Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio. Mike Nichols was one of the
Speaker 1: most celebrated directors of the last century, and he is
Speaker 1: the subject of a compelling new biography written by My
Speaker 1: guest Today, Mark Harris, drawn from more than two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty interviews. Mike Nichols. A Life traces nichols lonely
Speaker 1: and difficult childhood onto the highs and lows of his
Speaker 1: astonishingly productive fifty year career. Nichols was the rare director
Speaker 1: who moved fluidly between Broadway and Hollywood. His films include
Speaker 1: The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia, Wolf, Silkwood, and Working Girl,
Speaker 1: Where I had My chance to experience firsthand his ability
Speaker 1: to connect with actors on the stage. Nichols was prolific
Speaker 1: in shepherding the casts of everything from Neil Simon's Barefoot
Speaker 1: in the Park and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing to
Speaker 1: Monty Python's Smam a Lot. And before all of that,
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols was a performer, one half of the influential
Speaker 1: sketch comedy team Nichols in May, which he developed with
Speaker 1: the incomparable Elaine May. One thing Mark Harris knew when
Speaker 1: he started working on this book was there would be
Speaker 1: plenty of material. I don't know how you wake up
Speaker 1: every day and go to bed every night with the
Speaker 1: same person in your head while you're working on something.
Speaker 1: And I just thought that with Nichols, whatever I found
Speaker 1: out good or bad, there probably would not be boring parts.
Speaker 1: I mean, he had such a long, interesting career and
Speaker 1: it was always on two tracks, movie directing and theater directing,
Speaker 1: and before that there was all of his work with
Speaker 1: Elaine May. So I thought, I'm not going to hit
Speaker 1: a whole decade where nothing interesting happens or I can't
Speaker 1: find out anything good. And I just felt like I
Speaker 1: would never be bored. And and I also I felt
Speaker 1: truly that there was that what I didn't know was
Speaker 1: a much much longer list than what I thought. I
Speaker 1: knew now. Diane and his children were not interviewed for
Speaker 1: the book. No, they weren't. I went to them before
Speaker 1: I really sat down with Penguin to try to make
Speaker 1: a deal, because I had no interest in doing the
Speaker 1: book if they were opposed to it. But they gave
Speaker 1: their consent. They never asked to see anything advanced. They
Speaker 1: never asked for me to leave anything out, So I
Speaker 1: felt like what I really needed from them was they're okay,
Speaker 1: and they're okay to make their okay public. When they
Speaker 1: don't agree to sit down, why don't they do it?
Speaker 1: I felt like, in different ways, it was a very
Speaker 1: big ask. Mike's three kids are pretty private people, and
Speaker 1: Mike made no secret of the fact that when they
Speaker 1: were growing up he wasn't always as present a father
Speaker 1: as he felt he should have been. And I really
Speaker 1: understand the idea of not wanting to play out a
Speaker 1: whole parent child drama in the pages of a book.
Speaker 1: Diane was in a uniquely complicated position because if she
Speaker 1: had sat down and done an interview with me, I
Speaker 1: think everyone would have taken that as tacit approval of
Speaker 1: everything that was in the book, which she could not give,
Speaker 1: of course, because she didn't know what was in the book.
Speaker 1: So they put a lot of trust in me letting
Speaker 1: me do this. Everybody that worked with Mike, he's such
Speaker 1: a fizzy character. I would imagine your work was made
Speaker 1: easier by how much people remember their time with Mike completely.
Speaker 1: That was a really particular thing, Even if he said
Speaker 1: something to them forty years ago. They held onto it.
Speaker 1: Whether it was a great funny piece of advice or
Speaker 1: a brutal insult, it stayed inside them when it went in.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I didn't know Mike well. I worked with
Speaker 1: them that one time in the eighties, and but I
Speaker 1: would always see him. He was very kind and he
Speaker 1: loved actors. And it was at a time in my
Speaker 1: life when I was being tortured by a girlfriend I
Speaker 1: had like she was so resentful of my starting to
Speaker 1: work and being more successful. This is the beginning of
Speaker 1: me making films. This is the beginning of me throwing
Speaker 1: my clothes in a suitcase and leaving the moment after
Speaker 1: I hung up the phone, Hollywood was calling me to
Speaker 1: make movies and I was going to go no matter what.
Speaker 1: And you were gonna start missing everything, birthdays, anniversary as
Speaker 1: you didn't care. And I'm sitting lamenting this with Mike
Speaker 1: in his trailer when we were doing Working Girl, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, well, you know the relationship is dead.
Speaker 1: He said. There's two metrics. One is he says, there's
Speaker 1: just not enough other people in the room when you're
Speaker 1: with your girlfriend. They just aren't enough other people in
Speaker 1: the room. The other one is he says, how quickly
Speaker 1: do you get back into your ship after you come
Speaker 1: the thing to say, I mean, he really really like
Speaker 1: beguiled me. He was beguiling. Everything that came out of
Speaker 1: his mouth was smart and funny and rich. Well, I
Speaker 1: think you got him at a really interesting point in
Speaker 1: his life, not just because it was Working Girl, which
Speaker 1: of course is one of the movies that people still
Speaker 1: talk about and watch, but because he was on his
Speaker 1: way to marrying Diane. And I think at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, he had recovered from a big breakdown that
Speaker 1: he had had a couple of years earlier. He got
Speaker 1: addicted to halcyon and all of that, and he recovered,
Speaker 1: and Working Girl came along, and he said, it's too
Speaker 1: elaborate and location driven a production. I'm gonna make Biloxi
Speaker 1: Blues first, which is a movie that I can do
Speaker 1: in my sleep, and then I'll get my muscles back,
Speaker 1: and then I want to do Working Girl. But it
Speaker 1: was a point when he was trying to fix himself
Speaker 1: in some ways. You know, you go into your fourth
Speaker 1: marriage and obviously why the first three didn't work, and
Speaker 1: what your part was in that must be very front
Speaker 1: of mine. So I think you got him an unusually
Speaker 1: kind of vulnerable and tense and excited time in his life.
