Jack Attack

Jack Nicholson is 75 years old today. He has only made 3 movies in the past eight years and his last great performance (About Schmidt) was a full decade past. His frequent absences would be a much greater loss to cinema if his current taste didn't lean more Bucket List and less Schmidt. But he has meant so much to so many moviegoers for so many decades that his big day is definitely worth celebrating.

So herewith ten random things off the top of my head that I love about Jack Nicholson... and it shouldn't surprise you that most of them involve his actress co-stars. That's not just because you're reading this at The Film Experience but because, for all of Jack's showboating style, he regularly ups the game of his leading ladies (and vice versa)

• "Dear Ndugu..." (About Schmidt)

• the fascinating and atypical restraint of his character work as Eugene O'Neill in Reds (1981). He lets Warren Beatty & Diane Keaton lead (which they do spectacularly well -- what a great movie) but manages to leave an indelible searing impression all the same. I sometimes wonder if it's his best performance.

• That it took him a good  long while to become JACK NICHOLSON -- he started in 1956 and he wasn't really JACK til 1969's Five Easy Pieces, and those slow burn rises to superstardom really ought to inspire all great actors who are looking for a defining breakthrough.

• The electric but very different push/pulls of his beastly seductions of Michelle Pfeiffer in Witches of Eastwick (1987) and Wolf (1994). They had great chemistry together. 

• Chinatown (1974) in general and in its entirety. Also specifically in just about every scene. Let's simplify...

• Chinatown (1974) !!!!

• "Do I ice her? Do I marry her? Which one of dese?" Dumb pussy-whipped Jack in Prizzi's Honor (1985) who is talking about Irene (Kathleen Turner) but might just as well be describing his topsy turvy relationship with his ex (Anjelica Huston) too. 

...His women keep pulling the rug out from under him, the Oriental rug to be precise.

 Right there on the Oriental. With all the lights on. 

• Everything about The Jack & Shirley Show within Terms of Endearment (1983)

• His long friendship with Warren Beatty, also newly 75. Imagine the influence and power they've wielded in their time on American cinema.

• "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" My favorite Jack Nicholson moments are rarely the iconic ones that everyone knows (in which I always find myself feeling "pull it back!") but his literally splintering-crazy work in The Shining is the best of his YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH style screen beats. 

Your turn!

What's your favorite Jack Nicholson performance? Which screen moments from his long history stick with you.

"Titanic" Times Three. And Forever.

I had grand plans for the Titanic centennial, plans filled with a supersize hubris not unlike the power players at the White Star Lines albeit without the deadly consequences. It would be the biggest boldest blog post ever and would compare every last detail of all film versions of Titanic from costuming to art direction to special effects to young loves lost in the icy waters.  Film Experience readers would feel as if they'd won the lottery for a first class ticket, no slumming in steerage required! But before I drive this analogy into an uncomfortably tone deaf iceberg moment -- like the one James Cameron collided with when he mixed "King of the World" bragging with that moment of silence for a 1517 souls lost on the tragic night -- I will stop and just get on with it. Picture time!

Titanic (1943), Titanic (1953), and Titanic (1997)

Here is a brief visual history of the Titanic sinking via the greatest of all art forms, The Movies. All images are culled from films named Titanic directed by Germany's Herbert Selpin, the Romanian Hollywood success Jean Negulesco, and Canada's box office colossus James Cameron in 1943, 1953 and 1997. These are hardly the only films about the infamous oceanic disaster even if you exclude the filmed narratives where the disaster is only a minor plot point in everything from one of the earliest best picture winners Cavalcade (1933) to today's popular British series Downton Abbey (2010-)

The three Titanics begin very differently... before settling in as narrative siblings.

The German film begins with a board meaning at White Star Line staging the event as a cautionary tale about big business. The 1953 picture begins with an eery human-free depiction of the forming of an iceberg that Malick might love (though it instantly flips back to a stuffy 50s drama). The 1997 blockbuster begins with a contemporary dive with an explorer (Bill Paxton) and an old survivor Rose (Gloria Stuart) about to reminisce... cue three hour flashback!!!

After that they're much more similar. We get...

Click to read more ...

