Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  Francis Phelan heard voices. He saw people who weren’t supposed to be there. But ultimately, the most important voice in his head was the beautiful, lilting singing voice in the idealized vision he shared with his beloved Helen (Meryl Streep) in Ironweed.

  The detective Jerry Black was left with black thoughts, an endless dialogue with countless voices because he held a guilt about betraying a woman and a child he loved, and because he could not keep a pledge—no matter how far he was willing to go to honor it.

  That leaves Jack Torrance. Always suffering through the present caused by a relentless past. Always the caretaker who had to “take care of” his family. Always driven to roam the halls; sit and stare; seek memories he could not nor should ever connect; and retype the same sentence just as he relives the same insane tragedy.

  Here’s Johnny, again and again, hearing his own voice in disturbing concert with those of other Overlook staff members and with who-knows-how-many other voices, telling him and begging him to “correct” his son and bash his wife’s brains in. He told Danny he would never do anything to hurt him. He didn’t try to hurt Danny, but he did try to kill him. He told Wendy, “I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’m just gonna bash your brains in. I’m gonna bash ’em right the fuck in!” as he laughs at what his own voice has said.

  Little Danny also hears a voice, the voice of Tony, a little boy that lives inside his mouth and tells him things.

  Do you … hear any voices?

  What do they tell you … to do?

  8

  * * *

  Hippies and Hogs and Horses

  There are hippie dives, biker bars and cowboy saloons, with little mixing between them despite there being only little differences between them. They’re rough and unwelcoming to strangers, more about the atmosphere—the kind that’s only comfortable to the hippies, bikers and cowboys who spend more time inside there than in any other kind of “home”—than about the amenities.

  The three habitués wouldn’t be too eager to issue an invitation to either of the others, but they too have more in common than they’d want to admit. Often outlaws, always outsiders. Open to action and closed to interference. Moving boundaries and restricting membership. Conformity is rejected, while codes regulate behavior.

  Jack Nicholson has played his share of hippies and ridden his quota of Hogs and horses, particularly during the early portion of his career. Psych-Out was his more notable counterculture role (though he seemed a little old to be trying to make it with a psychedelic rock band); Easy Rider was his biggest biker flick (but he didn’t play a biker in that one); and The Missouri Breaks was his highest profile western (despite the movie having been stolen by Marlon Brando with his bewildering array of getups and accents).

  * * *

  In Psych-Out, a Dick Clark production originally titled The Love Children, Nicholson plays a rock guitarist subtly named Stoney and is third-billed to Susan Strasberg and Dean Stockwell even though he is on screen more than anyone. Director Richard Rush made the film when he was in love with the hippie scene in San Francisco. In a heavy-handed fashion, a product not of Rush’s direction but of American International’s intention, the movie reflected how the glory was receding as “the drug culture had flourished to a point where it became troublesome.”1

  Nicholson is a main subject of director of photography László Kovács’ rack focus handheld opening, though San Francisco is its true star. Nicholson has the first line, using a giggly and high-pitched tone, while his overall performance belies the hippie exploitation purpose of the release. He’s been said to be careful and attentive to the point of obsession about costume. In this film, he wears a vest from a three-piece suit with no shirt underneath—possibly as commentary on the emptiness beneath the “capitalist pig” of the time or possibly because it looked interesting—with beads and medallions, black jeans, Beatle boots and an unfortunate ponytail.

  Psych-Out (1968) features Nicholson (left) as a rocker named Stoney. He looked a little old to be playing in clubs, a bit stiff to be a pro on the axe, yet comfortable enough in the settings to be enjoying himself. He’s shown here with fellow Haight-Ashbury hippie Dave, portrayed by Dean Stockwell.

  He looks the part. Clothes may help define the character, but the eyes define the soul, and at this point in his career, Nicholson has learned that his eyes can be suitably expressive, showing a true understanding of his reality and his character’s understanding. This is an actor moving through a lengthy transition who’s become more assured of his screen presence.

