Mike Nichols

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Working Girl

Greetings, my underdog artists and forgotten auteurs. The vibes on Double Feature Thursday have been a bit wacky as of late—between the horny cartoons and inane plots fueled by nonsense words—so I thought I’d even things out with a round of films by one of my favorite directors and one of the most sophisticated storytellers of all time: Mike Nichols. Simultaneously a pillar of pop culture history and a forgotten gem among a class of fellow talented artists, Mike Nichols is responsible for making some of the most interesting, chic, and spectacularly unique films of all time. Not only did he create some of the most intriguing and memorable cinema of the 20th century, but he lived one of the most fascinating lives, too. Born Igor Mikhail Peschkowsky, on November 6, 1931 in Berlin, Mike Nichols and his younger brother, Robert, fled Nazi Germany for the USA in April 1939. When he was four, Nichols lost his hair after suffering an allergic reaction to an inoculation for whooping cough; consequently, he wore wigs and false eyebrows for the rest of his life. After graduating from the Walden School, Nichols briefly attended NYU before dropping out and enrolling in the University of Chicago, pre-med. Nichols thrived in Chicago, where he befriended Susan Sontag, Ed Asner, and Zohra Lampert, and breathed new life into the struggling WFMT classical radio station, with his farcical folk music program called The Midnight Special. Nichols first saw Elaine May in the front row of a Chicago production of Miss Julie, where he starred as the lead, and they made eye contact. Weeks later he ran into her at a train station, and they hit it off immediately, which led to a brief romance but a long-lasting creative partnership. Their comedic relationship really blossomed when Nichols joined the comedy troupe the Compass Players (the predecessor to Second City), and in the blink of an eye “Nichols and May” were an established, beloved, blueprint-making dynamic duo. Nichols would continue to yo-yo back-and-forth between Chicago and New York, wherever the work would take him, but his big break came in 1963, when he was chosen to direct Neil Simon’s latest play: Barefoot in the Park. In a 2003 interview, Nichols described this experience, saying, “On the first day of rehearsal, I thought, ‘Well, look at this. Here is what I was meant to do.’ I knew instantly that I was home.” The play was a massive success, and Nichols went on to direct several more plays by Neil Simon (among others), earning him nine Tony awards over the course of his illustrious career. He is one of a handful of individuals to achieve EGOT-status (winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), he discovered and platformed greats like Whoopi Goldberg, he was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post, he was a devoted horse breeder, and overall was known as a respected and respectable filmmaker who directed his actors so intimately and considerately that he was able to pull performances and abilities out that no other director could. Dustin Hoffman described working with Nichols, stating, “…he walks that edge of really going as far as he can without falling over the cliff, into disbelief. It’s not caricature.”, Jeremy Irons said Nichols created “a protective environment: he makes you feel he's only there for you”, and Ann-Margaret once said, “What’s wonderful about Mike is that he makes you feel like you’re the one that’s come up with the idea, when it’s actually his.” Among his peers and the theatre community, Mike Nichols is still held in a high regard, but in the larger mono-culture, I fear his legacy has been somewhat forgotten. I think, similar to Steven Soderbergh, Mike Nichols isn’t always referenced or revered alongside other cinema legends who have easy-to-recognize aesthetics and themes because his works are all SO different and diverse and interesting, the common movie-watcher likely isn’t aware of his long and iconic resume. He made The Graduate, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, The Day of the Dolphin, The Fortune, Silkwood, Heartburn, Biloxi Blues, Postcards from the Edge, Regarding Henry, Wolf, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, What Planet Are You From?, Closer, Charlie Wilson’s War, his award-winning adaptation of Angels in America, and tonight’s two films. There are Mike Nichols movies that I love, and Mike Nichols movies I just haven’t seen yet, so let’s dive into two beloved and bewildering Mike Nichols classics that I’ve always wanted to see.

