In his 1981 cover story, the actor talks to Tim Cahill about 'The Shining,' The Lakers, and more
He thought of himself as a dark specter beyond the bathers. Most of the lifeguards at this particular New Jersey beach had opted for the image of Bronze Protector, butwas different. He was a boat guard, and he enjoyed rowing out beyond the breakers. His job was to see that no swimmer strayed too far or got in too deep. It was the mid-Fifties, and Jack was the sort of older teenager who identified with Holden Caulfield, that sad, neurotic hero of J.D.
Nicholson ran back to his own beach, where the surf was not quite as high. Although the other guards doubted it could be done, Jack thought he might be able to muscle a boat out. He pulled through five-foot-high waves, waves so steep that sometimes it seemed as if the boat were moving in a vertical plane. Exhausted, he pulled out beyond the breakers, into the chop and swell, and made his way around the jetty, finally picking up the last five swimmers.
THE WORST CELEBRITY INTERVIEWS are conducted over lunch in some chic restaurant with the waiter interrupting a prize anecdote to ask who had the fettuccine while the public-relations person across the table is saying, “What Bobby really meant to say here was …” Some are held in a mobile home on a movie set. Others happen in desperate motel rooms around the world. Still others are held in the star’s home after the cleaning lady has left.
Two things became very apparent, very quickly. One, Jack loved to ski the narrow, raggedy line that divides control from total disaster. Two, he enjoyed skiing with others. He took time out to help Bradley and me, the two weakest skiers in the group. Bradley hadn’t skied in years, but he was improving hourly, and Jack, through word and deed, would caution him against the danger and delay of excessive caution.
“You know, Cain started as a journalist, and there is a lot of detail in his writing. He’s very cinematic. We essentially did the book. We added very little. David Mamet came in right on the money, first draft. The Lana Turner-John Garfield version was a classic, but at the time, they couldn’t really do the book. Not all the scenes. I mean, you know what it is: it’s a“What I like about Cain is that his women are very strong. Villainesses. You think of Joan Crawford or Bette Davis in those roles.
“He hacks this hole big enough for his face,” the patrolman said, “and he does this expression” — out there on the windswept high plains of Wyoming, the patrolman pressed his face close to mine and let his features fall in the rubbery, slack contortions of madness — “and he says,Johnny.'” The patrolman laughed out loud and repeated the line again, like the punch line of a good joke.
There was the neighborhood in Neptune City, New Jersey, where Jack spent his earliest years — it was mostly black, and so were many of his earliest friends. Basketball was the game, and his town “used to produce black basketball champions year after year.” You can still hear some of the hero worship in his voice as he talks about it.
During that time, he studied acting with Jeff Corey and Martin Landau and Lee Strasberg. He was reading the existentialists. He was interested in Zen Buddhism. He wrote a screenplay, a western based on Sisyphus. He hung out in poolrooms. He worked as an office boy in the cartoon department of MGM, handling mail for Tom and Jerry.
“At AIP,” Jack said, “I worked with Carol Eastman and Robert Towne. Monte Hellman got me into writing, and I emerged from that with a wider view. I started trying to produce, and all that was a key turn in terms of aesthetics. I began to see filmmaking as a whole, to see how all the parts fit together. Filmmaking is a collaborative art, and collaboration is what I’ve studied. I learned that a good actor can always be interesting, but fine acting involves the whole piece.
“I thought, ‘Geez, international politics,’ and I began composing this eloquent speech in my bad Spanish right there, when suddenly two big motorcycles lead a big Cadillac limo up to the door. Two tall Mexican fellows step out They look like Mexican secret service, and they ask me to get in the limo.
“I step out of the car, and suddenly all these fireworks go off and they spell JACK IS NUMBER ONE. I think, ‘Holy God, Portilloand about forty women in bathing-beauty type swimsuits and high heels come marching in my direction. When they got close enough, I said, ‘Ladies, what is going on here?’ One of them said, ‘Anything you want, Jack’ I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, what a night for my back to be out.
A big black dog of indeterminate breed loped in and interrupted the literary conversation. “Hey, Fabulous,” Jack said. He began scratching the dog behind the ears, his face inches away from that of Mr. Fabulous. “Aha, Fabuloso, Mr. Fab, yeah, good dog, good boy.” The dog huffed great puffs of happy dog breath in Jack’s face.
“Okay. You want to look at some pictures? Here’s Valerie Perrine. She plays my wife. Oh, Toots, look at this one. We had to do this stunt with a train, and the train guys didn’t know a lot about stunts, and the stunt guys didn’t know a lot about trains, so I had to do a lot of the work setting it up.” He handed her a photo of the train as it passed over him. “And there I am lying under a speeding freight train with no protection.
Jessica Lange plays a restless young woman married to an older man. Nicholson is the hired man —eventually her lover — and the chemistry between them is elemental. It’s all sex, raw and more than a little perverse. My favorite scene takes place in the rain. Jessica, her hair disheveled, her eyes wide, stares at Jack. “I don’t care what’s right or wrong anymore,” she says.
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