Mike Nichols: Be The Lesson

Interview with Mike Nichols

Conducted by James Grissom

New York City

1992 

What I honestly know--from experience--and what I most want to impart to others is that life is the source of all things creative. Stella Adler once told a student in class that his furnace was burning brightly and consistently, but it was heating up all the wrong things: He was obsessed with a career, with meeting people and making moves and always going upward, being seen, being noticed. Stella assured him that his motives were debased, and I think she was right. I think my motives have often been debased, and I regret everything I did or said or was during the times I acted upon the worst impulses available to me.

Among the creatives there is rampant unemployment, and so many of us sit around, empty, a ventriloquist dummy with no hand up our backs to animate us. Our life should animate us, and it remains a mystery to me that so many people I like and often admire have no concept of this. It is tragic to think that the career is the life--the career is an adjunct to the life.

I would suggest that a large life be pursued. I don't mean shooting at sharks from boats or scaling mountains, unless that is where your calling takes you. I'm talking about an expansion of the heart and the mind. See, read, listen to everything. Decide if it warrants your time. See how it--whatever it is--applies to your experience. Love fully and daily, whomever and whatever it may be.

Let the career grab you in the midst of your extraordinary life. Commit to the work. Apply what you've learned. That's where the good work will come from, always.

Good work and good artists are sacrificed daily to careerism, ambition, placement. Don't beg to have others look at you: Become so amplified by life that others cannot look away. Be the lesson.

© 2020 James Grissom