The X-rated Jack Nicholson line too risqué for cinema: “They correctly censored me on that”
As one of Hollywood’s brightest shining stars and best actors, Jack Nicholson spent most of his career being more unfamiliar than most with the word ‘no’. Whenever he wanted to get his own way, he usually got it, but even he was forced to admit that one near-the-knuckle line of dialogue was too much.
That’s saying something when you consider that he developed a habit of insisting that sex toys become a regular part of his onscreen arsenal. Matt Damon was completely unprepared for his legendary co-star to whip out a dildo during a semi-improvised scene in The Departed, but he should have known better.
After all, his frequent collaborator, Bob Rafelson, recalled that he was once given a highly specific instruction when they were preparing to film a sequence in The Postman Always Rings Twice, when Nicholson bullishly approached him and delivered four of cinema’s most ominous words: “Get me a dildo.”
When preparing to shoot a sex scene opposite Ellen Barkin in Man Trouble, the three-time Academy Award winner once again put out a call to arms. Or, to be more accurate, rubber phalluses. “I’ve got my dildo this time,” he said with terrifying glee, and he was so adamant about it that he threatened to “kill everyone involved” if his fake hard-on was taken out of the final cut.
It was left in, and he was devastated that “nobody noticed the fucking thing.” With that in mind, what on earth could Nicholson have suggested to James L Brooks in As Good As It Gets that was deemed so raunchy that he admitted the filmmaker was correct not to incorporate it into the script? If anything, it’s fairly quaint by his standards.
This being Tinseltown’s ultimate hell-raiser, he couldn’t set the stage without commenting on co-star Helen Hunt’s sexuality. “She’s not, you know, blatant about it,” he explained to Rolling Stone. “She asked me in one spot where she had to laugh in the picture to say something offscreen when we got to that point; when we got there, I just said, ‘Tits’. And she went higher than a kite.”
In the final scene of the romantic dramedy, Nicholson’s Melvin Udall and Hunt’s Carol Connelly cement their relationship by visiting a pastry shop. It’s all fairly innocuous, which might be why the regularly unhinged performer thought it would be better if a blatant sexual innuendo was dropped in for no reason.
“I also wanted another ending for the picture, and she agreed,” he explained. “I hope Jim doesn’t shoot me for saying this. When they walk to the bakery, I wanted to turn to Helen and say, ‘Warm rolls’. And she would say, ‘Wet pants’. Of course, they correctly censored me on that, but I mean, she liked it. They were looking for unpredictability, and I thought that would cover it.”
Instead of ending on an altogether moister note that conjures all sorts of unwanted mental imagery, Nicholson was overruled, which was the right call. It would have been a jarring way to end the film, and having Hunt insinuate that she’s more excited by their budding romance than you can let on in a public setting would have been bizarre.
