Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Ed Nelson talked about having control over one’s being. “You give up yourself. It doesn’t mean that you’re not in the picture. You can’t give away your physical being, you can’t give away the actions of your life.” He explained a key relationship that happens when making a movie that appropriately personifies the camera itself: “The camera loves you. It is your closest friend. It will never let you down. It always will see what you’re thinking, and it loves you, so please remember that the camera is part of the scene and he loves you…. There are many people who are afraid of it, subconsciously afraid of it.”51

  Nicholson’s knowledge of the camera and the value of expression help him command the screen and take charge of a scene. Confidence plus preparation yield results, in many cases famous and even iconic ones. A lesser-known pair of films, shot back to back in the Utah desert in the mid–’60s, provide a lesson in on-screen human potential.

  Monte Hellman, who directed Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting, agreed with my proposition that acting students would benefit from seeing Millie Perkins and Jack Nicholson play drastically different characters, in quickly made movies made in the same place and with much of the same crew.52 In Ride, they are backward and awkward, uncertain and near-innocent, while in The Shooting, they are harsh and hardened, hell-bent on revenge and sadistic to the core.

  It took sixteen years from Nicholson’s motion picture debut to join the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre forecourt of superstars.

  That same knowledge of the camera and the need for the actor to engender a relationship with it also influenced his support of other actors. Acting is a collaborative art, and Nicholson became known for “sticking around off-camera, after his part of a scene was completed, and feeding his lines to other performers.” For a Carnal Knowledge scene with Candice Bergen on the telephone, Nicholson “overacted like crazy to force her out of her reserve and raise her performance.”53

  Director Milos Forman paid tribute to Nicholson’s generosity as an actor by jokingly writing that he attempted to win over the other actors by feeding them their lines so the “superstar” could rest, but it failed because Nicholson stayed to read lines himself. “It was pure selfishness on Jack’s part because somehow he found out that helping the others would make him even better.”54

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  Meryl Streep wrote, “[T]here he is, where he belongs, the outlaw icon, slipped into the culture like a letter under the door, a letter we always like when we find ourselves reading it.”55

  A classic Method actor, Nicholson uses his body as an instrument, wholly aware of himself and of his body’s potential to add accents to his dialogue; depth to his characterization; power to his interplay with other actors; edge to his conflict; and pathos to his struggles.

  While working, Nicholson reminds himself, “Remember, everything counts. Everything.” He’s led by Strasberg’s definition, “Anything that works; that’s the Method.” Nicholson claims to be amazed that he’s not considered a Method actor and that “I’m still fooling them” and considers it an accomplishment to keep fooling the experts, because “there’s probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work.”56

  Re-watch your favorite performance, or try a movie you have not yet seen, but turn the sound off. No distractions, no dialogue, no distinctive Jack voice. Pure silent cinema, with a man reaching out through the screen to touch the viewer, traveling all the way from bombast to nuance, at once a train barreling toward you propelled by mass and energy, and next a broken and bent figure of pain and vulnerability. So much more than the teeth and the eyebrows that form the caricature, Nicholson uses muscle and sinew … or a faint flicker of a slight squint … or a wave of the hand with a rocking on the feet. Without the sound, you see how he uses his body as an instrument, and like any instrument, the tone and volume and rhythm come from the body.

  Watch McMurphy as he surveys the inmates’ party and marvel at how many expressions and thoughts you can identify without sounds; watch Colonel Jessep’s icy glare on the stand as he uses all of his discipline to focus perfectly forward; watch George Hanson take a belt of booze and become a bird; watch Jack Torrance in a catatonic state as he tries to comfort his son while succeeding in creeping us out; watch Garrett Breedlove, Francis Phelan, Henry Lloyd Moon, J.J. Gittes and Harry Sanborn each give in to love and convey their feelings in their own ways. Watch closely the control and intent, and you are watching someone doing rather than pretending, being instead of acting.

