Jack Nicholson is ambling down the stairs of his place on Mulholland Drive, in Los Angeles, a little late, having just zipped up. Hes lived here for more than 30 years a two-story stucco-type pad bought for $80,000 that is packed to the gills with soft chairs, easygoing couches, priceless art, Oscars (three), books (The Popular Medical Encyclopedia, Primal Scream), a former para-Marine named Oz, who is now his cook, an eyeglasses case marked Reading (helpfully), a bowl of fruit (he doesnt eat fruit, but Oz hasnt given up), tubes of both Rembrandt and Close Up toothpaste (hes peripatetic that way), much fear for the world at large, and huge historical problems with even the general concept of monogamy, not to mention echoes of past orgiastic parties and overheated assignations too numerous to count. Its entirely his place. Its where, in the late Sixties, as a matter of self-help, he spent three months walking around in the nude, at all hours of the day, no matter who stopped by, his daughter included. Its where his closest neighbor, the late Marlon Brando, used to come calling when Jack wasnt home and root around in his fridge (usually because hed padlocked his own), and for some reason leave behind his underpants, which would then mysteriously turn up in the laundry. Its where today, after successfully negotiating the trimming of his toenails, he ends up in his living room, which is dominated by a white-brick fireplace smack-dab in the middle (so I cant be cornered, he says). Hes wearing a polo shirt, khakis and fuzzy black slippers, with his thin hair combed back flat, sixty-nine years old but looking good, despite a tummy on the round side and occasional issues with heartburn. He angles himself into a chair, settles, and in his great gravelly Jack voice gives further explanation for his late arrival.
Jack Nicholson: The Badass Hollywood Star
Oh, you know how it is, he rasps. At the last minute, those old boys bladders
Then he lights up a cigarette and leans back, never bothering to finish the sentence hes started, which is often the way it is with him, completion indicated only by the skyward hoisting of his thick pyramidal eyebrows. At other times, though, he gathers in a full breath of air, starts talking, usually in fat, orotund paragraphs, and never stops. For instance: On the topic of his latest movie, The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese and co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, in which he gives another Oscar-worthy performance, as Boston-Irish mob boss Frank Costello, probably the worst, most criminal criminal ever in one gruesome scene, he steps out from behind closed doors covered in blood, well up past his elbows and over which he, the loosest and most experimental of actors, was expected to lock horns with Scorsese, the tightest and most controlled of directors.
My reaction to 9/11 was This is just a catastrophe, so Im just going to do comedy for a while, Jack says, sallying forth through a plume of cigarette smoke. Id done three in a row [About Schmidt, Anger Management and Somethings Gotta Give] and thought, Jeez, I really would like to play a bad guy. And the guy I play here, hes bad. Nothing is sacred, not the church, not children, nothing. I knew Leo from a while back and, in fact, hes the one who brought me in. Matt I knew too. I have very good feelings about both of them. At first I tiptoed in, but Marty was very inspiring in terms of how free he was with me. I thought itd be more frightening if my character had a sexual component, but all we put in the notes was Costello has wild sex. So I called Marty up and said, Look, I just thought of what would be an interesting scene of Costello having wild sex. And in this scene with two girls, one of the girls is wearing a strap-on, and he just hurls this handful of cocaine and says, Dont move until youre numb.And then later on, in a porno theater, as a sick joke, the guy turns to Matt Damons character with that same strap-on dildo sticking out of his pants. This was my idea and improvisational, and Marty went for it. But thats what these parts are for me: spicing the movie.
While hes talking, Im looking around. Its serene in here, simple, no sleazy leather couches, nothing like that, a guitar in a corner, with an intimate swimming pool glimmering in the twilight out back, and pretty soon I can hear Nicholson gliding by all the hottest recent topic Tom Cruises firing by Paramount, Mel Gibsons drunken anti-Semitic rant, Lindsay Lohans bad behavior on set breezily suggesting that he doesnt take much interest, really, in any of it. And all the time Im thinking, where could one possibly take Jack Nicholson, where could one possibly go, where he hasnt been before, lots of times, comfortably?
