Quintessential Jack

by Scott Edwards

  In The Evening Star, he returns as astronaut Garrett Breedlove for a charming reunion with Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway. Like Melvin Udall and Harry Sanborn, this man has grown by opening himself to those around him instead of focusing solely on his own immediate needs. He’s caring and thoughtful, but not at the sacrifice of humor and personality.

  The movie may have been an unnecessary and annoying sequel to Terms of Endearment, but Nicholson and MacLaine’s time together on-screen provided a few moments as precious as those shared by the characters in life. As with Nicholson’s other strong romantic comedies, moviegoers get to see the interplay between people older than the typical rom-com pairings, and in ways neither “icky” nor cloying.

  Nicholson has also had his share of less refined takes on the genre, playing more for the comedy than the romantic in mid-period examples Goin’ South (1978), Prizzi’s Honor (1985) and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). Nicholson directed himself as Henry Lloyd Moon in the first title, a western farce released seven years after his official directorial debut, Drive, He Said.

  Perhaps to make himself more comfortable, he surrounded himself with plenty of friends: Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito from Cuckoo’s Nest, Jeff Morris, Luana Anders, B.J. Merholz, producer Harry Gittes and screenwriter John Herman Shaner. He even wrote the part of Whitey for Ed Begley Jr. when the young actor asked if there was a part for him. “Beg, I’ll see what I can do.”5

  Tracey Walter, who later worked on The Two Jakes and Batman (again, as in this film, playing a member of Nicholson’s gang), was “overwhelmed by being part of a film like that with people like that.” He called it “a great film, a great experience. Me, Veronica [Cartwright] and Danny DeVito—we played the Moon Gang.”6

  Nicholson’s portrayal of Moon is quite broad (as is John Belushi’s debut as one of Moon’s gang members). Moon has an odd vocal affectation that sounds like Alfalfa with cotton in each nostril or suffering from a permanent stuffed head. Begley fondly recalled that “we partied every night,” pointing out that it was the ’70s and that sort of thing was pretty common, though “no matter what we did, we showed up on time and we knew our lines.”7

  Nicholson plays a nice comedic false sincerity in the gallows speech pleading for a wife in order to secure his freedom from a hanging fate. He establishes the character with big gestures, expansive movement and exaggerated expressions. As the film progresses, in certain sequences you have the overdone and mugging Jack—delivering what he is so often accused of—but in this film it seems to make an odd sense. The bombast isn’t so much overacting as it is a true representation of Moon himself. He plays it true when he plays over-the-Moon.

  Later, in a scene with his savior-wife-boss, played beautifully by Mary Steenburgen in her film debut, Jack deftly softens his characterization as he moves toward and away from the camera on a porch swing. As if that action itself helps calm Henry down, he opens up tenderly and talks about how he knows about dreams, revealing the failure of his own. His eyes are wide and alive. His eyes make the character and define the man.

  Henry must court Steenburgen’s Julia after they are already married. At first, Julia takes advantage of saving Henry from hanging by turning him into a virtual slave, mining for gold. As the marriage of convenience and the marriage of forced labor become a marriage of admiration and then of love, the two are shown more in-frame, together (as directed by Nicholson) and the pace of the film slows.

  Henry Moon becomes a romantic action hero of a different sort, a working man and outlaw who is honest as both. He has a surface truth, earnest and “just tryin’ to impress” Julia. He even adds a sweetness to an escape scene. After having been trapped in a collapsed mine, Moon discovers an opening into a field, yet takes the time to notice wildflowers and pick a bouquet to present to his wife as a way to break the surprise of freedom.

  Moon is a big character, yet Nicholson keeps him in just enough control without limiting the man’s range. Henry navigates from insincere charmer and failed outlaw to dedicated worker and romantic pursuer. He explodes with personality at one end of the scale, then pulls inward with intimacy at the other. Henry’s relationship to Julia travels from a cold employer-employee status through partnership all the way to genuine love. This juxtaposes his movement away from the old gang, from playful camaraderie (and in the case of Veronica Cartwright, a romance of sorts) to the kind of uncomfortable distance experienced by old schoolmates who meet at reunions only to find they no longer have anything in common.

