Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Director-producer-writer James L. Brooks certainly knew his way around the newsroom—both in real life (working at CBS News) and in a fictional sense (many years on the CBS hit The Mary Tyler Moore Show). His concern for the credibility of television journalism can be perceived as hopelessly naïve today, but within the context of the film’s time, it made sense. Nicholson portrays the veteran and the old guard, against Hurt’s uninformed, blow-dried teleprompter reader. It’s not much more than a cameo, not nearly a supporting role, but Jack got a New York Film Critics nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Twenty minutes into the film, he’s first heard in voiceover, then seen as anchorman, following a veteran’s story called The Homecoming. Rorish smiles, which the audience is cued happens to be a rarity, to show his admiration and appreciation for the work. Otherwise, he’s proper and serious, verging on intense. But then, off-camera, we glimpse the truer man, who himself is distracted and empty.

  Subtly developed and in no way called out—risking its loss to viewers—is that Nicholson’s Bill Rorish is in fact the same type as Hurt’s Tom Grunick. The key moment occurs when Jack fills a dead moment during the broadcast with a vapid look toward the ceiling, as if saying, “dum-de-dum” internally. Just a few seconds of screen time opens up the possibility that Rorish is the same as Grunick, differing only on the surface. Nicholson portrays the anchor as the acceptable version of the same “odious” type signified by Hurt’s star reporter.

  Rorish is dignified and stiffly proper as he pretends to be the solid “anchor” having alleged depth and substance, while Hurt plays Tom as a more obvious “pretty boy” who can’t hide his empty head as effectively. Otherwise, they are the same, separated only by age and eras, so handing over of the anchor chair was not the dramatic lowering of the bar feared by the other characters.

  Even when walking through the newsroom on layoff day, the only scene in which he is standing, Nicholson is stiff and mechanical when depicting Rorish’s feelings about the firings, jutting out his lower lip in an attempt at empathy (detached as it is).

  Brooks does trade newsroom reality for dramatic license in one key instance. There’s a major suspension of disbelief in the service of drama when Holly Hunter’s character falls for Hurt’s on-camera emotional reaction during a date rape story. News professionals—particularly a producer like Hunter’s Jane Craig—would know that such a reaction shot (the cutaway) is done separately and that the reporter’s tears had to have been staged. For such a pivotal moment, the hero reporter need be exposed as a calculating actor. Perhaps that was where prescience overcame naiveté.

  * * *

  Billy Spear, however, is no hero. He may not be a villain, either, as that would necessitate some enterprise or direction. Instead, this sadistic gun for hire (and perhaps for enjoyment) in Monte Hellman’s The Shooting is a fantastic though little-known step forward in the characterizations of Jack Nicholson.

  His character takes satisfaction in incurring a psychological pain that comes from the promise of physical pain. It might even be said that Billy gets joy from this sadism, except he seems incapable of such an emotion as joy, even in the pursuit of pain. Yet it is a promise Billy is more than willing to fulfill, if not looking forward to doing so.

  Where many of Jack’s characters have easy, welcoming smiles, his Billy appropriates a welcoming sneer. Spear’s menacing personality gets perfectly set up in a dramatic first shot for the character that’s an extreme close-up of his eyes. We then see that he’s dressed like a gambler who has a dangerous, quick draw. Co-star and Spear’s searching partner Millie Perkins explained her interpretation of Nicholson’s character to me: “My attitude was that Jack was a gun for hire and I hired him to help me find who killed my family. And I knew he was a bad man, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to kill whoever it was that killed my family.”

  This insight, however, did not come from director Monte Hellman, for whom they shot this film and Ride in the Whirlwind back to back. “The truth of the matter is, Monte would never explain anything. We’d ask Monte a question, ‘Monte, what are they there for?’ He said, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ That was Monte’s way, the avant garde, or Antonioni’s, who knows who else.”