  Author Beverly Walker saw and heard the crew applauding the actor during the shooting of Cuckoo’s Nest (a rare honor for an actor). It happened again and again as they watched “a remarkable, spookily personal performance” during which Nicholson reached such a “Zen-like state of oneness with his character the director’s voice calling ‘Cut!’ caught him unawares and he’d blink in surprise.”57

  Art Garfunkel described how Nicholson pushed himself “to the top of the Richter scale” on Carnal Knowledge in take after take of an entire scene in which Jack had to reach “the absolute top of rage and embarrassment over what he thinks [Ann-Margret’s Bobbie is] doing to him…. I was just humbled and awed at the amount of work energy asked of him.” Garfunkel wondered where it all came from, and Nicholson gave him a conspiratorial look as he answered, “I love to act.”58

  Like an instrument produces notes (the material provided in the script), the actor produces moments. But it’s the overtones that distinguish a Jack Nicholson performance from someone doing a note-for-note reading of the same lines from the same scenes. Without overtones, all musical instruments would sound the same when producing any given note at any given pitch and any given volume. Without overtones, the same note on a clarinet and a piano sound identical. You cannot tell the instruments apart. The overtones color the tone, creating the timbre so you can tell one instrument from another. Nicholson employs an actor’s version of these overtones, using voice and expression, stance and motion, to color the character and play the harmonics within a role.

  Bruce Dern reduced good acting to playing a part without performing, to being what he called “publicly private.”59

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  Now turn the sound on and cue up some memorable dialogue moments. Hear Nicholson and concentrate on his delivery, how he believes the words he is saying.

  Listen as he orders a chicken salad sandwich in Five Easy Pieces as no sandwich has been ordered before or since. Concentrate on how he navigates the character energy from cool to hot to explosive, beginning neutrally until he is blocked by inanity and mindless rules that are delivered in a patronizing manner by a waitress who cares less about service than servitude. He feigns patience as he tries in vain to be helpful. Jack becomes snotty and sarcastic, the antihero attitude emerging degree by degree, his voice rising in volume, pitch and speed simultaneously. This is a battle of generations and about freedoms, a battle than cannot be won by either side. With “You see this sign?!” one of the most famous Jacksplosions clears the diner table. Having the monitor off, what you don’t see is how casually he then puts on his shades, post-release in a post-coital moment of sudden calm and control.

  Fast-forward almost 30 years to appreciate the subtleties in Melvin Udall’s confession to Carol at a restaurant. Yes, he should have danced with her, but he never would have been driven to bare himself in such a vulnerable and touching manner. Nicholson is soft-spoken but anything but soft. He brings a dramatic control to the pathos, revealing how he’s started to take his medicine because of her. He is a better man, a man whose nuanced intonation turns Melvin from a broad, near-caricature to a richly defined human. Jack sounds sincere because he feels every word, and he feels every word because the actor’s craft makes him live it as he delivers it—rather than reach the words he already knows. You can tell that Udall is thinking about what he says, in measured and meaningful tones, words pushed out as if breathed, perhaps because the new direction of his life is relying on
every syllable. Ed Nelson explained, “The actor knows his lines, but the character doesn’t.”60

  Michael Caine wrote that a film actor is in charge of the material and in tune with his character so that he can “think his character’s most private thoughts as though no one were watching—no camera spying on him.”61 To Nicholson, this is the search for the reality and how to make it real for himself.62 “I started to develop an approach to acting which embarked on a search for the self” so that “all he feels is included in the life being expressed, and then the resulting emotion contains all of his own personal truth and reality.” He summed up his Method, a natural process of responding to life, as one of being, “a state you work to achieve. To be, you must find out what you feel and express it totally.”63

  Next, seek out contrasts. Travel from the sneering insanity of Billy Spear in The Shooting to the semaphore lesson in The Last Detail; from the fractured naiveté in The Border to a determined Jimmy Hoffa; from a wedding toast by an uncertainly proud father in About Schmidt to a privileged eulogy to an uncommon friend in The Bucket List.