Artist & Muse via Robert Doisneau

Today marks the centennial of the great French photography Robert Doisneau and though he wasn't a celebrity photographer --  the kind we obviously have the greatest use for as film obsessives -- he did them on occassion. I love this shot of one of the great auteur/muse pairings (both onscreen and off) actor Jean Marais (left) and Jean Cocteau (right). 

Here's another of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot.

Remember when Anthony Hopkins and Natasha McElhone pretended to be them? I know I know. No one saw Surviving Picasso (1996)... but I did because Julianne Moore was Dora Maar (another Picasso victim... excuse me, lover!) and with Julianne I martyr myself to completism. 

If you could photograph one auteur/muse pairing, who would it be?

"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?"

March 12th Happy Centennial Girls Scouts of America!

Girl Scout: Is this made from real lemons? I only like all natural foods and beverages. Are you sure they're real lemons?

Pugsley: Yes.

Girl Scout: Well, I'll tell you what. I'll buy a cup if you buy a box of my delicious girl scout cookies. Do we have a deal?

Wednesday Addams: Are they made from real Girl Scouts?

The Girl Scouts of America will never have a better movie moment than Addams Family (1991), am I right? I love that Mercedes McNab graduated from "Girl Scout" to a name role, Amanda "I'm going to be an actress!" Buckman' in the sequel Addams Family Values (1993) where she squared off with Christina Ricci again in that movie's most memorable plot thread.

Long live Harmony Kendall!

Monologue: "Lone Biker of the Apocalypse"

Michael C. here to drop off your regularly scheduled Monday Monologue

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Coen brothers' screwball, baby-knapping comedy Raising Arizona. Rewatching the film it is striking just how distant the rowdy hayseed comedy feels from cool control of the brothers' recent output. This isn't meant as an accusation that they have gone soft in their middle age. Quite the contrary. But even as they have produced a handful of unequivocal masterpieces I still harbor a soft spot for their wild younger days, much the way a Woody Allen fan can't help but pine for the anarchic spirit of Bananas no matter how much he appreciates the cinematic mastery of Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Take the scene where a premonition of doom visits Cage's H.I. soon after swiping one of the "Arizona Quints" to complete his family unit with Holly Hunter's Ed:

That night, I had a dream. I drifted off thinking about happiness, birth and new life, But now I was haunted by a vision of... He was horrible. The lone biker of apocalypse. A man with all the powers of Hell at his command. He could turn turn the day into night and lay to waste everything in his path.

He was especially hard on little things-the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake befouling even the sweet desert breeze that whipped across his brow. I didn't know where he came from or why. I didn't know if he was dream or vision. But I feared that I myself had unleashed him. For he was the fury that would be as soon as Florence Arizona found her little Nathan gone. 

The characters are both beloved Coen brother templates. The Biker (memorably embodied by former pro boxer Randall "Tex" Cobb) is one in a long line of remorseless heavies that reached their apex in Anton Chirgurh, while Cage's H.I is in the grand tradition of Coen brothers morons that continued through the escaped bumpkins of O Brother right up to the glorious idiocy of Brad Pitt's Chad Feldheimer.

Likewise giving even their most dimwitted characters memorable turns of phrase like "befouling the sweet desert breeze" is an unmistakable Coens trademark. See: Lebowski, Big.

What stands apart is the wild, improvised feel of the sequence. The series of gags that introduce the Biker - including the grenading of a cute, fluffy bunny - would be right at home in a Road Runner cartoon. The capper on the whole sequence is a doozy of a shot where the camera, which we had assumed to be the Biker's POV, goes unexpectedly airborne and flies right through a window landing in the open mouth of Mrs. Arizona as she screams. The moment can't help but bring to mind the fluid insanity of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series.

When Joel and Ethan have returned to screwball material in flicks like Burn After Reading the execution more closely resembles the deliberate style of Arizona's follow-up, Miller's Crossing. And while I repeat this is neither good nor bad, and that all great artists evolve, I can't deny I would kill to see what some meticulously controlled later day title like, say, A Serious Man would look like if it was made with the same unhinged, shoot from the hip style the Coens brought to Raising Arizona a quarter century ago.

Recent Monologues:
"My name is Charlene" -Missi Pyle in Spring Break
Megan and the Dolphins - Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids