Nicholson

by Marc Eliot

  According to Brooks, after an early draft of the script, he realized “you needed a male star, but you couldn’t get a male star to do it because the part [of Breedlove] was short and because the actor had to give up his vanity.” Burt Reynolds was Brooks’s first choice to play him, because he had worked previously with Burt in Starting Over and believed he was perfect for this role. He might have actually been great, but turned down the role because Brooks wouldn’t let him do it with his toupee or allow his always-held-in potbelly to be seen, two key characteristics—balding and sagging—the role called for. A disappointed Brooks next approached Paul Newman. When he said no, Debra Winger suggested Jack might make a great Breedlove. “Jack was always too much to hope for,” Brooks said. “The first feature I ever wrote was Starting Over, and I wrote that with him in mind, but we never got him.” That was the role that instead went to Reynolds.

  MacLaine also hadn’t been Brooks’s first choice to play Greenway. He had wanted Anne Bancroft or Louise Fletcher, but when he showed them an early version of the script, neither thought it was funny. The only one who “got it” was MacLaine. She thought it was a riot, even with the tragic turn of the third act. And because of it, she won the part. She modeled her character, she said later, on Martha Mitchell.2

  Also cast were Jeff Daniels and Jack’s good friend Danny DeVito.

  BREEDLOVE WAS A perfect name for Jack’s character, one in which he recognized a lot of himself. He is a retired astronaut who lives in a beach house by himself and loves getting drunk and making love with women. The film’s primary focus is on a mother and a daughter who live near Breedlove and spend their lives looking for love with men who, for one reason or another, don’t want to look back. Breedlove and the mother, Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), develop a brief but intense romance, filled with unexpected warmth and humor from Jack.

  Production began March 14, 1983, and resulted in one of those magical moments in cinema, when all the pieces mesh perfectly into one beautiful whole, like one of those reverse shots of an automobile blown to bits that, when projected on a screen, all seem to magically fly back together and become whole. Brooks’s script, littered as it was with TV sitcom one-liners (which Jack hated and, he believed, kept the film from being truly great), gave him the opportunity to introduce a new shade of character to his repertoire, one that would remain with him, in one form or another, for the rest of his career. This Jack was soft-spoken, slow-paced, hefty, balding, slightly tipsy, chasing skirts (that part wasn’t new), and letting problems roll off his back (that part was). He would never be a film comic like Jerry Lewis, who essentially played himself his entire career. Jack had developed into an actor who could do comedy rather than a comic actor.

  He found a bathrobe in wardrobe that he adopted as his uniform and wore when he was shooting and off-camera. It became the connective tissue that allowed him to meld his character in the film with who he was in real life. According to Brooks, “He lived in that robe!” He also wore an expensive astronaut’s watch throughout the shoot.

  In Terms, sporting a huge gut, Jack falls into an unlikely relationship with Aurora and slowly finds a way to open her up (sexually and emotionally). He shows her another, better way to live. He takes her for drives along the beach in a convertible, sitting high on the seat and driving with his toe. Everything seems to be going great (so great that one begins to wonder where else the film can go), when Brooks pulls out one of the great clichés of romantic films, and transforms a middle-aged love story into a middle-aged version of Love Story. Halfway through the film, as Aurora is coping with the travails of the troubled marriage of her daughter Emma (Debra Winger), Emma comes down with terminal cancer.

  This plot twist almost never works. Love Story got around it by not showing a lot of hospital rooms and keeping Ali MacGraw’s character looking bright and healthy almost to the end. Brooks managed to pull it off by making the cartoonish characters of the first half of the film have to adjust to family tragedy in the second, to act like real adults with real responsibilities and emotions. It elevated the picture out of the level of TV sitcom and into legitimate big-screen cinematic melodrama.

  TERMS OF ENDEARMENT opened in limited release on November 23, 1983, and nationwide two weeks later. Critics loved the film and especially Jack’s performance in it. Richard Schickel, writing in Time, called Jack’s performance “a joyously comic display of just the kind of wrong stuff that appalls and attracts …” David Ansen, in Newsweek, noted that “Nicholson may be unique for a star of his stature; he hasn’t the usual leading man’s vanity; indeed, he seems to revel in playing the slob, exhibiting his paunch.” Pauline Kael, in the New Yorker, wrote: “The years have given Jack an impressive, broader face, and his comedy has never been more alert, more polished. He isn’t getting laughs because of his lines; he’s getting them because of his insinuating delivery … it isn’t just the flab hanging out that makes him funny—it’s that he stands like a dirty-minded little kid who hasn’t yet learned to suck in his gut, an old sex warrior who can’t be bothered.” Daily Variety decided that the “teaming of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson at their best makes Terms of Endearment an enormously enjoyable offering for Christmas.” And Andrew Sarris, writing in the Village Voice, summed up the whole of the film’s parts this way: “There is real talent at work in Terms of Endearment, notably that of Nicholson … even more than that of MacLaine and Winger … To win an Oscar, actresses must be suffering and submissive creatures with excessively messy lives. This is both the message and the mechanism of Terms of Endearment as the most widely admired tearjerker of the year. Its expertise makes it nonetheless the Cabbage Patch doll of Christmas movies.”

