The one thing Jack Nicholson hated most about Hollywood: “It’s the cancer of film”
There’s always a slight whiff of hypocrisy in the air whenever someone who makes their living in Hollywood trashes the very place that provided them with wealth and success beyond their wildest dreams, but it’s not as if Jack Nicholson was ever one to hold his tongue.
Comfortably perched at the summit of the industry after decades of unprecedented and unmatched success, where virtually every movie he appeared in was guaranteed to turn a profit, he cast his eyes far and wide across the landscape and decided there was one thing he fucking hated more than the rest.
This was long before he quietly stepped out of the spotlight after 2012’s How Do You Know ended one of cinema’s greatest-ever careers with a whimper, and things have gotten worse since then. On the plus side, he’s rich, retired, and doesn’t give a shit, but he had a salient point to make when he voiced his concerns for the future, 30 years before his final feature was released.
Like most of his ‘New Hollywood’ contemporaries, the three-time Academy Award winner was raised on a steady diet of greatness. Nicholson and his peers became obsessed with the masters, all-time greats, and undeniable icons who’d come before them, but he didn’t hold back in explaining why he thought the unstoppable rise of television and VHS could be a death knell for the business.
“It’s the cancer of film,” he declared to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s why people can’t be educated to film. In the late ’60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited, and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut, this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video.”
Nicholson’s disdain for the burgeoning home video market was already common knowledge by 1992, and even cinema wasn’t immune, with the star completely and utterly baffled by the success of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which left him questioning what the hell he was doing here as a 50-something actor who was still trying to make pictures of style and substance that gave audiences sizzle and steak in the same package.
“You’re anachronistic when you know that your feelings aren’t going to have any effect on anything,” he explained. “I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn’t matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV.” He may not have thought it mattered, but he made himself perfectly clear, with Nicholson admitting more than once that being reduced to starring in a television series was almost a fate worse than death.
TV and home video didn’t ruin cinema, but they did fundamentally change it, and streaming did the exact same thing all over again. While there was a hint of ‘middle-aged man yelling at clouds’ to Nicholson’s rant, he’s far from the only high-profile actor, filmmaker, or producer to lament the fact that audiences being able to watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, from the comfort of their own homes did more harm than good in the long run.
