The one movie Jack Nicholson couldn’t find a flaw in: “There was simply nothing to criticise”
There’s arguably no such thing as a perfect movie or a flawless screenplay, but if Jack Nicholson says there is, then who’s going to disagree when he’s one of the greatest actors in cinema history who’s starred in several of the best films of all time?
What’s strange, though, is that he wasn’t referring to any of his many masterpieces. The most-nominated male performer the Academy Awards has ever seen knew his way around a classic, and many of them are destined to stand the test of time as examples of unadulterated on-screen excellence.
This is the guy who held up his end of the bargain and then some in the counterculture classic Easy Rider, the seminal ‘Big Five’ winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the enthralling Chinatown, Martin Scorsese’s ‘Best Picture’ winner The Departed, the aching Five Easy Pieces, the mesmerising The Last Detail, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and countless more.
He’s also the supremely confident thespian who declared themselves the single most successful actor who ever lived, so if he says something is about as close to perfection as it gets, then it’s even harder to disagree. Still, eyebrows may be raised upon discovering that he was talking about a romantic comedy from the brains behind The Parent Trap.
“There was simply nothing to criticise about the script,” Nicholson told Female of reading the screenplay for the 2003 rom-com Something’s Gotta Give. “I wouldn’t have worked because I was tired. I knew that this would be a difficult job because comedy is more difficult because it’s more exacting. At this point in life, I was surprised that I’m in the same sentence as the word ‘romantic’, so, naturally, that was very appealing to me.”
By his own admission, the three-time Oscar winner was knackered and didn’t really feel up to the task of leading a major motion picture until Nancy Meyers appeared on the scene with a script so strong that he couldn’t find a justifiable reason to turn it down.
“I said, ‘I’m like everyone: I like to appear brilliant, and I’d like to tell you a lot of things about your script and so forth,'” he recalled of their first conversation. “But frankly, other than a few phrasings and this and that and the other thing, it’s so good I don’t have that much to say. Let’s get rolling.”
Disappearing into a character completely unlike his real-life personality, Nicholson fully embraced the method to play an ageing womaniser with a much younger girlfriend in Something’s Gotta Give. However, after a health scare, lothario Harry Sanborn ends up falling for his current beau’s mother instead, even if she has no interest in reciprocating those feelings. At first, anyway.
Something’s Gotta Give cleared a quarter of a billion dollars at the box office, got Nicholson on the Golden Globes shortlist for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’, won co-star Diane Keaton the corresponding trophy for what was also an Oscar-nominated turn as the love interest, all of which was accomplished with a script the leading man wouldn’t change a word of.