  Perkins invented a character backstory for herself: “My thought to myself was that someone killed my family and I was out to find that person and kill them. And so that’s why I had that determination and unsympathetic attitude towards everything.” She illustrated to me how she connected that motivation to Nicholson’s character: “That was my choice. I don’t know what Jack’s choice was, but I felt that he was a gun for hire and he didn’t give a damn about anybody. When I saw how Jack was playing it, it helped me decide how I was going to play it, that he was a bad guy I hired I didn’t particularly like, but I needed him.”33

  It’s a pity this movie didn’t reach a larger audience, as Jack delivers some memorable dialogue with the kind of zeal that comes from playing pure villainy. He has a couple of lines that could have become Nicholson catchphrases had the movie been more widely seen. A creepy Jack sneers, “Your brain’s gonna fry out here … you know that?” with a hateful, spiteful, sadistic look. He tortures Warren Oates’ character and threatens that he’s “gonna blow your face off” and means it.

  Gary Kent compared Nicholson’s approach to the two widely varied roles in the Hellman films. “He was not the tough guy associated with a gunslinger in The Shooting, and that totally disappeared after the film had stopped. There was just no sign of him around; it was Jack. But the second character, in Ride in the Whirlwind, was pretty much Jack.”34

  Perkins defines The Shooting, playing a “man without a name” who just happens to be a woman, relentless and letting nothing get in her way, least of all sentiment. Horses can die of exhaustion; people can be left to die of heat and thirst in the desert; and anything goes as long as it keeps the group moving. Perkins’ evil personality gives license to Jack’s amoral sidekick.

  At times making the film precipitated serious conflict. “Jack and Monte had arguments all the time, but it was for what they thought was the right way to go in the movie.” Perkins captured the atmosphere, continuing, “Jack was emotional and he was dramatic and he lost his temper a lot and he got angry. He and Monte would fight on the set, I’d hear them screaming at each other…. He wanted it badly and Monte Hellman wanted it too. And the truth was, that Monte didn’t have the gods looking after him like Jack did.”35

  Despite the arguments, Nicholson and Hellman were dedicated to making the films—and to the realities the films depicted. And like the gods, Hellman also looked after Jack, giving the near-unknown the final shot in both The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind.

  * * *

  The director and the actor also worked together in the noirish and atmospheric Flight to Fury. The story was Hellman’s and the script was Jack’s. In Jay Wickham, Nicholson wrote himself a fine role of a man who’s truly revealed bit by bit, from hail-fellow-well-met and busybody to opportunist and mastermind. The glad-hander becomes the villain in stages. Jack handles himself well during the first phase, playing it naturalistic and delivering his dialogue with relaxed poise, ease and casualness. Nothing is forced. After “working” Joe Gaines (Dewey Martin) by buying him Scotch, plying him for information, and tying him in with an Asian hostess, Jay murders the woman to set Joe up. When the young woman opens the drapes in her hotel room to reveal a hiding Wickham, Jack gives a slight grin as he holds out a ligature, an early preview of Jack Torrance in The Shining in this second phase.

  In his third stage of the character’s development, Nicholson shows up in Martin’s room after Joe’s been to the police station, and Jay betrays just enough insincerity to show his true character. Yet he holds back enough to make it plausible that Martin does not catch on. In doing so, Wickham actually dupes his mark to help arrange a plane out of the country, slyly insinuating himself even more into the intrigue when he shows up on the plane.

  There’s an interesting non-narr
ative scene on the plane, when Jay asks Hellman’s then-wife Jacqueline (in her only film role) if she knows anything about death. We see a glimpse of a thoughtful but damaged man, as Nicholson’s character follows with a monologue on death and how man fools himself about his ultimate demise. Wickham counters that inevitability with the idea that man could regain control and grab it fully if he makes a conscious and open decision at the age of 50 to decide to go on or go out. Remember that Nicholson wrote this scene for himself.

  True, it advanced the character into a more substantial psychological space, a place where death is as much theoretical as practical, but this fourth stage fits snugly with a monologue by a swami about belief and existence in the Monkees’ movie Head, which Nicholson also scripted.

  The fifth phase of Jack’s Jay Wickham character emerges after a plane crash. He’s enjoying disaster! Not someone else’s, but one in which he takes part. In a moment of odd disassociation, Nicholson talks about the “rush” (a term not yet in vogue at the time) and the feeling of immortality he gets from surviving the crash, while sporting a beatific yet slightly twisted glow. Flight to Fury is a great early role for Jack. By 1964, his ability is accomplished to a degree that would not become apparent to the general public until a few years later, because this was a small, largely unseen movie. But he had advanced greatly as an actor since The Cry Baby Killer.

