Why Jack Nicholson “fought like the Dickens” on one of his favourite movies
In most cases, an actor and a director who constantly fight during production will never work together again. However, it goes without saying that Jack Nicholson is not like most actors, so he ended up making seven movies alongside a filmmaker he’d always argue with.
Sometimes, that kind of friction can bring out the best in both parties, which is definitely true in this instance. Nicholson may have bickered with the filmmaker every time they collaborated, but their respective rises towards the top of the industry during the formative years of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement were constantly intertwined.
Bob Rafelson made his feature-length directorial debut on the Monkees’ 1968 psychedelic odyssey Head, which he co-wrote alongside Nicholson, with the actor also making an uncredited cameo appearance. They’d work together again the following year, this time with Rafelson going uncredited for his contributions to the influential counterculture classic Easy Rider.
The first time they partnered up as director and leading man, the result was Five Easy Pieces, which earned Nicholson his first Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’. The duo would make their way back to each other multiple times in the years to come, putting their heads together for The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Man Trouble, and Blood and Wine.
Nicholson and Rafelson made at least one picture together in four consecutive decades, so there was obviously a very close kinship, professional admiration, and mutual respect there. It wasn’t without its fractious moments, though, with the three-time Oscar winner admitting that they tended to be at each other’s throats more often than not.
“Bob and I were very close creatively, that’s why we could argue about everything, and we always had these kinds of discussions on all the movies we made together,” he said, per Momentum. “Postman, one of my favourite movies, we fought like the Dickens, but we also ate dinner together every night.”
The fourth screen adaptation of James M Cain’s novel of the same name, Nicholson and Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice recouped its budget almost four times over at the box office, but it wasn’t as enthusiastically received as their previous collaborations, although a lot of that was down to the film being compared to its classic 1946 predecessor.
The star called it the most erotic performance of his entire career, but it evidently required some give-and-take with Rafelson to find that sweet spot between Nicholson’s desire to indulge his self-proclaimed sexuality and the director’s insistence that didn’t he didn’t pitch his turn to such a lustful degree that it overshadowed everything else.
It may not have been the most celebrated of their cinematic sextet, but Nicholson and Rafelson’s fighting tended to be a good sign for any shoot because their track record speaks for itself.
