Mike Nichols

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Nichols, Mike [né Michael Igor Peschkowsky] (b. 1931), director and comedian. Born in Berlin, his family fled the Nazis and came to New York. He studied at the University of Chicago for two years, then made his Manhattan acting debut in 1960 in An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Their humor, often improvised or seemingly improvised, ridiculed the foibles and frustrations of everyday life. Thereafter Nichols worked primarily as a director, staging such comedy hits as Barefoot in the Park (1963), Luv (1964), The Odd Couple (1965), Plaza Suite (1968), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Real Thing (1983), and Social Security (1986). He also directed more serious works, such as revivals of The Little Foxes (1967), Uncle Vanya (1973), Waiting for Godot (1989), and The Sea Gull (2001), as well as Streamers (1976), Hurlyburly (1984), and Death and the Maiden (1992). Nichols has co‐produced some New York productions, most successfully Annie (1977), and has directed many films.

A award-winning director of versatility and insight, Mike Nichols (born 1931) has found success in both film and theatre. He started as a performer in improvisational theatre with his longtime collaborator, comedian Elaine May. After the duo broke up, Nichols turned to directing and producing for the theatre, winning awards for such hits as "Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple", and "Annie". He has also acquired an impressive list of film directorial credits, including the 1960s classics "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "The Graduate".

Mike Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany on November 6, 1931. He was the son of Pavel Nicolaievitch Peschkowsky and Brigitte (Landauer) Peschkowsky. His father had already fled the Russian Revolution and, within ten years, the entire family would flee Nazi Germany and head for America.

Nichols' father, a physician, immigrated to the United States in 1938, and changed his name to Paul Nichols. A year later, Nichols and his younger brother joined their father in New York City. Due to illness, his mother did not immigrate until 1941. The Nichols family settled in the New York-Connecticut area, where Paul Nichols practiced medicine. Nichols was educated at the prestigious Dalton School in New York and Cherry Lawn School in Connecticut. Tragedy struck the family when Nichols was just 12. His father died, leaving his mother to raise two boys on her own. A short time later, in 1944, Nichols became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Chicago, New York, and Back

Nichols enrolled at New York University, but dropped out shortly thereafter. He worked for a year before enrolling at the University of Chicago in 1950. While in the pre-medicine program, he supported himself by working as a janitor, busboy, hotel desk clerk, and truck driver for the postal service.

Becoming more involved and interested in theatre, Nichols left college and moved back to New York. He studied acting with Lee Strasberg for about two years. Nichols then returned to Chicago, where he joined the Compass Players, an improvisational theatre group (later known as Second City) and began working with Elaine May. Of his dramatic abilities, Nichols told Vanity Fair writer Joan Juliet Buck: "I was very bad for a while, and then I was pretty good. And then, like everybody, if you do it long enough, you figure out how to do it."

Nichols and May began developing and performing routines that impressed audiences with on-target satire. Their manager, Jack Rollins, later commented to the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service: "They did things that were taboo by the standards in those days. They were totally adventurous and totally innocent, in a certain sense. That's why it was accepted." After packing New York City venues, they reached Broadway, with An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, which ran from 1960 until 1961. The show would earn the pair a Grammy Award for best comedy recording in 1961.

Shortly after Nichols appeared in one of May's plays, A Matter of Position, the duo split up. Nichols relayed to Barbara Gelb of the New York Times Magazine: "That's what fractured our relationship. I was onstage, she was in the audience watching me, judging me. As soon as we weren't in balance, equals on the stage, we flew apart." Nichols also shared with Gelb that he wasn't really prepared for professional life on his own. "When Elaine and I split up," Nichols told Gelb, "I didn't know what I was. I was the left-over half of something."

Found Niche as a Director

At the suggestion of a Broadway producer, Nichols made a career change and directed his first play, Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, in 1964. As Nichols told Buck of Vanity Fair, he knew he had found his niche: "On the first day I thought, here's my job. This is what all my experience, which up till now had seemed so random, was leading up to." Nichols was honored with the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best director of a play for Barefoot in the Park, and won the same honor a year later for The Odd Couple and Luv.

