Title: THE MAYOR OF COOLVILLE; Oscar's favorite actor drops his wicked charm to play a worn-out retiree from Omaha. Jack Nicholson insists he's only acting his age. But isn't that as cool as it gets?(ENTERTAINMENT)

Date: 12/15/2002; Publication: Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN); Author: Covert, Colin

Byline: Colin Covert; Staff Writer

Beverly Hills, Calif. -- Jack Nicholson is not the first movie star who comes to mind for the role of a clammy, purse-mouthed life-insurance actuary. From the mental patient in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to the ax murderer in "The Shining" to the Joker in "Batman" to the comically bigoted novelist in "As Good As It Gets," Nicholson has specialized in larger-than-life characters.

Yet in Alexander Payne's dark comedy "About Schmidt," which opens Friday, Nicholson plays a weary, colorless Omaha retiree. Warren Schmidt would be at home exchanging narrow-minded platitudes with Sinclair Lewis' George F. Babbitt.

All in all, it's quite a stretch for the Mayor of Coolville, now baring his famous teeth at the accolades and Oscar buzz that his complex, subtle performance has earned. The ever-rebellious Nicholson is still breaking the rules, defying his youth-conscious peers simply by playing his age.

Payne called his legendary star a pussycat to work with - "disarming, funny and completely accessible." The actor also is effortlessly entertaining at what he calls "the press aspect of the job."

Nicholson does not need tungsten lamps to light up a room. He takes control just by strolling in. But he said that he identifies with the weary, flabby, lonely Schmidt to some degree.

"I looked at him as the man I might have become if I wasn't lucky enough to wind up in show business," Nicholson said.

"The retirement issues, what happens when the normal activities of your job no longer drive your day, your loved ones move away from you, your children get older. My daughter Jennifer has a clothing shop she's opening. She's in her own business now so I don't get to talk to her as much as I did a year or so ago, those kinds of things. So there's always a lot to identify with.

"I had a mathematical background; he's an actuary. Y'know, it's a slight stretch of the imagination, but most people are alike in most ways, so I never have trouble identifying with a character that I'm playing."

Once he found the character's walk, a heavy march as if he carried an invisible bag of concrete on his shoulders, Nicholson had the key to the man.

His retirement `property'

Nicholson, now 65, has been considering his own AARP years for more than a decade. There's a shortage of great parts for actors in their 60s, he conceded - even $15-million-per-picture actors like Nicholson - "unless you play melodramatically the judge or the general."

In the late 1980s, as a hedge against that drought of opportunities, Nicholson bought a property called "The Murder of Napoleon," planning to play the part in later years. He thought of it as "the ultimate story of retirement."

Nicholson believes the emperor "allowed himself to be killed" in exile on the island of St. Helena.

"Here was a man who conquered the world, not once but twice. Here was a man who had been betrayed by everybody in his life with a couple of exceptions. His brothers and sisters whom he'd made kings and queens. All of the generals who opposed him in the field were all former students of his."

Nicholson was intrigued by the story's themes of "release in retirement," he said. In "About Schmidt," he found related ideas.

"In the course of this movie, everything is sort of systematically taken away from him; his wife dies, his daughter's going away, he feels the distance there. His job is now over. He sees that he's immediately replaced by another way of doing it. And as he travels," piloting a Winnebago across the Midwest for his resentful daughter's wedding, "so are, one by one, his illusions in life."

The film's posters show Nicholson bleary-eyed, wild-haired and unshaven, an image that he "fought very hard" to persuade the producers to use.

"It's sort of like what I go through in the mirror every morning, although I do stand kind of sideways," he chuckled.

He's never considered plastic surgery, he said. "I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was still in my early 30s. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.

"As you can see, I don't have any plugs or tucks or this or that. But, y'know, let people do what they want. I just don't - I look at it as mutilation."

He laughed, recalling an Oprah interview of his sometime costar Meryl Streep in which "she called me - what did she call me? `That lovable old wreck.'

Nicholson's lack of physical vanity is matched by that of Kathy Bates as a bohemian in-law-to-be who completely disrobes to join him in a hot tub. He made the potentially awkward scene a pleasure, she recalled.

"It was fun, actually," Bates said. "Hot tub, Jack Nicholson. He was great. After we did the first part of the scene and I was getting out and getting my robe on, he shook my hand and said, `Beautiful work, honey.' That was great." She did loosen up with a cosmopolitan before shedding her clothes, she admitted, "but just one. I had too many lines."

Affection for the characters

The satirical slant of "About Schmidt" sparked a controversy after its Cannes premiere, when some viewers found its portrait of Middle America mean-spirited. (Payne grew up in Omaha, and filmed "About Schmidt" there, as he did his earlier features "Election" and "Citizen Ruth.")

Nicholson calls it evenhanded and said he trusts audiences to understand its humane affection for its characters, although he admitted to some jitters during the production.

"All I can think about is when we shot it, y'know, these insecurities that we're talking about, `Well, will anyone want to see it? His wife dies and, Jesus, I'm depressed. It's a comedy!' And so forth.

"Y'know, when you make it, you hope that there's still a strong sensibility that responds to command, poise, trust in the audience. Y'know, you can't say this in a boardroom in Hollywood cause you'll be immediately dismissed. But now we're in Omaha, let's try and do it right.

"You start thinking, `Well, is subtlety and humanity suddenly a bad word in the movie business?' I don't know. No one's blowing up and ramming their car into the supermarket and all of that. But I'll do that movie next, probably."

In fact, his next film is the comedy "Anger Management," in which he plays a maniacal therapist assigned to treat Adam Sandler.

"I was curious to see how they make comedy today," he said. "I don't know that they wrote it specifically for me or not, but he brought the idea to me. And then I wrote it for me. I'm only kidding, only kidding."

Nicholson usually spends Christmas in Aspen, Colo., worlds away from his childhood as a beautician's son in gritty Neptune, N.J. The approaching holidays put him in mind of the year he wound up on Santa's "naughty" list.

"I'm one of the kids who actually got coal for Christmas one year. I had sawed the leg off of the dining-room table and then refused to cop. And they went all the way down the line with me. I opened the package and there it was, coal.

"Well, I cried so hard they didn't last very long. They went into the closet and got the old sled and the baseball glove out. I had my way in the end," he said, savoring the memory.

- Colin Covert is at ccovert@startribune.com.

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