  Beyond the physicality of his portrayal, accented with moments of tenderness, Nicholson also displays superior riding ability. His training and prior experience in westerns shows in the opening chase scene as well as a stunt later in the movie when he jumps onto his horse from the ground in one smooth move.

  When Henry and Julia get back together after the escape, their transformation of each other is complete, a symbolic embodiment of the spirit of romance. In the beginning, he was dirty and she pristine. At the end, he is clean and she is filthy and happy about it, though it didn’t hurt that they are now both filthy rich and “goin’ south” to Mexico.

  * * *

  Another romantic comedy featuring an oddly nasal accent from Nicholson and a non-traditional romance was Prizzi’s Honor, directed by John Huston (who last worked with Jack as a fellow actor in Chinatown). Similar in characterization, Charley Partanna was a 600-mile trip from Jimmy Hoffa, Detroit to Brooklyn. Through the film, Nicholson never has his mouth fully closed, a mouth-breather who pronounces “ask” as “axe.” His mouth was also often downturned, a bit like Bogart and a bit like he’s always getting ready to whistle. His top lip was pulled out, a big upper lip with a thick philtrum for a Brando’s Godfather in reverse.

  The first time we see Nicholson, he looks like a young hood as in Studs Lonigan. He plays the character with an active, scrunchy face of the Italian gangster from Brooklyn, the made guy who always has to look out for enemies and friends. Perhaps Nicholson’s New Jersey roots and his New York City birth come to life in this character, inherited by Charley Partanna.

  The soul of Prizzi’s Honor (1985) is the relationship between Nicholson as Charley Partanna and Kathleen Turner as Irene Walker. A mob parody, this John Huston film relies on its comedic-romantic core to connect with audiences.

  As with other later comedic efforts, Nicholson here is more successful when light rather than pushing too much or grasping for comedic attention. Always slow, always low, his mannerisms and speech underscore instead of undercut. He exhibits confidence and style. One nice recurring touch of character energy is how his use of body language shows Charley to be more relaxed when in the role of hit man. He’s in his element, comfortably killing while awkward with everyday sociability.

  The soul of the film is the relationship with Kathleen Turner as Irene Walker. He convincingly plays it smitten in their introductory scene at a church wedding. In a cute touch, he does a slow motion version of the Jack hair wipe before approaching her the first time to dance. In a late night call with Irene, he’s flustered like a little boy (a moment now indelibly distracted by a wonderful view of the World Trade Center in the background).

  In Nicholson’s most powerful scene, he confronts Turner after the killing of her character’s husband. He fuses voice, body and expression to create the real man. When Charley is yelling, it is real and the anger is authentic. Then a classic Jack look upward, through narrowed eyelids while his arms shake out to his sides, reveal his secret acting weapon. He uses his eyes. They move, darting as she informs him that she had been at the wedding to make a hit.

  Many actors, even the great ones, do not necessarily realize what Nicholson does with the use of his eyes. They are physical and their motion serves as a sort of body language to express the state of mind of the character. They are not there to see but to reflect. In A Few Good Men, he is able to keep them immobile to show Jessep’s obsessive self-control, while here they travel wildly both in response to betrayal and as
emblematic of Charley’s discomfort with a confrontation that doesn’t involve firing a gun. He also partly defines the character by looking up to expose the bottom of the whites of his eyes as a recurring expression.

  Nicholson’s portrayal of uneasiness is the most richly detailed aspect of his Charley Partanna. When Anjelica Huston sarcastically thanks him for being “a lotta help,” he shows confusion with a fast eye blink. After being found out by The Family, he’s ill at ease and overly animated at dinner with William Hickey. After Irene confesses her role as hit woman, Nicholson adopts the same look and the same body hump as in his Hoffa “I’m gonna do what I gotta do” scene.