  Audiences loved it too. It earned $4.5 million, half its production costs, on Thanksgiving weekend, and $25 million in two months, when most other holiday movies had disappeared from the big screen, and it would go on to gross just under $109 million in its initial domestic release (Jack’s eventual earnings were reportedly $9 million). It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1983 (1983–1984 grosses combined). Only Richard Marquand’s Return of the Jedi, of George Lucas’s bottomless money-pit franchise, beat it at the box office, earning more than $250 million.3

  Paramount had been right, there was nothing else like it out there. And so was Brooks, who had correctly predicted that this was the reason audiences would flock to see it.

  TERMS OF ENDEARMENT earned eleven Oscar nominations, including one for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for Jack, which thrust him right back onto Hollywood’s A-list of hottest and most desirable actors.4 Once again, everyone in the press wanted to know what Jack thought about everything, and, basking in his latest resurrection, he was only too happy to clue everyone in on what was on his mind. To Stephen Farber, in the New York Times, about his performance in Terms, he said, “I’m in my forties, and if I’m going to continue to grow as a person and an artist, I can’t keep playing 35-year-old ideas of romance. This is a transition that I’m interested in making and it’s an area which I think has been explored in sullen, lime-green tracts about the midlife crisis, or in situation comedy … I got very interested in the idea of how to age a character … pushing the old tummy out, not disguising certain things photographically. The other thing that’s fun about doing short parts is you know you’re going to get done before everyone else.”

  Mike Nichols said about Jack’s performance in the film, “Look at what he did in Terms of Endearment with that stomach hanging out.” Jack agreed. “One of the things that motivated me with that character is that everyone was starting to make a total cliché out of middle age … I just went against the grain of the cliché…”

  AFTER TERMS OF ENDEARMENT’S enormous box office success, Jack decided to celebrate in Aspen. He invited Anjelica, but she said she couldn’t go because she was tied up with too many things in L.A. Jack didn’t appear to mind. He was having too much fun being the oldest kid in Hollywood to think about anything so unfunny as growing up. He may
have learned how to play more mature onscreen, but in real life he was still the same old arrested adolescent, at least when it came to women.

  Andy Warhol came to Aspen for a visit and, with the understated directness of his manner and his flat vocal style, told Jack how fat he had gotten. This time it didn’t bother him at all. His weight just might win him an Oscar. Jack took off for Europe for some R and R with super-moe-dell Veruschka by his side. He basked in the flashing cameras pointed his way that shot off tiny bolts of fame as they walked together through London’s Heathrow—his smile, and his waist, wider than ever.

  While in London, Jack’s tolerance of the gossip press was tested when The Sun printed a story claiming that Jack had suffered “a string” of drug busts and that he loved getting high at least four days out of any given week. None of it was true. Jack was trying to lay off drugs to help his increasingly tender stomach, one of the by-products of a big belly. He sued for defamation and the paper quickly gave in, retreating and apologizing and reportedly settling out of court. Jack used the occasion to put in a good word for the legalization of drugs.

  Back in the States, he returned once more to Aspen, intending to stay there for the rest of the winter, or forever if he felt like it, or at least until April and the Academy Awards, where the limelight and the Awards gods would once more shine down upon him.

  THAT YEAR’S ANNUAL Oscar ceremonies were held on April 9, 1984, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles with Johnny Carson back at the helm. Jack arrived, Wayfarers in place, smile clicked to high beam, and Anjelica back on his arm to walk the red carpet. They drew the loudest ovation from the outdoor onlookers.

  In typical Oscar fashion, it took a full half hour for the first winner to be announced, Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton took the stage and read the names of the nominations. The cameras caught the nominees’ faces in simultaneous close-ups, to catch their reactions when the winning name was announced (all except Sam Shepard, who was not there; a photo of him was substituted). When Moore opened the envelope and read Jack’s name, his eyebrows shot to the sky and he actually pulled off his Wayfarers, looking surprised and delighted as he walked up to the stage. Once there he kissed Mary on the hand and replaced his glasses.

  After respectfully, if playfully, thanking the other nominees, Jack murmured, “I was going to say a lot about how Shirley and Debra inspired me, but I understand they’re planning an interpretive dance later right after the Best Actress Award to explain everything about life.” That brought a roar of laughter from the audience. When it died down, Jack thanked the L.A. rock scene and the Aspen congregation, inexplicably leaving out the Los Angeles Lakers and Anjelica: “All you rock people down at the Roxy and up in the Rockies, rock on!”

  Jack’s Oscar win, his first in eight years, was the icing on the cake that served to officially mark his return to the top of his game.

  He was Hollywood’s Prince again. He could do whatever he wanted, and with whom, and whenever he felt like it. He could gorge on the best street-side Mexican food in L.A. and his favorite dessert, chocolate mousse and whipped cream at the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Weight? Fuck it. Work? Fuck that too. Writing? Ditto fuck. He was Jack Nicholson, with two Oscars he could hang like double six-guns from his belt. Look out, ol’ Jackie was back!

