Mike Nichols: The Metabolism of Success, Part One



Mike Nichols, by Bob Willoughby


Interview with Mike Nichols
With James Grissom
New York City, 1992

JAMES GRISSOM: I want to ask you about the night you spoke to Tennessee [Williams] about the metabolism of success.
MIKE NICHOLS: Jesus, this sounds like a commercial late at night on television. An infomercial. It sounds like I can offer the metabolism of success and some steak knives. I want to talk about that, but at length, and I'm impressed and surprised that Tennessee recalled that conversation, because I really threw it off on him. I was not impressed with him at that moment, and I was really depressed by the idea of Tennessee Williams feeling so sorry for himself, as well as by the idea that his work meant--or appeared to mean--so very little to him. I'm older now, and I can sympathize with him: I can feel some of the same self-pity. But on that night in question--about which only you and Tennessee and I are aware--I was very harsh.
JAMES GRISSOM: Do you remember when this conversation took place? Tennessee was vague.
MIKE NICHOLS: Consider that as a title to your book: Tennessee Was Vague. I don't have your freakish memory for dates, so I can't give you an exact date, but it was right before his memoir was published, and right after I had suffered some failures, and so I think he felt I might offer him some nostrums or something.
JAMES GRISSOM: Was he thinking of The Fortune?
MIKE NICHOLS: Isn't everyone? I mean, when my failures come up, it tends to begin with either The Day of the Dolphin or The Fortune, but there was also my severe depression after "Uncle Vanya" on the stage. I literally did not know what I was doing, nor did I care, and, for the most part, it did not seem to matter.
The cast of Mike Nichols' 1973 production of Uncle Vanya. Back row: Conrad Bain; Barnard Hughes; George C. Scott, Nicol Williamson, Julie Christie. Front Row: Cathleen Nesbit; Lillian Gish; Elizabeth Wilson.
JAMES GRISSOM: To whom? Clearly it mattered to you.
MIKE NICHOLS: Clearly, it did, but with the exception of a few people associated with that production, no one thought things were off. I don't think anyone looked at what I was doing and wondered into which dark wood I had wandered. The negative reviews were no different from the negative reviews of productions on which I did know what I was doing, of work of which I was proud. 
JAMES GRISSOM: And there were Tony nominations.
MIKE NICHOLS: This is where your memory does you no service at all. I understand completely that, given your background, your distance from New York, a barometer of excellence might have been awards, but as nice as they can be--particularly to the receipts at the end of the week--awards are preternaturally silly. Evil, in fact. If I didn't want some serious repercussions at dinner--along with my acid reflux--I would list some names of duly rewarded people who have talents that....I don't know...
JAMES GRISSOM: Might fill a cocktail olive?
MIKE NICHOLS: With the right part and on a good day, yes. Awards are guilt money and sentimentality and reparations and...stop me now.
JAMES GRISSOM: Back to the metabolism of success.
MIKE NICHOLS: Yes. This night--this non-specific night--in question found Tennessee very sad and very curious about his future as a man and as a writer. His statements about his work--very precise and final--were based entirely on the opinions of others. Critics. Producers. Actors. I don't know, a trick from the Rambles. He was utterly outer, searching the faces of others for an opinion on his wardrobe, but never asking if the pants were too tight for him. How do I look? How do I write? Do you love me? This is fatal, and this is not the metabolism of success, whether you're in the theatre or auto mechanics or advertising. One moves ahead; one offers what one has done; one waits. This is how it's done. There is a time to seek the advice and counsel of others, but it is not when you have no idea what to do or how to do it, and you keen in the night waiting for someone to tell you what to do. My point is this: If I had looked at Tennessee and said, I will pay you half a million dollars and produce your next play on Broadway in the fall, he would not have been grateful and thought, I have a goal; I have a mission. He would have made excuses as to why he couldn't do it and ask me to feel sorry for him. That is what Tennessee was doing in those days, and that is what Tennessee was doing when he met you. What is great about your meeting with Tennessee is that you didn't--and couldn't--fall into his rhythm or pour your tears into his wounds. You kept going back to his work, and by God, he began to believe in himself again. I was saying the same things to Tennessee that you did, but I was exasperated, impatient. I don't want to appear unsympathetic to the man, because I have had many, many nights myself where I keen and wail at the stars and the imaginary heath outside the Carlyle and wonder if I'm totally lost. I'm lucky in that I get over it quickly. I'm lucky that I get over it. Let's face it, I'm just lucky.
Look at Elaine [Stritch, whom Nichols had just directed in a reading of Peter Feibleman's "Cakewalk"]. She walked right up to me, with you on her arm, and said, "This is Jim. He's an asshole, but he's very smart and talented." And off she went to yell at Timothy Carhart or Barbara Garrick or someone else. Elaine just does it and says it. That is a metabolism of success. It's not mine: I can't work that way, but I respect her work to a great degree. Elaine will walk the plank each and every time, and only ask--afterward--if it worked. Did it work for the play? Did it serve the character? She does not give a shit what you think of her for having done it. I went to see Elaine on top of Rockefeller Center--she was with Margaret Whiting and others. She was totally in control; smooth; acidic; on top of the material. When I saw her afterward, she asked me if she had fucked up Jason's [Graae] patter with her. I told her I saw nothing of a fuck-up, and Elaine admitted she was in terrible pain. She removed her shoes, and one foot--what might have once been a foot--was red and purple and bandaged and taped, and she was a frightened five-year-old girl. I can't conceive of a person living with such a foot, much less doing a show with no discernible effect of such a hideous foot. And, I hasten to add, she did not want any of this mentioned to anyone in the cast. No pity fucks for Elaine. That is one metabolism of success.
Elaine Stritch