Speaker 1: There's up moment you have in the book which is
Speaker 1: just so thrilling about Fiffer. When Fifer leaves the room
Speaker 1: and comes back, he says, my god, he's dazzled by
Speaker 1: what Nichols does and he says, it's all in there.
Speaker 1: And that was the thing about Mike. If there's ten
Speaker 1: things you want, the average director has four, maybe five
Speaker 1: of the ten things you want, and Nichols, of course
Speaker 1: had all ten of those things. And because his mind
Speaker 1: was on everything. If he was talking to you about
Speaker 1: the scene. I remember vividly he was talking about the
Speaker 1: scene we were going to do, and I'm sitting on
Speaker 1: a bed and he's sitting on the bed, and as
Speaker 1: he's talking to me, he's looking over my shoulder. He says,
Speaker 1: what is this painting doing on the wall. He says,
Speaker 1: take this down, He says, I hate this painting. And
Speaker 1: they're like the set design is in his mind. It's
Speaker 1: all of one. I was really surprised when I was
Speaker 1: doing the research and interviews how many stories I heard
Speaker 1: in different contexts about Mike freaking out about some physical
Speaker 1: location or surroundings based thing. This really bothered him. There
Speaker 1: was one point when he had an entire Broadway set
Speaker 1: re built because a hallway that was on the stage
Speaker 1: in the center he decided was eight inches too narrow
Speaker 1: and that he needed those extra eight inches. There's another
Speaker 1: point when he's doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf on
Speaker 1: stage with Elane May at the Long Wharf and they're
Speaker 1: in the living room set and he realizes that there
Speaker 1: are only three places to sit and there are four characters,
Speaker 1: and it he just completely blows a gasket. He completely
Speaker 1: freaks out. He can't let it go for days and days,
Speaker 1: and it was a really interesting kind of glimpse for
Speaker 1: me in what he needed in order to work now.
Speaker 1: You wrote a book about a battery of directors who
Speaker 1: were very influential in the seventies, as well as your
Speaker 1: other book about a battery of directors during the wartime.
Speaker 1: Nichols is someone who you really when you say his name,
Speaker 1: your heart pressed to think of anybody who was as
Speaker 1: adept at directing actors. There are directors who cast well,
Speaker 1: and they cast the prison and there's everything that just
Speaker 1: wind upup and let him go. You've come to do
Speaker 1: this thing I know you can do when I just
Speaker 1: let you go, do that and it puts a costume
Speaker 1: on you and we go. Whereas Mike really this idea,
Speaker 1: the vanity of certain directors who believe they quote unquote
Speaker 1: get a performance out of you is completely nonsense. But
Speaker 1: with Mike, it really was true. Mike got a performance
Speaker 1: out of you. Do you think that made him completely
Speaker 1: unique in the business. I do think it made him
Speaker 1: pretty unique. And I also think it's the reason that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have kind of had trouble pinning
Speaker 1: down what makes him special as a director. Because Mike
Speaker 1: didn't write his own movies. I mean that already sets
Speaker 1: him apart from a lot of the directors. Like when
Speaker 1: we talk about a Cohen Brothers movie or Paul Thomas
Speaker 1: Anderson movie or a Tarantino movie. We know where he's
Speaker 1: coming from as a writer as much as we do
Speaker 1: as a director. But if Mike's really special gift was
Speaker 1: connecting with each actor in a way that was going
Speaker 1: to bring the best performance out of them. If that works,
Speaker 1: that is sort of something that it's supposed to end
Speaker 1: up being invisible, Like You're not supposed to watch the
Speaker 1: movie and think, oh, that's a impeccably directed performance. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to watch the movie and think that's a great performance.
Speaker 1: And so I think the thing that made him special
Speaker 1: is something that isn't always evident to people who watch
Speaker 1: his movies. But what's interesting is that he did do
Speaker 1: a lot of writing. I mean, he was right in
Speaker 1: there with Piffer and Simon and other writers giving them
Speaker 1: his ideas about cuts. I mean, decorating the house is
Speaker 1: one thing, Building the house is another. And Mike didn't
Speaker 1: build the house. He didn't write the pieces, but he contributed.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he never wrote his own stuff
Speaker 1: for motion pictures. Well, some people say that it was
Speaker 1: because he was uncomfortable from the beginning of his life
Speaker 1: with literal writing, Like he hated his handwriting. He didn't
Speaker 1: like putting things down on paper. And of course there's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about his work with Elaine May, which
Speaker 1: is that all of the most famous sketches that they
Speaker 1: did together, some of which they did hundreds of times,
Speaker 1: were never actually written down. They were just things that
Speaker 1: were work doubt between the two of them until every
Speaker 1: word was locked. But it was never locked on paper.
Speaker 1: It was just locked in their performance. They were too childish.
Speaker 1: That quote you have where she says they talked about
Speaker 1: they don't want to break up anymore on the show,
Speaker 1: and she says it's so childish, and she says, she
Speaker 1: said it was the most responsible conversation we'd ever had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that story so much that there there are
Speaker 1: these two people in there I guess late twenties by
Speaker 1: that point, saying we have to stop laughing on this
Speaker 1: Broadway stage. People are paying to see this, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't keep it together. They really didn't think of it
Speaker 1: as a grown up job that they had. Author Mark Harris.