Fresh off of his unprecedented success directing several stage productions in the early 60s, Nichols caught the eye of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who invited Nichols to direct a screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Having already gotten a taste for Elizabeth Taylor’s capacity for overacting in last week’s double feature, I was hungry for more histrionics, and eager to watch this film which has been long-recommended to me. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a controversial and complex play, one that novelist Christopher Bigsby describes as opposing the idea of a perfect American family and societal expectations as it “attacks the false optimism and myopic confidence of modern society.” Playwright Edward Albee has said that the title of the play came from a piece of graffiti he once saw, and it “means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.” And to get this point across, he created two of the most unhinged characters ever to be put to stage and screen. Nichols’ 1966 adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? introduces us to two collegiate elites—George (Richard Burton), an associate professor of history, and his wife, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) who is the daughter of the president of this institution. We meet George and Martha as they stumble home from a faculty party one night. Martha grabs a single chicken wing from the fridge and salts it as she quotes various remarks she heard at the function, as well as a line that Bette Davis says in “some god damn movie”: “What a dump!”, as George gives taciturn responses that express his tepid interest. The two vacillate between bickering and laughing, casually saying the most cutting and cruel things to each other, and Martha establishes herself as the boisterous alpha of their relationship fairly early on. It’s 2:30 in the morning, and George pours what he assumes will be their nightcap, until Martha reveals that they’ll be expecting guests any minute—a young couple whom she met at the faculty party. George says he wishes she’d stop springing things on him, Martha calls him a simp (a term I’ve only previously seen on present-day Twitter), George sulks, Martha says, “If you existed I’d divorce you”, and then finally, their guests arrive. Academic ingenue Nick (George Segal) is a member of the biology department (though Martha and George keep saying he’s in the math department) and his wife, Honey (Sandy Dennis), is meek and “slim-hipped”, but friendly. The young couple are polite and calm and the perfect targets for a night of psychological torture by Martha and George, who have nothing to do but drink and verbally abuse each other. Nick and Honey are immediately uncomfortable and embarrassed by the things Martha and George say to each other, but Martha’s jabs at George in particular are hilariously bitchy—constantly making reference to his weakness and ineffectuality in the stuffy world of academia and in life, in general. Nick and Honey nervously laugh along to Martha and George’s bitter duet, which takes on a different tone when Martha and George’s son is brought up. This topic is more than contentious, to George it is absolutely off-limits, and though he maintains his nerdy-but-cool demeanor, it’s clear that a rage is building inside him. As the two couples down more brandy and have chaotic conversations of all varieties, secrets from both couples are revealed, giving every player leverage in this twisted, torturous game Martha and George are playing. But Nick and Honey are kind, decent, wholly-unpretentious people, who are no match for the wretched wit that Martha and George effortlessly spew out—even several drinks and many hours in. This seemingly-never-ending evening is surprisingly funny given its increasingly dark subject matter, and though George and Martha are steering this ship of scathing statements, Nick and Honey become so enmeshed in the madness that it becomes harder to tell where one couple’s trauma ends and the other couple’s anxieties begin. I had always feared that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would be depressing, or, at the very least, boring, but this wasn’t at all the case. Several lines, dare I say, the majority of this script, had me laughing out loud, and though it became a bit meandering at the end, this film was entirely my shit. I love a dialogue-heavy film when the dialogue is funny and cunty and cutting and GOOD. For this to be Mike Nichols’ first film is absolutely nuts and he really did get Dame Liz to different, compelling levels of melodrama, which was satisfying to observe. I have such a crush on George Segal and comedically speaking, Sandy Dennis stole the show for me. When Martha says that the dumbest thing she ever did was fall in love with her husband and Sandy’s character says, “Oh, I like that”, I LOL’ed. Everyone is at their best, it makes sense that all four leads were nominated for Oscars (with Liz and Sandy winning), and the writing is so fun and frenetic that I know that I likely missed many imaginatively-intense turns of phrase as I laughed out loud, gasped, and audibly said “OOF.” It’s so entertaining, so ludicrous, so intoxicating yet repulsive, it really is just Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton psychologically tormenting a nice young couple for a little over 2 hours, and I absolutely loved it. Already a popular play, this film adaptation became a massive hit critically and commercially—it was the number 1 film of 1966 and had critics calling Nichols “the new Orson Welles.” I’m not sure if I was able to decode every convoluted story or allegorical anecdote that came out of Martha and George’s mouths, and I certainly couldn’t tell you how much of their speech was fabricated for the sake of messing with and taking out their frustrations on this young couple, but I enjoyed it all nonetheless. This play continues to be produced all over the world, and over time has had some incredible players take the stage as Martha, George, Nick, and Honey—actors like Colleen Dewhurst, Ben Gazzara, Diana Rigg, David Suchet, Patrick Stewart, Mercedes Ruehl, Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, Mireille Enos, David Harbour, Amy Morton, Tracy Letts, Carrie Coon, Imelda Staunton, Conleth Hill, Imogen Poots, Luke Treadaway, and even by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, in a production in 1980. This play has been parodied by American Dad, The Office, Our Flag Means Death, and Soderbergh’s Black Bag, it has inspired dance performances and wildly creative re-imaginings that involve vampires, and overall underscores the same notion that the Real Housewives franchises present, which is our culture’s voyeuristic obsession with watching people fight.