Of his early actor pals Warren Beatty, Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, Peter Fonda, Art Garfunkel, Bruce Dern Jack is the only one who remains crucial to the current moviemaking scene. Hes still friends with most of them and they do talk, but more infrequently these days. And of those contemporaries who might be considered acting equals, like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, he just seems to loom larger. Hes both a movie star and a cultural icon and in so being has singlehandedly managed to render meaningless such distinctions as Old Hollywood vs. New Hollywood. DiCaprio and Damon are great big movie stars in their own right, but as The Departed makes clear, Nicholson is bigger than either, and better. Pretty much, hes all things at all times, a sui generis lunatic force of nature who in his personal life is forgiven for all of his apparent sins his obsessive womanizing, his brutalizing of a car with a golf club, his evasions behind sunglasses even as they mount to the heavens above, because what else can you do with a guy like that?
It can hardly be said often enough: In terms of cool and its variants, Nicholson, inside the movies and out, has come to signify almost everything worth signifying. Hes the mythic rebel in Easy Rider (1969), his breakthrough performance, at the late-start age of thirty-two, after eleven years of trying; the laconic drifter dropout in Five Easy Pieces (1970); the self-hating misogynist in Carnal Knowledge (1971); the dogged too-nosy seen-it-all detective in Chinatown (1974); the anti-establishment loon in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975), all the way up to the over-the-hill womanizer with the flabby rear end in Somethings Gotta Give (2003), with enlightening stops along the way to define the true nature of writers block in The Shining (1980), the murderous nature of lust in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and the effects of aging on a party-hearty ex-astronaut in Terms of Endearment (1983). Plus, born in 1937, abandoned by his father, raised in rinky-dink coastal New Jersey, he didnt know until his late thirties that the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother and that his putative parents were, in fact, his grandparents a set of mind-boggling personal circumstances that also seems to have broadly described many of the social and sexual perplexities of the day. In a sense, he has always operated as an advance man for behavior of the most outrageous, unconventional sort. Could Russell Crowe or Colin Farrell have behaved quite so libidinously in public without Jack, the Great Seducer, having paved the way? Of course, Jacks great pal Warren Beatty was himself no slouch in this regard. But the curious thing is, over time, young and old, all of them got married, or had kids and settled down, or otherwise became respectable, sort of, all but Jack. More good times is both my ethics and my morals, he likes to say. In other words, today is the same as it ever was, and to hell with what anyone else thinks.
If it happens that you need a condom, I ask him one evening, do you buy it yourself?
Ive never bought one, he growls. But if I needed a porn picture or something like that, my staff normally does that kind of shopping for me.
Have you ever even used a condom?
Sure.
Successfully?
Its always a problem. You cant feel your wanker. He sighs, takes a sip of iced coffee and goes on, Look, I have Reichian therapy in my background. Early on, I had problems with that most common kind of impotence, being quick, suddenness, which is actually a kind of jitter from holding on too hard and not feeling things, which is part of what were talking about. Its all about actually feeling it, not in some locality but in the larger sense of the experience passing through your being. In my lifetime, from World War II on, the world got freer, just by nature. And then came along, now we have the Death Fuck. And when this idea became popular, the sex-negative, pleasure-denial momentum of the world, I mean, it just got to the point where I cant do this anymore. It was no longer the full catastrophe. So I went to my doctor and got a very specific scientific analysis, which boiled down to, unless youre a shooter or something else, youre as likely to have this problem as to have a safe fall on your head. I mean, look at it logically. If you understand numbers at all, just by geometrical progression, if it were all true, everybodys dead by now.
He continues like this, leaving me frantically trying to parse his words. Its difficult, because if hes not clipping his sentences short, hes divesting his pronouns of most of their antecedents and doing away with transitional connectors altogether. What I think hes saying, though, is that when the AIDS crisis started, he tried wearing condoms, but they prevented him from feeling the full catastrophe of the sex act, so he went to a doctor, who told him not to worry about getting AIDS, so he no longer wears condoms. Anyway, at times like this, with him soaring off into the ether, I have noticed that the easiest way to bring him back down to earth is to sink him into the gutter.
