mike nichols Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When Cinematical staff first discussed the "Montages We Love" series, the image that popped into my head was a classic: the from-bed-to-pool montage in the 1967 film The Graduate. This is my favorite part of the Mike Nichols-directed movie -- yes, even better than the "plastics" line and the bit with Buck Henry and that iconic scene at the end.

The montage is a triumph of clever editing, thanks to Nichols and editor Sam O'Steen, whose other credits include Cool Hand Luke, Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. It begins with Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) lazing in his parents' swimming pool, then as he leaves the pool and pulls on a shirt, he's revealed to be in a hotel room with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and then "April, Come She Will" play in the background as Ben shifts from his bed to the pool to the hotel, drinking beer and looking passive and bored, or with his expression masked by sunglasses. The scene ends with Ben pushing himself off the pool's raft -- and into Mrs. Robinson's arms on the hotel bed.

Having faced Charlie Wilson's War, Mike Nichols is gearing up for his next film, and this time, there's a good dose of murder. Variety reports that he's going to direct Joe Penhall's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Deep Water. Set in an American suburb, the book reveals the life of a loveless marriage between Vic and Melinda -- one that survives only because Melinda is allowed to take on as many lovers as she pleases (as long as she doesn't pack up and go). However, then her lovers start to die.

Penhall, you might recall, adapted Cormac McCarthy's The Road, while Highsmith was the novelist behind Strangers on the Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. But it's the magic of Nichols that really makes this appealing. While he's had a quite varied film career that extends from Catch-22 to dolphin assassins, Nichols has always excelled the most with dysfunction and drama -- from the early days of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate to Closer and Charlie Wilson's War. Add some kills and thrills into the mix and this should be interesting.

For me, he's the director who helped warm me to the world of film criticism. I believe The Graduate was one of the first films where I began to notice how cinematic flairs make a film all the better. And hey, he's also the man who revealed a whole different depth to Julia Roberts with Closer.

But how about you? What's your favorite Nichols film?

We often hear about Hollywood remaking foreign-language pictures, translating them for the domestic audience. (Some would say, "dumbing down and stripping away everything that made them unique and special," but I digress.) Now a Hollywood studio is proceeding with plans to remake its own movies for international audiences. Do they have any hope for success?

Fox International Productions is working on versions of Tony Scott's Man on Fire and Mike Nichols' Working Girl for the Russian market, according to Variety, and is planning a different version of Working Girl for the Japanese market. In a case of "turnabout is fair play," Taka Ichise, who produced the original Japanese versions of The Ring and The Grudge, will perform the same duties for the Japanese Working Girl. The Russian versions are considered re-imaginings rather than remakes, "with concepts to be tailored by Russian writers."

The Russian films can be made on the cheap (under $4 million) because, presumably, the Russian equivalents of Denzel Washington, Tony Scott, Harrison Ford, and Mike Nichols won't be paid millions of dollars and production costs will be lower. A Russian remake of Johnny To's Breaking News was recently released, so maybe Russian audiences are primed and pumped to see local remakes of foreign films. It's not likely that American audiences will ever be able to (easily) see any of these particular foreign-language films, but I admit to curiosity over how Russian creative talent will interpret the basic premises of Man on Fire and Working Girl, or how Working Girl will translate in Japan. They sound like odd choices to remake. Anyone want to venture an opinion on why and how?

If you've been seduced by the seductive powers of Mrs. Robinson, or find yourself afraid of Virginia Woolf, you might want to head for New York City in April. The Hollywood Reporter posts that The Museum of Modern Art is gearing up for a two-week retrospective of 17 Mike Nichols films from April 14-May 1 (at MoMA's Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters).

The plan is to show projects that range from his early work like the classic The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, plus more recent cinematic excursions like Charlie Wilson's War and Angels in America. But as with any big retrospective, the big draw will be "Mike Nichols in Conversation." The director will be on-hand on April 18 for an informal conversation, not just with some random interviewer, but with a collection of his closest writing and acting collaborators. This list includes Nora Ephron, Elaine May, and Buck Henry.

For those of us who can't be there ... we've got YouTube, so I hope you enjoy this classic scene:

When it comes to sifting through all actors responsible for portraying the most powerful man on the planet, there's no shortage of options. John Travolta did a great Bill Clinton impersonation in Primary Colors and Timothy Bottoms delivered a near-perfect imitation of George W. Bush in both D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis and That's My Bush! Neither one comes across as particularly flattering, so presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen a safer bet: At a recent party in Los Angeles, Obama revealed that he prefers Jeff Bridges' conflicted commander-in-chief in The Contender. Granted, he may have said this simply to keep his audience happy -- in this case, Contender director Rod Lurie, one of the attendees who was willing to plop down $28,000 for the event. "'I just plugged your movie," Obama told Lurie, according to a report the director sent to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells.