  Later in the film, Nicholson rounds out the character in his “nothing but bodyguards and money” speech, in which he talks about being alone like the three older men he addresses—father, lawyer and Don—displaying a passion for life in opposition of their perverse passion for death. This depth of emotion belies the dramedy approach of the film, taking it beyond the movie itself.

  His work in The Witches of Eastwick doesn’t include any such transcendent moments, but one key sequence toward the end justifies its preceding bombastic majority. Nicholson is the perfect actor for the role of Daryl Van Horne in this chick flick with a devilish twist, but it wasn’t necessarily the perfect role for the actor. That is, aside from having fun and working with a trio of glamorous actresses: Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher and Susan Sarandon.

  Richard Kaufman served as Nicholson’s violin coach on The Witches of Eastwick (1987). He worked with the actor for three months, not to teach him to play the instrument, but to teach him to look like he plays.

  John Updike, who wrote the novel on which the film was based, snuck into an afternoon showing at a local mall with his wife, Martha. Updike biographer Adam Begley related to me how she loathed it, but that he was less bothered. The special effects distracted him from the screenplay’s deviation from the book, “leaving him free to enjoy the three witches, each lovable in her own way.”8

  The movie seems trite until a transitional seduction scene with Cher that snaps it tighter when she violently rejects his advances and him. Van Horne then becomes the insightful, sensitive drill to the truth that allows him to disarm the woman.

  With Susan Sarandon, he doesn’t sweet-talk her, he soft-talks her, using tenderness to breathe out song and righteousness.

  Conductor and violinist Richard Kaufman, who served for 18 years as an MGM music supervisor, explained to me the amount of effort that went into training for the musical sequences. Credited as Nicholson’s violin coach on The Witches of Eastwick (though he also coached Jack on piano and Sarandon as conductor), Kaufman worked with the actor for three months, just about every day. “The idea is to not teach an actor to play the instrument,” he said, “but to teach them to look like they play, and to look like they’ve been playing it for most of their life” as realistically and as comfortably as possible.9

  Nicholson’s legendary dedication to research and Method-like preparation is evident on-screen, despite the brevity of his appearance. Kaufman related,

  I think that being the consummate actor that he is, Jack wanted to look absolutely realistic in every part of his performance. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to the idea that he would look like he was really playing the instruments. The music that they chose was part of a Paganini “Caprice,” which is not an easy piece to play, even if you’re a great violinist.10

  Despite this dedication, he mainly plays a caricature of “Jack,” the actor’s name in quotes rather than the actor in control. Even Nicholson hinted as such when telling an interviewer prior to filming, “I’ve been studying to play the Devil. Of course, a lot of people think I’ve been preparing for it all my life.”11

  While Updike had been careful to keep Van Horne from stealing the show as the Devil tends to do, Begley pointed out that Nicholson, “who had no such scruple, gave an outrageously exuberant performance.”12 Nicholson’s face is puffy and fleshy, yet he succeeds in coming across as unnaturally sexual as “just your average horny little devil” who repeats the invitation to “have another cherry” in a completely purulent manner.

  He becomes less “Jack” and more Nicholson when he is the victim rather than the lech. When he blows up and slams his phone down after Cher hangs up on him, it’s not enough to throw it down; so he peers at it with vile hatred. When abandoned by his ladies, Van Horne experiences witch withdrawal, reducing him to a slobbering, blubbery mess whose hair is out of control and all over the place. With his eyes forced upward and defocused, the actor resembles Patrick Magee as attacked and damaged in A Clockwork Orange. Though nonplussed by some of Jack’s excesses, author Updike was pleased that the filmmakers conveyed that his story was about women.13

  As in many others of his films, Nicholson seemingly doesn’t care how he looks, vanquishing vanity in favor of character. Instead, this student of the visual actually does care and care very much how he looks, purposely destroying the “star” in favor of the rare shock of seeing a Hollywood star in the most unglamorous fashion.

