Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  However, taken without the coloring of expectation or the context of movie “realism,” it makes sense. Brando’s Lee Clayton is a mystery, enigmatic and effective. Clayton keeps Nicholson’s Tom Logan (and everyone else in the film) off-balance thanks to this idiosyncratic behavior.

  Jack underplays to counterprogram Brando’s overplaying, going for real life against Clayton as bigger than life. That intended contrast makes sense.

  Brando was somewhat insensitive when discussing the film. “Poor Jack Nicholson,” began his sarcastic assessment of how Nicholson remained low-key to concede to Brando the bigger impression. “He’s right at the center, cranking the whole thing out while I’m zipping around like a firefly.”31

  The Missouri Breaks presents a more matured Nicholson approach to comedy within the western idiom, toned down, with a more natural yet guttural and nasally voice compared with Goin’ South from two years later. Against John Belushi, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Veronica Cartwright in Goin’ South, he chooses to play it big and loose, while against the Wild One rebel and the Streetcar Kowalski, he knows he must pull it down and draw it in tighter.

  Marlon is mannered, with much “business” beyond the physical. In the first meeting on film of Nicholson and Brando, Nicholson wins the acting battle, using subtlety and range vs. personality and force. When Logan talks about not having a chance when shooting at 500 feet and not looking in the eyes of his target, his character knows what he’s talking about. The actor shows he knows and that he cares, employing a human restraint.

  The Missouri Breaks is most famous for its pairing of the bizarre Marlon Brando with acolyte Nicholson. Director Arthur Penn admired the latter’s reality in the setting, commenting that Jack “had a very real sense of look and feel (for Westerns).”

  Brando is billed first, but Nicholson was clearly the lead, entering on a horse and riding toward the camera just as he did in Goin’ South. Jack’s heroines in both films were new to the screen, introducing Kathleen Lloyd here and Mary Steenburgen two years later.

  Without Brando, Nicholson allows himself to open up. He fakes a laugh and becomes animated in an active push to choke back tears when told a gang member “kinda strangled for a while” being hanged. He’s mercurial and emotional in response to Calvin’s (Harry Dean Stanton) resolute seriousness when delivering a great monologue about a dog and his dream about moving to Canada.

  Director Penn admired Nicholson’s reality in the setting, amazed at how well the actor rode and the comfort he embodied. “He had a very real sense of look and feel [for westerns]. There is a degree of authenticity about Jack that just belongs to that earth.”32

  Nicholson’s range under Penn is quite revelatory given the circumstances and the superstar showdown. He breaks down with true touching emotion after Little Tod (Randy Quaid) is dragged by rope through the raging Missouri River. He’s also vulnerable reacting to the sexual forwardness of Kathleen Lloyd as Jane Braxton, like someone pointing a gun at him. When she cries in rejection, Tom softens and lets down his guard, a nice transition of character feeling. Later, he loses his musculature when he sees the shot-up face and figure of Calvin, reflecting a real event as it in the actors’ true-life friendship.

  But it’s the interplay with Brando that gets the attention. Their final confrontation, as the Brogue Brando takes a bath, creates a reversal of roles and an intriguing switch of styles. Brando shrinks. He becomes vulnerable and underplays. Nicholson grows. He becomes tough and blustery because he’s finally in charge. Logan kills Clayton with such calm, steady of eye and safe from interfering emotion, completely on task to the degree that pushing his tongue firmly between his teeth is the only sign of effort expended and strength applied.

  Critic Richard Schickel provided an alternative viewpoint about his fellow reviewers’ disapproval. Yes, they couldn’t believe that heavyweights Brando, Nicholson and Arthur Penn “indulged” themselves “in such a loosey-goosey way.” The break with the western convention was the break too far, with this subversion justified if viewed as converted into another genre entirely. “The Missouri Breaks may play weirdly as a Western, but it makes perfect sense as a horror picture…. [T]hink of the prairie as a big haunted house … of Brando as a monster haunting it, popping out of the shadows periodically, to bump off one of the innocents who have invaded his domain,” making the picture both coherent and enjoyable.33

  Penn saw it as “convoluted … away from the flat-out face-to-face shoot-out,” with a boldness to change expectations, something that ultimately disappointed the studio and the audience.34

  * * *

  This accomplished but little-remembered film is many dusty and parched miles from Jack’s first film western, 13 years before as Will Brocious in The Broken Land. In Broken Land, he has a small but solid role as an outlaw who’s first seen being fed by and flirting with a girl while in jail.

