Jack Nicholson Interview - Part 6

by Peter Bogdanovich

from Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin

Then you agree with what Orson said to me once: “The first great step downward for the acting profession was when Henry Irving was knighted.”  
Accepted knighthood and respectability. Yeah.  
 
You don’t think you’re quite respectable, Jack.  
Well, I count on the fact that I’m much more respectable than people imagine. There’s nothing in my mind that makes me think I should be in charge of the world or the country; I’ll try to rise to the occasion on anything, but I also know what I’m suited for.  
 
You have a kind of bad-boy image. The public forgives you for things they might not somebody else.  
How bad is it to feel you’re part of the great American tradition of the maverick? It’s not exactly “out there.” It’s endlessly discussed, written about, by endless amounts of people. It is a great tradition and I certainly feel I’m part of it.  
 
Was there a moment after Five Easy Pieces. and Easy Rider. and then Carnal Knowledge. when you took stock of the fact that you were now a movie star and what that meant?  
I think I sort of understood it better than most who arrives at that odd juncture in their life. And when I realized it, I made what I felt were good, proper adjustments and decisions. I felt I had a strong intuition about how to most productively deal with that situation. If I was going to do it, certainly I wanted to do it well. I knew a lot of what I felt other people’s mistakes were. Being seen or acceptance or however you want to say that, I had more than average instincts about how to deal with that. And then you learn from it by actually living honestly and clearly seeing what it is. Among other things, actors are trained for trying to find out how do they really feel. Do you really feel like a banker? You know what I mean? That kind of questioning.  
 
Was there a particular moment when you said, “I’m a movie star!”  
Yes, as I told you. Sitting in the audience at Cannes.  
 
Easy Rider..  
Yes.  
 
So you acted accordingly after that?  
Right. I remember before I got home from Cannes, Columbia asked me suddenly to meet with [director] Rouben Mamoulian. You know, I’m not even home. Rouben Mamoulian wouldn’t be in my dead center as audience. I certainly knew his reputation. Had heard about him from people like Sam [Spiegel] and so forth, I’d heard a lot about like Billy Wilder - that kind of thing.  
 
So they asked you to meet with Mamoulian...  
About a picture. Everyone didn’t know that I’d had all this previous experience. So I remember saying, “Well, no, Mr. Mamoulian, in all honesty I really am not going to read for you right now. I hope that you don’t mind.” And then the various kind of wonderful devices he used to try and get me to read during that meeting. What I remember most is talking to him about his wartime experiences and his wonderful head of gray. I liked talking to him. I always hate when I can’t fulfill what somebody else seems to want at that moment - I like to be accommodating - but I also know when I’m not going to be.  
 
Looking at your pictures over the years, you seem to have been very careful to work with major directors. That runs through your career.  
I respect the value of a great movie director and had opinions about who they were. Many of whom I already knew didn’t necessarily work the way I worked. (There’s always scuttlebutt among friends who were actors.) But I have total respect, and if I know they’re going to be trying to make a good movie and that they have a talent, I’m at their service. It is my good fortune that all of the directors I’ve worked with have wanted to work with me.  
 
Did you make decisions based on the director more than the script? In other words, if a director you respected came to you with a script you weren’t sure was so hot, you’d still go with the director, or not?  
You know, those kinds of things change and they’re different every time. But, yes, for the most part if I trust the director and if we could communicate about whatever misgivings either of us might have that would inform the ongoing work, that would be good. I always try to be clear about it. I never did anything - no matter who’s directing - where I felt, “oh, I don’t like this!”  
 
I meant, for example, On a Clear Day - did you do that because of Vincente Minnelli, or...  
I did that because of Minnelli, but I did that because of money. There’s the one job I know for sure that I did only for the money. Though I had watched and liked Vincente and thought very highly of his work. Before Easy Rider. was released, you know, there were murmurings. But I don’t count my chickens and I needed that money right then - family reasons and so forth. I tried to get out of that picture later. Vincente didn’t really have anything but a conception about what a rich hippie would be like. It was a character kind of put back onto the script in this new incarnation. Even though I needed the money, the first things were like, “Well, you’ll have to cut your hair.”  
 
At this period - this was like that generational thing: “Cut my hair to be a hippie - geez, I don’t know if he really understands what this character is or if he does, I wonder why he sees it this way.” And then, next, was a yellow trench coat, which was kind of his trademark. By now, I’m leaning back. It was a surprising job anyway - came completely out of left field. I’m working over at BBS and [producer] Howard Koch, who was a friend of mine, calls me and I went down and said, “Look, Howard, you know I need this money. I’m not in this because I think it’s the greatest thing in the world or that I’m Gene Kelly, but I think, a) I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t going to say I want to play this part this way. And b), I think it won’t be good for the picture. Howard may know me but nobody’s thinking, “Gee, Jack’s going to be a big movie star for forty years.”