  Nicholson’s Stoney is a man pulled between standard (“bourgeois”) morality and hippie sensibility. He’s a cool creator in his psych-rock band, yet a strict and authoritarian leader of that band. He’s into free love, with deaf runaway Jenny (Strasberg). Jack also foreshadows his devil character in The Witches of Eastwick with a dirty flirty look and reaction as the group’s blonde flautist invites him to bed. He has a nice, tender post-gig bed scene where he’s slow and sweet with Jenny, changing attitude entirely the next morning when he dismisses her with more than the expected brushoff, but with a physicality that’s like flicking away something small.

  This character has more depth than an exploitation movie deserves, as Nicholson perceptively portrays a guy who is on planet Earth in a scene with Strasberg and Dean Stockwell (Dave)—who is anything but an Earthling in this story. Later, Stoney moves from hipster to sanctimonious square at his pad in a big, dramatic scene that foretells his ’70s Five Easy Pieces mode with a pissed and pinched putdown of Jenny and Dave.

  Nicholson secured future indie director Henry Jaglom a role in the film as “the guy who psyched out,” a friend whose bad trip leads to hallucination and an attempted attack on himself with a circular saw. As Jaglom described it, “I was the moral of the film, which was if you take bad LSD—get your hand cut off … [laughs].”2

  Gary Kent, who created the innovative special effects and gaffed all the stunts, said that Nicholson particularly identified with this character.

  He was beginning to be a leader … not of hippies, but peace people, and Jack was into that and you could feel it in the role of Stoney. He didn’t have to push so hard or ask many questions, he just knew Stoney, knew the guy, knew his buddies on the Sunset Strip. And Jack at that time knew many of them and was already starting to get a reputation among that street crowd of being someone who had earned their props, so to speak.3

  In a scene inside an art gallery with Bruce Dern as a Jesus figure and brother of Jenny, Stoney becomes the semi-square voice of reason, providing a true character study that’s based on caricatures and clichés just as it represents an unfolding of Stoney from hippie musician to a man who’s hip to this crisis of life. Stoney assumes the role of the sensible adult, shaking Dave and scolding him that Jenny “does not understand” the drug he’s given her, his ’60s version of “can’t handle the truth.”

  After a stylish, House of Usher destruction of Dern’s character, we’re taken through a melodramatic battle between a deaf Jenny and a drug-addled Dave through the busy and oblivious San Francisco traffic. There’s a terrible reaction shot by Nicholson after Dave is mortally slammed by a car (a stunt by Kent). Nicholson also had a weak and contrived reaction to a motorcycle mishap death in Hells Angels on Wheels. They both looked like what they were: shots made separately to simulate a person’s fake reaction to an event that never actually occurred.

  Garry Marshall was best known as the executive producer of the TV classics The Odd Couple, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, as well as director on the movie hits Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries. When I showed him an original one-sheet poster for Psych-Out, he yelled, “Psych-Out! Oh, that’s the truth!” and reminisced further, “I wasn’t even billed here. I was unknown.” It’s interesting how, over four decades later, an actor who’s become more known as a director and writer and producer would be concerned about credits. But then he exclaimed, “I arrested Jack Nicholson!” Marshall played a narc—“the fuzz” as he
put it—and that “it was my own suit” he wore when hassling Stoney and Ben (Adam Roarke) because “that’s what Richard Rush told me to do.”4

  * * *

  Paying the bills had to be what told Nicholson to take part in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. One of the last gasp productions of the classic-style movie musicals, this Broadway reworking uncomfortably tries to be “hip” and relevant within the familiar vernacular of that genre. They don’t mix.

  The Institute of the American Musical founder and president Miles Kreuger called the film adaptation “a complete catastrophe. I thought Barbra Streisand was, as usual, hopelessly overacting and that it was one of the worst movies she ever made. The casting of Yves Montand, I thought, was disgraceful. He’s old enough to be her father.”5

  Nicholson’s first scene is 42 minutes into the movie, revealing the near-future countercultural star playing sitar and dressed in hippie cool, complete with ascot. His demeanor is relaxed in his first scene with star Streisand (Daisy), playing her stepbrother Tad. He’s also at ease and natural in his second scene, using a light touch and wearing a yellow turtleneck in a scene with Larry Blyden that begins an hour and 46 minutes into the film. What could, potentially, have been his most impactful scene in the movie was a musical interlude in which he sings an Alan Jay Lerner–Burton Lane piece, “Who Is There Among Us Who Knows?” with Babs joining in toward the end.

