Jack Nicholson on why he “deeply resented” the VHS
Many industry figures have publicly lamented the rise of streaming and digital-only distribution at the expense of physical media, but Jack Nicholson was borderline apoplectic at the mere concept of VHS a decade before Netflix even started shipping DVDs.
Actors get into the movie industry for the purpose of having their work seen by an audience in a cinema on the biggest screen possible. While the paradigm has shifted entirely now that streamers are recruiting the cream of the crop on either side of the camera with the promise of vast funding and creative freedom, being restricted to the small screen used to be deemed as a career death sentence.
No performer worth their salt wanted to be in a television series or straight-to-video feature, but despite his status as one of the most lauded cinematic talents of his generation, Nicholson could barely sanction the thought of people watching his back catalogue from the comfort of their own homes on cassette.
Talking to Rolling Stone in 1986, the Academy Award winner stated his belief that “the moviegoer’s life has been degraded by this thing” when talking about the influx of multiplexes, which was positively quaint when compared to his burning disdain for VHS. Making the point that “television is not a support group for the movies,” he called it “a competitive industry that’s been devouring the movies like cancer since I came out here in the 1950s”.
Making no bones about it, Nicholson offered that “I deeply resent the whole video thing”. Of course, there was the financial aspect of it, too, as he continued: “I’m so furious at video. Prizzi’s Honor was one of the best-selling videos in Brazil, and no one even owns the rights,” he raged. “They run my movies all the time. And I’m not compensated for it. That does nothing but hurt me.”
The VHS industry created plenty of jobs and income for those who worked in its many facets on and off-screen, but Nicholson didn’t care: “Everybody says it’s great for the labour pool. I didn’t get in this to be in a union labour pool; I got in this to be an artistic, expressive person.”
Even though he’d just commented on it at length, Nicholson then ranted how “the movies have sold their future so cheap for so long it’s almost amateurish to comment on it.”
Ironically, this came several years before he was cast as the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman and negotiated what would become the most lucrative contract any actor had ever signed. Foregoing a chunk of his usual acting fee in favour of money to be earned through box office receipts and merchandise sales, the mountainous volume of VHS copies shifted by the blockbuster comic book adaptation helped net him an estimated $60million, which might have made him less mad about Prizzi’s Honor.