Still, when you're under the kind of intense scrutiny that Obama currently endures, Bridges actually seems like a pretty safe choice. Choose Anthony Hopkins in Nixon and it sounds like you're endorsing the bad guy. Choose Kevin Kline in Dave and you come across as disingenuous. Choose Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and somebody will call you incompetent. Bridges, on the other hand, plays a fierce leader bound to his moral convictions. Of course, Obama also expressed sympathy over Lurie's short-lived television show Commander-in-Chief, which featured Geena Davis as the first woman president. Perhaps it's no coincidence that he and Hillary have publicly made amends.

The question is, if you're going to make a political movie based on a true story, how "true" do you have to be, and is it fair play to make such a film that works as purely entertainment, even if you fudge the facts a little? There are two things going on within Charlie Wilson's War, which stars the affable Tom Hanks as the title character, a liberal Democratic congressman from Texas with an affinity for single-malt scotch whiskey and women. The first thing is an entertaining story about a good ol' boy from Texas, a hard drinking skirt-chaser who, if we're to believe Hanks' take on the character, wasn't so bad, really. Oh, maybe he called his staff of sexy, all-female all-stars "jailbait," drank heavily, and partied in Vegas with Playboy models while surrounded by cocaine, but heck, y'all, that doesn't make him a bad guy, does it? Shoot, he's just a rascally sort, and after all, he's from Texas, where the good ol' boys are, so that makes it all okay.

But, okay, let's toss that aside and say that in spite of his flaws, he really did, underneath, care about his job, at least enough to look up from the nekkid women in the hottub in the first scene of the film long enough to notice that Dan Rather is wearing a turban, and astute enough to realize it might be interesting to know why. The second thing that's happening in Charlie Wilson's War is the story of what happened after Wilson gets interested in Afghanistan: In the summer of 1980, Wilson reads a dispatch about the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet invasion; Wilson, newly appointed to the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, casually orders the CIA funding for Afghanistan doubled from five million to ten million, and presto, it's done. But not quite finished.

I didn't leave Charlie Wilson's War, the new film from director Mike Nichols, dissatisfied or unamused. I walked out of Charlie Wilson's War angry. No reasonable person expects a film -- any film -- to capture the complexity and scope of real events with absolute precision; adaptations are translations, and as the old Italian saying goes, "The translator is a traitor." It's one thing to compress, combine and fictionalize a story to fit the sprawling, ugly mess of it onto the big screen; it's another to take only the best, shiniest parts of a real, ugly story and turn it into a feel-good comedy. Translation may be traitorous, but Charlie Wilson's War feels like a conscious act of treason against reason itself. As film critic David Thompson has said, "We learn our history from movies, and history suffers ...." Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia.

Based on George Crile's 2003 book of the same name, Charlie Wilson's War follows the exploits of Charlie Wilson, a Democratic Congressman from Texas who, during the '80s, had as much fun with his position as you could, which was a lot. As Charlie Wilson's War opens, we see Charlie hot-tubbing in a Vegas hotel suite; the room's full of booze, broads and blow. But Charlie, played by Tom Hanks, can't look away from the news; as one of his new acquaintances notes her apathy to world events, Charlie boils it down: "Dan Rather's wearing a turban; you don't want to know why?" Dan Rather's in a turban because Dan Rather's in Afghanistan, among the Afghan mujahideen -- the Islamic rebels trying to drive the Soviet Union out of their country by any means necessary. This sight sparks something in Charlie, so he sets out to increase the C.I.A.'s funding for the Afghan rebels -- from $5 million a year to 10. It's a lot of money. It's going to be much more.

ComingSoon now has the exclusive first look at the teaser poster for Charlie Wilson's War (click on the image to the right for a larger version). War stars Tom Hanks as the 'unconventional' congressman Charlie Wilson, who with the help of a Texas socialite and a rogue CIA agent managed to organize a "covert war" in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. Hanks is joined by Julia Roberts as the socialite Joanne Herring and Philip Seymour Hoffman as CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos.

Wilson's good-time-guy image was only one aspect of his personality and more importantly he considered himself a staunch patriot with a clear sense of right and wrong. Wilson was once quoted as saying '"The US had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight...But we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones." Charlie Wilson's War is based on the book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crill III -- I guess for the sake of billboard space they decided to shorten the title just a little.

