APRIL 23 - Jack NICHOLSON 's insights about Acting

[Music] as my friend jim lampley said the fact that you've had a life is an achievement jack thank you bro yeah um you know i feel like um that young rancher that i saw on the tv commercial with his boots up sitting on the ground and he says you know if you can find some work that you love uh you pretty much have a life you know this you know after this is i've worked with directors from everybody travel all over the world i am a hick actor this expanded my life this this thing business teaches you everything it um i love you all i'm very proud to be here i love this work it's dangerous you give your life to it and uh like all novice speech writers you know i'm just trying to be funny the truth is uh i'm proud of all my collaborations the work that's that this is about to set my life free um confounds me i'm a romantic i feel these things matter these little patterns that we are the universe okay um my work motto is everything counts my life motto is more good times so uh i guess the only real danger here is after this i'll fall in love with myself so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so mud june shorty pam i may be godless i may be faithless i still pray that they can hear me i started out because of them here to please them had a ball i was going to choose here to say good night mr calabash wherever you are because shorty had an enormous nose and like my invitation jimmy durante but um spirit i'd like to express on behalf of afi and if you don't mind the international film community really all these things about age and time and everything is uh you ain't seen nothing yet [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] can you remember the time in your own childhood or adolescence when you formulated the desire to be an actor was there was there a point someone you saw or someone who influenced you well no i would say it was a gradual thing as it probably is with most people it's an unusual choice of occupation for a sort of centrally placed male american you know when you're out there in new jersey you don't suddenly pop up in the middle of your your football practice and say yes i'm going to be an actor you don't it doesn't do it that way i probably really started thinking about doing it after i was doing it and vaguely when i was working at mgm in the cartoon department a job which i got really mainly to observe movie making because i was sort of star struck that time still him when you got into movies that those those early films the pre easy rider films the roger corman movies do they make you wince when you see them on television now well they they all make you wince i mean old i i think work of any vintage because you know you embody your own work uh makes any i i would imagine makes anyone wince or at least it should [Music] um i i i i got to do a few things that i actually liked and i must say that although i was in some of the most dreadful pictures of all time uh that i was all i was and and so were all the people i was working with trying to do their best under the circumstances and that's really all you need is a developing actor is just to be trying to do it well if you can live with the humiliation of you know being in something where it's pretty funny you know it's not bad for you i always have felt that i was lucky because if i had been successful that early i i'd be in a position where i was trying to make a comeback now uh you know almost all of the actors for instance uh the first show that i was in michael landon was the the star actor in it and while we were doing the play he got bonanza so all of my career up until when michael left bonanza went on while he was on bonanza and uh that was very good for him you know what i mean everybody was envious as i would be naturally at the time but in reality now obviously i wouldn't trade it with him well all comparisons are odious as my mother told me uh i always have a good time working i i suppose those of you know anything about me know i've always worked with good directors i'm real good i choose material well and after that i think i'm lucky i always brush my teeth before i report back in for work why consideration for my co-workers it's grueling enough without a face full of lamb cutlets um [Music] nobody's so grateful to me now what they'll be so grateful they'll say look at that cat you haven't come down even though it's midnight that's not true it's 8 o'clock and lord knows what he's been doing he's down here and he has a fresh and sparkling breath you see now you'll have to excuse me now because i'm going to take a piss thank you this just amazing collaborative actor i couldn't believe that the amount of work he put into it i never met the man and i just figured boy if anybody can just show up and do something it's going to be jack nicholson is the opposite in that he put so much into it and it was a real um master class for me i i was blown away just one how much work he put he put in but too of how good he is he's a persona like he can easily slip into that kind of jack persona you know where you think he's like this and because that guy is so larger than life and so charismatic and so amazing it's easy to overlook the fact that he's as good as he is i mean i saw him do 20 takes in a row and i saw how different each one was all the choices that he was making and how each one was valid and each one was riveting and at different levels and it was mind-blowing this is the kind of monotonous work that's equivalent to doing scales for a violinist and you'd be amazed at how many actors look at their watch to see what time it is and they don't see what time it is you know if you just get rid of your camera tricks what angles they shoot you from all of that in the end creates an overall impression of uh aging in different ways and this was this is the least vain performance i think i've ever given you know no shadow under the chin you know this kind of thing but i think you find the mind of a character myself i'm i'm always after that and really to do the movie that the director wants to do otherwise it's not amazing bob and i rode a lot together we're very close creatively anyway that's why we could argue about everything and you know we always had these kinds of discussions all the movies we made together postman one of my favorite movies and all that we fought like the dickens but we also ate dinner together every night what