Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Reportedly, Nicholson coveted this role. He expressed his pride in having played the part a few years later to fellow actor and master stuntman Gary Kent. Kent related that Nicholson seemed a bit rankled that “he was more or less ignored…. He kind of felt that people should maybe pay a little attention to him and weren’t doing it yet.”6

  In contrast, star Christopher Knight is extraordinarily terrible, so laughably overwrought and comically over-emotive that he’s almost a throwback to the worst of the early silent cinema “photo players,” twisted up and contorted, suffering as if he’s about to void himself.

  Nicholson instead makes the most of his well-gained opportunity. In a close-up with an aging party girl at a speakeasy, he has a suitably snarky, sneering attitude that’s accompanied by a quick, clipped delivery of impatient superiority. Weary is smart and smart-assed. After cracking a joke to the sad, sodden hustler (unfortunately, the joke was on her), he busts out laughing—laughing the joy of someone who has hurt the helpless, the kind who lays it on thick only to pull the rug out.

  In a burlesque club scene, Jack goes out of control watching the womanly entertainment. He bounces in his seat; taps a booze bottle on his head; grabs the guys in the row in front of him and next to him; hoots, hollers, yells, whoops, becoming more like a monkey than a boyish gang member. He’s too excited and worked up to handle himself, perhaps a foreshadowing of his forthcoming sexual assault and downfall, and perhaps his best early acting sequence next to the brief Little Shop of Horrors dentist scene.

  Reilly and the gang attend a political party, not the kind that elects candidates, but the type that brings men and booze and women together and the kind where a politician makes the ultimate campaign promise by proclaiming, “The drinks are on me!”

  Weary gets crazy drunk, with Nicholson convincingly so, and grabs a showgirl to drag her up the steps, forcing and practically carrying her to a room for the purpose of forcible sexual congress. Afterward, he is grabbed by two police officers and struggles to break free, accented by a strong Jackish “You ain’t got nothing on me!”

  The character destroyed himself, a juvenile delinquent who took it too far like cop killer Johnny Varron in The Wild Ride. But Gary Kent drew the comparison of the quintessential Jack with the Studs Lonigan gang member before he descended from bad boy to convict. “One of the things I remember was the Weary Reilly part, because Studs Lonigan was one of my favorite books and Weary was one of my favorite characters. And every time I see Jack on screen, I see a little bit of Weary Reilly, that tough little guy who’s out there jumping on the sidewalk and playing stickball and going through life with some kind of smile even though his coat is too long and his pants don’t quite fit or whatever. Like he didn’t need that, he was gonna go on balls and zest for life.”7

  Fifteen years later, Nicholson improbably played another Weary Reilly, a more world-weary post-juvenile J.D. by the name of Randall Patrick McMurphy in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Insane or not, McMurphy’s basically a juvenile delinquent who never grew out of it, straight from The Wild Ride to the wild house. Like all classic J.D. gang leaders, he comes into the ward all attitude, already looking for his angle, a natural con man and manipulator.

  He delights in the childish and the dirty, gleefully showing the facility director a pornographic set of playing cards. He schemes and shows off, full of bravado and cheer, insinuating himself first into the group and then assuming its leadership. Nicholson embodies a full, complex character, one who plays a joyful scene where McMurphy’s guidance and encouragement take his fellow inmates to an afternoon of temporary sanity and momentary normalcy on a fishing boat. But the juvenile dreams of freedom are defeated when his delinquency—and that of his nuthouse colleagues—defines him and defeats them. His act of generosity and mentoring is dashed as the group of escapees is apprehended, re-labeling big-heartedness and coaching as rebellion and “dangerous.”

  Overgrown as he might be, R.P. displays all of the symptoms of the late–1950s and early–’60s J.D. He hates authority and rebels against conformity. He collects compliant and fun “girls” but bristles at the strength and pressure from a strong woman. Here that assertive woman is represented by one rigid and frigid, by-the-book, dictatorial female, forever to remain a symbol easily conjured by the name Nurse Ratched.