  Though a minor character in a minor role, this early Nicholson has a nice way with his lines, shifting from irony and sarcasm to persuasive and personable. With lots of teeth and loads of accent, the actor still looks good in close-up and delivers dialogue convincingly.

  He shows understanding and tenderness to a simple-minded character who’s beaten and thrown into jail for stealing a necklace to give as a gift. Brocious makes for a sympathetic character, urging the others to band together and break out of jail.

  Jack’s relaxed and not forced, looking natural on his horse and holding his rifle, then gentle and big-brotherish with the simpleton. Inexperienced as he is, Nicholson comes across as helpful without being condescending, and then youthfully powerful when the bad sheriff knifes the man in the back.

  * * *

  “The Law” is bad. The outlaws are not. They’re only doing their job, just as Nicholson and Cameron Mitchell’s outlaws meant no harm when invading Millie Perkins’ family farm in Ride in the Whirlwind. Captain America and Billy the Kid weren’t evil in Easy Rider, but they blew it because they just didn’t fit in and upset some squares who blew them away. ACLU lawyer George Hanson could protect them against “The Law,” but he couldn’t protect them nor himself against the locals. Violent death also ends Psych-Out, Hells Angels on Wheels, Rebel Rousers, The Shooting and The Missouri Breaks.

  Living outside the law is living with danger. Living outside of straight society is even more dangerous. Nicholson lives inside the roles of outsiders, the disaffected and out-of-place. It’s hard to imagine now, but hippies were hated when these films were made. Longhairs were outlaws and outsiders, deserving only of contempt and attack. “They had it coming” was an oft-repeated chorus, referring to DNC protestors or Kent State innocents. Bikers weren’t yet yuppies and certainly weren’t hippies. They were feared as violent gangs of thugs and drug dealers. Western outlaws were horse thieves and held up stagecoaches. The quintessential Jack is the quintessential outlaw, outside of society and inside the biker bar, the hippie club or the broken-down saloon.

  9

  * * *

  From Ballbusters to Heart Attacks

  They are mutually flaccid. They seek assistance, Jonathan from coaxing and role play and Harry from chemistry and Viagra. They are two men who take opposite routes in their relationships with the opposite sex. Jonathan slides into a pathetic parody of sex while Harry grows into a mature manifestation of love.

  In Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge, Jonathan encourages his best friend and roomie Sandy to pursue Susan—only to steal her for himself. In Nancy Meyers’ Something’s Gotta Give, Harry is a hip-hop mogul who pursues Marin—only to be rejected as he decides to go after her mother instead. The contrast of ballbuster victim to heart attack victim presents a contrasting direction in which one man descends into an impotent hell while another is elevated into an enlightened heaven.

  First, Jonathan (Nicholson) is established in voiceover during the opening credits as the more sensitive compared with Sandy (Art Garfunkel). The first time we see him at a college mixer (in the 1940s), Jack looks like t
he guy we first saw in the Corman movie The Raven and on TV’s The Andy Griffith Show, his simulation both bright-eyed and bewigged. Somehow, in the early shots, Nicholson (whose tallest reported height is 5' 9½" and Garfunkel (only a six-footer though believed much taller due to his towering over partner Paul Simon’s 5' 3") appear to be the same height. No matter, they both look young and convince as young.

  More important than appearing young is Nicholson’s portrayal of Jonathan’s naiveté as college chums after Sandy’s first date with Candice Bergen in the role of ultimate WASP Susan. This sets up the emotional downfall and psychological decay. Jonathan turns devious when turning on his friend with Susan, appearing more edged and angular while acting less open and relaxed toward his friend.