Whats your favorite position?
Huh? Oh. Ha, ha, ha. Heh, heh, heh. Two arms and legs, he says, obliquely.
And at times like these, its best to raise your voice and start yelling something like, Oh, come on, Jack! God! Its missionary! Its every guys favorite position!
Yeah. Yes, he says. But as you get older its inverted missionary, because of other reasons. Look, Im less rambunctious these days, not because of a change in character, but your physiognomy changes. I am not as obsessed. I am not as, you know Im still very I have the same libido. But whether you want it to or not, that part of your life changes a bit. Throughout most of my life, though, I liked doing what I like to do. And Ive been fortunate because thats just the way it worked out for me.
You mean you got laid a lot just because it worked out that way?
Well, no. You know, I mean, I was very driven. I remember being at least mentally sexually excited about things from childhood, even sooner than eight, in the bath-tub. I mean, I had a large appetite.
As Kim Basinger once pointed out! I say. (What shed said was [Jacks] the most highly sexed individual I have ever met.)
Well, says Jack then, taking a long, deep breath, Ive never talked about it that much. I talk about the generality of it. But in all honesty, Im very tender in these areas. Lets use that word.
Altoid? I ask, offering one.
Sure, he says, and places it in his mouth.
And then for a few moments we let the day slip by, his ship of comfort seeming to rock just a little, in a little late breeze.
Lots of things are reverberating into the past around Jack Nicholson these days. For instance, the dildo-in-a-porno-theater scene he thought up for The Departed. The roots of it, you could argue, reach back twenty-five years, to 1981, when he was making The Postman Always Rings Twice, with Jessica Lange a highly sexed-up piece that nonetheless features no nudity whatsoever. Jack, however, was dead set on making it one of the naughtiest movies and decided that the solution lay in showing an erection this kind of bulging railer through his 1940s pleated pants. To that end, he asked director Bob Rafelson to craft him a conventional prosthetic, but no one took him seriously, so when the day to shoot the scene arrived, he found himself empty-handed and irritated. Said Rafelson, Well, jeez, if youre so red-hot about this, go upstairs and see what you can do there. And so Jack did, whipping away, he says, until he realized that some things were beyond even him.
And then theres Marlon Brando, the only actor to ever outsize him as icon. How odd it is to think that for three decades two such figures shared the same driveway and lived in homes only a few stumble-through-the-woods minutes apart (with their pal Beatty also living nearby, several houses away, the trio forming a kind of unholy trinity that once led local cops to nickname Mulholland Drive Bad Boy Drive). Jack idolized Brando. He called him the man on the hill and was always delighted, or at least not horrified, when he found Brandos underpants in his laundry. So when he died, in 2004, Jack bought his place, for $6.5 million. Its in terrible, falling-apart condition. He plans to get rid of it completely and plant frangipani where it once stood.
I rarely talked to him on the phone, he says. For the most part, hed come wandering down. We had many, many discussions other than Well, what are we going to do about the gate? and Well, I hear my kids came down here. But we were good neighbors because we werent up each others ass all the time. I mean, what can you say? Hes one of the most powerful presences in our lifetime, just sitting there, the big fella. After he died, though, I couldnt go up there for months or years. I just had this weird juju. He shivers, dramatically, to show what he means. Juju kinds of feelings. Then he pauses and says, For all thirty years, Marlons presence to me was this tree I see out the window in front of my toilet. I miss him.
He seems to be getting a little melancholy, so I change the subject and ask him to describe his mornings. He says that he usually wakes up around 11 a.m., when Gloria, his housekeeper, brings him breakfast in bed. On the breakfast tray is a glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee (cream, sugar), a container of diet chocolate pudding (but only on weekends) and his daily regimen of pills, which includes a baby aspirin, for all the good one baby aspirin a day can do a person; Lipitor, to deal with certain cholesterol issues; and a Celebrex, to ease the pain of arthritis, with a Prilosec waiting in the wings should heartburn develop. Now, at night, he usually doesnt go to sleep until 4 a.m. and most often spends the last two hours before lights out my ass-scratching hours with his nose deep into a book, most recently The Genesis Code, a thriller by John Case, and Charlie Wilsons War, by George Crile, about the nutty renegade congressman. Typically he does this reading up in bed, in the half of the bed thats been imprinted by his bulk and that he likes to call the dent.