  Louise Fletcher completely lives this role and her character gets under the skin of McMurphy in one of Jack’s most powerful and revered parts. She signifies the parent, a nagging mother with her rules and her tyrannical ways, just the kind a J.D. would resent. She simultaneously characterizes an official authority figure—certainly not the police but close to it—and someone with legal and living oversight.

  The Academy Award winner gave Ratched “a rigidness that never wavers,” making the character “the person in power who thinks they have power because of who they are and how they do their job, and they’re ‘right’” in the belief that there is no other way but her way.8

  Cop, teach, shrink, mom and doc all in one immobile and rule book–waving foe, Nurse Ratched was a juvenile’s nightmare (because she held complete authority) and a delinquent’s destiny (since she lived to make “Mac” and his fellow inmates know what they do wrong and make them pay for it).

  Nicholson revealed his secret subtext to their conflict as “one long, unsuccessful seduction which the guy was so pathologically sure of.” He discussed this “secret design” only with Fletcher, that “this guy’s a scamp who knows he’s irresistible to women and in reality he expects Nurse Ratched to be seduced by him. This is his tragic flaw. This is why he ultimately fails.”9

  Fletcher gave the reverse perspective, that when Nurse Ratched “figures out that she’s losing control and everything’s been in control until this guy shows up and starts undermining her position, she begins to lose it and does lose it.”10

  She loses it to a juvenile delinquent. Though a little old for the label, Jack’s McMurphy shows his juvenile side often enough to betray the character’s immaturity over his insanity. He’s first seen in cuffs, being led inside and looking more like a criminal than anything else, dressed all in black. Then he mischievously pretends to be nutso, doing a monkey dance and kissing a guard. He’s harmless; he’s having fun with a deck of cards that displays naked women; he plays hard at cards and basketball; he flirts; and he serves as big brother to Billy (Brad Dourif) when the shy younger man shows an interest in Candy (Mews Small).

  Mac’s juvenilia are not appreciated, but his delinquent character ultimately does him in. Society can handle a little nonsense, but not when the outsider acquires a little power, in growth from teen troublemaker to adult agitator. Jimmy Wallace in The Cry Baby Killer could take a few hostages (even a baby!) and face some discipline and punishment toward rehabilitation. Buddy could slip out of a near–date rape and move on to another day, while Weary Reilly took the rap but likely got out of the clink to an uncertain future.

  Johnny Varron killed a cop on his Wild Ride. But he just never got it. He was obnoxious and openly contemptuous of the law. He was bad. He became what the system thought about Randall. But Randall … he may have been the purest of the bunch, oblivious to any harm he might have caused. McMurphy was a gang leader, just like Varron. And we don’t like that. Leaders for good, or what the majority views as good, are fine and dandy. But leaders for unrest, taking on social conventions and orthodoxy—especially along with other misfits and rabble-rousers—that is not to be tolerated.

  Nurse Ratched will see to that.

  11

  * * *

  Writers on the Storm

  Where did Kafka come from? A mind met a piece of paper. The mind either accomplishes exquisite beauty or misses with excruciating emptiness. The paper either becomes a work of triumph or a symbol of abject failure. Writing is a pursuit that can result in something good and satisfying … something useless and disappointing … or nothing at all. The writer can become Kafka and the paper can become history; the writ
er can remain unknown or labeled a hack and the paper can produce piles of rejection or derision; or the aspiring writer cannot bring anything to fruition and the paper becomes garbage.

  Each of these—the real writer, the pretend writer and the failed writer—pass one another as they wander bookstores in search of themselves or their rivals or their unrealized dreams. Given their heightened sense about the production and dissemination of the written word, they look and touch and judge and dismiss and imagine and pine not in chains or mass market stores, but in America’s great independent book paradises.

  Melvin Udall examines the displays for his newest romance novel, for symmetry and perfection, though he touches nothing. Jack Torrance randomly studies the work of others, searching for a beginning and for any inspiration, just so he can start (any start will do). Will Randall inventories the store’s support for his authors, not entirely businesslike and not altogether detached. Eugene O’Neill doesn’t haunt these stores as much as bless them, subtly expanding the Drama section each evening after closing. David Locke wants space, pushing from the beyond for political reporting and original documentaries. And Mark Forman is there more in the hope of being noticed than anything else, except possibly encountering a young female admirer.

