Why I Love Jack Nicholson

So it’s Jack Nicholson’s Birthday today…number seventy-five…and I started thinking what it is that makes me love him so much.                     

I missed much of Mr. Nicholson’s early work—didn’t get up to speed until the advent of Netflix—but I remember watching him on VHS in The Witches of East Wick every chance I got. As Daryl Van Horne—just your average, horny little devil—Jack was a letch, a slob, seductive as hell and criminally charming as he insulted his female leads (Cher, Michelle Pfeifer and Susan Sarandon) into the sack.And for me, most importantly, it was one of the first times I’d seen a witch depicted other than Bugs Bunny’s cackling broom-rider, or as a garish green baddy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

And I’m sure I’ll be taken to task by any staunchly religious types, but he made the Devil rather appealing.  I played flute all through high school: Bach…Prokofiev.  And I always, always wanted to find an instructor that would tell me “You’re bowing sucks”—you know what I mean!—and then somehow bring out the most passionate, amazing performance of my life…and then screw the hell out of me on the upright piano.Sigh…that little fantasy never came to be, and the closest I get to classical music now is public radio and YouTube—I love YouTube!

But Jack’s influence didn’t end there.  Right after I graduated high school he cursed and threatened his way into stealing A Few Good Men from the stars of the movie, Tom Cruise and Demmi Moore.  No one can make you love the bad guy like Jack.And in a few more years there was As Good as It Gets, his third Oscar win as OCD meany Melvin Udall, and the best (in my humble opinion) movie of that year—for me Titanicwas about the fourth best movie that year, behind AGAIG, LA Confidential andGood Will Hunting. 

Anytime the female lead pulls focus from Jack, you know you’ve got something special—where have you gone Helen Hunt?And who can forget him as sixty-ish letch Harry Sanborn in Something’s Gotta Give.  Again he’s charming and politically incorrect, and absolutely at the top of his game.  Diane Keaton was truly phenomenal.  Why they didn’t sweep the Oscars that year, as he and Hunt had in 1996, is still a mystery to me.   

As I said, I came to his earlier, scary performances later, thanks to Netflix.  Jack Torrance in the chilling horror classic The Shining.  A football-helmeted, hard-partying lawyer in Easy Rider.  Private dick J.J. "Jake" Gittes in China Town.  And one of his most powerful performances as Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.What I love most about Jack is how he bends reality to make every character he plays so much more than just a person in a story on a big, brightly lit screen.  He makes them legend, he makes them alive and kicking…and cursing, and flirting, and screaming.

Some say Al Pacino says the “F-word” better than anyone else.  I say they haven’t heard Jack snarl it in A Few Good Men, or purring it to Cher in Witches of Eastwick.And most of all, I love how he just brings it , no matter what the role calls for, he’s up for it.  Fearless about how horrible he looks on screen, so wonderful to his fellow actors (especially the ladies) that they swoon and throw accolades at him like he’s the God of acting…which probably wouldn’t be the title I’d give him.

I’d call him the Devil of Acting, the Sultan of Letches, and my absolute favorite actor of all time.Happy Birthday Jack!