Speaker 1: If you love behind the scenes stories of Hollywood legends,
Speaker 1: check out my conversation with Sam Wasson, author of The
Speaker 1: Big Goodbye Chinatown and The Last Years of Hollywood. Wasson
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with producer Robert Evans, who
Speaker 1: was credited with turning Paramount Studio Is around in the
Speaker 1: early nineties seventies. He loved it, he loved it, he
Speaker 1: loved show business, he loved movies, he loved people, he
Speaker 1: loved talent. It's actually that simple. I asked him this question.
Speaker 1: I said, Evans. Is it as simple as you bet
Speaker 1: on talent? Do you have an easy job? And he said,
Speaker 1: you goddamn right, that was and it's true. Here more
Speaker 1: of my conversation with author Sam wasson that Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing dot Org. After the break, Mark Harris talks about
Speaker 1: a fundamental truth of Hollywood. Success has a way of
Speaker 1: limiting your choices. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Mike Nichols was known for bringing out
Speaker 1: remarkable performances from his actors, but not always. Two stories
Speaker 1: of when Nichols struggled stood out to me and Mark
Speaker 1: Harris's biography, nichols frustration with Gary Shandling as the lead
Speaker 1: in What Planet Are You From? And his decision to
Speaker 1: fire Mandy Patakon just a week into rehearsals for Heartburn,
Speaker 1: a role that went to Jack Nicholson instead. It's so
Speaker 1: interesting to me. I mean, Mike did know how important
Speaker 1: casting was, and yet the list of actors that he
Speaker 1: fired over the decades is really pretty impressive. It's like
Speaker 1: Gene Hackman, Robert de Niro and in that case, Mandy Pottakin.
Speaker 1: I know that Mike was very impressed by his work
Speaker 1: on stage, and that was a moment when he was
Speaker 1: really coming up. He was a big deal on Broadway,
Speaker 1: and Mike often felt that could carry over. I mean,
Speaker 1: he would fill out the supporting cast of his movies
Speaker 1: a lot of the time with people he had seen
Speaker 1: on Broadway or off Broadway because he knew they could deliver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he even flew them to Texas when he was doing Silkwood.
Speaker 1: But that's different, obviously than casting a romantic leading man
Speaker 1: opposite Meryl Streep. I mean, so it could have been
Speaker 1: the jewishness, it could have been that he just felt
Speaker 1: a good connection with that character. But whatever it was,
Speaker 1: clearly it was something that he Nichols decided pretty early
Speaker 1: on was a wrong call. I mean, they shot for
Speaker 1: a week before he fired Mandy Patinkin, but it sounded
Speaker 1: to me like even before that, in the read throughs,
Speaker 1: in the rehearsals, Nichols had a really strong sense that
Speaker 1: it was not going well on a character level and
Speaker 1: maybe not going so well on a personal level. Meryl
Speaker 1: said that Mandy was very rabbinical in his questioning and
Speaker 1: then his character development. Right, I loved that word. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what she said. She said he was rabbinical, that
Speaker 1: he had to kind of interrogate everything about the character,
Speaker 1: maybe even to the point of torturing people a little.
Speaker 1: But one thing that seemed to come up a lot,
Speaker 1: and I can understand how this would be a sticking
Speaker 1: point was he kept saying, I don't understand this. Why
Speaker 1: would a man ever cheat on his wife? Why would
Speaker 1: a man ever cheat on his pregnant wife? And heartburn
Speaker 1: was obviously like the facts of the case, we're not
Speaker 1: in dispute. It's based on this real thing that happened
Speaker 1: between carlburn Steen and or Evran. So I think there
Speaker 1: was a feeling that at some point we got to
Speaker 1: get off the y and just move on to it happened.
Speaker 1: So you have to figure out why this like this
Speaker 1: guy did this, and that's what you have to play.
Speaker 1: I love how you write. When Nicholson comes on the project,
Speaker 1: he says, Mike, if you need me, I'm there, and
Speaker 1: then later on they interpreted Mike, if you need me,
Speaker 1: what he meant was if you need me, which is
Speaker 1: means an eight million dollar price ticket, I'm there. Well,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say that decision just completely changed
Speaker 1: the budget of the movie. Heartburn was not an expensive movie,
Speaker 1: and it turned into a much more expensive movie the
Speaker 1: second Nicholson came on board, but he did it with
Speaker 1: very few days. Notice, well, you know, Mike decides that
Speaker 1: in order to have the Hollywood career he wants to
Speaker 1: have in the budgets and get paid what he wants
Speaker 1: to paid. The budgets inflate in direct proportion to Mike's
Speaker 1: salary inflating. If Mike's salary becomes six seven eight million dollars,
Speaker 1: the budget goes from fifty sixty five million dollars, and
Speaker 1: that the canoe tips over. In terms of casting, you
Speaker 1: have to have the star. We go, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: less creative maybe about who should play the part, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna start talking about who we need to play
Speaker 1: the part to sell tickets. And I wonder if you
Speaker 1: felt that he ever express any anxiety or regret about
Speaker 1: the fact that, in order to make big ticket movies
Speaker 1: he couldn't cast who he wanted in the film. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it turned into a casting thing,
Speaker 1: but probably the worst example of a movie where his
Speaker 1: ask his fee changed the whole nature of the movie
Speaker 1: was what planeted Are You from? The comedy he made
Speaker 1: with Gary Sandling, because everyone who wrote that movie, which
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty long list of people when you
Speaker 1: add everyone who took a crack at the script and
Speaker 1: and even people who were in it, like and At Benning,
Speaker 1: said this was this really should have been a small movie.