  There’s a classic screen composition and inspired direction when Susan is humped in a field. Only when Jonathan dismounts and turns over on his back is it revealed that he is the rival who “gets in” first. From “tell-me-everything” friends to deceive-at-all-costs rivals: Jonathan treats Sandy with patronizing distance, becoming the Five Easy Pieces, furrowed-brow Jack as he pressures Susan to break up with Sandy. He then has his first Jacksplosion as he yells at Bergen to tell him his thoughts—an emotional put-down with emphatic physical overtones.

  Our introduction to Harry Sanborn in Something’s Gotta Give presents a rich mix of similarity and distinction. Harry is an older man, yet he shares Jonathan’s single-minded pursuit of the young and attractive female, as much for the psychology and triumph as for the physical pleasure. With convertible, chick, cigar and sunglasses, Nicholson’s opening-scene drive with Amanda Peet (as Marin Barry) is clearly a winking play at our perception of the real man. As the lithe and playful Peet strips off her clothes on the way into her mother’s summer house, Nicholson does not necessarily have to stretch his acting muscles to appear to enjoy the attention and the prospects.

  The get … the game … both men live for the temporal win, showing off to other men and showing themselves they still have what it takes to make it with women who get noticed. Harry is different from Jonathan, however. Harry doesn’t take it all too seriously, in it for fun and frolic, while Jonathan sees the dark side of the conquest. Obsession is different from attraction, and Jonathan’s Carnal Knowledge is—as the title indicates—more legalistic and clinical than Harry’s frisky, dirty older man.

  Harry’s obscene swirling of tongue on his ice cream and devilish leer in the town’s grocery store is pure Jack, a fun inside joke about the actor’s image, and the type of light playfulness of which Jonathan could never have been capable.

  When Jonathan becomes involved with Bobbie, introduced at an ice rink with Ann-Margret displaying her native Swedish talents, Nicholson presents his character’s second phase, pinched and cynical with all openness and brightness extinguished and all emotion and expression tamped. Still young, this man has been deadened. In an office reaction shot, Jonathan looks like what we later see as the Warren Schmidt who waits and waits to leave on his last day of his job.

  Wooing Bobbie reveals Jonathan as a guy going through the motions when making his moves, calculating as a tax attorney should be. For the first and only time in the movie, Nicholson’s voice becomes forced and phony after Ann-Margret’s character suggests they shack up. He cannot handle it, but he also cannot handle the betting odds against this relationship.

  Nichols uses striking back and forth POV monologues that peer intently and unblinkingly into the characters as the best way to reveal the contrasts between what the two friends say and what they truly feel. When Jonathan tells Sandy that Bobbie’s a lot of fun, his dead look and total lack of expression betray a more foreboding future and the dissipating soul of the man.

  Nicholson portrays the slide of this man, into his own emptiness, a place where nothing exists but conquest that becomes less victorious as it becomes less frequent, and sex that becomes less sexy as it becomes less successfully attainable.

  Jonathan wanted to get Bobbie into bed. He just didn’t want her to stay there all the time. In Carnal Knowledge, Nicholson shows Jonathan’s increasing anger and frustration in response to Bobbie (Ann-Margret) and her lazy, slovenly ways.

  Is this solipsism? Has Jonathan descended into a narrowing, echoed interior? Or is this merely the period’s awakening to the “male chauvinist pig” syndrome? Screenwriter Jules Feiffer told playwright Lillian Hellman that Carnal Knowledge was a “picture about men’s hatred of women,” adding that “all heterosexual men hate women.”1 Nichols revealed that the film reflected his own “disastrous second marriage” and that it portrays the relationships between men and women with “only three types of scenes—fights, seductions and negotiations.”2

  Two scenes show Jonathan’s anger and frustration at Bobbie’s do-nothing lifestyle (feeding his stereotype of women) brought to life. The first is an extended confrontation scene with Ann-Margret as he tries to dress to go out, that is classic Nicholson—big and raucous, physical and loud, emotional and powerful. It’s huge but not over-the-top, a “rave-up” worthy of Clapton-era Yardbirds, building in pace and intensity to a fever pitch that is released, only to build again to a torrid blast of pure energy and abandon. The second is her suicide attempt, where his reaction was over-the-top, forced yet unrealized. Completely lacking in empathy, Jonathan’s response centers only on how the act affects himself. Bobbie is not the subject of concern, but the object of derision.

