Hollywood Hellraisers (27 page)

In business Warren had proved himself a tough operator, someone who refused to make commitments and negotiated tirelessly to get his fees up. Warren wasn’t just smart and ruthless but also devastatingly charming: a dangerous combination. He got people to do what he wanted. He was also the most tuned-in celebrity in Hollywood. ‘Warren talked to everybody in town all the time, and always knew what was happening,’ recalled super agent Freddie Fields, whose clients included Newman, McQueen and Hoffman. ‘He knew about weddings before people got married, and about divorces before couples broke up. He knew who’d get a picture before they knew. He knew release dates and grosses. He’d talk to Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, to studio heads, and the guys running distribution. He was on the phone all day. Part of what drove him is paranoia. He needed information like he needed sex.’

Apart from a script that was never really ready, a further strain on filming was that Jack’s old girlfriend Michelle Phillips was now with Warren, as earlier she’d left Dennis to shack up with Jack. Feeling guilty, Michelle called Nicholson to make sure he wasn’t too hurt about her getting it on with his best friend. ‘I thought it was fabulous,’ said Jack. ‘Because I am fond of them both.’ According to Michelle, however, director Mike Nichols eventually had to bar her from the set because she’d show up and disappear into Warren’s bungalow, ‘And it was terribly painful for Jack.’

There’s a scene in
The Fortune
where Warren and Jack pass Stockard Channing back and forth between them like a football; some friends speculated that this reflected their attitude towards Michelle. This was unfair; Warren was genuinely serious about her. Jennifer Lee met Warren again around this time and recalls how deeply in love he obviously was with Michelle, though the old reprobate was never too far from the surface, suggesting they all have a nice friendly threesome. Jennifer was past all that; after numerous affairs she’d met the love of her life, comedian Richard Pryor.

Warren was determined that this relationship was going to work, though it didn’t bode well that, although Michelle and her young daughter Chynna moved into his home up on Mulholland Drive, he still spent most of his time at the Beverly Wilshire. At least he played at happy families, driving Chynna to school, helping her with homework, but blotting his copybook somewhat by the odd bit of blatant womanising. Michelle quickly concluded that to keep the errant Warren away from temptation she shouldn’t let him out of her sight.

When news broke that Warren and Michelle were preparing to marry it was a case of ‘we’ll believe it when it happens’. Both appeared to be serious, though, with Bali chosen as the perfect romantic rendezvous to tie the knot. On the flight over Warren started applying the brakes, talking about marriage as ‘a dead institution’, hardly a good sign for any potential bride. They returned to LA still single, and the press sensed storm clouds hovering. Warren waved them away, complaining that the media were behaving like ‘anxious mothers’ trying to push him up the aisle. Michelle felt different. ‘He prefers shallow, meaningless relationships,’ she said. ‘He thinks they’re healthier, or at least the only kind he can have. I don’t respect his lifestyle, but I don’t try to judge him.’ No one ever did.

In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she don’t know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.

Robert Towne was touting a new screenplay around town, a Chandleresque story about how fat-cat developers made LA into the city it had become, with a subplot about a father who’s screwing his daughter thrown in for good measure. His detective hero was very much written with Jack Nicholson in mind, to suit his ‘blue-collar arrogance’. Bob Evans over at Paramount couldn’t make much sense of the labyrinthine story, but he liked the title, thought it was catchy —
Chinatown
.

It was Jack who suggested Roman Polanski direct the film. At first he was hesitant about returning to Los Angeles, the scene of his wife’s terrible murder only a few years before. He was still damaged by it, carrying in his bag a memento of Sharon wherever he went, her knickers. Evans finally persuaded Polanski to fly over to discuss the movie. It was a depressing experience for him. ‘Every street corner reminded me of tragedy,’ the director said.

Jack got on well with Polanski, or ‘the Little Bastard’, as some called him, and adapted well to his martinet approach to directing. The feeling was mutual. ‘Jack’s on the wild side. He loves going out nights, never gets to bed before the small hours, and smokes grass.’ Jack did arrive late a few times when the call was indecently early, his eyes bloodshot, but he not only knew his own lines but everyone else’s. His lack of vanity also endeared him to Polanski, who insisted he spend half the movie with a large bandage on his nose, the result of a knife wound. He simply doesn’t care about the way he looks. With Jack it’s only the result that counts.