Speaker 1: There should have been an indie style, Charlie Kaufman, quirky
Speaker 1: little comedy, and instead I think it becomes maybe with
Speaker 1: the exception of Primary Colors, the biggest fee that Mike
Speaker 1: ever got for a movie. In the minute you're paying
Speaker 1: someone like Mike Nichols eight million dollars in the nineties
Speaker 1: to direct a movie, suddenly it becomes a completely different
Speaker 1: kind of movie. So what planet are you from? Turned
Speaker 1: into this movie with big sets and special effects and
Speaker 1: and sort of elaborate costumes and kind of heaviness of
Speaker 1: production value that crushed the comedy under its weight. And
Speaker 1: I think that was the only time where money actually
Speaker 1: did damage in a kind of material way to a
Speaker 1: movie that Mike was making. I mean, he did get
Speaker 1: a lot of money for Primary Colors, but Primary Colors
Speaker 1: was probably always going to be a movie where you
Speaker 1: wanted to see a couple of stars play those parts.
Speaker 1: When you're doing a movie about a potential president and
Speaker 1: first lady, you want to see big names, And in
Speaker 1: that case, to Mike's credit, he did resist. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of pressure to turn the main character,
Speaker 1: the narrator of the novel Primary Colors, who was African
Speaker 1: American on the page, into a white character. People were
Speaker 1: openly saying, like, why don't you give this to Michael J. Fox.
Speaker 1: This is a perfect part for him, And Mike resisted
Speaker 1: that and actually cast an unknown actor, Adrian Lester in
Speaker 1: the part. So I don't think there are too many
Speaker 1: cases where money got in the way of him casting
Speaker 1: a movie the right way. I mean, I know that
Speaker 1: on Working Girl there was a lot of back and
Speaker 1: forth with the studio right about whether they could afford
Speaker 1: two stars in the leading part or they wanted Melanie
Speaker 1: and I to play the two leads, right, And then
Speaker 1: he said, and he said to me point there was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite conversation with Mike. He said, if
Speaker 1: I put you in Melanie in the leads, where they're
Speaker 1: gonna give me twenty million dollars to make my movie,
Speaker 1: and if I cast these other people, they're gonna give
Speaker 1: me fifty million dollars to make my movie. She said,
Speaker 1: I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: go with them in order to make my That was
Speaker 1: one of my first indoctrinations into that. And meaning there's
Speaker 1: a metric, there's an arithmetic to this, which is there's
Speaker 1: just nothing I can do about it. I can't make
Speaker 1: my movie for twenty million dollars. And he said, would
Speaker 1: you play this other part? Would you play this smaller?
Speaker 1: I said, you got. I mean I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be around him and work with him. I once said
Speaker 1: to someone, Travolta is the last movie star in the timeline,
Speaker 1: mean that old movie stars after that are all about
Speaker 1: effects and guns and cars and computer generating, and that
Speaker 1: the star of themselves is the hood ornament on a vehicle.
Speaker 1: Travolta is a very old school movie star in terms
Speaker 1: of you build the movie around what he can do
Speaker 1: you and if you don't make the movie built around
Speaker 1: what he can do as primary colors, you suffer because
Speaker 1: he's not really right for that role. And in my mind, well,
Speaker 1: and he was the second choice. I mean, Mike really
Speaker 1: wanted Tom Hanks for that part, and it sounded to
Speaker 1: me like he came actually quite close to getting Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: and then Hanks backed away. Some people said because he
Speaker 1: didn't want to offend the Clinton's I read that when
Speaker 1: Hanks said to me, was I thought of myself as
Speaker 1: an old young man but still not quite old enough
Speaker 1: to play a president. Well, someone said that to me.
Speaker 1: Was They said, oh, if you do that part in
Speaker 1: that movie, they go, you'll be middle aged for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. And then you also write about
Speaker 1: how the timing of the Clinton scandal and the film collide. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had kind of forgotten that. I knew that they
Speaker 1: were intermingled, but I didn't remember that we're talking about
Speaker 1: two separate scandals. That the Primary Colors was really springing
Speaker 1: off the Jennifer Flowers story, and then in the middle
Speaker 1: of it, the Monica Lewinsky story breaks. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a story that makes Primary Colors suddenly looks quite a
Speaker 1: children's book, right exactly. And um, Emma Thompson, this speaks
Speaker 1: to Travolta's stardom. Emma Thompson tells a really funny story
Speaker 1: about the moment they all found out, which is they
Speaker 1: were sitting around and Emma Thompson said, Mike and I
Speaker 1: were reading, you know, rice and beans out of all
Speaker 1: the starring containers, and John Travolta had like a seventy
Speaker 1: five course chef's meal. He had his own chef on
Speaker 1: the set, And I thought that was like, of all
Speaker 1: the star indulgences, that struck me as one that like Mike,
Speaker 1: would be the most forgiving of because he loved food
Speaker 1: so much. What's rehearsal without donuts? Right from Barefoot in
Speaker 1: the Park. So it happened a couple of times in
Speaker 1: Mike's life that this thing just from out of left
Speaker 1: field kind of derailed a movie at the last minute.
