Title: Chemistry,
comedy, and a few surprises
Date: 12/7/2003; Publication: The Record (
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
12-07-2003
Chemistry, comedy, and a few surprises
By AMY LONGSDORF, SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Date: 12-07-2003, Sunday
Section: ENTERTAINMENT
Edtion: All Editions.=.Sunday
It takes a lot to unsettle Jack Nicholson but, on the set of "Something's
Gotta Give," Diane Keaton managed to rattle him nearly every day.
"She's surprising," he says, clearly relishing the memory of his
co-star. "Sometimes before a scene, she'd look me right in the eye and
say, 'You're disgusting.' And then, you're supposed to start the love
scene."
Nicholson chuckles and flashes his mischievous grin. "She's playful, too.
Every once in a while, she'd come over and say, 'I love you,' and man, I'll
tell you, I believed it. I didn't know whether I was going to be engaged to her
at dinner or what."
Nicholson, 66, and Keaton, 57, passed the chemistry test with such flying
colors that rumors began circulating that the dynamic duo were dating.
Not true, says Keaton, who admits she finds Nicholson's devilish charm very
appealing. "Look at Jack's face, my God, it's one
of the most beautiful faces in the world.
"Sometimes when I'm with Jack, I feel that I'm back in the Thirties and
we're doing a Cary Grant picture. There's a kind of formality to the respect
that he pays the art of acting."
In "Something's Gotta Give," written and directed by Nancy Myers
("What Women Want"), Nicholson plays an aging record company exec
with a reputation for romancing younger women. During a long weekend, he
unexpectedly flips for the mother (Keaton) of his new trophy girlfriend (Amanda
Peet).
If things weren't complicated enough, Keanu Reeves, playing Nicholson's doctor,
also finds himself mooning over Mom.
The first time Nicholson and Keaton teamed up was in 1981 for a couple of
scenes in "Reds." She played fiery author Louise Bryant and he was
soused playwright Eugene O'Neill. Making an entire movie together was a much
different experience for the pair.
"This was a reintroduction into the world of Jack," says Keaton.
"This time, I really did get to know him. We were forced into friendship.
Tough life, I know."
Arriving separately at a
"This is always so intimidating," she says as she takes a seat in one
of the hotel's suites.
Nicholson saunters into the same suite an hour or so later, rife with anecdotes
about subjects ranging from his sex life to his nicotine habit. Supremely
confident, the
Needless to say, there's a lot of the actors in the
characters they play. In fact, Myers says she tailored both roles for her
stars. Keaton, like the successful playwright she embodies in the movie, is
unattached and has been for a long time. (She is raising two adopted children -
Dexter, 6, and Duke, 3.)
Although she's enjoyed high-profile relationships with co-stars Warren Beatty,
Al Pacino, and Woody Allen, Keaton has never married. Ask if it's because she's
never met the right person, she says, "I think that I've met some right
people, but I think that maybe I wasn't right."
Nicholson has a reputation as one of
But, he insists, he's not the commitment-phobe he plays in the film. "I
commit like a freight train, and always have," he insists. "I think
that's what throws people.
"But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue
most of my life because I have, and would still be if I had the energy for
it."
It's no surprise to learn the actors reacted differently to their nude scenes
in "Something's Gotta Give," which opens Friday. Nicholson bares his
bottom for a quick shot in an emergency room while Keaton strips for a sequence
in which she's inadvertently spied on by her randy co-star.
Nicholson had no qualms about his scene. This is the man, after all, who gave
the Eighties one of its steamiest love scenes alongside Jessica Lange in
"The Postman Always Rings Twice" and who did what he calls "a
year of experimental nudity in my home" in order to get comfortable in his
own skin.
"It was the Sixties," he says with a laugh and a shrug.
Keaton spent a good chunk of the Sixties as a member of the bare-all Broadway
musical "Hair." Ironically, she was the only participant who refused
to shed her clothes at the curtain call.
So, why now? "Your idea about your body changes
completely as you get older," she says. "Now, I just see it as a
body."
Did she have a couple of sips of wine beforehand? "No, I'm not a substance
abuser," she says, laughing. "I just went out there and prayed for
the best."
Going the full monty wasn't the only challenge for
Keaton. For three weeks, she and Nicholson were forced to cuddle together in
bed for the movie's big love scene. They got through it by laughing every
chance they got.
"Well, I'm Irish, and Jack's Irish, and I think that we like to laugh at
the other person when they fall, really lame stuff," she says. "Like,
if he makes a mistake, I think that's great. Just humiliating each other was a lot of fun for both of us - we definitely shared
that."
Nicholson and Keaton share another characteristic: They're both adamantly
opposed to plastic surgery. Nicholson calls it "butchery," and Keaton
agrees. "Look, there has to someone out there to represent the women who
don't have it. I'm here.
"Of course, now I say this, and watch me, in about five years, I'll decide
to go under the knife. Sometimes, I don't trust my own pronouncements. I
remember when I was really young, I said I would never
go to bed with a man until I was married. I mean, that didn't exactly hold
true."
Now in his fifth decade in the movie business, Nicholson admits that in the
wake of a trio of comedy roles in "About Schmidt," "Anger
Management," and "Something's Gotta
Give," he's found his true calling.
From now on, he's embracing the funny stuff. "I don't want to make my
living depressing people," he says. "9/11 knocked me out. As I say,
I'm very sentimental."
Keaton identifies with Nicholson's desire to leave serious fare behind. "I
mean, look, I'm limited," she says, working herself into a
self-deprecating dither. "I know where I fit as an actress. I kind of get
it now, finally, after all of these years of trying to be a dramatic actress.
I'd like to continue on in a kind of funny, light vein."
After a career that's included three Oscars (for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Terms of
Endearment," and "As Good As It Gets"), Nicholson resists the
slightest bit of false modesty.
"Most of my friends tease me after they see a movie of mine," he
admits. "They say, 'Well, what can we say, Jack? Routine
brilliant.' Believe me, it [ticks] me off.
"It's very easy to say in your company, for instance, 'I was just lucky.'
But the fact of the matter is that I had a lot to do with it. I did go to
acting classes for 12 years. I've made a lot of my own decisions. I've always
wanted to work with people who were better than me."
Unlike Nicholson, Keaton isn't one for looking back. She's not interested in
rhapsodizing about the good old days as Woody Allen's muse in such movies as
"Annie Hall" (for which she won an Oscar), "
"I don't really want to go back there," she says. "I'd rather
just keep it in my mind as a memory and life goes on."
The ultimate message of "Something's Gotta Give" is that it's never
too late for romance. It's a theme both Keaton and Nicholson subscribe to, at
least up to a point.
"There's a certain time in your life where you're biologically charged and
driven towards the opposite sex," she says. "It's so exciting that
you can't help it. Your dreams are about men, you love them, you're
excited by them. I don't feel that way now. There's a kind of freeing aspect to
that, but I still do believe in love."
Nicholson agrees. "Right now, I just can't do the dance. I sat in the
lobby of the hotel restaurant last night, and I could've knocked off two
thousand women - every age, their mothers, some of them were with their
mothers. ... I had them if I wanted them. I had to admit to one of them, 'Look,
I just can't do the dance anymore.' I said, 'If I do, you've got to be a really
good dancer.'"
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