Success in filmmaking would follow. Nichols received critical acclaim for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? a 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor in an Academy-Award winning role. He also began to exhibit his fondness for foreground shooting, long takes, and distorting close-ups to intensify the sense of his characters' entrapment.

Nichols made his mark with the success of The Graduate, which starred Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. In Hoffman's memorable screen debut, Hoffman's character became the spokesman for a generation that mistrusted anyone over thirty and vowed never to go into plastics. Nichols earned an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a New York Film Critics Award for best director for the film, which Gavin Smith of Film Comment called "a time capsule movie."

When asked how he made the transition from performing to directing, Nichols told Smith of Film Comment: "Improvising was a wonderful training as it turned out for theatre and movies, because you learn so much about what the audience expects in terms of action and events." His next film efforts would fall short. Catch-22, was based on the Joseph Heller novel. Quite simply, as Buck of Vanity Fair wrote, the film was "a disaster." Carnal Knowledge, a film about how men view women differently, followed in 1972. Starring Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret, Nichols called it "the darkest movie I ever made." His next two efforts, The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and The Fortune (1975) were, as Peter Bart of Variety described them, "ordinary studio films." Nichols then began a seven-year hiatus from making films.

Despite these disappointments, Nichols continued to garner honors in the theatre. He won the Tony Award for best director of a play for Plaza Suite in 1968 and for The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1972. In 1973, his stage work began to slacken as well. He did some television work, serving as executive producer for the series Family. He returned to Broadway with a bang, producing the musical Annie, which earned him $2 million and a Tony Award for best musical (as producer) in 1977.

Returned to Films

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nichols was active in theatre and television, but had not made a movie since The Fortune in 1975. That changed when he began working on the politically-charged movie Silkwood, which starred Meryl Streep and Cher. He was excited about the fascinating, fact-based story about Karen Silkwood, a plutonium plant worker, who died under suspicious circumstances as she went to meet a union official and reporter regarding unsafe conditions at the plant. The story revitalized Nichols, and he greatly enjoyed directing the talented Streep. He also had success on Broadway, with the play The Real Thing, and won another best director Tony Award in 1984.

Nichols' personal life experienced some dramatic upheavals during this time as well. He developed health problems between the films Heartburn (also starring Meryl Streep) in 1986 and Biloxi Blues in 1988. After being prescribed the drug Halcyon, his problems increased. In quick succession, his third marriage ended, he quit using Halcyon, and he became reacquainted with the television journalist Diane Sawyer (whom he had met prior to the Halcyon problems). Nichols and Sawyer married in the spring of 1988. Children from previous marriages included Daisy (from his first marriage) and Max and Jenny (from his third marriage).

Nichols returned to work with a vengeance. He directed a stage production of the Samuel Beckett classic Waiting for Godot in 1988, as well as several successful films. After Biloxi Blues, he directed the romantic comedy Working Girl, starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford. He directed Streep in Postcards from the Edge in 1990, and directed Ford in Regarding Henry in 1991.

Collaboration with May

A 1994 effort, Wolf, was unique and special in many ways. Starring Jack Nicholson, the film took Nichols into new territory - the horror genre. He also tackled profound questions about aging, death, and what lies beyond concrete knowledge. Smith of Film Comment added, "In some ways Wolf is almost a mirror image of Regarding Henry. Both are stories of transformation, of discovering a new self."

What was likely the most special part of Wolf however, was that Elaine May, his old partner from his comedy days, helped with the script (although uncredited). Regarding his relationship with May, Nichols commented to the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service: "Certainly rejoining Elaine has been terribly important. Any small differences between us have burned away. We have only pleasure. What I don't think, she thinks of; what she doesn't think of, I think of."

The pair followed with The Birdcage, a remake of the French farce La Cage Aux Folles, which was released in 1996. May wrote the screenplay, and Nichols directed the film. It was their first collaboration in more than three decades. The movie was a huge hit. David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, "What's striking about The Birdcage is how little it's changed in 18 years. Nichols carefully follows the classical-farce footprints of the original, in which the middle-aged gay couple are forced to conjure up a straight facade to facilitate the marriage of Armand's son to the daughter of the gay-bashing, anti-Semitic senator."

