Winner on the phone one evening he explained how it happened. ‘You know my bedroom, I’ve got all that electrical equipment in it. I dropped a tiny screw on the floor and she bent down on all fours to look for it under the bed and that’s when the relationship changed.’ Like all his relationships, it ended in tears. ‘You know I’ve given up sex, Michael,’ Marlon told Winner years later. ‘I just watch the porno channel and jerk off. It’s much simpler.’

  On 1 July 2004 Marlon Brando passed away, the cause of death revealed as lung failure. He was eighty. Contrary to press reports at the time suggesting he’d died penniless, Marlon left a fortune of $21m.

  He’d wanted no public tributes, no funeral service, ‘no weeping widow’, no cluster of mourners all sobbing at his passing; the very thought was enough to make him vomit. Even worse was the notion of being buried in a Hollywood celebrity cemetery and becoming a tourist attraction. Instead his ashes were scattered partly on his beloved Tahitian island and partly in Death Valley, California, where those of Wally Cox had been; back together at last.

  Marlon’s home lay empty for several months. Jack admitted he couldn’t go up to the old place. ‘I just had this weird juju.’ Fearing it might be bought by developers and thus impinge greatly upon his privacy, Jack bought it in May 2005 for $5.5 million. Advised that it would be too expensive to renovate the derelict building, plagued as it was by mould, Jack demolished it, planting a garden where it once stood.

  It’s been said by many that Marlon was an enigmatic misery, his whole life a sham because he was ashamed of what he did professionally. Michael Winner disagrees. ‘He was the most playful man in the world. Jokes all the time. But complex. I think he was the greatest actor. A couple of years before his death I said to him, “Marlon, you should be playing King Lear at the Old Vic.” He said, “I hate acting. I’ve always hated acting. I never wanted to be an actor.” I asked, “Why did you go to drama school then, Marlon?” He replied, “To get laid.” Well, it’s a good answer, isn’t it?’

  Maybe he detested the profession so much because it was no effort for him; it came so damned easy. Paul Newman used to confess seething anger towards Marlon, ‘Because he does everything so easily and I have to break my ass to do what he can do with his eyes closed.’ Perhaps there was a certain amount of guilt about his talent because it was nothing he earned. Like a woman being complimented on her beauty, it wears thin after a while because it’s not an accomplishment.

  Yet his legacy is huge. Jack used to say that other actors never went round discussing who the best actor in the world was, because it was obvious, it was Marlon Brando. Warren used to say that when Marlon goes, everyone moves up a place. ‘There was a young actress who came i
nto my office once,’ says Godfather producer Albert Ruddy. ‘I said, “You look like Natalie Wood.” She said, “Who?” I said, “Have you heard of Marlon Brando?” She said, “Actor, right?” If you want to be in this fucking business you better learn the legacy of the art form. The greatest gift in the world is to sit there and run On the Waterfront, Streetcar, any movie Marlon Brando ever did. I say you will learn more running one of his movies than you learn in an acting class.’

  Put simply, Brando is now beyond legend. ‘There’s a temptation to compare Brando to King Lear or some hero of a Grecian tragedy,’ says Richard Stanley. ‘But it’s futile, he’s actually beyond that. He’s Brando. He’s not King Lear. He’s too much of a myth himself for any analogy to make sense.’

  Dennis Hopper is the first to admit that his story is one of enormous potential that was largely squandered, undermined by a rebellious nature and self-destructive hedonism which as good as derailed his career for well over a decade and nearly killed him. ‘When I look at my career and I look at Jack’s there is a vast difference, isn’t there?’ There have been high points, of course: Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet. Those are the ones he’s most proud of and yet they’re so minimal in a vast body of, well, crap, ‘This river of shit that I’ve tried to make gold out of.’ But when he enters a museum with an exhibition of his paintings, is he disappointed? No way. ‘I think that is a fucking miracle.’