AND: There will be longer obituaries soon. I'm looking at YouTube, all the old Nichols and May comedy routines. Nichols was never married to Elaine May, but he did have 3 other wives before his marriage to Diane Sawyer, whom he remained with for 26 years. The glamorous newswoman is now his widow. I'm looking at Wikipedia and see that he was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. His original name was Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky.
His father was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. Nichols' father's family had been wealthy and lived in Siberia, leaving after the Russian Revolution, and settling in Germany around 1920. Nichols' mother's family were German Jews. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. Nichols is a third cousin twice removed of scientist Albert Einstein, through Nichols' mother.The relocation to the United States — escaping the Nazis — took place in 1938. What a life!
ADDED: Here's a picture of Gustav Landauer:
"You don’t know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don’t know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty!"
AND: Here's the long NYT obituary. Excerpt:
Mr. Nichols said in interviews that though he did not know it at the time, his work with Ms. May was his directorial training. Asked by Ms. Ephron in 1968 if improvisation was good training for an actor, he replied that it was because it accommodates the performer to the idea of taking care of an audience.
“But what I really thought it was useful for was directing,” he said, “because it also teaches you what a scene is made of — you know, what needs to happen. See, I think the audience asks the question, ‘Why are you telling me this?’ And improvisation teaches you that you must answer it. There must be a specific answer. It also teaches you when the beginning is over and it’s time for the middle, and when you’ve had enough middle and it’s time already for the end. And those are all very useful things in directing.”
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"The Graduate" was a great movie--to this day I cannot attend a family member's graduation without telling them to go into "plastics". I don't get invited to graduations any more...
Also glad they haven't tried to re-make that movie (yet). If all we can do these days are re-makes, then what will there to be nostalgic about for the 2010s? Will we be telling our children some day about "hey the 2010s were a magical time, that's when they did the second reboot of Superman, and re-made the Evil Dead..."
No idea he was married to Diane Sawyer.
Nichols lost me with "Day of the Dolphin."
That movie was supposed to be such a big thing.
I have not seen Day of the Dolphin. How do you pitch that? "It's Day of the Jackal, with Flipper."
Buck Henry wrote it. Isn't it strange how Buck Henry and Mike Nichols can work together on The Graduate, one of the finest films ever made, and 6 years later it's killer dolphins?
There's something about dolphins that turns everyone into an idiot.
They don't need bombs strapped to their heads to destroy us. They do it with their smile.
As Shakespeare said: "one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."
Those bastards do nothing but smile.
Nichols gets credit for introducing Dustin Hoffman to the world. Can you imagine The Graduate with Robert Redford? Ugh! Ugh ugh ugh.
Are you one of those agitators? Those outside agitators?
Another German Jewish kid left in 1938 and had, what I believe, to be a more useful life. Certainly it was more adventurous. Not in the theater, of course, and I don't know about his taste in shirts. A bit about him here.
From another review:Not enough good can be said about this book. Gerhard Nuemann's story is almost unbelievable. The only person in the history of the United States to have an Act of Congress passed to make him a citizen. The father of the Variable Stator jet engine, chief mechanic for the Flying Tigers, Executive Manager for GE's aircraft division,rebuilt the first Japanese Zero during WW...
Watch this scene, Nichols at his best. The humor is so understated, so perfect.
Those people who say the book is always better should read The Graduate sometime. Incredibly sanctimonious and bad. I didn't get too far into it. I was really kinda shocked, I was expecting an awesome book. The movie is a vast improvement.
If I had to argue that comedy is superior to drama as an art form, The Graduate would be one of my primary exhibits.
Bye bye Mike.
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