  In the sixth and final character development phase, Nicholson adopts the amoral disconnect we see many years later as Francis Costello in The Departed. He shoots a Japanese man because he “moves too slow” and uses Destiny Cooper (Fay Spain) as a shield and hostage to get Joe to drop his gun. When Destiny breaks free, Wickham shoots her in the back (it looks like he aimed for her buttocks) and then is himself shot.

  Wickham is holding stolen diamonds. He reveals he’s been in on it all along and begins a final chase with Joe Gaines. Rather than escape, they’re after each other. Perhaps this, too, may seem familiar from a later Nicholson role. Once he’s given up his cover story, Jack stays consistent in character as killer and heavy. With Jay’s realization that he’s finished after a severe hit from Joe’s gun, he finally gives up—without giving in. This will seem extremely familiar. In a final move of perversion and selfishness, Jay simply tosses the diamonds into the water, and yells that Joe can’t shoot him before killing himself. The final shot focuses on Nicholson’s dirty shoes.

  The film is taut and twisted. Nicholson uses an actor’s fan dance, revealing in sequence more and more about his character until the bare truth is uncovered. Wickham is not transformed; he’s found out, and the viewer finds out just as the other characters do. Nicholson’s creation is an interesting character with range, engaging and inquisitive at one end and odd and manipulative at the other.

  * * *

  He throws the jewels. He tosses everything he’s worked for and cared about into the water. He is Jay Wickham. He is also Alex Gates in Blood and Wine. Thirty-two years later, one failed jewel thief faces the same fate as the other. Seeing defeat, diamonds fly to freedom, sinking low … low … lower … just as the men themselves have sunk. Sparkling jewels into sparkling water, nature back to nature, but for different motivations. Wickham throws his cache into the stream for spite. He could not win, so no one else should benefit. Gates jettisons his riches as surrender, an admission of the kind of defeat a deep-down loser should expect. Wickham will surely die; Gates’ injuries are serious enough he very well might. If not, he will never truly live again.

  It can surely be no coincidence that the ending of Blood and Wine mirrors that of Flight to Fury. Nicholson plays both roles, and co-wrote the earlier film. Strangely, Monte Hellman “never saw it,” showing no curiosity about the connection with his own creation, though adding that “Nicholson owns Flight.”36

  It’s a mystery why the 1996 film Blood and Wine is as little known as it is. There’s a great cast (with some big names), particularly the then-hot Jennifer Lopez and perennial favorite Michael Caine. It could have been because the film was subtle or hard to classify for marketing. It is bleak, and there are no real heroes, or even particularly likable characters.

  Peter Tork, who worked together with the other Monkees and Jack to develop their movie Head, described Bob Rafelson’s works as embodying being stuck in “the black box,” such as the one that trapped the band in their sole film.37 The Monkees could not escape, with circumstance and fate leading them back inside their career trap, their black box. In Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Bobby is trapped by his family, their musical legacy and its attendant expectations, and his pregnant girlfriend Rayette. His attempt to escape, by hitching a ride with a truck driver, necessitated leaving his identity (represented by his jacket and wallet) behind. As you watch the closing scene inside the truck, you know Bobby isn’t escaping a thing. The brothers in The King of Marvin Gardens put past differences aside to pursue the dream held by the stronger personality (played by Bruce Dern) through the exploitive pursuit of the weaker brother (portrayed by Jack). Bad plans, bad luck and bad brains turn escalating failure to violence. Nicholson returns to his box and into his radio booth as confessional monologist.

  Four films, four boxes with no way out. Though tinged with an unidentified bitterness toward the Monkees series co-creator, Tork’s evaluation of Rafelson’s oeuvre is insightful and intriguing.

  Rafelson called Five Easy Pieces, Marvin Gardens and Blood and Wine “an informal trilogy” of adversarial family dynamics. The first “was about a fundamental relationship of son to father”; the second about brothers; and the third was a result of several years of discussions between director and actor “about whether we could do a film where [Nicholson] played the father, as opposed to the son or the brother.” In Blood and Wine, the conflict pits the father against his wife and stepson.38

  In Blood and Wine, Nicholson is soft-spoken and understated when dealing with his troubled family and its troublesome undercurrent. This partly fuels Gates’ attempt to break free from his mild-mannered and limited life as a wine dealer by enlisting someone named Vic. In a beautiful actor’s summit with Nicholson, Caine completely inhabits the smarmy, ill, downand-out hoodlum, making the elder thespian the true winner here.

