Jack Nicholson: The Early Years PDF
Preview Jack Nicholson: The Early Years
Jack Nicholson J N ack icholsoN The Early Years Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer Copyright © 2012 by Robert David Crane and Christopher Fryer Published by the University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Crane, Robert David. Jack Nicholson : the early years / Robert Crane and Christopher Fryer. p. cm. — (Screen classics) Originally published as: Jack Nicholson : face to face. New York : M. Evans and Co., 1975. With new introduction. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8131-3615-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8131-3639-4 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8131-4066-7 (epub) 1. Nicholson, Jack. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States— Biography. I. Fryer, Christopher. II. Title. PN2287.N5C7 2012 791.4302’8092—dc23 [B] 2012006641 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses To Moz Muse, love, beauty. Promise. —C.F. To Leslie Bertram Crane —R.C. C ontents Introduction to the Paperback Edition 1 Jack Nicholson: First Interview 7 Roger Corman 27 Karen Black 35 Richard Rush 45 Jeremy Larner 55 Bruce Dern 59 Jack H. Harris 79 Sally Struthers 83 Dennis Hopper 91 Ann-Margret 99 Monte Hellman 107 Henry Jaglom 113 Mitzi McCall 131 William Tepper 135 Hal Ashby 143 Robert Evans 151 Jack Nicholson: Second Interview 159 Acknowledgments 171 Filmography 173 Index 203 Illustrations follow page 90 I ntroduCtIon to the P e aPerbaCk dItIon Sometimes it’s good to be naive. Perhaps more than anything our original book, Jack Nicholson: Face to Face, was a result of youthful naïveté, an unfettered notion that a couple of twenty-year-old film students could call Jack Nicholson on the phone and then spend several days talking movies with him in his living room. Our attitude was, “How could he possibly say no?” Our guilelessness was accompanied by a boisterous enthusiasm and passion for the New American Cinema that was coming of age just as we were. In 1969 there were no multiplex cinemas. Any film of conscience or consequence wanted to open at one of a half dozen movie palaces in Los Angeles: Grauman’s Chinese, the Pantages, or the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, or the National, the Bruin, or the Fox Village in Westwood. A film called Easy Rider premiered in June 1969 at the Village, and the lines for tickets wound around the block. Waiting patiently were students from neighboring UCLA, hippies, yuppies, young, old, bikers, and wan- nabe bikers. Easy Rider was a phenomenon, not just for its two long- haired, dope-smoking, counterculture antiheroes played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, or because it cost less than $400,000 to make and quickly grossed more than one hundred times that amount. Easy Rider was a must-see principally because of a performance by an actor almost no one had seen before, in spite of the fact that he had appeared in twenty films, written five, and produced three over the previous twelve years. That actor, of course, was Jack Nicholson, playing the lubricated and loquacious lawyer George Hanson, who finds enlightenment, liberation, and a fatal beating in the company of his new free-wheelin’ friends. It was a supernova performance, and it won Jack his first of a now raft-load twelve Academy Award nominations. Easy Rider got Jack off the B train local and onto the high-speed A express. Next stop: Tinseltown. 1
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