The trailer for the film was just released a few weeks ago, and I think most of us were a little 'underwhelmed' by the whole thing. It's a solid cast, and it does have Oscar written all over it, but for such a fascinating story I guess I was just expecting a little more 'oomph' in the preview. Although for those of you out there worried that this is just another boring political drama, don't worry, the trailer works in a few genuine laughs -- but that could just be me. Much like the trailer, the poster for the flick isn't going to blow you away but it gets the job done -- mainly reminding you that there are three Oscar winners in the film. Considering you have mega-stars like Roberts and Hanks in the cast, it's a pleasant surprise that Hoffman made it on the poster at all. Charlie Wilson's War is scheduled for release on Christmas Day.

The World Entertainment News Network (WENN) is reporting that Natalie Portman has second thoughts about doing a nude scene for Wes Anderson's short film Hotel Chevalier, which will play in front of The Darjeeling Limited when it expands to nearly 800 theaters tomorrow. According to WENN, Portman said: "I'm really sorry I didn't listen to my intuition. From now on, I'm going to trust my gut more. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is say no." Portman also says she'll never appear nude on screen again -- cue thousands of pervy men crying out like Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith: "Nooooooooooo!!!"

You might recall that Portman had second thoughts about nudity in the past. She played a stripper in Mike Nichols' Closer but then evidently convinced Nichols to cut out footage that was too revealing. Then rumor had it that she appeared in the buff in Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts, but the naked bits were provided by a body double -- and it was an unpleasant torture scene anyway.

What surprises me about her latest regret is that Wes Anderson financed Hotel Chevalier out of his own pocket. He's not exactly known as a hound dog director, exploiting actresses by making them take off their clothes, though most of his films (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) have included nudity. Is it possible that she's more concerned now because the interest in Hotel Chevalier has been driven almost entirely by her exposed bits? (All due respect to Anderson, but there's no way half a million people would have downloaded the short off iTunes if not for her appearance.) Or possibly she's tired of all the cute headlines calling her "Naked Natalie." (Guilty as charged.) Maybe we can all get it out of our system this weekend.

UPDATE: It was all a big misunderstanding. WENN based their news item on a press release by PARADE, touting Portman's first-person article, "What I've Learned (So Far)," which will appear in print on Sunday. In a statement that has been forwarded to Cinematical by a publicist representing Portman, PARADE states: "In the release, we say that Portman regrets doing a nude scene in the movie Hotel Chevalier. This is wrong. When Portman writes about this in PARADE, she does not mention a specific movie title. However, she tells us she was referring to a torture scene with a body double in Goya's Ghosts, which was taken out of context and leaked onto the internet. Portman is very happy with Hotel Chevalier and proud of her work in the film. PARADE apologizes for the error." The entire article is now available online.

You may have noted my mention of a playwright named Beau Willimon last week. If not, it was in a post about a remake of the British miniseries The Jury, which Finding Neverland's Marc Forster will direct. I pointed out that Forster actually handpicked Willimon to be the screenwriter of that project after reading the guy's play Farragut North. The political drama is set to open on Broadway early next year with Jake Gyllenhaal starring and Mike Nichols directing, and I figured that eventually there'd be a movie in the works, possibly with that prestigious duo re-teamed for the big screen version. But no, it seems Gyllenhaal and Nichols just aren't good enough for Warner Bros., who owns the film rights. Instead they've cast some guy named Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead and are hoping to sign on some old television has-been named George Clooney to direct.

According to Variety, the project is also being produced by DiCaprio's company, Appian Way (The Aviator), and Clooney's company (with Grant Heslov), Smoke House (Leatherheads); both companies apparently teamed up after reading the script (were they at the same party as Forster?) and then together brought the thing to Warners. In the film, DiCaprio will play a young idealist working on a presidential campaign who ultimately ends up resorting to bad tactics like backstabbing and trickery. Basically, it sounds like the sad story of the common politico who still thinks there's room for Mr. Smith's out there, only to wake up and discover the real world of Washington. But as much as it sounds familiar, or obvious, or otherwise trite, it seems the play is somewhat autobiographical, as Willimon based it on his experience working on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign. Certainly the film would be a great timely release for 2008, but right now the film, which Willimon is adapting himself, doesn't have a clear start date. Hopefully Warners can grab DiCaprio as soon as he's done with Ridley Scott's Body of Lies and Clooney as soon as he's done with the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading for a just-in-time Fall opening.