  Nicholson has used character voices as Charley Partanna in Prizzi’s Honor, Wilbur Force in The Little Shop of Horrors, Oscar in The Fortune and Henry Lloyd Moon in Goin’ South. Some are broad and rowdy for comic effect and work perfectly, while others seem over the top and distracting. He’s played it polished and silky, as president, network news anchor, celebrated playwright and French lieutenant without a French accent. He’s played it tough and macho, as with Frank Costello, Colonel Jessep and Buddusky. Insecurity is not outside of the aural range of the famous “Jack.” Witness portrayals in The King of Marvin Gardens, Ride in the Whirlwind and Ironweed. However, confidence overflows (sometimes to a disgusting degree) in Carnal Knowledge, How Do You Know, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Batman and Terms of Endearment.

  Many might think only of the nasal twang when thinking of Nicholson’s voice. That Jersey twang has made 75 characters become different people. But the perception is also misleading. Jack has used his vocal instrument in the many varied ways outlined above, altering the timbre and how he plays the notes as any top-level musician expands the manner of playing. Is Miles Davis the soft and lyrical or the caustic and electric? Does Brian Wilson rock the surf or touch the soul? Nicholson emotes, using expression and meter to pour blood into a character’s flesh, turning words in a script to thoughts of a person. His Method abilities do betray themselves when he pushes too hard, as if the character takes control over itself, as in Goin’ South and moments in Hoffa and The Witches of Eastwick. However, it doesn’t matter how many critics call Jack Torrance “over the top.” That delivery and that attitude reflect a man who is, appropriately, not in control of his senses to the extent that he is no longer in control of his communication faculties.

  In Reframing Screen Performance, Baron and Carnicke explain, “[A]ctors adjust the quality and energy of their gestures, voices and actions to fit their characters’ shifting desires and interactions with others,” contributing to the trajectory of a dramatic action.64 That is how Nicholson can make transformations that present two distinct characters within the body of the same actor, such as the demented, extreme physicality in The Shining compared to the naturalistic and understated drifting in Five Easy Pieces.65 This causes audiences to “make inferences about characters’ temperaments and emotional states by observing the quality of the physical and vocal expression crafted into filmic representations.”66

  Gary Kent described the quintessential Jack as a combination of the famous grin and the voice that’s “so hard to change. No matter what he does, accent or whatever, there’s that Nicholson voice.”67 Yet that Nicholson voice has changed, and has changed drastically and seemingly without notice. The actor’s vocal delivery has migrated from the nasally twang, even high-pitched at times, to a low and smooth tumbling of thought to speech, a fine sandpaper applied to someone’s true feelings.

  This transition happened in the 1980s, though it did not occur across a straight line. In The Shining, we hear the old Jack, in Broadcast News, the new one. Along the way we also hear snippets of the old and the new residing side by side in other films of the era. Confusingly, the J.J. Gittes in Chinatown sounds different than the J.J. Gittes in The Two Jakes. Perhaps the detective’s increased refinement and growth in respectability (though limited) accounts for this. The occasional emergence of the original Jack twang could provide the proof (or it could simply capture an imperfect changeover).

  The later Nicholson is more sophisticated, even and precise than the earlier model, with the sound coming from the chest and throat instead of the head and nose. Clearly a studied and intentional enhancement, the new Jack voice was likely the result of lessons and the kind of dedication he put into preparation—only this time the preparation continues over the long term and over the course of many different roles.

  One intriguing note about the actor’s voice and delivery is how he uniquely treats those most common of responses in the English language, “yes” and “no.” When other people, including actors, normally say these words, they’re abrupt and merely provide information. Nicholson intones the same words with care, giving them time and imbuing them with meaning. Instead of throwaway words that typically lead directly into the next phrase, when Nicholson responds “yes,” he has thought about the question and weighs his answer, imparting the significance it deserves. When he responds “no,” he does so with equal deliberation so that the emotion comes through, whether regret or defiance. An actor who puts so much into two small words is a student dedicated to bringing the most out of the provided dialogue.

