Jack in the Box, page 16
We three were in an outer room with a tall counter at which we stood, the others having gone farther inside with their drinks to sit together at tables. But we were honestly too stimulated to sit down. Tom was busy ordering drinks for everyone, and Mike was looking at me. No, I mean really looking at me. To be so scrutinized by Mike Nichols on this occasion was very, very different from what I had experienced before. He was truly exhilarated, and in retrospect, no wonder. Of all the productions I have directed, I believe The Invention of Love may very well represent my best work. The London production, transferred on from what was then the Cottesloe Theatre to the West End, had been dark, austere, basically a towering series of library stacks around which John Wood sat in a small boat with the character of Charon. It was intellectually incisive, but not especially visual. Crowley and I had found ourselves virtually poleaxed by the challenge of the work before us, baffled by the profusion of ideas, themes, demands, even styles the play seemed to require. One afternoon, facing the necessity of hunkering down and finally coming up with a design scheme, we sat together in my Central Park West apartment, armed with our scripts and a series of colored Post-its. We read the play aloud to each other, alternating roles and scenes, and at the conclusion of each scene, tried to identify what it was we’d just heard. Was this a romantic scene? A satiric scene? An extended metaphor? Kitchen-sink realism? What bound this disparate collection of dramatic encounters into a whole? Each scene was given a “color” of Post-it, to categorize what we thought we’d just experienced, and as a way to possibly render it more clearly, at least to us. And that’s the way we made our way through the entire intellectual thicket … pink, green, blue, yellow … giving us a map, courage, and an original way to look at deciphering a dramatic work that didn’t reveal itself as immediately comprehensible. The result was liberating and ravishing, with Crowley giving full bent to his extraordinary imagination … a black mirrored floor, massive pieces of sculpture upon which Housman and his younger self could sit and argue, golden chunks of representational Oxford, suspended on gold chains and virtually floating in the light, a back cloth ripped in such a way as to reveal chinks of light and silver sparkle, like magical snow … boys on bicycles whizzing across the stage in front of it, a cascade of bronze leaves crashing down from above to cover the stage and signal a change of season … oh, it was something!
Finally, in that same bar, I found myself the complete focus of Mike’s attention. Like most everyone in our business—like Crowley and me, for example—pitting oneself against the vast challenge of Tom’s multifaceted imagination is going to be daunting, to put it mildly. Mike, having collaborated with Tom earlier, knew only too well what we had been through to achieve what was now across the street on the Lyceum stage, and his appreciation and generosity were almost intimidating. There was nothing spare about Mike’s enthusiasm when he genuinely felt it. No review, no award could match the elation one felt when the full force of Mike’s delight unspooled onto a performance, or a production, or even an unexpected meal. Many masters of their craft can be complimentary and diffidently warm in their appreciation of what a colleague has achieved. But Mike could lift one up, almost physically, and the degree of specific detail of that appreciation made it more than simply a string of compliments. He knew! He truly knew precisely what was at stake, as well as how rare it was to ever believe one has delivered on the promise. When he was so moved, he had the ability to make you think, for a moment, that you might be almost on his level, warmly welcoming you in at the same time.
I felt suddenly, immediately there … there in his circle of warmth, caring, joy, appreciation, and, yes, something almost like peerage. You knew in your heart that wasn’t remotely possible, but he swept you along, nevertheless. He, too, had wondered about this play, and how it might fare on Broadway, and in an instant, in his mind, it had been resolved, and there I stood: “The guy who did it!” Which, more or less, was what he was saying to me. What a rush!
* * *
And now … armed with that very sense of unexpected approbation, I can finally approach the backlit table before the window in the restaurant Marea, where Mike has been patiently sitting all this while, and, picking up the narrative, try to chronicle what followed.