That hadn’t become clear yet.  
You know, I had a certain amount of confidence, but I’ve had periods of great lack of confidence so until it’s actually happening - I may have a good intuition but I don’t count my chickens [before they hatch]. Therefore, it was kind of - I thought it was very easy for them to say, “All right, well, let’s replace the kid. I don’t know what he’s doing.” I was talked into it, of course, as easily as a pair of shoes.  
 
Do you still have moments of lack of confidence?  
Oh, yes. I think there’s nothing unique about this. It’s a moving interior mood thing. But I don’t feel worried about a career at this point. What are they going to do, yell at me? I’m a collaborator and all that, but sometime in the last week before every job I’ve ever done, there comes this sudden rush of, “Jesus Christ!” Number one, I don’t know what I’ve done to date to get ready for this job. I don’t know what I actually do. “What is it - what am I going to do?” And this throws me into total anxiety, this feeling. I don’t even know what I do. However, after the first shot, or sometime before it in makeup, I become extremely informed about what I do.  
 
You give the impression of enormous confidence, always.  
We talked earlier about my nature creatively. We talked about how I got with The Monkees. It comes from me sitting there, you know, saying, “I can write any movie about anything.” That concept. And it wasn’t just completely unfounded, but there was a certain overconfidence or braggadocio in it. I wasn’t dead certain about this. I understand what a movie is and I understand the many avenues you approach it from and felt that I could execute some of them relating to whatever it happened to be, including the time element.  
 
You seem to have kept yourself on your toes.  
Being a movie star is part of what you have, in some ways, to forget. Sometimes I’ll walk in and make the joke, “I’m coming in, it’s time to dominate.” But these are work modes. What I learned from watching myself is to eliminate bad habits. I’m educated that repeating is not necessarily good for the kind of acting I like. Repeating successes, repeating isms: Oh, they like it when you stand, walk a certain way, or whatever that is. In order to function, you have to have craft to eliminate.  
 
Eliminate the self-consciousness.  
Yes. The idea behind craft is to create something within what you’re immediately doing, take by take in a scene, so that you have something more important than the tension that everybody feels, and the self-consciousness that everybody feels when they feel they’re being watched. Anybody is going to have a certain amount of self-consciousness. There’s books and books about these things. It’s like one of the last things that I heard Lee Strasberg talked about: That an actor should prepare for when he just suddenly feels he’s done something very good in a moment. You should be pre-prepared when you drop into that level of self-awareness that the next thing you’re going to feel is embarrassment. Particularly male actors, because you pretended it successfully. These things mean something totally different to everybody. I don’t, for instance, sit there all the time eliminating the camera, or you sitting there directing me.  
 
So you use your craft basically to avoid self-consciousness or self-awareness.  
Yes. All of what we’re talking about is theory, and theory about preparation. You’re hoping that all of that completely disappears because the only thing gonna be photographed is that unrepeatable moment changing like it does in life. A lot of things you learn about acting also inform you about life.  
 
Do you like to do a lot of takes  
I think that rather more depends on the director.  
 
For example, [Stanley] Kubrick famously did many, many takes.  
He had an idea about me. He said, “You go along. When you start getting it is about take 8.”  
 
Did you agree?  
I don’t remember if I agreed. I really don’t. I just remember him saying it and he said, “You’ll stay right there,” so whatever, 8 through 15, he says, “After that there’s gonna be another kind of flat period.” Yes, he was, he’s meticulous.  
 
And other directors?  
It depends how they work. I prefer to rehearse on film. What if something great happens? John Huston did very few takes. A lot of the performance in Prizzi’s Honor. is take 1. Very few are more than take 3.  
 
He came from the old school which didn’t do many takes.  
And I geared up to that. I think it comes from the kind of sureness that a guy like John would have. He wasn’t in a lot of doubt about what he was doing, and that “better” is often the enemy of “good.” Of course, John - like any good director that I’ve ever gone to and said, “Look, I just want to take one more bite at this. Throw it out if you want, I’m just gonna veer into something that I really want to do once” - will give you another one. I rarely do it.  
 
You mean you rarely ask for another take, if the director says, “We got it.”  
Right. My job is to be the most immediate. I can’t not know what I know about all of the movie-making process. What I know about editing, what I know about this, that or the other thing. I don’t have a matrix of rules, this is all intuitive.  
 
So you go a lot with the director who’s doing the picture in terms of the dynamic of that particular movie.  
Yes. It’s their prerogative. I told you the story with my dear friend James Brooks, about that part of craft: “Look, I’ll follow you anywhere, but if even that is not getting it done, I don’t know what to say or do.” But the fun of making movies - they’re collaborative. With Jim, he just writes a better scene. You know what I’d really like to do? I’d like to go back and, where it was possible, do the same movie that I did, at a different time. Redo [The Treasure of the]Sierra Madre.- do that text religiously - like it was a classic play.”