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  But what is a Jack Nicholson character? For some time, he was labeled an “antihero.” Deficient in typical heroic traits like idealism, courage and traditional morals, the antihero appealed to art house denizens such as Nicholson, who later latched onto the alienation and countercultural slants associated with Vietnam War protests, free expression and free love, plus recreational drug use.

  This dissonance, “caused by his conscious or subconscious awareness of the role [the characters] are forced to play in society … captures the disaffection males feel from being constantly surrounded by social forces that seek to contain them within a sphere of accepted behaviors.” Nicholson faces these challenges with a “dislocation technique” that embodies this inherent tension and become “a unique feature of Nicholson’s acting style.”68

  Early examples stemmed more from the kind of roles that were available to young unknowns, from Corman quickies to biker exploitation. He graduated from juvenile delinquent in The Cry Baby Killer, Too Soon to Love, The Wild Ride and Studs Lonigan to gang member in Hells Angels on Wheels and The Rebel Rousers. As he gained fame and took greater control over his career, Nicholson’s personal stamp—and the manifestations of “actor as auteur”—formed an impression that the man and the actor shared personalities, one that may have confused media, fandom, and even studios and filmmakers.

  Nicholson became known for playing characters adrift, and not necessarily worried about it. A rocker older than most guys playing to little success in Psych-Out; a classically trained pianist who turns his back on his similarly talented family to go nowhere as an oil rigger in Five Easy Pieces; a nighttime radio personality without much personality in The King of Marvin Gardens; a reporter as much escaping from an undefined past as searching for a story in Antonioni’s The Passenger; a former insurance adjuster who finds he had as little life before his forced retirement as in his less-than-golden years in About Schmidt; an astronaut explorer turned skirt chaser in Terms of Endearment; and his directorial debut Drive, He Said (in which he does not appear), the story of a college basketball star who questions his commitment to the game or any notion of the future.

  Nicholson plays full-blown antihero J.J. Gittes in Chinatown and The Two Jakes; the morally-under-fire border agent Charlie Smith; the cynical Navy escort Buddusky; a messed-up father of a little girl killed by a
drunk driver; and a publisher who becomes a werewolf and beds his enemy’s daughter. He also scripted The Trip, about a Mad Man ad exec who skips the booze in favor of acid.

  Right and wrong don’t motivate these Nicholson characters, who go through the motions, who live more for reaction than action, and who are pushed by no ambition and pulled by no relationships (at least of a mature nature).

  Other misfits and misanthropes, such as the tragic and pathetic Jonathan in Carnal Knowledge and the besotted, romantic Francis Phelan in Ironweed, round out a group of mentally ill unfortunates in Cuckoo’s Nest, The Shining, As Good as It Gets and The Pledge. Actors are drawn to the dark side, reveling in the villainous and the evil. Nicholson gave such portrayals teeth and potency, from his brief appearance in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, to The Postman Always Rings Twice (another antihero), to Flight to Fury and The Shooting, to Prizzi’s Honor and Batman, to Blood and Wine and The Departed.

  Getting into show business isn’t always a direct hit. This early Nicholson play (with Suzanne Sydney) made L’il Abner seem ultra-sophisticated (original program, c. 1956).

  More recently, as he has aged, his characters have remained young through the discovery of romance, often in unlikely ways with unlikely pairings. He doesn’t deserve Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give but earns the love of Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets. He’s outclassed by classical singer Ellen Barkin in Man Trouble and prudish widow Mary Steenburgen in Goin’ South. He also indulges male fantasies with the captivating Tuesday Weld in A Safe Place and the supernatural trio of Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher and Susan Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick.

  Another Nicholson archetype has been the comic eccentric, exemplified in the Roger Corman classics Little Shop of Horrors and The Raven; meatier interpretations such as in Easy Rider and Anger Management; caricatures in Goin’ South and The Fortune; along with a devil and a president in Witches and Mars Attacks! respectively.