  As victim, Nicholson also becomes more physical, such as when he blows up at Cher while ironing, pleading for “a little respect, a little trust” as he marches maniacally with posturing and bluster. This palpable movement erupts when the witches escalate their attacks from emotional hurt to bodily harm. Nicholson has to be having fun doing the climactic, solo voodoo scene, as he’s stuck and feathered, Marcel Marceau–ing while slipping and sliding.

  Through pantomime and physical comedy, the trademark messed-up Jack is wet and disheveled when disgusted and disgusting, running the gamut from boorish to sensitive, hurt to befuddled, sarcastic to sympathetic.

  He rants and pleads, just serious enough to portray power and invite empathy, and just exaggerated enough to evoke laughs and welcome the audience to play along. Nicholson’s “Do you think God knew what He was doing when He created women?” speech perfectly encapsulates the actor’s character energy. He delivers the words with sound and fury.

  His physical prowess tracks the emotions of the words along with the emotions themselves. Nothing else matters during these moments. The overdone, pushing attitude of much of the preceding film is forgotten. The Jackisms have slicked down to a polished portrayal. And the punch of the words themself create an emotional momentum with verbal stabs that pierce the screen and enter your consciousness to stay.

  Van Horne truly wants to know if women were a mistake or a “plot.” The Devil has been hurt! He asks the churchgoers whether anything can be done, be it vaccine, immunity or exercise. What matters is that we believe Van Horne, we believe that for these genuine pained moments that one hell of a playboy has been left helpless, struggling and grasping for answers by his true loves. That’s what hurts most, and we feel his pain with just enough comic subtlety more in search of a knowing grin rather than an understanding tear.

  To complete the moment, Nicholson retreats from the church to a limo, walking toward the witches in a limp-run parody of Jack Torrance’s race after Danny and race against freezing in The Shining. Jack sometimes likes these self-referential moments. We do as well.

  * * *

  Nicholson seduces three witches here, but was seducing the camera 16 years earlier in Henry Jaglom’s A Safe Place. Genreless, this BBS production featured Nicholson in a cameo that was purely romantic with no comedy. Shown 14 minutes in, this fleeting foreshadowing of a later love scene with Tuesday Weld does not appear in full form until the 33-minute mark.

  In an entirely improvised scene on a rooftop, Mitch (Jack) flirts with Susan (Tuesday) and with the camera, encircling her in a POV shot as he walks and eats, all the while looking at the camera and at us. A throwaway as it might seem, done as a favor to writer-director Jaglom, Nicholson fully connects in motion, using suggestive raised eyebrows, a winsome and toothsome smile to charm Weld’s character and the audience.

  Jaglom and Jack had made a deal to act in each other’s directorial debuts; Henr
y was featured in Drive, He Said and Nicholson kept his word, even after achieving stardom. Jaglom said, “He did my first movie for a color television set that he really liked.”14

  Mitch is simultaneously natural and good-naturedly putting her on. A Safe Place may very well mark our first view of Nicholson as the star ladies’ man, introducing his trademark eyebrows and smile.

  Weld is stunningly beautiful and fresh, yet she also shows an emotional range from joyous and innocent to lustful and intense to reflective and pensive. She goes from playful to tearful. Her eyes are the star of the movie.

  Nicholson’s scant screen time belies his impact. His second appearance, a love scene in which he employs plenty of tongue on Weld’s neck, is intercut with pieces featuring Tuesday and Orson Welles until Welles’ “Magician” makes Mitch disappear with triumphant laughter—taking up a total of seven minutes of screen time.

  After a brief blink in a darker love scene at the 51-minute mark, Nicholson returns again 63 minutes into the film at 4:00 a.m. in film time, taking Fred’s (Philip Proctor) place with Susan using a natural physicality that combines discomfort with desire. In such a small and parceled role, Nicholson still delivers an emotional reality. After their newest coupling, Mitch levels a disturbed intensity, using clipped speech in his lower register, until he and Tuesday’s character return to cuddling and kissing.