And of course, he continues, wolfish grin making an appearance, canines gleaming, I do like company when I have it. Thats always exhilarating.
And do you have a lot of company?
Im unattached for quite a while so I have varied company. In terms of age, you could say that over the last year, Ive probably covered the territory from twenty-one to sixty-one.
Sixty-one?
Yeah, Im good with my pals. You know theres certainly more than one person that Ive seen maybe thirty years, intimately. Unexpected by me. I have the normal things that people have. You know, Mom sitting on the toilet, scared, Gee, you know, when you were little, or whatever that is. You know what I mean, Oh, am I going to be able to deal with crepe? or whatever the fears are.
The Mom-sitting-on-the-toilet-scared-gee thing is so out of the blue and weird that I am struck senseless and dont think to ask him what he means by it. All I can manage to say is Crepe?
Crepe, he says. You know, any fears you may have about contacting mortality or the aging process, particularly in this area.
What he means, I suddenly realize, are his fears about coming into contact with wrinkly, baggy, crepe-y old skin, not his own but that hanging off an older woman.
Oh.
It sometimes seems, tellingly, perhaps, that all of Jack Nicholsons life has revolved around sex in one way or another. To begin with, theres his birth circumstances, the so-called illegitimacy of it, which was tucked away and hidden, the dirtiest of family secrets. Then, as an adult, theres his frantic pursuit of women, all women. Among those known to have succumbed are horror-movie actress Sandra Knight, his wife from 1961 to 1966, from whom came daughter Jennifer, 42; Mamas and the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, before she took up with Warren Beatty; actress Susan Anspach, from whom came son Caleb, 36; actress Anjelica Huston, daughter of his great friend, the late director John Huston, for seventeen tempestuous, topsy-turvy years; former waitress Rebecca Broussard, from whom came daughter Lorraine, 16, and son Raymond, 14; and, most recently, tweezer-thin actress Lara Flynn Boyle, who is thirty-three years his junior. Among the rumored have been Diane Keaton, as well as Margaret Trudeau, wife of late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Among the most blabbermouthy was late Playboy model Karen Mayo-Chandler, who once said, Hes a nonstop sex machine. Hes into fun and games like spanking, handcuffs, whips and Polaroid pictures, and who added that he eats peanut butter in bed to keep his strength up. And among those he has mentioned as lust fantasies are President Jimmy Carters wife, Rosalynn, President Franklin Roosevelts wife, Eleanor, and hotsy-totsy New Age guru and A Womans Worth author Marianne Williamson. (He is also fond of the television preacher known as Reverend Ike, but not in the same way as the others, one hopes.)
As it happens, however, he has also defined what he does for a living in terms of sex. You have to determine, what is your sexuality in this scene? he said a long time ago. Everything else comes from that. Its the key. The total key. Naturally, his Mulholland Drive pad is a place also all about sex. In the early Seventies it was well known as the epicenter of the eras drug-soaked social scene, according to one report, and while living there then Anjelica Huston nicknamed Jack the Hot Pole. As well, its where, in 1977, with Jack out of town, director Roman Polanski allegedly raped a thirteen-year-old girl; after his arrest, he fled the country, never to return. And, finally, there are the choice words that Jack uses to spice up his normal, everyday conversation, two of his favorites being pussy and cunt.
I love those words! he almost shouts one day. I mean lately, I may ask someone, Well, look, do you have a response as to whether I say cunt or pussy or pookie? But I love being able to say things like, Cunt is an acronym. For what? For cant-understand-normal-thinking. Heh, heh, heh. Now, of course, Im sure I just made that up for goofy stuff. But the point is, I just happen to like those words.
And so it swirls, sex, all around him, constantly, if not in his bed so much as before, then in his head, always. Its not that sex is the primary element of the universe, he said in 1972. Its just that when its unfulfilled, it will affect you. Thats an interesting notion to contemplate, because, as a guy who for decades could not sleep alone, it seems fair to conclude that no one has been more affected by sex than him. In fact, seen in this light, he could be the most unfulfilled man of all time. Then again, maybe thats taking his reputation too much at face value.
A lot of it, I dont know how real it is, he says. Ive always allowed for that element in my public image to be to some degree overstated, because its good for business. He pauses, reaches for a cigarette and shifts gears a little. I mean, I get depressed like everybody, he goes on. I have angst. I have anxiety. I worry about the world. Nobody was expecting the kind of fearful times that we live in. Its really out of the blue. Its like, My God, what the hell is happening?
Im an American through and through, and I cant find any reason why anybody should be wanting to blow up everything. Saddam Hussein may have said, Well win this because the West worships life and we worship death. But I dont believe it. In my heart I know that nobodys that different that we would want whats going on now. And people can say, Thats easy for you to say, Jack. Youre one of the luckiest people on the planet. Well, yeah. I mean, so what? Im lucky, so because youre not you think murdering innocent people is great? I mean, in a lighthearted movie like Mars Attacks, as the president, Im in a condescending way trying to slip in the philosophy of Rodney King, saying to the little people, Cant we all just get along? But, I mean, cant we?
And so, in addition to sex, these are the kinds of things that are currently on Jacks mind along with basketball, of course, and his golf game, and, lately, his teenagers Lorraine and Raymond. With them, he tries not to be too overbearing, nor is he about to offer advice based on his life as a well-known pot smoker, a well-known one-time LSD user, a well-known pro-lifer (due to his own illegitimate birth), and so on. Instead, he says to them something like, Look, I remember myself as a teenager, so I know Im not going to be the first parent that ever outsmarted a teenager, and Im not trying. All Im going to say is, everything they say is bad for you, pretty much it is bad for you. And pretty much he leaves it at that.
A few things, at random, from inside Jacks world and head:
He often refers to himself as a hick from New Jersey.
He laments the thirty-year tenure of melodrama in the movies but understands it. Once you start blowing up almost every other building in a picture, the audience, they jones without it. Its their rhythm.
He suffers from claustrophobia, and if youre at a restaurant with him and paying attention you may notice him angling for the outside seat at a booth. Hes OK if he gets trapped inside. It just makes him uncomfortable.
When he looks in the mirror, what he generally notices first is that I cant see myself too clearly these days. Sometimes I go ahead and put the glasses on.
That time he spent three months hanging around his place in the nude: I felt it was totally necessary. Im self-conscious about body image. I dont have a great body shot. And it was an era ofLets get free. I know it drove my oldest daughter insane. I just wanted to be more relaxed within my skin. But it didnt totally resolve all that, like many experiments you think youve concluded on yourself but you havent really.
Those times he took acid, which was done in a clinical setting, what the experience taught him: Just let it be. Release. Kind of be where you are, where we are, where it is, in a kind of fearless, unconscious way.
The TV show Deadwood: I love that show. Its a tough morality play. You should see it.
Girls with cigarettes: Theyve used them to hold me off. Distract the predator. The Great Seducer.
Mona Lisa, with that smile on her face, what shes thinking: I know you. I know what youre thinking. Dont try to fool me.
A recent big panic: I havent lived out every fantasy that ever came into my empty, er, echoing head, but enough of them that Im relaxed about it. The only thing lately is, I got to the point where I couldnt in any way conjure up a fantasy. It was like, Ohhh, Id love to but there was, like, nothing in that department in my head. And as a man who has been attracted to Eleanor Roosevelt, it really panicked me out.
So, there it is, a bit more of Jack, whats going on with him and making him tick.
One more thing. He says he likes it a lot, a whole lot, when women in his bed call him by his name. I cant help but notice that women, especially when theyre in any sort of amorous mood, dont say my name that much, so I like it when they do. I like being called Jack. I like being identified by my name. At that moment.
Before it gets too dark, can I see that view you were talking about, Brandos tree from your bathroom?
Heh, yeah, sure, he says, looking somewhat startled.
So, up a flight of stairs we go. Halfway down a narrow hallway, he hooks to the right, into a bathroom, and ushers me close to a tight little interior cubicle with a toilet that faces, up high, a smallish rectangular window. You see this pine tree right there? he says. But from where Im standing, its obvious that I cant. Sit on the throne there, he says. I do. See it up there? he says. I do, vaguely. Its a tall, wide-spreading pine, with maybe some wind dancing into its branches. Jack turns down the lights. Can you see it better now? he asks. Its just a view. But youre repetitively in that big pine tree. And it gets bigger all the time. He leads me out again past his twin-sinked vanity with its three large mirrors and a countertop displaying all of his toiletries, neatly arrayed, a bottle of Listerine, shaving gear, two kinds of toothpaste, his Prilosec and into his bedroom. He turns on a TV. As long as were up here, he says, Ill just show you this. What he shows me is the strap-on-dildo scene from The Departed, with him saying to the girls, Are you ready, pony girl? and Want some coke? and Dont move until youre numb.
Afterward, he says, That scene is something thats being discussed. Is it gilding? Is it too much? My reason for it is an old moviemakers instinct but also, unfortunately, an audience will find it more corrupt that the man whos buried in blood up to his throat, see, so thats the reason why I have a certain amount of passion for having it in. Martin and I both happen to feel the same way: Its the perimeter of his corruption. Hes a bad man. And I always want that to be clear.
I ask him to tell me about all the cool-looking little figurines sitting on top of his TV cabinet. Oh, the gimcracks? he says, and reels off the names of several well-known, big-money artists. And see this little one here? he goes on. I dont know how good your eyes are, but hes holding his dick in his hand. Meanwhile, Im looking around Jack Nicholsons bedroom, the place where he has gotten so much business done. I look at his bed, the four blue pillows heaped on it, and the blue duvet pulled back on one side to reveal the dent. The dent! I feel a little woozy, just as a girl might upon seeing it for the first time.
And, indeed, right around then, Jack clears his throat and says, I dont know if Ive ever had someone like you in my bedroom before. Feels a bit intimate.
Dont worry, Ill be gentle on you, I say, nervously. So, whats in the top drawer of your bedside table?
Pencils, Jack says, nervously, too, largely caught off guard for once, I can see. Phone. Phone things.
Do you want to open the top drawer?
Er, no, he says. Well, I dont know whats actually There are drawers over here youd be more interested in.
OK What about those drawers?
Well, he says, his gravel voice turning more gravelly by the second, there are some things youre better off not knowing, and then without taking a breath he quickly adds, I sit here a lot and sketch, for instance. Sometimes at night instead of reading Ill paint a bit.
No matter. Weve had a moment, I can tell that much. As for me, I know Ill never be the same. As for Jack, regardless of what he says, I know that Im probably just one of hundreds or thousands who have been up here. So be it. Im not ashamed or embarrassed. Ill always have my memory of our time together here. No one will ever be able to take that away. If only at some point I had remembered to call him by his name, Jack. If only.
A little later on, both our composures regained, Jack lights up a cigarette, and through an occluding haze I ask him, Do you think youre a good guy?
He doesnt hesitate. Yeah, I do. Im pretty consistently well-intended. Itd be hard for me to recall where Ive been underhanded.
Dont you think cheating on your girls is kind of
I didnt. I didnt think so, no.
You didnt think what?
That it was underhanded. I knew, for instance, when I got married, because of my libido I was silently emanating to the above, This does not mean theres not going to be other women in my life. Im taking certain vows here. [But] between you and me, let me be at least clear. There have been many times Ive been totally sure, not having been put to the test, that it would be no problem for me to be, uh, what do you call it?
Monogamous?
Monogamous. Yeah. But many times Ive thought, This is impossible for me. Someone once said, Its not loving that you miss. Its being loved. I dont have that primary sense. I havent given up hope, but most of my friends think Im a little goofy in that area, which is why I knew I would be singular at this point in my life.
I think what he means to say is single at this point in my life, not singular, as in deviating from the customary, or without equal or rival, or far beyond what is usual and normal. Im not sure, though. And either way, it works out the same.
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