  * * *

  1 Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises, run at the time by Grant Tinker.

  2 The two female stars reportedly battled over billing. The problem was resolved by giving MacLaine first position in the credits, and Winger first position in the advertising. James Brooks said it was done to make sure that the two female leads got first billing someplace. Mort Viner, MacLaine’s agent, said she accepted the arrangement “gracefully.” Doug Taylor, Winger’s publicity agent, was less gracious—he called it a case of “age before beauty.”—From an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1984.

  3 The other eight top ten grossers of 1983 were, in descending order, Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance ($93 million); John Landis’s Trading Places ($90 million); John Badham’s WarGames ($79.5 million); John Glen’s Octopussy ($68 million); Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact ($67.6 million); Sylvester Stallone’s Stayin’ Alive ($64.8 million); Stan Dragoti’s Mr. Mom ($64.7 million); and Paul Brickman’s Risky Business ($63.5 million).

  4 The other nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role were Charles Durning in Alan Johnson’s To Be or Not to Be, John Lithgow in Terms of Endearment, Sam Shepard in Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, and Rip Torn in Martin Ritt’s Cross Creek.

  CHAPTER

  “I’ve been overweight since I was four years old. Of course, I have all the normal defenses against it. But it’s always bugged me. I don’t want to overinflate my role and my job, but isn’t there more to me than what I weigh?”

  —JACK NICHOLSON

  TWO MONTHS LATER, IN JUNE 1984, JACK’S ONGOING OSCAR celebration was interrupted when Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, Bob Woodward’s Watergate-style book-length reporting of the drug death of the comic actor, was published. A year earlier, the corpulent performer had died of a lethal injection of a “speedball,” a combination of heroin and cocaine. Woodward was able to reach a lot of people and get them to talk, celebrities who otherwise never spoke to the press about these types of tragedies. At the time, Hollywood was supercharged; cocaine ran through it like a virus. With a reporter like Woodward nipping at everyone’s heels, the same Woodward whose reporting had helped push a president to resign, Hollywood’s pervasive guilt and fear were brought into the spotlight. Everyone was afraid not to talk to him.

  Even Jack, who had sworn off interviews in general and had experienced firsthand the demonized Belushi, to whom he’d given his first film role in Goin’ South, tried to make some kind of a deal with Woodward. Trade-off with journalists had become Jack’s specialty. He would cooperate if the writer would not sensationalize those aspects of Hollywood the public didn’t need to know that much about.

  What was he thinking?

  Woodward was a highly praised, award-winning investigative journalist who took no prisoners. He wrote a detailed, if sensationalistic account of the last days of Belushi’s life that spared no one and was really a fire-and-brimstone indictment of a social scene among the pampered celebrity set. As for Jack, Woodward had somehow found out about his habit of “upstairs” drugs—the cocaine he kept in the bedroom just for himself—the VIP stash reserved for best friends and especially beautiful women, and the “downstairs” drugs for the rest of the crowd at party time. In a not-so-subtle way, Woodward implied that cocaine had taken over the rhythm of Hollywood life and that Jack was living in the American capital of high-grade powder, one of the so-called perks of being a Hollywood movie star, where the rules for the rest of the citizenry didn’t always apply.

  When the book came out, Jack was furious that Woodward included all the drug stuff about him, and publicly referred to Woodward as a “ghoul and an exploiter of emotionally disturbed widows” for profiting off the death of Belushi, and predicted the book would end Woodward’s career as a serious journalist.

  Jack’s and Hollywood’s rage at Woodward was, to say the least, misplaced. Woodward hadn’t pulled back the shades of some secret window into Hollywood; he was holding up a cautionary mirror to its face. Instead of recognizing that, in classic form, Jack and everybody else in Hollywood blamed the messenger, worse, an outsider, for pulling back the curtains on their private and privileged ways.

  But Jack didn’t sue Woodward, as he had The Sun. Woodward had nailed the story and any court would clearly see that. Up until the publication of the book, Jack had always disdained cocaine. Now, if he went to court, the results could be disastrous. Woodward had correctly described Hollywood’s cinematic social set for what it was, a section of society dangerously out of control—obsessed with money, sex, fame, and drugs—and that didn’t take care of its own, even as fellow actors, producers, and directors w
ere dropping dead everywhere from overdoses and from a new disease that some saw as a scourge on those who exceeded the bounds of morality. It was called AIDS and it would irrevocably change Hollywood’s cultural landscape. Nobody knew how you got it, and there was no cure if you did. At first, it was called the gay disease, and even though more men and women in Hollywood were gay than the public might imagine, nobody seemed to care because it couldn’t possibly happen to them. They were too careful, they were too successful, they were too young, they were too invincible. Rock Hudson’s very public death from complications as a result of the disease in 1985 would change all that. As much as Jack and everyone else in Hollywood railed against it, they knew Woodward had gotten the story dead right.