Some people have that unique gift of conversation that erases the element of time. They are so witty, or so compelling, or so insistent, or all of the former, that one finds oneself surrendering control. It is said of Oscar Wilde that nothing in his makeup rivaled the effect of his companionship. Noel Coward, as well, was reputedly an irresistible friend, first and foremost, and I can believe that as truth. Encountering such an individual spoils you for the average rest of us. They may excel at various things—writing, politics, psychological insights, languages, anecdotes, whatever—but their best is on display in the exquisite isolation of direct conversation. Mike was such an individual. And because I had existed at an unfathomable distance for decades while he was amassing that reputation, only to be fed by bits of overheard, third-party recitations, the opportunity to have lunch with him just across the table was sheer bliss.
By this time I felt comfortable enough to hit back as well as I could, and with my curiosity about all phases of his work, his loves, disappointments, skill in direction, marriages, and fatherhood, being inexhaustible, lunch was, for me, a veritable matinee, and never concluded in less than two hours, while dishes were cleared, coffee ordered, and the midday light shuddered to an oblique angle that implied that, if not careful, I might overstay my welcome. I realize in retrospect that most of what he was regaling me with were polished elements of recitations finely honed, edited, made glossed-over by endless repetitions, and I can well imagine that none of my queries ever caught him by surprise, and yet there was a seemingly endless repertory of answers, examples, as well as questions and opinions of his own, so we were never at a loss.
But by now, for all intents and purposes, I didn’t feel as if I were chasing an idol; he gave every impression that we had become friends, and with his guard so relaxed, he began to demonstrate a kind of vulnerability that I found as moving as I did informative. “I was an asshole for much too long,” he offered at one point, explaining how his dependence on the drug Halcion for a while was the cause of serious behavior problems. He had confessed to me that he hadn’t fully understood the effect that the drug could have, and as a result, losing all objectivity at one point, he had panicked, and had even thrown himself on Stoppard’s generosity, actually pleading for the privilege of being able to move in with Tom, so Tom could care for him and his family as well. Bizarre! Once he was apprised of the dangers of Halcion and stopped taking it, he returned to his normal self, but he continued to find the promise of drugs if not romantic, certainly compelling. We shared the experience of having bypass surgery, and celebrated my getting through mine with a breakfast, which was most unusual for us, with our respective morning’s work awaiting. Mike greeted me at that table by trumpeting, “Weren’t the drugs just amazing?!” I disappointed him when I revealed that I had been able to tolerate only Tylenol during my confinement, and his response was again wickedly enthusiastic: “Did you know the surgeon actually held your heart in his hands?” I didn’t. I still don’t. “How many did you have?” “I had a triple,” I responded. “I had four!” he literally gloated, like a kid on the playground, once again winning the round.
Lunch followed lunch. Not constantly, but often, the phone would ring and that unmistakable sound—“It’s Mike!,” like a New York Times banner headline—would herald our next meeting, a month or two down the road. One afternoon he told me about an interview he’d conducted on a break from filming, when across the lot, a prop person held up a chair and called out to him from afar: “Mike! What color do you want the chair?” And without a pause, he said, he hurled back at full volume, “Blue!” Later, the interviewer asked with astonishment how he could have been so sure so quickly. “Oh,” Mike answered, “it didn’t matter. He just needed an answer. You can always change your mind later!”
Another nugget dropped! I never asked him if the chair, indeed, ended up blue, but I still wish I knew. Yes, his instinct was primarily in moving everything forward with confidence to reassure everyone he was on top of it, and eager for it to be right, but was blue, in fact, the right color? I’m always fascinated by instincts. During our lunches, I learned many things both general and specific: He spoke of his family, his mother and father, the now heavily documented transition from Germany to the States, where his doctor father had settled before sending for his dangerously vulnerable family. He confessed to his rather glamorous father’s infidelities, and even his mother’s independently wandering eye, without either a comment or a shred of rancor. He talked of his childhood, his education, his first encounter with Elaine, when they had immediately and instinctively lapsed into spy accents in an apparently improvised routine that eventually found its way into a major skit: “May I seeet?” “Eeef you weeeesh!”
I mentioned in passing that I had never visited Martha’s Vineyard, and immediately came an invitation for the Fourth of July weekend, when I found myself flying with him in his private jet, along with my Norwich terrier, Pumpkin, and placed in one of the two glorious guest cabins at Chip Chop, the stunning property he had worshipped from afar for years, until he was able to buy it from its original owner, Katharine Cornell, whose astrological chart, to this day, remains carved in wood over one of the twin fireplaces in the great room, which opens on one side to the restless ocean, and on the other, to the serene bay.