Next I watched one of the most well-intentioned but dated films I’ve ever seen, one that isn’t only about fighting but certainly champions a certain kind of scrimmage, this is Mike Nichols’ 1988 film Working Girl. Considering the intensity and depth that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate and Silkwood explore, I was actually shocked to learn that this light-hearted rom-com was directed by Mike Nichols, but as Working Girl proves throughout its runtime, there are some harsh lessons among the sweetness. Working Girl follows a working-class, Irish-American secretary named Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) who works at a stockbroker firm in Manhattan, and has far more wisdom and skills than her male co-workers (like Oliver Platt) give her credit for. Tess speed-walks into the office, sporting massive hair and questionable fashion, as she changes from sneakers to heels and endures the daily harassment from the men around her cubicle. After these slobs trick Tess into going on a date with a fellow misogynistic slob (played by Kevin Spacey [really going out of his way to play “straight” but not exerting himself too much to play a creep]) all under the guise of a potential new job opportunity, Tess reaches a breaking point and quits. Tess negotiates with her employment agency director (Olympia Dukakis in a ridiculously-small role) and lands herself one last-chance job in the world of stockbroking. She’s hired by an associate partner at mergers and acquisitions firm Petty Marsh, who shockingly turns out to be a woman(!) named Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver.) As far as bosses go Katherine is a breath of fresh air: she’s respectful, clear in her demands, isn’t a sex pest, and even tells Tess that she welcomes her ideas and input, so Tess shares an idea she’s been brainstorming—one that is too steeped in stock-market-jargon for me to translate or understand. Katherine is intrigued by Tess’ idea, but kindly tells her that it would never work. Disappointed but not discouraged, Tess continues to settle into her new job and happily agrees to house-sit and run errands for Katherine, who is about to embark on a romantic ski trip with her man. As fate would have it, though, Katherine breaks her leg skiing, putting her out of commission for several weeks, so she needs Tess to watch over things even more thoroughly. As Tess explores Katherine’s luxurious and cavernous apartment, she discovers some meeting notes of Katherine’s, where she plans to pass off Tess’ idea as her own. On top of this, she discovers that her slimy (but, admittedly, hot) boyfriend Mick (Alec Baldwin) has been cheating on her while takes night classes, and Tess is rightfully fed up. After years of tolerating sexual harassment, demeaning tasks, and discrediting bosses, Tess decides to take advantage of Katherine’s absence and put her business plan into action. She cuts her hair (cuz only women with short hair can be taken seriously), borrows some of Katherine’s expensive clothes and impressive connections, she code-switches between her actual voice and her professional, eloquent voice when making calls, has her friend Cynthia (Joan Cusack) pretend to be her secretary, and assumes the position of an actual associate partner with ease. Tess sets up a meeting with Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) a mergers and acquisitions associate from another company, but attends a networking event before their meeting, in hopes of talking shop beforehand. But through trials and tribulations and an ill-advised valium from her friend Cynthia, Tess unknowingly ends up in the back of a cab with Jack, eventually winding up in his apartment. Tess is mortified, but Jack, ever the gentleman, says nothing happened—he just took her clothes off and put her to bed. (You gotta understand, in the 80s, it was really romantic for a guy to have the opportunity to rape you but then deciding not to.) Despite or perhaps because of this incident, Jack is totally down to make a deal with Tess, and as it turns out, the two make a great team. As their deal solidifies, Tess brushes off Jack’s careful but direct flirtations, as she desperately wishes to be taken seriously. But she can only resist his curmudgeonly charms for so long, and something other than business begins to bloom between them—just in time for Katherine to recover and come back to the office. Hijinks ensue, rivalries intensify, and though this movie’s girl-on-girl beef isn’t necessarily great for feminism, it was fun to watch unfold. Working Girl is nothing special, if I’m being honest. Nothing made me laugh particularly-out-loud, no moments were particularly memorable or quotable, but it is a fun-enough time—filled with an impressive line up of character actresses like Nora Dunn, Caroline Aaron, Julia Silverman, Ricki Lake, and Amy Aquino. I really empathized with Tess, as an almost-30 woman working in a similarly-secretarial role, but I fear the curse of soft-spoken, barely-acting style of acting that plagued Melanie Griffith’s mother Tippi Hedren was passed down to her (and her daughter, Dakota.) Don’t get me wrong, by 1980s standards, Working Girl is an extremely progressive and empowering movie, but by Mike Nichols standards, it just barely scratched the surface of greatness. There were no show-stoppingly-grand romantic gestures, no humorously-cringe fumbles, and not nearly enough Joan Cusack for my rom-com tastes. Carly Simon’s original song was the most memorable part of this film, along with Sigourney Weaver, whose androgynous aesthetic is hyper-feminized and turned on its curly head here—which is always fun to me. But I’m clearly in the minority of viewers who found this movie to be cute-but-mid, as Working Girl was nominated for Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Song, and Best Picture. It’s also parodied in an episode of Bob’s Burgers, and allegedly Cyndi Lauper plans to turn this film into a musical. Working Girl may not have dazzled me as much as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it holds a similarly-significant place in pop culture history. Plus, both Melanie Griffith and Mike Nichols were battling cocaine addictions during filming, so it’s a wonder it got made at all. Thank you for reading along for another week, dear reader, and thank you, Mike Nichols, for providing the world with such smart, satisfying, sometimes sexy, but always compelling cinema. Ta ta for now!