The movie received some criticism from conservative groups because of its content. It was a movie about a gay couple, which did not sit well with some people. Nichols contended that it was a movie about families and how they care about each other. He stated to the Knight-Ridder/ Tribune News Service that the movie was "suggesting that the value of family is far more important than anyone's notion of family values. What the film really says is that we're all the same. We're all people trying to get through life." The movie made an impact on Nichols as well. He commented to Lemon of Interview that "his life ha[d] come full circle" because he was back working with May. He added, "I've made up my mind that she's the world's greatest screenwriter."

Nichols followed The Birdcage with an acting job. As noted by Jack Knoll of Newsweek, when Nichols was asked to appear in Designated Mourner, a Wallace Shaw play in London, "he consulted with his wife, Diane Sawyer, and with Elaine May, who both advised him to do it." Nichols and May were also honored and profiled in an "American Masters" special on the Public Broadcasting System. The Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service called the pair "the best man-and-woman comedy team since George Burns and Gracie Allen. They precisely fit the name of the series on which they are saluted this week American Masters."

The next Nichols/May collaboration was Primary Colors, which closely resembled the trials and tribulations of American President Bill Clinton. Based on the novel by "Anonymous" (later revealed to be Joe Klein), John Travolta and Emma Thompson play the Stantons, a couple on the campaign trail for the presidency. When Jack Stanton's sexual escapades become public knowledge, his career is threatened. Ansen of Newsweek wrote, " Primary Colors is the funniest, shrewdest, and saddest movie about American politics since Gore Vidal's The Best Man. " He added, "Nichols knows this is a movie about performers performing."

Nichols received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Film Society of the Lincoln Center in May of 1999. According to the "Internet Movie Database," he is directing and producing the movie What Planet Are You From? as well as producing the movie All the Pretty Horses. Both are scheduled to be released in 2000.

Lemon of Interview magazine reflected, "Over and over, Nichols has captured exactly where culture turned out to be going. You could say that his sixth sense is spooky, but in fact, his uncanniness reflects something else: the mind and heart of an artist."

Further Reading

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, volume 16. Gale Research, 1997.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, St. James Press, 1996.

Newsmakers 1994, Volume/Issue 4. Gale Research, 1994.

Film Comment, May 1999, p. 10.

Interview, April 1998, p. 102.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, June 17, 1994; March 14, 1996; May 20, 1996.

New York Times Magazine, May 27, 1984.

Newsweek, March 18, 1996, p. 71; May 6, 1996, p. 84; March 23, 1998, p. 63.

Time, May 9, 1988, p. 80.

Vanity Fair, June 1994.

Variety, May 10, 1999, p. 4.

"Mike Nichols," The Internet Movie Database Ltd,http://chevy.imbd.com(October 16, 1999).

"The Tony Awards" Infoplease.com - all the knowledge you need,http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0153396.html (October 16, 1999).

Biography

A deft humorist and social critic, director Mike Nichols has managed to skewer mainstream sensibilities in crowd-pleasing work throughout most of his career. Collaborating with such renowned writers as Buck Henry and original stage partner Elaine May, the theatrically trained Nichols excelled at adapting plays and novels for the screen, and eliciting superb performances from his actors.

Born Michael Peschkowsky in Berlin, Nichols and his family emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, to escape the Nazis. Though his father's death several years later left his family poor, Nichols worked his way through college at the University of Chicago, where he decided to become an actor. After studying with Lee Strasberg in New York, Nichols headed back to Chicago, where he formed an improv group with several actors, including May and Alan Arkin. Their comic and critical sensibilities well matched, Nichols and May performed as a pair in the latter half of the 1950s, earning raves for their sharp, satirical routines. After their 1960 hit Broadway show, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, closed in 1961, however, they parted ways.