  Ann-Margret referred to her character as “this pitiful woman, this doormat for abuse, who’d spent her life attracted to the wrong kind of man.” The actress became Bobbie through the process of rehearsal during three weeks of experimenting on scenes, “reading them one way, then another” with Nicholson, Garfunkel, Bergen, Nichols and Feiffer.3

  Both Jonathan and Harry experience defining moments, points in their respective lives that direct their destinies. Jonathan’s moment is a “ballbuster” while Harry’s is a heart attack.

  Jonathan’s defining moment is pathetic. His braggadocio in presenting a slide show called “Ballbusters on Parade” to Sandy and his girlfriend Jennifer (Carol Kane) makes the self-pitying victimhood of feminine guile more about himself than about his purported abusers. Jonathan remains oblivious to the notion that others could not sympathize with his failures (or even care about them, for that matter), and that the choice of “ballbusters” as his theme would serve as a naked commentary on his own blind illusions as well as a cue to his intractable bigotry. Jonathan’s impassive slug of whiskey underscores appropriate detachment, and an arc to nothingness.

  He doesn’t even realize that Jennifer, let alone his friend Sandy, might find “ballbusters” offensive. Jonathan has sunken so far into his own world that he cannot consider that anyone else would be put off by such an affront. In fact, he’s as triumphant about “ballbusters” as they are turned off. Interestingly this incident was staged and shot, spare and stilted like a Kubrick scene from 2001 or A Clockwork Orange.

  Harry’s defining moment is in the immediate sense life-threatening, and in the ultimate sense life-changing. It is also funny. Jack’s heart attack scene represents another example of how he not only doesn’t care that about being the attractive movie star, but actually goes out of his way to look terrible. He’s slimy, resembling a beached whale, and his hair is everywhere but where it should be. As he is wheeled in and viewed on a gurney from above, Nicholson’s eyes go back under the lids and he appears almost a parody of his electroshock portrayal in Cuckoo’s Nest.

  Stumbling and flopping around on his feet, bare-assed in his hospital gown, Jack is classic comedy. He’s very “giving” and performs a breastfeeding piece of business with Diane Keaton that’s like an in-control drunk—not too broad, but just right in this comedic piece. They play it like they are about to waltz as she moves to hold him up from falling. The “little boy” look he gives while lowering his head and then looking up to announce he has to pee is precious.

  As Jonathan sinks, Harry rises. Jonathan becomes he
avy and burdensome and tiresome, while Harry becomes light, vulnerable and engaging. Jonathan closes himself inward, especially more distant from women. This, in clear contrast to how Harry opens himself beyond his glamorous world and young beauties to appreciate people more and appreciate (perhaps for the first time) the special appeal of a woman as mature as himself.

  Nicholson has attained a comfortable state with comic action, reaching only just enough instead of wildly grabbing for too much. Funny moments no longer have to be telegraphed, signaled like a pitcher who unknowingly indicates an oncoming curveball to the watchful batter; a quarterback giving away a pass play; or a boxer cueing his opponent about a left hook.

  There’s a small moment, as he prepares to leave the hospital, when he’s truly hurt because Amanda Peet only kisses him on the cheek (“Down to the cheek,” as Harry interprets it). Another more celebrated juncture occurs when Keaton strips, mirroring the scene of her daughter at the beginning of the movie. Jack accidentally sees her naked and flops around, struggling to cover his eyes while bouncing off the wall. His use of his flitting hands plays a strong part of his business in the role, as he flicks and flitters and waves and weaves in a dance of deft physical comedy.

  Sometimes, comparisons can be constructive and enlightening. Other times, they can be hurtful and pain-inducing. The contrasting destinies of the male lead characters in Carnal Knowledge and Something’s Gotta Give are of the sort that invite a wince and provoke a difficult swallow. There is no shining of a sunny and hopeful light on Jonathan’s future. He shrinks into the darkness while Harry grows in the sunshine.