Speaker 1: Once was Catch twenny two when they saw Mash just
Speaker 1: a couple of months before Catch twenny two was supposed
Speaker 1: to open and realized that Match was going to take
Speaker 1: the entire audience that they were hoping to get and
Speaker 1: Catch twenty two. And the other was Primary Colors, where
Speaker 1: they all said, I don't really know what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to the movie, but they knew what was going
Speaker 1: to happen to the movie. They knew that it was
Speaker 1: totally eclipsed by the scandal, right, And when you read
Speaker 1: the reviews of it at the time, some of them
Speaker 1: even say explicitly, like we see this on the news
Speaker 1: every night, and this movie feels like it's about something
Speaker 1: that happened two years ago, and nobody's mind is on
Speaker 1: that anymore. I got a little choked up reading this
Speaker 1: book because it's like you get to those forks in
Speaker 1: the road of career versus personal life, and you have
Speaker 1: to say to yourself, am I willing to do what
Speaker 1: it takes for some people? The answer to that question
Speaker 1: is very easy. I mean, it's just reflective that they
Speaker 1: when you're offered that opportunity. I remember when I would
Speaker 1: be working in films early on and things were getting
Speaker 1: a little shinier. People looked at me with there was
Speaker 1: an unmistakable look. At least I thought it was unmistakable
Speaker 1: where they looked at me, like, you realize, we don't
Speaker 1: ask just anybody to do this, don't you? You realize
Speaker 1: that they are at bus loads of people coming here
Speaker 1: who want to be sitting exactly where you are right
Speaker 1: now discussing with us. I mean, they really put a
Speaker 1: pressure on me to want to spend the big wheel
Speaker 1: of the movie star game, whether it was gratifying creatively
Speaker 1: or not. And I had grown up tortured by wanting
Speaker 1: to be a better actor. And I thought it, well,
Speaker 1: that's not going to get me there, and they were like,
Speaker 1: you need to go get a vaccine for that. We
Speaker 1: need to get you disabused of that, because who gives
Speaker 1: a shit about that? Where we're gonna, I'll be offering
Speaker 1: you your own seat up here on Mount Olympus. And
Speaker 1: I always struggled with that, and I see that with Mike,
Speaker 1: and that that leads me to the question, do you
Speaker 1: think he was happy? I think it depends on when
Speaker 1: you're asking about for a long time, I think the
Speaker 1: answer is no, and he would have said no. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was shocked. This was when I was working on
Speaker 1: my first book. But I was shocked when I asked
Speaker 1: him about coming to the Oscars and winning for the
Speaker 1: Graduate and for Best Director his second film, and he
Speaker 1: basically said, and his face almost fell when he said that.
Speaker 1: He said, I really have no memory of that experience,
Speaker 1: but misery and wanting to get back to the hotel
Speaker 1: and feeling like being alone at the hotel at midnight
Speaker 1: was the entire experience of winning that Oscar. He described
Speaker 1: himself as Mr. And Hedonia, And I think that lasted
Speaker 1: well past nine eight I think there were long stretches.
Speaker 1: Even when Mike was being fairly productive, like in the
Speaker 1: early eighties when he was not directing movies but directing
Speaker 1: a lot on stage. He described himself as sleepwalking through
Speaker 1: entire productions that he did, just feeling totally disconnected from it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think depression was something that he really
Speaker 1: wrestled with for a very long time. I do think
Speaker 1: later in life, Mike was more happy, more settled, more
Speaker 1: comfortable with the kind of work he did and the
Speaker 1: way he made his choices and what he was doing.
Speaker 1: And I think his marriage to Diane had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with that. And also I feel like he
Speaker 1: always wanted to work, but he didn't necessarily feel that
Speaker 1: he had that much to prove anymore, and so that
Speaker 1: made him happy. But now there were long stretches when
Speaker 1: I think what was externally going on in his world
Speaker 1: in terms of the creative work he was doing, did
Speaker 1: not match his mood, his happiness at all. It seems
Speaker 1: like there's a fracture was an impact of Mike's personal
Speaker 1: life and his personal psyche from when things end with
Speaker 1: Elaine until he meets Diane. Mike isn't healed until he
Speaker 1: finds Diane. When he finds Diane, he finds a woman
Speaker 1: that is really the woman who makes him feel better
Speaker 1: and is the right fit for him in terms of
Speaker 1: a companion and a wife. Do you think that's true.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Yeah, I really think that's true.
Speaker 1: I love the thing that he said to Doug Wick,
Speaker 1: the producer of Working Girl, which you know, it was
Speaker 1: a movie he made while he was sort of preparing
Speaker 1: to marry Diane, which was he said, if I don't
Speaker 1: find a woman who will kick my ass when I'm
Speaker 1: rude to a cab driver, I'm doomed. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was immensely proud of Diane and what she did, and
Speaker 1: he he loved her celebrity. He genuinely did. But I
Speaker 1: think he also felt that he needed someone to tether
Speaker 1: him to humanity and to say behave yourself and to
Speaker 1: say treat other people well. But yeah, I do think
Speaker 1: there's this long stretch after his big rift with Elane.