The real on-set fireworks were between Polanski and Faye Dunaway. Almost from the start of shooting she puzzled over her character’s motivation. ‘Say the fucking words,’ an unsympathetic Polanski shouted. ‘Your salary is your motivation.’ She also fussed excessively over her appearance. In one scene the actress couldn’t flatten a miscreant strand of hair that kept catching the light, so Polanski took matters into his own hands and ripped it out of her scalp. Faye couldn’t believe it, screamed obscenities at him and stormed off the set.

Relations were even worse after that. Faye and Jack were in a car waiting for cameras to roll. She needed to pee rather badly, but Polanski wouldn’t have it; he wanted the shot done. Faye wound the window down and threw a cupful of liquid in his face. ‘That’s piss,’ he said. Faye smiled. ‘Yes, you little putz.’ And rolled the window back up.

The explosion between Jack and Polanski that people were waiting for didn’t happen until near the end of the shoot. Jack’s beloved Lakers were playing a vital basketball game on TV and during filming he’d rush back to his dressing room to catch the latest score while Polanski fiddled about with the lighting. At one point he failed to return on time and Polanski stormed in and smashed the television to pieces. ‘You are an asshole,’ he fumed at Jack, hurling the smoking hulk out of the door. (The TV, that is.) Jack’s reaction was, in Polanski’s words, ‘dramatic in its irrational fury’. He tore off his clothes in the full glare of everyone on the crew and walked off the set. Too mad to continue, Polanski quit too.

On the way home, Jack pulled up at some lights. Looking over, he saw Polanski in his car. The two of them stared at each other in silence. Finally, Jack mouthed the words ‘fucking Polack’. Polanski grinned and the two men burst into laughter as they drove off in opposite directions.

Still at his philandering best, boasting to one friend that a top fashion model had flown 10,000 miles just to spend the weekend with him — ‘What can I do, I’m hot!’ — Jack started to look for something a little more permanent. He found that special someone in Anjelica Huston, the daughter of veteran director John, who was a successful model at the time. They met at a party during the
Chinatown
shoot. It was instant attraction, he seduced by her feline sophistication, she by his hypnotic eyes and the famous Jack grin. ‘His whole face lit up when he smiled. I wanted him!’

Friends agreed that Anjelica was perfect for Jack, and it was her love and understanding that brought him out of the self-imposed shell into which he’d retreated after his break-up with Michelle Phillips, nervous about plunging into another long-term relationship. Theirs would be a tumultuous love affair that lasted, on and off, for the next seventeen years.

It was a playful one, too. At home with a
Rolling Stone
reporter Jack, dressed in a bathrobe, was showing off stills from his latest movie, including love scenes with the sultry Valerie Perrine. ‘Let me see that,’ Anjelica said. ‘No,’ said Jack, defending himself as Anjelica jumped at him on the sofa and they began to wrestle, she making a grab for the hem of his robe. ‘Help!’ Jack cried. ‘She’s trying to expose my wanker to
Rolling Stone
.’

Chinatown
was one of the summer hits of 1974 and received nearuniversal acclaim. Today it is justly regarded as an American masterpiece, and one of the best films of the seventies. The icing on the cake for Jack was another Oscar nomination for best actor. Jack could now name his price. He’d truly arrived, his name mentioned in the same breath as Hoffman, Redford, Newman, McQueen and Beatty.

Jack has attributed his longevity in Hollywood to his determination to mix up his roles, playing in mainstream Hollywood movies followed by more art-house choices. ‘I don’t believe in pigeonholing, it’s the death of any actor.’ It was a policy that began when he agreed to make
The Passenger
(1975), mainly because the man doing the asking was Michelangelo Antonioni. He plays a burned-out TV journalist who assumes the identity of a mysterious stranger he finds dead in a hotel room. In Antonioni’s hands, it is less a thriller than an existential-style meditation on identity and alienation. ‘Antonioni is the absolute opposite of melodrama,’ Jack said. ‘A chase scene in his movies might be a camel walking for a very long time.’