i had said to jack and um what i felt was really intrinsic uh to the movie was that we had to see the underbelly of this character that he was somebody who had emotion but that it was all blocked up uh and uh and we had talked about his crying um and jack said uh that that was the most simplistic thing uh that any director every director by directing his bike movies he said well we have a cry scene here jack you know cry for us you know and uh and so he was very much opposed to it but i was very much for seeing the underbelly and we picked out a few places where it could happen but in particular i think i suggested it be with his father um and jack said i'm not going to do this and i don't want to do this and i had kept him up for the entire weekend long discussions about why this was important god damn it jack we got three scenes left you have to cry in one of them and i said bob that's just not the way we do it we got in the car and he said i hate this this script just me a penny started to write the scene himself and i said i don't care what the words are as long as i see the emotion i sent the entire crew away there was a locked camera that's very easy it's a big machine you stick it there you flick it and it goes on and then there was a boom like this here and uh i held it in my hands like this jack was over there sitting i flicked on the camera i said action i flipped on the camera and i held the boom and i faced the other way i didn't want jack to see anybody and just to be with his thoughts and his father was sitting right over there the actor it was honest and jack took it to a place that i could never anticipate very strong directors this is the luckiest thing about what i do they're always very demanding in this area i know from before i was a successful actor because i knew some of them and so forth they don't want whoever you are actually you know jack you seem to be like somebody who would know more than anybody else on any of your sets because you've been doing this so well and for so long do you take direction is are you a force of nature on the set do you come with an idea of what you're going to do and alexander you watch him do it is you know what is the measure of the the collaboration here i guess i know it's intuitive but you know they write such a strong script i understood sort of what it was about and he directs very specifically uh and on most scenes also you know i mean you you in order to get really loose you have to have somebody that you're working to that's always the director so that you can go outside and inside and they take you in and out and guide you and that's what i do you know i've always thought of myself as a good director's actor but you're right i know more than anybody else bob dylan said you uh you must be very honest to live outside the law stanley said i think that for a movie or a play to say anything really truthful about life it has to do so very obliquely to avoid all pat conclusions and neatly tied up uh um ideas uh you use the audience's thrill of surprise and discovery to reinforce your ideas rather than reinforce them artificially through plot points phony drama or phony stage dynamics to put them across well anyway no artist creates more anticipation about among his peers about his coming work than stanley kubrick he's always viewed very paradoxically i i sort of pulled some of the members the director's guild and other people that i've worked with who knew him and the paradoxes are always bizarre benign illusion delusion fear inspiration dizzying lucid he knows this and he said that his critics are overwhelmed or at least overworked he likes that the critics are overwhelmed i think because he's found out what we all hope for the critics don't affect the audience at least not of his work what do you do to get into a character and not just make people see oh there's jack nicholson again on the screen yeah well that's always a hard job for an actor you know anybody can act once or twice they don't know who you are i think an actor's gotta stop you stop taking meetings you stop taking phone calls and uh you know you live you live a life so that you can have something to give when the time comes to give it a conscious choice i don't think he wants to be in your living room apart from uh if he's at the at the laker game i don't know that he wants to be that friendly guy that you feel so you know what was so close to on television no one really knows the real jack anyway television has this way of editing and moving things around and you see it on this show and that show and pretty soon you begin to not you know you don't know exactly who or what or why you are and i just felt if i kept that to an absolute minimum i wouldn't be living with that the rest of my life i don't like to see myself in trailers on television it interrupts my evening through this only one agent who has stayed with me [Applause] guided me tolerated my tantrums my operatic you know behavior and so forth never lost is calm his name escapes me where are you standing sandy bressler my fallon and and uh conrad and arms i love you guys and the winner is jack nicholson for the last detail in chinatown well it uh it looks as though tonight is technology night joanne woodward was in new york ingrid bergman was in denver colorado and now jack nicholson has further complicated matters by being in salem oregon i hope that damn satellite is up to the job smashing to have been chosen best actor by the society this year for my performance in chinatown i'd like to thank madam president and the rest of the members of the society for this great honor uh i wish that i could be with you there in albert hall but as you can see i've been institutionalized here in oregon while filming one through over the cuckoo's nest with some friends of mine uh i understand however that mrs polanski and town are with you in the audience this evening and i'm sure that they will take this opportunity to thank miss dunaway themselves and the rest of the cast and crew of chinatown for their contributions uh mr town mr polanski if you would please hello excuse me for interrupting but mr nicholson has to come with me yes thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Momentum Acting Studio Meisner Ireland

Views: 536,530

Keywords: Five Easy Piece, Screen Acting, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Id: bOpG1UNMsHk

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022