Speaker 1: May happens in ninety two, sixty three, and by sixty
Speaker 1: five or sixty six, they're friends again, and they're they're
Speaker 1: doing occasional performances for benefits and she the love of
Speaker 1: his life. The book to screams that not from you,
Speaker 1: but you lay out the fact. You go, my God,
Speaker 1: Was this just the love of his love? Was he
Speaker 1: so deeply in love with this woman? I think he
Speaker 1: was deeply in love with her. I don't know enough, honestly,
Speaker 1: about Mike's third marriage, which lasted a really long time
Speaker 1: and was a serious relationship with someone who really cared
Speaker 1: about him and who he really cared about. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's not my place to rank loves, but I
Speaker 1: absolutely know that Elaine was his first love, and he,
Speaker 1: I mean, his first wife, looks exactly like her, so
Speaker 1: it's hard not to draw conclusions from that. Mark Harris,
Speaker 1: author of Mike Nichols Alive. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back. Mark Harris talks about Mike nichols
Speaker 1: later years and how, at long last he started to
Speaker 1: become Mark tent. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Mike Nichols was married four times. His
Speaker 1: last two journalists, Diane Sawyer. They were together twenty six
Speaker 1: years until Mike's death in two thousand fourteen. She was
Speaker 1: someone who had to get on a plane and go
Speaker 1: a lot of the times, I mean at a moment's notice,
Speaker 1: because she worked in news, and um, I just remember
Speaker 1: a few times from the years when I knew Mike
Speaker 1: he would really miss her when she was gone, but
Speaker 1: he would also be so proud of the fact that
Speaker 1: she was doing it. And the combination of two super
Speaker 1: high achievers in completely different fields is really interesting because
Speaker 1: there's no real competition there. Mike did not aspire to
Speaker 1: be in television news and Diane didn't aspire to be
Speaker 1: in the movie business. And that's a good combination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to get back to Gary Shandling, only because you handle
Speaker 1: that beautifully. You write in Shandling, a congenitally nervous comedian
Speaker 1: insecure about his attractiveness, two women, terrified that people were
Speaker 1: smirking at his hair. He had seen a nightmare version
Speaker 1: of his own reflection. For his entire life, he had
Speaker 1: worked to compose a surface self and impeccably polished Mike Nichols,
Speaker 1: capable of concealing any insecurity with an epigram A decisive
Speaker 1: piece of direction where brilliantly inscrutable, wide eyed grin whose
Speaker 1: infinite variations could meet anything from how true to what
Speaker 1: a terrible idea? To only you and I know we're
Speaker 1: on the Titanic. I just love that. I love that.
Speaker 1: He told George Siegel. So this was as early as
Speaker 1: you know, the mid sixties. It takes me three hours
Speaker 1: to become Mike Nichols every day. And and I held
Speaker 1: onto that line so tightly because it tells you so
Speaker 1: much like what it costs you to compose a self,
Speaker 1: like to feel that you can't go into the world
Speaker 1: without creating this external self that is someone you can
Speaker 1: carry off. But also what are you afraid that people
Speaker 1: are going to see if you don't do that? I
Speaker 1: think that's what Gary Schandling triggered. That Gary Shandling was
Speaker 1: somehow to Mike the person that Mike was afraid other
Speaker 1: people saw when they looked at him. And which which
Speaker 1: tragic is that Mike in the casting realm, when you
Speaker 1: talk about that collision of the budget, the star, the
Speaker 1: nature of the person. That was a fifteen million dollar movie,
Speaker 1: right and then suddenly it's a what fifty nine million
Speaker 1: dollar movie? I mean all wrong, and there's no way
Speaker 1: he can I think Mike's worst fear was to be
Speaker 1: painted into a corner and there was nothing he could do.
Speaker 1: He was so resourceful. You present him with a problem
Speaker 1: and it was fun, It was a game. He was
Speaker 1: always with clever people. Sondheim, who's more clever than son Teim,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Bernstein, all the friends of
Speaker 1: his in Connecticut and up in a Cape cod in
Speaker 1: Martha's vineyard or wherever he was, and everything seemed to
Speaker 1: be people who had built these towering careers out of
Speaker 1: problem solving and loving the challenge. But when you put
Speaker 1: him in a situation where there was no way out,
Speaker 1: you were trapped and no wonder he decided to just
Speaker 1: decimate Shandling. Right. I don't get the impression that Mike
Speaker 1: minded if an actor was momentarily stuck on a scene
Speaker 1: or a line or something that neither to be talked through,
Speaker 1: because that was an interesting puzzle to try to figure out,
Speaker 1: and if he believed in the actor, Mike even had
Speaker 1: pleasure in that. But with Shandling, he later said that
Speaker 1: he was sort of fooled that he thought from watching
Speaker 1: the Larry Sanders show which was of course so brilliant
Speaker 1: that Gary Shandling was just a completely facile, natural actor,
Speaker 1: and when that turned out not to be the case,
Speaker 1: and that was probably Mike's fault in many ways for
Speaker 1: not having spent some real time with Shandling to get
Speaker 1: to know him beforehand, it was I mean, it reminded
Speaker 1: me of something that someone said in an another context
Speaker 1: about him, which was when he couldn't get something from
Speaker 1: an actor, he was like a musician whose instrument suddenly
Speaker 1: refused to play, that he just got stuck. He did
Speaker 1: not know how to move forward. And what's unfortunate with
Speaker 1: what planet are you from, is that in that case,
Speaker 1: it really sent him into this just terrible temper where
Speaker 1: he really did, by all accounts, take it out on
Speaker 1: Gary Chandling in a pretty terrible way. But when you
Speaker 1: said it about Diane tethering him when he's abusive towards
Speaker 1: cab drivers, you can almost hear people like that in
Speaker 1: his life saying you're not so all fault anymore, so
Speaker 1: a little less tarib if you don't mind, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's so he that grown man who loses
Speaker 1: control of himself. Believe it, I've been there and that's
Speaker 1: not great. Now. I was at Mike and some people
Speaker 1: I don't really remember. It's kind of weird. Was thrown
Speaker 1: together so hastily, or at least it wasn't my mind.
Speaker 1: We did this benefit one of those highly improvhasatory, wonderful evening.
Speaker 1: It was one of the funny evenings I've ever had.
