Chinatown was one of the summer hits of 1974 and received nearuniversal acclaim. Today it is justly regarded as an American masterpiece, and one of the best films of the seventies. The icing on the cake for Jack was another Oscar nomination for best actor. Jack could now name his price. He’d truly arrived, his name mentioned in the same breath as Hoffman, Redford, Newman, McQueen and Beatty.
Jack has attributed his longevity in Hollywood to his determination to mix up his roles, playing in mainstream Hollywood movies followed by more art-house choices. ‘I don’t believe in pigeonholing, it’s the death of any actor.’ It was a policy that began when he agreed to make The Passenger (1975), mainly because the man doing the asking was Michelangelo Antonioni. He plays a burned-out TV journalist who assumes the identity of a mysterious stranger he finds dead in a hotel room. In Antonioni’s hands, it is less a thriller than an existential-style meditation on identity and alienation. ‘Antonioni is the absolute opposite of melodrama,’ Jack said. ‘A chase scene in his movies might be a camel walking for a very long time.’
Antonioni quickly got to work on Jack, stripping away all his trademark mannerisms, leaving him naked as an actor. It was a huge leap of faith to surrender himself totally; there was no communication, no give and take. According to co-star Maria Schneider Jack suffered during that movie. ‘He was lost in Spain. He loathed the food, he had hamburgers sent from America, and he panicked because he wasn’t being directed.’
Fresh from her controversial role in Last Tango in Paris, Maria accepted Antonioni’s film in a bid to play something different. ‘She didn’t want to be typed as the sexy broad with butter up her ass,’ said Jack helpfully. Unable to handle the instant fame and notoriety of Tango, Maria had descended into a drug-induced oblivion that lasted years. Jack recalled how in one scene he had to hold Maria upright because she was so zonked on painkillers. Another time she was holding a conversation with Antonioni and she was loaded and half nude, with her bathrobe open. ‘I thought Michelangelo was going to die,’ said Jack.
Hot on the heels of The Passenger came the film that for many remains the quintessential Nicholson movie — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). It began life in the early sixties when superstar Kirk Douglas bought the rights to Ken Kesey’s novel about a nonconformist in a mental hospital. Hoping to play the title role himself, Douglas spent thirteen years trying to launch a movie version, finally giving up and passing the rights over to his son Michael. But the son wasn’t any more successful than Dad at hustling the property around Hollywood. ‘How many films about mental illness made money?’ studio executives would say. Enter Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records, keen to branch out into movies and together he and Michael were able to raise the budget independently.
For their director both men wanted Milos Forman, who’d fled his Czech homeland in 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and had been looking for a Hollywood hit ever since. Forman grabbed the opportunity; after all, Kesey’s book was about what he’d left behind — a totalitarian system. He also saw only Jack in the lead role of Randle P. McMurphy. Obviously Kirk was too old now to star and the likes of Marlon had turned it down. Burt Reynolds was also considered. (Did they envisage Reynolds escaping the nuthouse at the end by launching a souped-up red Ford Mustang over the fence?) Finally, logic prevailed and Jack signed on. It was a book he had always loved.
Given the filmmakers’ intention to offer audiences their most realistic view yet of life inside a mental ward, highlighting vile practices like lobotomies and shock treatment, most institutions were understandably reluctant to accommodate them. Luckily the director of Oregon State Hospital in Salem was a fan of Kesey’s novel and welcomed the producers, providing they employ as many patients as possible both as extras and to work alongside the crew. It would be good therapy for them. What no one on the film realised was that this meant employing some pretty wacko people. So you had an arsonist who’d tried to burn the hospital down a year before working with highly flammable turpentine as a painter, and a murderer working with the electricians, along with a couple of child molesters and rapists.
During filming, a crew member left a second-floor window open and a patient climbed through the bars and fell to the ground, injuring himself. The next day the local paper’s headline read: ‘One Flew OUT of the Cuckoo’s Nest.’