  Nicholson’s musical debut was not to be, which very well might have done him a favor given the overall outcome. Lyricist Lerner (who wrote its screenplay!) also “hated the movie” according to the Broadway and Hollywood musical historian. “It’s not possible to like it. It’s a terrible, terrible movie,” declared Kreuger, who largely blames director Vincente Minnelli, whom he felt lost his way over the years.

  “He became so affective. Minnelli starts out so well. Meet Me In St Louis is undoubtedly the best musical film of the 1940s and some of his other films in that period are so good. But then, he begins to get carried away with his own brilliance, and I think defeats himself.”

  As one of the country’s foremost experts on musicals, Miles shared his observation that Minnelli was “a very peculiar man, very eccentric. I don’t think he could have been very eccentric at the beginning. I think he just kept getting more and more peculiar.”6

  What might have been his most significant scene in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) was a musical interlude in which Nicholson sings an Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane piece, “Who Is There Among Us Who Knows?” with Barbra Streisand joining in toward the end. It wound up on the cutting room floor.

  When the hopelessly dated and painfully un-mod Minnelli film faced the reality of the marketplace, Nicholson’s big singing scene was amongst the material cut as the original roadshow format was scrapped (thus allowing audiences to escape the theater earlier). Oh, but what might have been….

  * * *

  Oddly, this uneasy combination of anachronistic musical and forced coolness was in production at the same time that the legitimate hippie masterpiece Easy Rider was mired in its protracted editing process. Unusual in its synthesis of the hippie exploitation with the biker exploitation, yet transcending any identification with genre pictures, Easy Rider is the film that delivered the counterculture into the culture. A biker movie becomes an art film. A hippie flick becomes a festival darling. Director Dennis Hopper and lead Peter Fonda become names in their own right, while supporting actor Nicholson finally breaks through as an overnight star over a decade after he began trying.

  Yet it’s a world of contradictions. Hippies are driven by the capitalist need to strike it rich and retire. Bikers don’t belong to gangs, but remain unaffiliated. Wyatt’s sidekick Billy the Kid isn’t a gunslinging outlaw, but a cocaine smuggler.

  The pair are alert and thoughtful and caring and mature. Sure, they smoke weed and don’t punch a clock, but these longhairs are no revolutionaries. In fact, their Southern lawyer might just be the most liberal, activist and suspicious out of the bunch. Nicholson’s George Hanson is gregarious, a glad-hander who thoughtfully questions the notion of freedom. He’s a good old boy who’s paranoid about outer space beings living among us. He’s happy and despondent, spontaneous and vigilant, rambunctious and reserved. Hanson is a complex character. Nicholson portrays him with an intricacy of personality that displays these contradictions realistically and with full force. Fonda admired Nicholson’s dedication to getting a handle on his character. “He studied the scene every day. There are photos of Jack sitting in a field with a script in his hands. He told me he was ready, and he must have told Hopper the same thing.”7

  Nicholson doesn’t just talk about freedom, he embodies it. Hopper and Fonda, Billy and Wyatt, ride in tandem, Hopper alone and performing stunts and Fonda together with Nicholson—who performs a more poetic and meaningful stunt. He waves his hands like a happy and leisurely bird. Jack is the easy rider (note the singular form of the noun used in a film title about two characters).

  In these moments, he lives freedom, contradicting the fact that the scene was filmed the day after freedom died a little more when Bobby Kennedy was shot.