Nichols began to direct plays in 1963, earning a sterling reputation for his work on a string of hits, including the Neil Simon comedies Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. Not surprisingly, Nichols moved to films with an adaptation of a play, Edward Albee's scathing study of marital discord, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Making the most of a screenplay by Ernest Lehman that left Albee's taboo-breaking profanity intact, crisp cinematography by Haskell Wexler, and the casting of glamorous marrieds Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as the warring couple, Nichols scored a critical and box-office success. The film earned 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nominations for the lead quartet, and won five. Nichols further staked his claim as one of the premiere avatars of Hollywood's new generation the following year with The Graduate (1967). Wittily adapted by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham, starring an unknown Dustin Hoffman, and directed with New Wave flair by Nichols, The Graduate's mordant portrait of youthful anomie and suburban sexual frustration spoke to late '60s disaffection with the Establishment, and the film became a landmark hit. Though The Graduate lost the Best Picture Oscar to In the Heat of the Night (1967), Nichols won for Best Director. Turning his attention from sex to war, Nichols seemed to be on target for another timely success when he and Henry decided to tackle Joseph Heller's sardonic anti-war bestseller Catch-22 (1970). Though Nichols and Henry managed to translate the book's surreal tone to the screen, and Alan Arkin proved an adept Yossarian, Catch-22 suffered in comparison to Robert Altman's pacifist farce M*A*S*H (1970) and became an expensive failure. Nichols quickly recovered with Jules Feiffer's acrid examination of male sexual gamesmanship, Carnal Knowledge (1971). Remarkable for its frankness (at least for Hollywood) and featuring career performances from Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, and Candice Bergen, Carnal Knowledge became Nichols' third groundbreaking hit.

Nichols' film career, however, was comatose by the late '70s. The bizarre yet touching dolphin conspiracy drama The Day of the Dolphin (1973) flopped; not even 1970s supernovas Nicholson and Warren Beatty attracted audiences to the maligned period comedy The Fortune (1975). Except for lensing comedienne Gilda Radner's Broadway show Gilda Live (1980), Nichols stayed away from movies for almost eight years. He made an auspicious return to film, however, with the social drama Silkwood (1983). A biopic about the life and mysterious death of nuclear whistle-blower Karen Silkwood, Silkwood garnered raves for stars Meryl Streep and a de-glamorized Cher, and earned five Oscar nods, including Best Director. Though he didn't win the Oscar, Nichols did earn his sixth Tony Award in 1984, for directing Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. Back to his comic ways after Silkwood's seriousness, Nichols bolstered his Hollywood comeback with appealing adaptations of Nora Ephron's autobiographical novel Heartburn in 1986, and Neil Simon's Broadway success Biloxi Blues (1988). Spinning 1980s corporate ambitions into a cynically charming fairy tale, made all the more winning by Melanie Griffith's star-making performance as the eponymous striver, Nichols notched another Oscar nominated hit with Working Girl (1988).

Nichols continued to deal with knotty questions of sex, ambition, and relationships throughout the 1990s. Directing Carrie Fisher's sharply funny adaptation of her novel Postcards From the Edge (1990), Nichols and stars Streep and Shirley MacLaine made comic hay out of Hollywood craziness. Male weepie Regarding Henry (1991), featuring Harrison Ford as a chastened Master of the Universe, became a moderate success, but the Jack Nicholson horror-comic sexual fable Wolf (1994) missed the mark. Reuniting with Elaine May after several decades, the pair crafted a slick remake of La Cage Aux Folles (1978), renamed The Birdcage (1996). Starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a gay couple with an engaged son, The Birdcage poked fun at the conservative notion of family values and found blockbuster favor with the audience. After Nichols returned to acting on stage and screen in The Designated Mourner (1997), he joined with May to adapt Joe Klein's novel about Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign Primary Colors (1998). Though Primary Colors featured Nichols and May's customary intelligent wit, and star John Travolta virtually channeled the President, the real-life 1998 sexual drama involving Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky proved to be a greater draw than the fictionalized Presidential shenanigans. Nichols' next film, Garry Shandling's send-up of masculine sexual cluelessness What Planet Are You From? (2000), was an outright flop. Turning to the more hospitable venue of cable TV's HBO, Nichols and Primary Colors star Emma Thompson masterfully adapted Wit (2001), the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about an imperious professor's eye-opening battle with cancer.

Nichols married his fourth wife, TV news star Diane Sawyer, in 1988. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

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