  All of these characters inhabit all of the great bookstores. All of these characters have been portrayed by Jack Nicholson. Nicholson has played an unusual number of writers in his movies, since a writer is not necessarily a strong potential cinematic subject. Nicholson has also been a writer for film, with screenplays for Thunder Island, Flight to Fury, Ride in the Whirlwind, The Trip, Head and Drive, He Said. In a career of over 50 years, all six writing credits took place over only eight years, with the last occurring over 40 years ago. Though he knows of writers and has been a writer, Nicholson now clearly prefers playing them than serving as one.

  He’s portrayed writers four times: a novelist in As Good as It Gets; one who suffers from the ultimate in writer’s block in The Shining; a celebrated real-life playwright in Reds; and a writer-journalist based on another real person in Heartburn. He’s also played a book editor for a major publishing house in Wolf and a documentarian-journalist writer in The Passenger.

  That’s six actual writing jobs and six roles as writer-related figures. And, even considering 75 roles over 50 years, that’s a good number of literary characters given the action-oriented slant of the Hollywood movie. Considering Nicholson’s position in the industry, these choices are likely based more on personal interest than box office potential.

  * * *

  For any writer, established or novice, proven or delusional, the nightmarish meeting of the blank mind with the blank page can possess and strangle. Frustration leads to panic, which elevates stress and accelerates worry. Self-doubt is deadly. An emptiness depresses and deadens the afflicted. This so-called writer’s block can turn a best seller by a promising first-timer into a flop by a wannabe, a mental mess.

  Jack Torrance wants to be a writer. He thinks it’ll help to get a nice, quiet job away from it all so he can concentrate on his work and spend quality time with his family. Jack was dead wrong. He was no writer, no family man, no hotelier. He was trapped by his inability, by his inadequacy, and perhaps even by time and place.

  Stuck in a rut? Here’s a guy who’s been in the same caretaker job since the Roaring ’20s. He’s such a prolific writer that he’s come up with a grand total of one sentence over the span of months—and has repeated it hundreds and hundreds of times.

  Yet Jack Torrance is the milder, gentler George Bailey, the hero of the holiday favorite It’s a Wonderful Life. With Jack there were signs and incidents, looks and reactions. Something about breaking Danny’s arm (an accident, they said) and a drinking problem, but of course he’s quit the booze. George, on the other hand, drank too much (on Christmas Eve of all days) and came home only to ruin his family’s holiday. “That silly tune,” as he spits out in attack, referring to a song that happens to be a celebration of the birth of their Lord. He yells at a hard-working schoolteacher, overturns tables and throws heavy objects inside their home. Imagine if Jack Torrance had said something approaching, “Why do we have all these kids?” on Christmas Eve. Can anything be more horrid other than actually attacking them physically?

  Sight & Sound called Nicholson’s performance “a splendidly Gothic reworking of Ray Milland’s in The Lost Weekend,” explaining that alcoholics see things not there, say things not meant, and become people not themselves.1

  Look into the dead eyes of Jack Nicholson as he sits alone on a bed in his bathrobe, robotically pretending to care, with everything forced and overspoken, in a monotonic declaration that he’d never do anything to hurt his son. Who would say anything like this unless the opposite was true? Nicholson uses such a menacingly sarcastic tone, more Bruce Dern than Nicholson, that it becomes true irony, the opposite meaning of what in fact is said.

  Compare this with James Stewart as he holds his young son on his lap, destroyed and unhinged, a look of desperation and fractured reality, and betraying a dangerous insanity that could easily lead to an axe-wielding incident. Stewart looks more beaten than Nicholson, wet with sweat and shining with the drink-sodden tears of a failure. Nicholson is detached, but Jimmy is fully in charge, yet in charge of something that clearly no longer works.

  As Jack Torrance descends from sanity, he becomes a nightmare, a scared animal bleating non-verbal growls before he falls out of his chair, and awakens with saliva falling from his mouth, as he collapses into a tearful state while retaining enough self-awareness to wonder if he is losing his mind.

  The actor’s interpretation, in my belief, is that he doesn’t become uncontrolled or insane, but rather an actual monster. When he races toward the bar, his flailing, super–“Jack” body language includes hyper-shrugs, breast strokes and shoulder flings as he propels himself “down the hall,” as Jim Morrison warned in The Doors’ epic The End. He must escape to a safe, more tranquil place, the calming and closeted space of the bar of yesteryear.

  Jack is big, from handshakes and laughs to looks and head turns, with teeth, hands and snaps—a proto–Joker in the bar scene—in contrast to Lloyd the bartender, who is more constrained, controlled and inscrutable. Kubrick veteran Joseph Turkel (from The Killing and Paths of Glory as well as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner) is impassive, with a low, staccato intonation from another world. This contrast was intentional, but Turkel explained to me that Nicholson had warned him he was “taking it all the way” due to his frustration of shooting that first bar scene for four straight, grueling and repetitive days. Nicholson became big and bigger and bigger still, with “fuck this and fuck that,” as Turkel put it, purposely overdone to make the point about being tired of doing the same scene over and over.

  When Nicholson completed his most over-emoted “I’ll show you” take, Kubrick calmly stated, “Jack, I see that you’ve opened up a whole new can of corn with this approach. Tell you what. That’s the one I’ll put in the picture—and that’ll be the end of your career.”2

  Message received. Joke got.

  “Nobody did things like Stanley,” Turkel told me.3 “I adored watching Stanley,” says actor Barry Dennen. “He was so interesting, and the more I found out about him, the more I liked him. I liked him a lot. He was very phobic. He was very loath to shake your hand, so I didn’t offer my hand.”4 Pointing to his temple, actor Shane Rimmer, one of Slim Pickens’ crew in Dr. Strangelove, said that Kubrick “was like a walking camera.” Rimmer added, “Anybody could go in to see him. If there was a problem, he would find a way to solve it.”5

  Kubrick’s exacting approach to shooting is legendary. He’s known for seemingly endless retakes, perhaps executed to exhaust the players and take out the “acting.” Shelley Duvall explained that a scene could take hours to shoot, “and by the end of the day you just don’t have anything more to give.”6

  Music supervisor and assistant editor Gordon Stainforth acknowledged that Nicholson pace
d himself and that around take 12, “Jack would really go for it.” Aware of Kubrick’s working methods, Nicholson would get annoyed in some takes and go wildly over the top, “because he wanted to give Stanley a huge selection when it came time to edit. Jack turned in many, many great takes.”7

  “Stanley shot millions of feet of film and he did scenes over and over and over again, and I never knew why,” Dennen said to me. “Nobody knew why, we didn’t know what we’d done right, or what we’d done wrong, but we’d do it again.” Barry compared Kubrick’s approach to that of Alfred Hitchcock, “because Hitchcock never gave notes. He figured it’s all in the casting. If he cast the right people and they were good, you leave them alone.” Kubrick was the same way. “Stanley trusted the people he cast because he looked at a lot of auditions and he went for the one that he knew would be right and he didn’t need to do anything.”

  Dennen didn’t recall Kubrick giving direction, but hired good people and let them do their job. As sensible as that sounds, the shoot was hardly an ordinary one with ordinary talents. “My main memories and my main experiences from The Shining are not Jack’s, so much as they are of Stanley Kubrick, who was not like Earth people [laughs]. He was really wonderful; strange, marvelous, and wonderful.”8

  From the beginning of The Shining, Nicholson and Kubrick create an atmosphere of disquiet. The disassociating opening scene uses visual distortion and deep electronic musical sounds, while the interview session with Barry Nelson seems like a 45° turn on the admittance interrogation with Dr. Spivey in Cuckoo’s Nest. You see a hint of an odd look on Nicholson’s face, not just foreshadowing, but a small glimmer of his thinking, “Why am I here? What am I doing?” to himself. In this sense, the film really becomes an allegory on the trap of family and commitment, similar in ways to Five Easy Pieces and About Schmidt.