Speaker 1: We did, I think at Carnegie Hall called Short Talks
Speaker 1: on the Universe, and any Lane wrote up vignette, but
Speaker 1: I did a scene with Ellen Barkin and Ellen Ellen
Speaker 1: and I play two people that are flirting with each other,
Speaker 1: or think they're going to flirt with each other and
Speaker 1: think that's what's happening, and they wind up just tearing
Speaker 1: each other to pieces, saying with such horrible things to
Speaker 1: each other. And it was very funny. I mean normally
Speaker 1: that kind of Albi esque thing wears a little thin
Speaker 1: on me after a while. Virginia Wolf and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing that there's the shouting and the venom and everything,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh God, I get exhausted. But we did it.
Speaker 1: It was very funny, and in that way that he
Speaker 1: loved to improvise, he loved to get people to just
Speaker 1: fling it against the wall and play with it, which
Speaker 1: is probably his greatest gift. Because other other directors are
Speaker 1: astute with a camera and cutting and so forth, and
Speaker 1: other people know how to manufacture a movie, even a
Speaker 1: hit movie, But getting actors, shepherding them toward the breakthroughs
Speaker 1: and they're acting, is the thing that I think he's
Speaker 1: the most memorable for and come from all of his
Speaker 1: improphessitory work. In fact, Eline was sitting behind me. Wow,
Speaker 1: I went on stage and did my thing that I
Speaker 1: took my seat in the audience. They held a seat
Speaker 1: and Eline was behind me with Donnin and I turned
Speaker 1: her and I said, what a Stanley Donnin have that
Speaker 1: I don't have? I think, he said an Oscar. I said,
Speaker 1: that's true, that's true, But I mean everybody who knew
Speaker 1: Elaine was just madly in love with Ela, and Emiline
Speaker 1: couldn't give a ship me. Lane was like, she's kind
Speaker 1: of thrived from the fact that does she really care
Speaker 1: what you thought? She talked to you? Correct, she said,
Speaker 1: the only things I can remember are the things I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you. It was difficult to get
Speaker 1: her to commit to do it. It always seemed to
Speaker 1: be postpond and prest bond. Once we sat down and talked.
Speaker 1: Other than that very scary first thing that she said
Speaker 1: to me, she was great. There's so little that she
Speaker 1: has done in terms of real, sit down, non joky
Speaker 1: interviews over the last fifty years that I really didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was going to be. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe how not only forthcoming she was, but how specific
Speaker 1: she was about the dynamic between her and Mike professionally
Speaker 1: and personally, the work that they had done together, the
Speaker 1: pain of that breakup, the way their relationship was different
Speaker 1: after the breakup and after their reconciliation, the way they
Speaker 1: stayed together for fifty five years after that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like an enormous amount of what I came
Speaker 1: to learn and understand about Mike grew out of that interview,
Speaker 1: which fortunately was an interview that happened quite early in
Speaker 1: my interviewing process, so I was able to I mean,
Speaker 1: she was the first person I went after, and really
Speaker 1: the only person in the book who if she had
Speaker 1: said no, it would be a different book. I really
Speaker 1: don't know how I would have done it. It would
Speaker 1: have been hamstrung there. Yeah, Kushner, of course, Angels is
Speaker 1: done by Mike for HBO. Did you get to know
Speaker 1: him at all during the shoot? Did you become friendly
Speaker 1: with Mike at all? Yeah, that was the first time
Speaker 1: I met him was probably when he was in Central
Speaker 1: Park one night directing this cruising scene and I remember
Speaker 1: Tony and I he called Lake because he was having
Speaker 1: trouble with the scene or something, and he said, get
Speaker 1: out of your apartment, come down here because I need you.
Speaker 1: And so Tony and I walked down there, which was
Speaker 1: just a fifteen minute walk, and we were saying, I
Speaker 1: wonder if we're gonna be able to find the shoot,
Speaker 1: and then we rounded the corner onto Central Park South
Speaker 1: and like the whole Central Park South is floodless circus
Speaker 1: is there? That was our first understanding that this was
Speaker 1: going to be a big production. But yeah, the first
Speaker 1: time I ever met Mike was watching him direct a
Speaker 1: scene that he was having trouble with and that was
Speaker 1: an amazing introduction just getting to see him sort of
Speaker 1: figure out is this an actor problem? Is this a
Speaker 1: visual problem? Do I not have enough fog? Is this
Speaker 1: a staging problem? Is this the way guys would walk
Speaker 1: toward each other, away from each other? It was really
Speaker 1: interesting to watch him kind of struggle, but also almost
Speaker 1: mathematically or forensically work out like what am I not
Speaker 1: getting here that I need to get? And it wasn't
Speaker 1: a case where he was taking it out on anyone.
Speaker 1: And I was always interested that he called Tony that
Speaker 1: night and and said like, come help me, which was
Speaker 1: not Mike's away necessarily, but he didn't mind asking for guidance.
Speaker 1: Was the book in your mind then, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: I never thought of doing a book about Mike until
Speaker 1: after he passed away. I urged Mike to write his autobiography,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't do it. No, interesting no, And he
Speaker 1: used to say, not only do I not want to
Speaker 1: do it, but I'm very proud that I have made
Speaker 1: any future biographer's job impossible by burning all my papers.
Speaker 1: Towards the very end of his life, he did for
Speaker 1: the first time expressed some interest and maybe doing a
Speaker 1: book where he would sit with the writer and they
Speaker 1: would just go project by project and he would talk
Speaker 1: about directing. So his papers are not donated somewhere. Nothing
Speaker 1: was left to any academic institution. No, I I don't
Speaker 1: think they're not then he like library or university or
Speaker 1: anything like that, and maybe that will happen down the road.
Speaker 1: Luckily for me, everybody who might ever wrote a note
Speaker 1: to or an email too, seems to have saved it.