Jack undertook painstaking research, talking to staff and even persuading them to allow him to watch inmates undergo electro-shock treatment. It was a chilling experience, watching the grotesque facial convulsions of the poor wretches when the technician unleashed the juice. He then took a stroll inside the maximum-security wing that housed the most dangerous mental patients in the whole of Oregon. He sat there quietly and alone as they were brought out of their cells; some even engaged in conversation with the actor, believing him to be a patient like themselves. Only a month earlier one of them had stabbed a guard to death. For Jack it was both fascinating and rewarding to sit, watch and learn from them, although a guard was never very far away. When he saw the finished film the hospital’s superintendent, Dean Brook, said of Jack’s performance: ‘He was an absolute genius in getting across the character of McMurphy, a sociopath of whom there are plenty around. Jack’s performance typified them.’
It was a long shoot, lasting some eleven weeks, and Anjelica came to stay with Jack. She was soon wishing she hadn’t. Usually Jack had no problem slipping out of the skin of a character once the cameras stopped whirring, ‘But here I don’t go home from a movie studio, I go home from a mental institution.’ Poor Anjelica didn’t feel that she was living with Jack at all; the character of McMurphy was taking over. ‘Can’t you snap out of this?’ she challenged him one day. ‘You’re acting crazy.’ Jack couldn’t, he was in too deep and Anjelica packed her bags and left. ‘I’m no longer certain whether you are sane or not,’ she told him. ‘I’ll see you when you come back into the real world.’
Cuckoo’s Nest was a monster hit, beaten in 1975 box-office terms only by Jaws. It worked primarily because of Jack’s performance, subtle and unashamedly crowd-pleasing at the same time. The culmination of critical acceptance was at the Oscars ceremony, when Cuckoo’s Nest became the first film since It Happened One Night way back in 1934 to sweep the top five categories. Jack was there, sporting his by now standard dark glasses, and had brought Anjelica along for support. When his name was announced as the winner the audience yelled as he hopped onto the stage. ‘I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else,’ he said. Walking off, clutching his award, Jack was heard to say, ‘Jesus, I’m shaken up.’ In the press room afterwards one hack asked, ‘When you were doing Little Shop of Horrors, did you ever think it would lead to this?’ Jack smiled, ‘Yes, I did.’
You know what woke you up? You just had your throat cut.
After three years watching waves crash against the shore of his paradise island and agonising about how badly the American Indian was being shafted, Marlon Brando returned to the movies. His comeback couldn’t have been more high profile, teaming up with Jack, two heavyweight acting champs in one movie. The result was a rather messy western called The Missouri Breaks (1976), with Brando as a psychotic bounty hunter and Jack as his prey, leader of a band of cattle thieves.
Although they’d been neighbours for a couple of years, the two actors were hardly what you’d call pally. ‘We weren’t up each other’s ass all the time,’ said Jack. Getting them together and fixing it so their schedules matched was quite a feat for producer Elliott Kastner. ‘But he pulled it off,’ says the film’s associate producer Marion Rosenberg, ‘by employing that old trick of telling Marlon that he had Jack, and telling Jack he had Marlon. That picture had to be made within a certain time period, so to get it done Elliott pulled out all the stops.’
There was one casualty, however: the script. It was never finished. Marlon, Jack and director Arthur Penn all agreed it needed heavy revision but no one sat down and properly worked on it. By the time cameras rol
led, as Penn put it, ‘We were out there tap dancing for our lives, making up the movie as we went along.’
Jack was giddy about working with his idol. ‘I remember waking up one morning halfway through the shoot, and I couldn’t move because I thought, wait a minute! I’m in a movie with Marlon Brando, the patron saint. I was practically immobilised by it.’ Jack’s deference to the great man was plain to see. He shot for two weeks prior to Marlon’s arrival on location. ‘And while Jack was working that first fortnight he was the star of the picture,’ says Marion Rosenberg. ‘For the crew, the minute Marlon arrived it was like, Jack who? But to his enormous credit, Jack just took a back seat and let Marlon get on with it. There was never a moment when Jack said, “Hey, what about me?” He’s a total professional.’