  For Nicholson the actor, he is flying free … free from dead-end roles such as On a Clear Day or any further TV work like Bronco and The Andy Griffith Show. When rednecks pound his character to death after the second campfire scene (with his murder played out stylized, with the cutting reminiscent of the Psycho shower scene) each blow—“THWUMP!”—kills a paycheck like Ensign Pulver and—“THWACK!”—finishes off the dreaded reliance on television as career filler. The Nicholson who was ready to give up acting and pursue producing, directing and writing, was violently put out of his misery. The Jack who was ready to become “Jack” had been freed from George Hanson’s corpse, the dead making way for the rise of a vigorous and living career.

  * * *

  Before this decade-in-the-making overnight success, however, there were more biker flicks to be made. In this tale of two motorcycle movies, Hells Angels on Wheels represents one of the best of the genre and Rebel Rouser among the worst.

  Richard Rush used an active, in-motion direction with real people in the street and a lot of bikers, courtesy of his genius decision to enlist actual MCs (Motorcycle Clubs) for the film. Using the Hells Angels provided P.R., realism and credibility, quantity, plus a much tougher looking biker than supplied by Central Casting.

  Perhaps the most famous of Angels, Sonny Barger, told me that the club voted to do it after having been offered work on other films and turning them down. He recalled the filming as fun and commented that Nicholson seemed a natural. “It was really funny, because everybody from every other chapter thought he was from another chapter. He was that good.” Asked if that was due to how he handled a bike, Barger firmly corrected, “It was because of how he handled himself. He fit right into the program.”8

  There’s an immediacy and a closeness to the shooting style, so you become part of the MC, involved rather than simply viewing. For instance, Leslie Kovacs shoots from in front of a car, creating some shots similar to what he later did on Easy Rider, traveling past a three-quarter camera view while in motion.

  Rush called it “the first picture that was really representative of me … when I finally caught on to what it is that I had to do to make my pictures unique and mine.” Making the film personal started with liberating himself from the script and using a good deal of improvisation.9

  Though second billed to Adam Roarke (Buddy), Nicholson has the strongest role as Poet, with the greatest dramatic range and situational opportunities. He’s the explosive Jack in his first scene when he pushes and yells at his boss at the gas station. He shows intensity in an introductory confrontation scene with Bull (Richard Anders) and the Angels. More instinctive in this set-up than in the fight itself, his natural acting strength recovers when Buddy breaks up the fight. He’s part-sensitive, part-heel, in a nice moment with Sabrina Scharf (Shill). As she plays nurse to his injuries after the fight,
Nicholson betrays the character’s self-conscious, true reaction to his own vulnerability. He transitions from a high-pitched, seemingly spontaneous laugh—catches himself—then plays it down to a tougher persona while going straight into pickup mode. Met with a less than enthusiastic response, Poet remains tough as the sneering, drawling, ambivalent antihero.

  Three overlapping emotions in one sequence makes sense for a character named Poet, but is not necessarily an expectation for such a low-budget exploitation flick.

  A later scene with Scharf features another dance from emotion to emotion. Intensely erotic in its intimate depiction of their kissing, lovemaking at Shill’s place becomes playful as Poet asserts his brighter, smiling self when interrupted by her roommate. He’s good at playing it coy and embarrassed in front of the intruding woman. Then he rejects Shill because he’s square and can’t do it in front of someone else.

  Complex relationship scenes like those with Sabrina Scharf anticipate a much later strength as mature romantic comedy lead in films such as Something’s Gotta Give and As Good as It Gets.

  Gary Kent, who was stunt coordinator and played a small part in the film, doubled Nicholson in his fight scenes (which Kent also staged). He observed Nicholson work on his character. “I became aware of how really dedicated he was, because he spent a lot of time on Poet to make that work, and when I watch it and see that’s tough to do, knowing so many tough guys and not a lot of them are really poetic, but Jack pulled that off.”

  The vantage point of an important member of the crew, yet one with certain, isolated responsibilities, gave Kent a special insight into the process. Over 30 years later, he still marveled when relating to me, “It was a different type of approach and it surprised me because it was a totally different character and a hard character to play because he had to be a biker and he had to be sensitive and tough at the same time and make it work. That was the first time I became aware that Jack had no fear about taking difficult situations and playing someone who wasn’t the handsome lead but someone who was almost a character actor.”