Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Storm-filled in life, Melvin is an easy writer. Finishing his latest romance novel, Nicholson uses the voice of aged velvet, not pristinely shiny or perfectly smoothed, but showing some of the roughness that can come from use and life’s reality.

  Nicholson has fun with a nice piece of business with his sunglasses on the drive to Simon’s parents. Upon the mention of Simon’s mother having modeled for the young artist, the shades start down in place and move up via Melvin’s raised eyebrows at the moment it is revealed that the mother posed nude for her son; then pushed up on the forehead before letting them fall down; when reacting to the story of Simon’s father’s beating, Melvin raises them slightly with his gloved hands to wipe his eyes. Once again, he leaves the glasses up on his forehead, only to let them drop down once again into place.

  During the big date scene with Carol, Melvin reaches another turning point when a new jacket and tie he bought to meet the Baltimore restaurant’s dress code seems to actually calm him down and make him more normal, more desirable and more desired. The clothes do make the man. His cute sideways wave and big triangle-shaped-eyebrows grin signals a new man.

  Melvin’s breakthrough does not come easy. He touches his face a lot and builds to the ultimate “compliment” with a wipe across the brow, rubbed hands and rubbed fingertips. As he recounts the story of having taken his pills for the first time and Carol challenges him as to how that could be a compliment to her, the actor goes to work. He briefly reacts and puts his hands together and intertwines the fingers. He lowers them and looks down. He smiles, bites the right side of his lips and lifts his eyes to declare that it’s a compliment because she makes him want to be better, accentuating the point with a slight eyebrow raise toward the end and after enriching the statement with fast but subtle eye-blinks.

  This compliment, this declaration of a devotion that truly touches his life, expands eight seconds of screen time, eight magic seconds made special because he uses six of the eight seconds for the set-up. That’s why it works and creates such an emotional impact: the import of the statement, yes; the transformation of the character, yes; but the manner of pulling you into the emotional moment. Nicholson masterfully pulls you in by putting much more emphasis on the air before the spoken line and more on the preparation for the line than its delivery. That is what counts and that is what an actor who has learned and has reached a level that allows him to take such “valuable” screen time with silence and gestures to make the line so exquisite. His smooth, beautiful delivery was embodied with authentic meaning, not just acted meaning.

  His sweetest, most emotionally open moment was sealed by Hunt’s reaction shot, as a slow zoom follows her subtle read with slow, partial eye-closes, for a completely wonderful conveyance of feeling.

  In this restaurant scene, Jack uses so many small movements and slight reactions—his eyes and the starts and stops of his speech—when Hunt moves over to his side of the table, we benefit from the luxury of an actor at the top of his game who is given the opportunity to expand the scene and elaborate on the feeling he gets when romance finally enters his character’s life.

  At this point in his career, Nicholson has become more adept at the comedic portion of his performances, no longer forced or awkwardly broad. When Carol calls Simon on the phone after Melvin takes him in, he uses some nice little business, wiping his brow in distress here and there, on the sides and then across, before joining the call with a romantic cough.

  The conversation leads to his second emotionally staggering line when he painfully reveals his regret that he did not dance with her at the Baltimore restaurant. Nicholson even pulls in a bit of his Prizzi’s Honor character, Charley Partanna, when reacting to Simon’s lament that Melvin is luckier because he knows what he wants. Wordlessly, Nicholson beckons some Partanna in his slit eyes and slow thought.

  In his final transformative scene, as Melvin and Carol go to her neighborhood bakery at four in the morning, he tells her how he’s the only guy who sees how special she is. Taking such a defining stance with such certainty and strength, Nicholson transitions the character’s style of speaking from realistically halting to flowing, forceful and confident. His clear delivery and tone carry attitude and manner to move through three or four modes of expression within that one section of dialogue. Nicholson brings such nuance and range of true character energy to the moment that we can almost feel his growth. Then, in the middle of this big speech, Melvin completely stops shaking and becomes precise and direct, focusing his entire being on his life and his love instead of his obsessions with cleanliness, sidewalk cracks and numbers. His obsessive-compulsive disorder made Melvin count locks and switch the lights on and off in two rooms. He does each five times. His number is five. Is this a reference to Five Easy Pieces, his breakthrough role 27 years earlier? Who knows? And who’s counting?

