Jack Nicholson’s five-year argument over Jennifer Lopez’s arse: “He wouldn’t put it in the picture”
Given his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most legendary lotharios, ladies’ men, and hard-partying hell-raisers, it probably doesn’t raise an eyebrow that Jack Nicholson spent years locked in a heated debate with a close friend and regular collaborator over somebody’s arse.
Not just anybody’s arse, either, but Jennifer Lopez’s rear end. Knowing that Nicholson was once the industry’s leading source of drink, drugs, and sex-fuelled debauchery, it’s reasonable to assume that something seedy was afoot when the actor spent five years battling over a pair of cheeks. However, it wasn’t anywhere near as near-the-knuckle as his reputation would suggest.
When Nicholson finds a filmmaker he enjoys working with, he’s often made a point of reuniting with them. Whether it’s Roger Corman, James L Brooks, Monte Hellman, or Rob Reiner, the three-time Academy Award winner tends to return to auteurs who know how to bring out the best in him.
That especially applies to Bob Rafelson, a longtime associate of Nicholson’s who directed him in Head, Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Man Trouble. However, their sixth picture together turned out to be their last, although there are no guarantees it was Lopez’s posterior that proved to be the breaking point of their bond.
1996’s Blood and Wine was an important movie in a different way after it convinced Michael Caine that he didn’t want to retire from acting after all. For Lopez, it was her final screen appearance before her breakthrough turn in the biopic Selena. Playing the mistress of Nicholson’s character, he was adamant that one particular scene demanded to be in the movie.
“The arguments were simple, and the onward discussion was simple,” he told Peter Bogdanovich. “Jennifer Lopez was going to be famous for her ass. When Bob overslept, we staged the short dance number in the picture with my hands on her ass in an inset. He wouldn’t put it in the picture. I said, ‘Bob, you’re insane.'”
Wildly misogynistic, absolutely, but nonetheless on-brand for Nicholson. “That was the first five years of the discussion,” he continued. “Which then transformed into: the studio made him take it out. I said, ‘Isn’t it a little late to tell me?’ Now, another few years go by, and not only didn’t the studio take it out, but his new argument is, ‘You’re crazy; it’s in the picture’. Fortunately, it came on TV; I looked, it’s not in the picture.”
Objectification is hardly a new thing in Hollywood, but did Nicholson really have to spend years going back and forth with Rafelson and repeatedly voicing his dissatisfaction with a shot that only runs for a couple of seconds at most being excluded from the theatrical and televised versions of Blood and Wine? Absolutely not, even if it’s a very Nicholson-esque thing to hold a grudge over.
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