Marlon’s arrival was suitably dramatic. Trying desperately at the time to lose weight, Marlon didn’t want to be around the cast and crew in a hotel, where people were socialising, anywhere where he could maybe be tempted to scoff himself stupid. ‘So the production bought him this giant Winnebago,’ recalls Marion, ‘which he insisted on driving personally from Los Angeles to the location in Montana, almost a thousand miles, and no one could stop him. And the very fact he arrived was a miracle, because we were in the middle of nowhere, miles away from any town. How he found us I do not know, but this gigantic Winnebago came lumbering over the hill.’
Pretty quickly Marlon took control, his copy of the script simply awash with scribbles, crossed-out lines and his own personal additions. Jack and Penn were invited into his trailer for long discussions as the crew suffered outside in the searing heat. After an hour and still no show someone was heard to mutter, ‘Has God’s gift to the world appeared yet?’
Depending on your viewpoint, Marlon’s performance as a schizophrenic lawman who grows into more of a fruitcake with each passing scene is either a darkly comedic tour de force or operatically self-indulgent. ‘I know Marlon and Arthur had long talks abut his performance and his depiction of the character,’ says Marion. ‘And it’s clear that Marlon got his way, because that performance is exactly what he wanted. And to this day I don’t know if he was thumbing his nose at us or if he really felt that was the way the character should be.’
For his troubles Marlon received $1.25 million, plus a percentage, and worked five weeks, beginning a policy that continued until the end of his life to earn big bucks on a movie and work on it for the shortest time possible.
Jack wanted maximum authenticity for his character so stained his teeth a yellow-brown to get that frontier look. Penn admitted there were times when he couldn’t tell Jack from the old cowboy wranglers around the set. It was an approach diametrically opposite to Brando’s flamboyancy. For example, in one scene Marlon wears a dress and bonnet. It was here that Harry Dean Stanton lost patience with him. As the camera was about to roll on his death scene at Marlon’s hands, Stanton jumped on the star, wrestled him to the ground and tore off the dress. ‘I just couldn’t stand the idea of getting killed by a man in a dress.’ The two actors would clash again in 2001, when Marlon threatened to hurl Stanton out of the window of a posh Los Angeles eatery for daring to light a cigarette. His action elicited a standing ovation from fellow diners.
Jack and Marlon’s working methods were different, too. Jack was keen to get on the set and do the scene while Marlon was forever coming up with wacky and frankly bonkers experimental ideas for his character. Jack never got his head round Brando’s use of cue cards, either. ‘Who are they for,’ he asked Penn one day when he first saw them.
‘Himself.’
‘Marlon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why does the greatest actor in the world need cue cards?’
‘Because he hasn’t learned his lines.’
For one scene Marlon had the audacity to paste his dialogue onto the forehead of one of the cast members. When the actor complained that he’d at least like to look into Marlon’s eyes, two holes were punched into the paper. When that didn’t work out new cue cards were drawn up with large letters and stuck on a wall behind this poor actor. Cameras rolled and Brando began, only to stop suddenly. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘there’s a plane coming into shot over your left ear.’
The legend of Marlon relying on cue cards grew over the years. Was he merely bone idle and never learned his lines or was it a practical aid to his acting, the belief that in life you don’t know what words you’re about to say, so why learn them? It looked more realistic on screen to be seen struggling with the dialogue, to have a real thinking process going on. Later on Marlon dispensed with cue cards to take advantage of technology. ‘He’d use an ear piece,’ says cameraman William Fraker, ‘into which an assistant would read him his next line, he’d listen to it and then speak the line. And you’ll notice on the screen that there’s a little hesitation before he speaks each time.’
Jack had his own problems too. His screen lover on film was newcomer Kathleen Lloyd, but their personalities just didn’t gel, she being something of a militant feminist, and when it came to their love scene Jack baulked. ‘I wouldn’t even fuck her myself,’ he complained to a friend. ‘How can I make love to her in this movie?’