Speaker 1: So I was able to get his own voice into
Speaker 1: the book, which was really important to me. Well, whenever
Speaker 1: I saw him, he was very sweet to me. He
Speaker 1: would hug me and he was so nice. I think
Speaker 1: I saw him the Lincoln Center maybe a year before
Speaker 1: he died. He was with Diane, but he asked me
Speaker 1: to do postcards from the edge. I remember we were
Speaker 1: under the cloak of the holidays one year, it was
Speaker 1: like January, and he said, I want you to come
Speaker 1: to do this movie with me. I want you to
Speaker 1: play this part. I said, I really don't know. I said, uh,
Speaker 1: we're not shooting until May. I said, well, I've been
Speaker 1: having this problem with my same girlfriend. I said, been
Speaker 1: having this problem that I keep trying to end this
Speaker 1: relationship and it's so painful, it's just so miserable of
Speaker 1: and I thought of old people. He wouldn't understand lingering,
Speaker 1: nagging problems. But he had this great line. He goes,
Speaker 1: what kind of problems could you possibly have that couldn't
Speaker 1: be solved by May? He said, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you really made me feel like ship. Now you have
Speaker 1: a point there, But I didn't do the movie, and
Speaker 1: I that when you did, when he invited you and
Speaker 1: you didn't come, it was not good. Matthew Broderick told
Speaker 1: me an interesting thing, which as he said that he
Speaker 1: felt that actors men came in and out of Mike's scope,
Speaker 1: that for a while the bright light really shone upon you,
Speaker 1: and you were the guy, and it could only be you,
Speaker 1: and then it would move on. But actresses he tended
Speaker 1: to hold onto forever, like he didn't really let go
Speaker 1: of an actress once he loved her. On the Richard
Speaker 1: Burton documentary that was on PBS, there's a wonderful line
Speaker 1: that Mike himself had and he said something along the
Speaker 1: lines of he said, Richard had completely lost the distinction
Speaker 1: between being and seeming until his life had become only
Speaker 1: about seeming. And I thought, was that true of Mike
Speaker 1: as well, where where a large part of his life
Speaker 1: was he was obsessed with people's perception of him as
Speaker 1: opposed to how he really lived his life. I'm sort
Speaker 1: of pay shuring that question as a diagram, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that like maybe as the years and the decades
Speaker 1: go on, the being and seeming lines get closer and closer,
Speaker 1: until Mike finally was what he seemed to be or
Speaker 1: seemed to be what he was. I guess depending on
Speaker 1: what angle you look at it from. But I think
Speaker 1: who Mike was and who Mike wanted to be finally
Speaker 1: did come together despite of this childhood. I would say, so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He talked about how directing put him in the place
Speaker 1: where he was the father to the room full of people. Right.
Speaker 1: That's such a striking thing to me in that he
Speaker 1: felt it when he was thirty one or thirty two
Speaker 1: years old and he walks into a rehearsal room for
Speaker 1: the first time for Barefoot in the Park and says, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it. This is what I want to be.
Speaker 1: I want to be a director because the directors the dad.
Speaker 1: I think of myself at thirty one and not aware
Speaker 1: enough being the dad was not like high on my
Speaker 1: list year, but my paternal nature exactly. So it's an
Speaker 1: interesting instinct at that young age to decide that, oh,
Speaker 1: this is who I am. I'm the father. But it's
Speaker 1: like to me, I mean, I only have a silly
Speaker 1: analysis of it, but it's like Mike was like the
Speaker 1: somalia of human emotion and feeling. He had this hyper
Speaker 1: developed sense of what people were feeling and why and
Speaker 1: how it was expressed. So when he was directing actors,
Speaker 1: he'd be listening and he'd be sitting there going, you know, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not that, do it again, and and we're going to
Speaker 1: get closer to the thing that he knew was the
Speaker 1: perfect take, or the right take, the truest take, the
Speaker 1: funniest take. He had to such an ear and an
Speaker 1: eye for that kind of thing. And so maybe that
Speaker 1: guy that has that hyper developed sense is the kind
Speaker 1: of guy that could say I'm the father in the
Speaker 1: room and I'm thirty one years old. He was so
Speaker 1: developed emotionally. Maybe so because by that time he had
Speaker 1: spent his whole childhood and adolescence watching other kids, like
Speaker 1: kids who looked to him like quote unquote normal kids
Speaker 1: and who sounded like normal kids. I mean, he spent
Speaker 1: so much of his childhood sta to get apart from
Speaker 1: the crowd, thinking what does it look like? What does
Speaker 1: exactly it looked like when someone is popular or when
Speaker 1: someone's unpopular, or when someone's awkward. I think that went
Speaker 1: into him really early, that you figured out human nature
Speaker 1: by watching other people. Yes, Oh God, that that resonated
Speaker 1: for me so incredibly. I want to just say, this book,
Speaker 1: Mike Nickles of Life. I went into this and I
Speaker 1: thought I knew everything about Nichols. You made me see
Speaker 1: Nichols in a different light. And because the order of
Speaker 1: the book and the way you put it together, in
Speaker 1: the whole arc of the book, you made me see
Speaker 1: this guy in a light that that much of it
Speaker 1: I knew, but I didn't really know. And this book
Speaker 1: really so definitive. It's just just a beautifully written book.
Speaker 1: To congratulations, Thank you so much. And I have to
Speaker 1: say I don't think I've done an interview for this
Speaker 1: with someone who has read the book as carefully as
Speaker 1: you have. No, I loved it. I loved it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't put it down. I really mean that, I couldn't
Speaker 1: put it down. So anyway, thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: Mark Harris on legendary director Mike Nichols. The book is
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols Alive. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Karry Donohue,
Speaker 1: and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Is brought to you by iHeart Radio