Antonioni quickly got to work on Jack, stripping away all his trademark mannerisms, leaving him naked as an actor. It was a huge leap of faith to surrender himself totally; there was no communication, no give and take. According to co-star Maria Schneider Jack suffered during that movie. ‘He was lost in Spain. He loathed the food, he had hamburgers sent from America, and he panicked because he wasn’t being directed.’

Fresh from her controversial role in
Last Tango in Paris
, Maria accepted Antonioni’s film in a bid to play something different. ‘She didn’t want to be typed as the sexy broad with butter up her ass,’ said Jack helpfully. Unable to handle the instant fame and notoriety of
Tango
, Maria had descended into a drug-induced oblivion that lasted years. Jack recalled how in one scene he had to hold Maria upright because she was so zonked on painkillers. Another time she was holding a conversation with Antonioni and she was loaded and half nude, with her bathrobe open. ‘I thought Michelangelo was going to die,’ said Jack.

Hot on the heels of
The Passenger
came the film that for many remains the quintessential Nicholson movie —
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
(1975). It began life in the early sixties when superstar Kirk Douglas bought the rights to Ken Kesey’s novel about a nonconformist in a mental hospital. Hoping to play the title role himself, Douglas spent thirteen years trying to launch a movie version, finally giving up and passing the rights over to his son Michael. But the son wasn’t any more successful than Dad at hustling the property around Hollywood. ‘How many films about mental illness made money?’ studio executives would say. Enter Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records, keen to branch out into movies and together he and Michael were able to raise the budget independently.

For their director both men wanted Milos Forman, who’d fled his Czech homeland in 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and had been looking for a Hollywood hit ever since. Forman grabbed the opportunity; after all, Kesey’s book was about what he’d left behind — a totalitarian system. He also saw only Jack in the lead role of Randle P. McMurphy. Obviously Kirk was too old now to star and the likes of Marlon had turned it down. Burt Reynolds was also considered. (Did they envisage Reynolds escaping the nuthouse at the end by launching a souped-up red Ford Mustang over the fence?) Finally, logic prevailed and Jack signed on. It was a book he had always loved.

Given the filmmakers’ intention to offer audiences their most realistic view yet of life inside a mental ward, highlighting vile practices like lobotomies and shock treatment, most institutions were understandably reluctant to accommodate them. Luckily the director of Oregon State Hospital in Salem was a fan of Kesey’s novel and welcomed the producers, providing they employ as many patients as possible both as extras and to work alongside the crew. It would be good therapy for them. What no one on the film realised was that this meant employing some pretty wacko people. So you had an arsonist who’d tried to burn the hospital down a year before working with highly flammable turpentine as a painter, and a murderer working with the electricians, along with a couple of child molesters and rapists.

During filming, a crew member left a second-floor window open and a patient climbed through the bars and fell to the ground, injuring himself. The next day the local paper’s headline read: ‘One Flew OUT of the Cuckoo’s Nest.’

Jack undertook painstaking research, talking to staff and even persuading them to allow him to watch inmates undergo electro-shock treatment. It was a chilling experience, watching the grotesque facial convulsions of the poor wretches when the technician unleashed the juice. He then took a stroll inside the maximum-security wing that housed the most dangerous mental patients in the whole of Oregon. He sat there quietly and alone as they were brought out of their cells; some even engaged in conversation with the actor, believing him to be a patient like themselves. Only a month earlier one of them had stabbed a guard to death. For Jack it was both fascinating and rewarding to sit, watch and learn from them, although a guard was never very far away. When he saw the finished film the hospital’s superintendent, Dean Brook, said of Jack’s performance: ‘He was an absolute genius in getting across the character of McMurphy, a sociopath of whom there are plenty around. Jack’s performance typified them.’

It was a long shoot, lasting some eleven weeks, and Anjelica came to stay with Jack. She was soon wishing she hadn’t. Usually Jack had no problem slipping out of the skin of a character once the cameras stopped whirring, ‘But here I don’t go home from a movie studio, I go home from a mental institution.’ Poor Anjelica didn’t feel that she was living with Jack at all; the character of McMurphy was taking over. ‘Can’t you snap out of this?’ she challenged him one day. ‘You’re acting crazy.’ Jack couldn’t, he was in too deep and Anjelica packed her bags and left. ‘I’m no longer certain whether you are sane or not,’ she told him. ‘I’ll see you when you come back into the real world.’