For much of the filming Jack didn’t see much of Brando. ‘I think Marlon and Jack had tremendous mutual respect for one another,’ says Marion. ‘But I wouldn’t say they were good buddies, their lifestyles were completely different.’ Marlon spent his free time playing bongo drums, roaring around on a motorbike or searching the prairies for grasshoppers. He was fascinated by the insects and Penn never forgot the time co-star Randy Quaid was feigning sleep and Marlon dropped a grasshopper in his mouth. Randy didn’t mind, but it sure took him by surprise.
Another surprise was when the FBI showed up to interview Brando about a pair of Indians on the run from the police. Marlon took much pride in being as uncooperative as possible and later admitted that he had indirectly assisted the two men to escape.
As for Jack, he tended to hang around with his own bunch of friends like Harry Dean Stanton and much drinking went on at a motel a few miles out of town. One party Jack hosted must have been particularly good as the management asked the entire crew to vacate the next morning, while someone had added UN – to the sign outside which read WELCOME MISSOURI BREAKS.
Curiously, when Marlon’s five-week stint on the movie ended he remained on location, living in his Winnebago. ‘I remember a couple of his sons came to visit him,’ says Marion. ‘But Marlon would not let them come on set. He said, “I don’t want my children to see me walking around in silly clothes.” So he took them fishing. Marlon was wonderful, but he really despised acting, he didn’t think it was the way for a grown man to make his living.’
It’s your money or your life and it’s in that order.
Isolated in Taos, Dennis Hopper’s marriage to Daria naturally suffered. His drug-induced personality changes were the final nail in the coffin of his third marriage. Daria upped and left with their daughter and went back to her parents in San Francisco. Dennis was crushed. ‘If I hadn’t gotten on drugs,’ he said years later, ‘I’d be married to her today.’
Dennis was in despair about what was happening to his career, or what was left of it, trying all the time to get jobs in Hollywood, getting more and more depressed because it was the same guys he’d made rich on Easy Rider who now wouldn’t give him a job. So with no offers from Hollywood he took whatever work was going, parts in low-budget independent movies, foreign films no one was ever likely to see. Some of these roles he was advised to turn down, the characters he was being asked to play lacking any redeeming qualities. But when his bank manager came calling, saying his account was empty, ‘The role sounded redeeming to me,’ said Dennis.
In Australia he appeared in Mad Dog Morgan (1976), at least that’s what his filmography says, and there is actually a film to prove it, too. Just as well; Dennis can’t remember a damn thing about it. ‘I was out of my mind back then. I was on 150-proof rum and had no idea what the hell w
as going on.’ The character he played was an outlaw, a sort of Ned Kelly type ‘and very much attuned with the way Dennis was at the time,’ says assistant director Michael Lake. ‘He was still enjoying the good life and was persona non grata in Hollywood. He was still drinking and taking drugs, but hey it was the seventies, so some days he’d come to the set a little worse for wear, as many of us did. But Dennis was a true professional and that’s the thing that really impressed me about him, that he could take all this stuff but once he got in front of the camera he could perform. And he really had a presence on screen.’
He turned up on his next picture equally spaced out to play a soldier returning home from Vietnam in Henry Jaglom’s controversial Tracks (1976). It was a perfect piece of casting, says Jaglom: ‘My anger and hurt about what the Vietnam War was doing to America — and to the Vietnamese – were best expressed, I felt, by the madness and lostness that Dennis, more than any other American actor, can reveal just in his face alone.’
At first Jaglom found the actor difficult to deal with, even though they’d been friends since the days of Easy Rider. But that quickly vanished as filming progressed and Dennis came up with the most extraordinarily creative ideas and acting choices, notably his last speech at the funeral of a fallen comrade. Jaglom had written what he thought was a rather brilliant six-page oration, about America’s loss of its own innocence, that kind of stuff. Dennis ripped it up the moment Jaglom called action, threw it into the grave and started screaming, ‘You motherfucker. You motherfucker. You motherfucker. You motherfucker. You wanna go to Nam? You wanna go to Nam? You motherfucker.’ It was a barrage of fury and inarticulate rage, ‘A thousand times better than all that smart stuff I had written,’ said Jaglom. ‘Dennis understood the anger and the hurt better than I did.’
Robert Sellers Page 22