Look at your mentor--Marian Seldes. Year after year, season after season, there she is, for the most part in unremarkable parts in play after play, but her dedication, her adherence to impossibly high standards, remains the same. I asked her how she had managed to stay in "Deathtrap" for nearly five years, and she admitted that she had a daughter to support and had not received a single offer for another play--better or worse--while she was in that one. So, metabolism for success on high boil, she went on every night, gave her all, then went to her dressing room and wrote a novel. And by day taught at Juilliard. That is another metabolism of success.
Marian Seldes

Let me define success. It is not awards; it is not money. It is doing what you must, what you love, to the highest standards you have currently mastered. There are people who have the success of money and awards and attention, who are utter failures in my opinion.

JAMES GRISSOM: Such as?

MIKE NICHOLS: I cannot bear for a moment the sound or appearance of [when I showed Nichols a transcript of our interview, he asked that I remove the name of this actress], but she gets great reviews; she's won awards. And no one on the face of the planet thinks more highly of this actress than this very actress, and everything she does smacks of this. I would not work with her for a moment, because her modus operandi is to reassert just how much smarter she is than everyone else, and the play, her fellow players, the ozone layer be damned.

JAMES GRISSOM: That is, ironically, how some people view Elaine Stritch.

MIKE NICHOLS: Well, they're wrong. You don't, do you?

JAMES GRISSOM: No.

MIKE NICHOLS: Elaine is tough and abrasive and tireless in getting it right, and I know that can make her a pain in the ass, but she does not think she knows everything. She thinks she's smart to try everything and question everything, but she is very bold in going forward and asking to be edited and guided.

I mention a good director who has told me that one should only do what one must, and that was his definition of success.

MIKE NICHOLS: I like him very much, and I respect him, but he is so full of shit on this that I ask that you not use his name. I'm asking this before we work on the transcript, because I like him very much, and I feel he's saying this in a defensive gesture, in regret for bad things done. Even if one is fortunate enough to enter a business with great personal wealth, this does not preclude one from having to sit before other people to present your case, and your case is your film or your play or your book or yourself. You sit before producers and boards and ultimately audiences. No one does this alone, even if there are people who bloviate to the media that they only do what they want to do. They are liars. They are often nice and often talented, but they are liars. One has to remain active. One has to pay one's mortgage or alimony or tuition for the children. These payments due do not align with the gods of creation or the powers of CAA, so you take what is least offensive, and your pray for the metabolism of success to guide you through the assignment by working at your highest level with the greatest respect for everyone. We do this so that we are known to be alive and working; we do this because we need money and work and communion; we do this because we hope that we might be rewarded with dumb luck and the thing won't be as bad as we fear.

Look, I really thought I had lost whatever talent I had, not to mention my curiosity and my contentment, so I jumped at the chance to invest in "Annie." My good friend Lewis Allen came to me, and I thought, Well, this is perfect. I'll help a bit, but I won't be on the line, and I'll make a lot of money. A comic-book annuity. I really thought it was the end of the line for me, and ultimately work came to me, and I came out of the woods and out of my own fog, with apologies to Tennessee.

JAMES GRISSOM: Were you happy with "The Gin Game"?
Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in The Gin Game, 1977

MIKE NICHOLS: I would not append the word happy to that production. Perhaps I was content or pleased or startled. I have great respect for Hume [Cronyn] and Jessie [Tandy], and I was praying, I think, for some osmosis by being in their company, because they certainly have the right metabolism, and they approached that slight, little play as if were discovered in a Greek cave and answered all the world's questions. Having no faith in myself, I was wise enough to take on a play that had one set--one glorious set--and two incredible actors, and I just sat back and watched. Those two actors directed that play. I had something like the rapture of the deep that divers get, under all the beautiful, blue water, fish darting about, and a sort of bliss envelops one as death approaches. I was in the rapture of my depth. Of depression, as it happens. And one goes on.


TO BE CONTINUED
©  2018  James Grissom


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