Life lessons come in myriad and surprising ways, and when I opened the medicine cabinet in my perfect little retreat, I saw how every conceivable request by a forgetful guest might be instantly met with a supply of every legal substance one might require: talcum powder was one item I observed and, years later, placed in my own guest bathrooms, much to the appreciation of more than one visiting woman friend. In the Vineyard mornings there were, before formal breakfast, fruit juices, cereals, and baked goods, all laid out in the immaculate kitchen, with steaming coffee and a copy of The New York Times for every person invited, so, obviously, each guest could do his own crossword if so inclined. No aspect of comfort went unattended. This was the kind of detail he and Diane Sawyer both instinctively understood and provided for. Nothing … nothing one could possibly need would be thought too much, but would be transformed instantly into reality. I was gobsmacked, and as an aspiring host, so instructed.
Mike’s initial love might well have been the theatre, but his extensive experience on movie sets began to affect that perspective, and, to a degree, the tools he eventually brought to the job at hand. He began to seem slightly baffled by the theatrical restraints he would have easily embraced earlier in his career, during those final projects he mounted for the stage. When prepping The Seagull for the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, he wondered to designer Bob Crowley why he couldn’t simply arrange for a substantial river to wander through the park, so Kevin Kline, as Trigorin, might be truly fishing during the production, or why he couldn’t have more and more actual trees growing on the set, when other living trees were evidently elsewhere, proving an essential characteristic of that verdant space. To a film director, such queries wouldn’t be remotely out of place, but in a practical theatrical setting the questions seemed almost bizarre.
In every other way, he appeared more positive, more engaging, more sure of himself than ever, except when it came to this approach to theatrical subjects. Ideas often caromed in ways that couldn’t be taken seriously—or could they? As a newly embraced directing pal, I often found myself wondering what the appropriate response should be, when he delightedly claimed, as happened in the case of the Harold Pinter revival of Betrayal, that he was determined that the character of Emma should perform oral sex on either her husband or her lover—I cannot recall which, so stunned was I by both his enthusiasm and his assurance that this was a necessary insight into the heart of the play. The morning after the first preview of Clifford Odets’s The Country Girl, I was called at something like eight thirty and picked up the receiver to hear “It’s Mike! It’s a disaster! You have to come tonight and tell me what’s wrong.” He was genuinely panicked, and I struggled to calm him down, assuring him that I could get there in a day or so, if not to that next performance. He seemed rattled and confessed he’d violated some cardinal rule of his, by hiring an actor he hadn’t known personally, a rule of thumb I find in the abstract reasonable, especially when the stakes are so high. “Mike,” I insisted, “they’ll get it; they weren’t playing the play last night, they were listening to the audience and trying to figure out the rhythms.” I tried humor. “Reach around to the back of your neck and find that little switch … On one side it says ‘film,’ and on the other it says ‘theatre.’ Flip it! You’re on the ‘film’ side. This takes a few days, remember…?” He was inconsolable, and when I arrived to witness the preview, there was, in fact, something both lifeless and sterile about the production, dominated as it was by a design that replicated an enormous black “brick wall,” set at an oblique angle, indicating a naturalistic backstage atmosphere, but that resulted in his actors automatically lining up with their backs to it, thus throwing all their text offstage right into the empty wings, rather than where the audience could best see and hear them. “But what do I do?” he asked, and I suggested the obvious: “Why not put a table and chairs down right so they can break that diagonal and turn front?” It was, of course, the obvious solution, but he seemed baffled, and I was confused. This was the single most authoritatively equipped director of our generation … Had he managed to misplace his compass for simple staging?