  * * *

  Melvin Udall is. He finishes his 62nd book in As Good as It Gets. Jack Torrance can’t start, let alone finish, his first book in The Shining. Eugene O’Neill and Carl Bernstein each won a Pulitzer Prize. Wolf Will Randall takes on the form of a werewolf while Passenger David Locke takes on the identity of a dead man. Writers, editors, reporters, obsessing about their own rituals or on wrongs done by others; terrorizing their wives in a remote hotel or in a new home in need of major repairs; a playwright out of his time or a political documentarian who runs out of time. They all live to put one word in front of the other and one idea as prelude to the next.

  12

  * * *

  Rom-Com Wonder

  Harry thinks he loves Marin, but he really loves her mother Erica. The astronaut loves the Southern belle and the hit man loves the other hit man until she tries to hit him. Melvin the writer has to learn how to live before he can learn how to love the waitress Carol. A devilish guy loves a trio of hot, young friends. And a fake Carl Bernstein loves himself more than he does a fake Nora Ephron. It’s not The Love Boat or Oprah or Dr. Buddy Rydell’s next encounter group.

  No, it’s the wonderful world of the rom-com, a world of mostly beautiful people and largely unamusing comic talents.

  Think Jennifer Aniston, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Ashton Kutcher, Julia Roberts, Vince Vaughn, Drew Barrymore, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd … and Jack Nicholson?

  Late in his career, the actor best known for the huge roles, the big personalities, the memorable moments of Batman, The Shining, Cuckoo’s Nest, A Few Good Men and The Last Detail, became something of a rom-com wonder. A genre associated with the young and the pretty (both men and women) has embraced senior citizen Jack and has been rewarded with box office and awards.

  There was no announcement, no press conference, no news release. But without fanfare, the antihero became a major romantic comedy star for the AARP crowd. Since he turned 60, eight Nicholson movies have been released and half of them have been rom-coms.

  With a little help, even casual moviegoers can see the latter comedy tendencies of Nicholson. Alongside Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets and Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give; paired with Kathleen Turner in Prizzi’s Honor and quadrupled with Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Witches of Eastwick; plus the regrettable romances Man Trouble and How Do You Know.

  As Nicholson has matured, so have his comic instincts. He no longer pushes, letting humor emerge naturally from character and conflict, action and reaction. Forced, broad, near-caricatures such as Goin’ South’s Henry Moon and The Fortune’s Oscar smoothen to somewhat overblown treatments that feature shades of humanity, such as Charley Partanna in Prizzi’s Honor, Daryl Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick and the dual role of President James Dale and developer Art Land in Mars Attacks! The progression is complete with As Good as It Gets, the successive trio of About Schmidt, Anger Management and Something’s Gotta Give, along with the later dramedy The Bucket List.

  Appropriately, Nicholson’s most nuanced comic performances come to life in the romantic comedies. His movements are slight and subtle except wh
en it suits the situation to become bigger and more “Jack-like.” As Melvin, his OCD provides latitude for occasional outbursts and thoughtless acts. Elsewhere, the character and the actor are both under perfect control, earning sympathy for a man who could have remained a one-dimensional bully in the hands of a lesser performer. Pauses say more than words. A wipe of the brow and a nervous rub of the fingertips endear. When shaking is replaced by level precision, we know he is a changed man because he thinks more about another than himself.

  * * *

  Dr. Buddy Rydell presents Nicholson the opportunity to seesaw from boisterous and rambunctious to ironic and mock-sensitive. In his introductory scene on a plane with Adam Sandler, he’s all about “the stuff” that establishes comedy and character. Soon thereafter, he shifts to soft and calming, coming across as if he believes in the claptrap of “getting in touch” with ourselves. He’s in charge, but not pushy, using controlled intensity as his defining character energy. At one point, he approaches a judge in command and with Saturday Night Fever–Travolta slickness, insincere and smooth as faux fur. At another, he’s the explosive Jack who blows up over eggs (not over easy, ironically, as requested) and promptly calms down to regain his role of therapist. Is the good doctor crazy? The ongoing ambiguity could very well be a McMurphy Cuckoo’s Nest reference.

  Nicholson plays Rydell as mischievous; as spontaneous (singing “I Feel Pretty” with basso profundo confidence); as mercurial, when he betrays confusion about his mother in surgery and leaps from berserk to happy to suspicious, all within only a couple of actor-ranged minutes; and as demonic, with a slo-mo phony encouraging nod that boosts Sandler toward his “exploding Mr. Pants” come-on to Heather Graham.

  Nicholson admitted that though he’s “not that into farting and vomit jokes,” Sandler interested him. “It’s all a learning experience, as far as I’m concerned.”1 Director Peter Segal had been concerned that his two leads would overshadow one another, but that the reality of the concept would make the journey sufficiently believable. “Some of our first discussions with Jack were about the tone, and the balance, and how real we were going to be.”2

  * * *

  In Anger Management, Nicholson seems to have become more comfortable in his role as comic actor—perhaps in part due to his supporting position—without feeling the pressure to be as overly energetic in carrying the show. Nicholson is feeling it without ramming it and living without pressing, sliding from aspect to aspect rather than carrying the burden to push from action to action as if doing so singlehandedly.

  Harry Sanborn represented a further step in Nicholson’s perfection of the comic transformation, made more difficult because it could not have been as dramatic as was Melvin’s. He didn’t have a condition. He was just a cad, in the minds of many Jack playing Jack. In Something’s Gotta Give, the something was Harry’s tendency toward young women. He had to mature in order to find a woman closer to his age attractive. Erica (Diane Keaton) had to give by looking beyond her self-absorption and career obsession to let someone into her life. They both had to give in order to meet in the middle.

  It should be no surprise, when seeing their interaction, to find that director Nancy Meyers felt that Diane and Jack “were really the only actors I wanted for this movie.”3

  You can see that Jack enjoyed playing the rakes and playing with his own image, a delightful inside joke shared with the other actors and with the audience. He likes to shock and leer and be the dirty boy. He lampoons himself with relish, yet to the benefit of the character arc rather than any sort of comic grab for attention that could have served as detriment to the story.

  Harry’s career isn’t exactly the drive of his life, as it is for Erica. For a hip-hop label mogul, he never mentions or listens to music. It does provide access to parties, glamour, money and babes. A heart attack shows he is no longer as young as the women he dates. He needs to be taken care of. He can’t even chance having sex, which leads to a beautiful scene of comic pathos that’s both a test of his will and a chance for some subtle physical comedy. Harry must climb a flight of stairs to prove he is ready for sex, with the character struggling and failing, grasping and gasping, and nearly losing (all while the audience enjoys the nice touch of using Jimmy Cliff’s “You Can Get It If You Really Want It” to underscore his toil and eventual triumph).

  Nicholson makes pieces of life real. We feel for a man who has become vulnerable for the first time in his life (something that is neither said nor implied, though somehow we know) when Marin (Amanda Peet) kisses him like she would an older uncle instead of a vital lover. He’s hurt, he’s ashamed, and he realizes the kiss-off as he gazes without focus and intones that “It’s down to the cheek.” In the tradition of the sad clown greats, Harry Sanborn becomes Harry Langdon, a man-child who’s a striking contrast to the slain lady-killer.

  The comic actor in Nicholson delivers lines with a naturalness that makes the situations connect so that the laughs come naturally. “I think there’s something about the way Jack uses language,” Keaton explained. “It’s like he’s a master of the word, and the love of the word.”4

  Nicholson also has a sense for his physical being to use his body, his hands and his expressions as instruments of humanity and humor. After all, Harry isn’t a bad man. He is flawed, as he gives in to his temptations toward much younger women. Is it Harry’s fault that his money and position in the music biz help him get exactly what he desires?

  Jack’s hospital gown scene and his accidental encounter with a naked Diane Keaton give him full license for delicious slapstick, seeming to fight his own body. He struggles to remain upright in a dance against gravity up and down a hospital corridor and he fights a wall, trying to escape a situation he cannot handle, which is remaining in the presence of a nude woman who is old enough to be his ex-girlfriend’s mother (because she is).

  Through his transitional period, Nicholson’s Harry reprises his character’s fast eye-blinks to represent moments of doubt. It’s a slight movement, betraying weakness by flitting his eyes in a toned-down version of his earlier self. This is a comic actor in complete control. When Erica writes and produces a play about their relationship as revenge against Sanborn, he reacts to hearing a young actress describe his thinly veiled parody having a heart attack while messing around with a younger lover in a way that’s physical and smart, not broad or overdone. He knows the temperature of the character and always keeps it in balance with that of the world in which that character resides. Critics talk about heightened reality in films, but there’s less to it than that. In real life, people tend to overreact. Unexpected situations and emotional drama shock and stun, with an equal and opposite reaction the result. Should an actor be that “true” on-screen, the magnification would make every gesture and expression so large that it would overwhelm the scene. We see this on TV, where it’s more accepted due to the smaller scale and even smaller expectations. In movies, the thinking actor must be true to reality while dialing it down to make the overall presentation palatable. Ninety-plus minutes of mugging and overreacting can wear an audience down and break down any connection to the narrative worth than if the story itself were full of holes.

  By the time of Something’s Gotta Give, Nicholson had perfected his comic touch, a lightness and maturity much like the hard-earned destiny of his character. Even his wardrobe comes into play. More than for appearance or for his character to inhabit, Jack uses their physicality. For instance, Harry tugs his jacket closed while in the theater when watching the scene that makes fun of his heart attack, in a pathetically inadequate attempt to hide himself. Earlier in the film, the actor uses a similar gesture when pulling his robe closed to cover himself through his embarrassment, exposed as a man coming to terms with his weakness and vulnerability.

  * * *

  The romantic actor in Nicholson retains this strength of portrayal in As Good as It Gets, though six years had passed. Both films focus on a man’s transformation as necessary admission price for a
mature romantic relationship. In As Good as It Gets, his character energy is imposing, traveling through the character with physical devotion and emotional range. Gestures and moves accent thought and feeling, yet never distract.

  The motion of his eyes and action of his eyelids take us toward the man, while line delivery brings us all the way inside him. When Melvin tells Carol he stopped taking his pills in tribute to her and reveals he should have danced with her, we respond with true emotion and feel a little of what each of them feels. These are fictional characters, yet people we do not know (the actors Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt) find a way to fuse us with these characters, making us part of them rather than merely close enough to overhear them. Here, he is sweet and emotionally open.

  In Something’s Gotta Give, he learns to become charming and casual, a more grownup version of what had made the predatory Harry so successful with the ladies. His conversion lies bare his inner emotions in ways unnecessary for Melvin. Melvin had to become aware of his faults, face them and find a way to defeat or at least subdue them. Harry had to feel his faults, having them turned against him by former conquests and through the public humiliation from Erica’s play. Melvin stopped taking his pills so he could feel, but Harry needed a taste of his own medicine in order to empathize and feel how others feel.

  As Harry grows up, he gets younger, playful and coy, rather than lecherous and commanding. Nicholson and Keaton become a couple when they walk on the beach and picnic together, attaining a quality sadly unattainable by so many rom-com combinations who too often only reach the point in the story where they are in love but rarely reach the place within their characters where they exude the glow of love.

  * * *

  Nicholson had to feel a special connection to Melvin and Harry, while much weaker films like Heartburn and The Evening Star provided only glimpses of the Nicholson who would later become so accomplished in romantic comedy. In Heartburn, a film that largely lives up to its name, the otherwise unsympathetic Mark Forman reconciles with Meryl Streep’s Rachel in an emotionally bare and charming scene when the estranged husband and wife (stand-ins for real-life Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron) meet at a fountain. Here, Nicholson closes up when opening up, and later breaks down entirely in the movie’s other palpably true and impactful scene, when he brings himself back to how he felt during the risky birth of their first child.