  “Movie acting is a delicate blend of careful preparation and spontaneity,” Caine explained. “[T]he camera sees everything, especially lack of spontaneity.” Success in making a character as real as Vic, of new-minting thoughts and dialogue, “comes from listening and reacting as if for the first time.”39

  Caine credits Nicholson for restoring his faith in the business and for the joy of working with such a “tremendous actor.” The combination of this script, Jack and Rafelson was “very seductive and I decided to have one last shot at being a movie actor.”40

  Nondescript and unassuming, Jack as Alex sees one chance to escape from the black box of his family, his lot in life, his status as servant to the rich. Normally solicitous and polite, even bland, Gates’ whole attitude and physical demeanor changes in his hotel date with Gabby (Lopez). He’s in charge, he’s with a catch, so he’s confident and smooth, expressive and cocky, dancing with flair and moving with panache. Of course, this is yet another role of an older Nicholson paired with a much younger and fetching woman, but the required disbelief works here. Lopez plays a poor Hispanic maid, so Alex has somebody over whom he can feel superior—in class if not in looks.

  Though nearly 60 during filming, Nicholson doesn’t take it easy or rely on facial “Jackisms.” In fact, many of Nicholson’s best moments in Blood and Wine are physical. When Judy Davis (as his wife Suzanne) hits him with a poker, we feel the impacts; after a couple of solid blows, he hesitates, attempts to get up, and falls—a moment that comes across as genuine.

  Alex reaches a point of desperation and self-disgust that is palpably real after Vic drives Suzanne and stepson Jason (Stephen Dorff) off the road and she lies dying. Here we meet a man who realizes he’s gone too far, reaching beyond anything he had in his mind when deciding to give cr
ime a chance.

  Harkening back to Five Easy Pieces’ diner scene, Nicholson has a classic moment when tossing his tray off the cafeteria table in response to Caine’s complaint about there being nowhere to sit. Nicholson picks up the tray, he drops it from a distance, and he quips in sarcastic disgust, “How’s that?”

  There are two exquisitely violent and unrelentingly extended sequences that form a double climax to the movie, supplying the Blood portion of the title in much greater quantity than any emphasis on Wine. Purposely uncomfortable in length, both expertly turn conflict and battle into desire and revenge. Desire takes over in the form of an all-too-human lust to inflict pain on another, with revenge the pulsating and explosive force that destroys reason in favor of sadistic victory.

  The first is a bloodcurdlingly exciting scene in which Vic attacks Alex with a golf club, progressing fabulously with Gates in terrific pain because of the well-placed strikes. Vic is simultaneously coughing himself to near unconsciousness, so they’re both out of control in their suffering. The point of no possible return, wherein the sickest aspect of man emerges from a single, defining moment, manifests in help turned to hurt. Alex “helps” Vic to a patio chair to calm him and explain everything, only to push a pillow forcefully onto Vic’s face. They struggle greatly. The stronger man defeats the weakened, ailing man. This is what passes as triumph in this particular world. Alex victoriously downs a glass of wine at the conclusion of the duel of these two older and imperfect partners-turned-rivals. Two losers struggle in battle and one lesser loser emerges in a shameful parody of success. That final gesture joins the blood with the wine.

  The second climactic sequence is the final battle between stepfather and stepson, except this battle has only one participant. The younger man pummels his elder without mercy, concentrating years and decades of pain and neglect into one supersaturated campaign of pain. Alex is brutalized by stepson Jason’s near execution of his stepfather, ramming Gates’ legs against the pier with a fishing boat. This is finely crafted defeat, with an ironic sense of dark humor. Even in such mortal pain, lying on his stomach and unable to rise to his knees let alone his feet, Alex writhes like a fish on land. He gazes at the jewels he stole from his wine collector client, the jewels that now have robbed him of everything, if not life itself. Gates grimaces and almost laughs. This man sees the irony, can perversely appreciate the (in the literal sense) crushing defeat.