A much-lauded production of Death of a Salesman, with the last great stage performance of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Willy Loman, offered him an easier path. He had been utterly fascinated when I had reported how Ellis Rabb, my first mentor, when reviving the comic chestnut You Can’t Take It with You, had wanted to have the original ground plan replicated, and have Kaufman’s directing notes, as printed in the standard acting version, followed specifically, so the result, in Ellis’s imagination, would “look like the Moscow Art Theatre’s production of The Seagull as directed by Stanislavsky had been kept meticulously and forever fresh in the rep.” Ellis thought George S. Kaufman’s initial blocking solutions, which had made the play a hit in the first place, should be both respected and honored by any repertory company dedicated to keeping these traditions alive. “You mean he followed the stage directions?” Mike asked incredulously. “Yes,” I responded. “Ellis wanted to ‘see’ what Kaufman as author and director had done originally with timing and comic business before applying his own ‘brush’ to the ‘master’s canvas.’” When it came to the love scenes, which had always embarrassed Kaufman to the degree that he’d repeatedly excuse himself and leave the theatre for a cigarette, Ellis found his own voice, and turned the revival into something both rare and magically fresh.
Mike was flabbergasted. For this highly anticipated production of the Arthur Miller play, he decided that he, too, would replicate the ground plan that Kazan’s original designer, Jo Mielziner, had made, and even resurrected the score Alex North had composed for the film version, using cues, according to him, in the exact same places with only minor adjustments. When I asked how it was going, he crowed, “Fantastic! The rooms upstairs are so goddamn small, you don’t have to block at all … They find their own moves simply because otherwise they’d be on top of each other!”
You don’t have to block at all? I was struck by this, because few mortals have invented stage business as ravishingly and realistically as Mike had throughout his career. Now he seemed to prefer sitting back and watching it unfold, almost wishing to leave the details to someone else.
And when the Betrayal revival finally premiered, powered by the star presence of husband and wife Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, which garnered immediate excitement at the box office (but without the much-discussed act of fellatio anywhere in evidence), it felt curiously static and slow, marked by endless scene changes accompanied by a series of identical piano cues giving neither pace nor variety to an already extended evening. This was Mike Nichols, remember: the very hand that had guided Stoppard’s The Real Thing to a blazing, wildly theatrical solution that virtually eclipsed all other stagings. It was hard to see a parallel. The press, always respectful of Mike, and never suspecting that he himself might not be playing his top game, was kind to the production, and it paid back almost immediately, so this final effort can in no way be judged to be unsuccessful.
But at the same time, where was Mike? On all other channels, he still seemed to be firing. I was invited to a private screening of Angels in America with just him and the designer Ann Roth in attendance, and at the conclusion, I was able to say with complete conviction, “Not only do I think this may be the best thing you’ve ever done, I am not certain it isn’t the best thing anyone has ever done,” to which he dissolved in grateful tears. Our lunches continued, the dialogue better than ever, until spring 2015, after which I reluctantly excused myself, feeling as usual somewhat incomplete. We’d spent over two and a half hours wandering through his random thoughts, memories, and anecdotes, and I couldn’t help but think what a treasure of a repository all this information represented, and what a shame that someone other than me couldn’t participate, couldn’t benefit. Mike had been an early enthusiast and champion of my memoir Jack Be Nimble, and had been helpful with his advice along the way.
I had, as had so many others before me, begged repeatedly that he sit down and begin some kind of orderly reorganization of these monumental decades of discovery and achievement for publishing, but there was nothing for it. “I can’t write!” he’d snap, which really meant he wasn’t interested in the process of writing. Reciting, yes. Entertaining, no question. But committing any of these delicious anecdotes to paper? No way. I had my own theory, feeble as it might appear. Mike often explained that when he and his brother first came over from Germany, he was placed one year “ahead” in school, thereby missing the year students were taught cursive writing. For the remainder of his life he printed everything he wrote, never feeling comfortable writing otherwise. I have the instinct that that missing link might have engendered a suspicion of inferiority having to do with words and paper. Not trusting the written word, he began to prefer the security of speaking, and even better, perhaps, improvising. He was never at a loss for words, and yet he obviously couldn’t trust his ability to put equal emphasis on paper that would capture what he truly meant. So, in my imagination, he turned his back on the entire conceptual enterprise. True? As I say, it’s just an instinct …
