October 31, 2017 (XXXV:10) Mike Nichols POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE (1990), 101 min. (The online version of this handout has color images.) DIRECTED BY Mike Nichols WRITTEN BY Carrie Fisher (book & screenplay) PRODUCED BY John Calley, Robert Greenhut, Neil A. Machlis, Susan MacNair, Mike Nichols MUSIC Carly Simon CINEMATOGRAPHY Michael Ballhaus FILM EDITING Sam O'Steen CAST Meryl Streep…Suzanne Vale Shirley MacLaine…Doris Mann Dennis Quaid…Jack Faulkner Gene Hackman…Lowell Kolchek Richard Dreyfuss…Doctor Frankenthal Rob Reiner…Joe Pierce Mary Wickes…Grandma Conrad Bain…Grandpa Annette Bening…Evelyn Ames English” and “Please, do not kiss me.” Back in Berlin, Germany, Simon Callow…Simon Asquith Nichols’ father had been part of a young intellectual circle that Gary Morton…Marty Wiener included Russian immigrants such as Vladimir Nabokov’s sister CCH Pounder…Julie Marsden and Boris Pasternak’s parents. Nichols became a naturalized US Sidney Armus…Sid Roth citizen in 1944. He was told as a child that he was a cousin of Robin Bartlett…Aretha Albert Einstein, and although he never quite believed it, he Barbara Garrick …Carol repeated it to friends as he was growing up. While doing Finding Anthony Heald…George Lazan Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2012) he found out that Dana Ivey…Wardrobe Mistress it was true. They would have been 3rd or 4th cousins several Oliver Platt…Neil Bleene times removed. An immigrant whose work was marked by Michael Ontkean…Robert Munch trenchant perceptions of American culture, he achieved — in Pepe Serna…Raoul films like “The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Mark Lowenthal…Bart and “Carnal Knowledge” and in comedies and dramas on stage Michael Byers…Allen — what Orson Welles and Elia Kazan but few if any other JD Souther…Ted directors have: popular and artistic success in both film and George Wallace …Carl theater. The director’s first attempt behind the camera was to Peter Onorati…Cameraman direct Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in an adaptation of Edward Albee’s scabrous stage portrayal of a marriage, Who’s MIKE NICHOLS (b. November 6, 1931 in Berlin, Germany—d. Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). The film was nominated for 13 November 19, 2014, age 83, in Manhattan, New York) is one of Academy Awards, including one for best director. Though he America’s most celebrated directors, whose work earned him didn’t win, the film won five. Nichols did win an Oscar for his adulation both on Broadway and in Hollywood. In 1939, Nichols second film, The Graduate (1967). A social satire that and his family fled Nazi Germany. In an interview with The New lampooned the Eisenhower-era mind-set of the West Coast York Times the director said that when he came to the U.S. at age affluent and defined the uncertainty of adulthood for the 7, he could speak only two English sentences: “I do not speak generation that came of age in the 1960s, the film anticipated the Nichols—POSTCARDS FOM THE EDGE—2 anti-heroism of many future films. Especially consistent was his However, Fisher was much more than a fictional space feminist: wry and savvy sensibility regarding human behavior, derived in She was a real-life champion for women who was also a talented part from his early success in nightclubs and on television with writer and satirist. The daughter of showbiz vets Debbie Elaine May. Their program of satirical sketches depicting one- Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, her father left her mother when on-one moments of social interaction reached Broadway, where Carrie was just two for Reynold’s best friend Elizabeth Taylor. An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May opened in Any semblance of a normal childhood was impossible for Fisher. October 1960 and ran for more than 300 performances; the At 15, she played a debutante in the Broadway musical Irene, recording of their show won a Grammy Award. Their act, as which starred her mother, and appeared in her mother’s Las described by The New York Times as “developed through Vegas nightclub act. While the fraught mother-daughter improvisation, written with sly verbal dexterity and performed relationship is humorously featured in tonight’s film, in fact, with cannily calibrated comic timing.” Their best-known routines Fisher lived next door to Reynolds for her entire life. Whatever became classics of male-female miscommunication and social resentment Fisher felt in her younger years, the pair’s haplessness: a mother haranguing her scientist son for not calling relationship healed over time with Reynolds often accompanying her; teenagers on a date in the front seat of a car; an injured man Fisher in interviews and in her one-woman show. At 17, Fisher and a doltish emergency room nurse; a telephone operator and a made her movie debut in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975). She desperate caller in a phone booth. Nichols is one of the only 12 auditioned for the lead role in Carrie (1976), while Sissy Spacek people who are an EGOT, which means that he won at least one auditioned for Princess Leia in Star Wars (1977), as George of all of the four major entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Lucas and Brian De Palma were holding joint auditions. They Oscar and Tony. His career encompassed an entire era of screen ultimately swapped roles. Fisher has been open about her and stage entertainment. On Broadway, where he won an struggles with substance abuse, acknowledged taking drugs like astonishing nine Tonys (including two as a producer), he once LSD and Percodan throughout the 1970s and ’80s and later said had four shows running simultaneously. Won more Tony Awards that she was using cocaine while making The Empire Strikes for Best Direction of a Play than any other individual. He won Back (thinly referenced in Postcards). In 1985, after filming a for Barefoot in the Park (1964); Luv and The Odd Couple role in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, she had a nearly (1965); Plaza Suite (1968); The Prisoner of Second Avenue fatal drug overdose. She checked herself into a 30-day rehab (1972); The Real Thing (1984); and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (2012). He also won best direction of a musical for Monty Python's Spamalot (2005); and as producer for Annie (1977) and The Real Thing (1984). In 1984, as a producer, Mr. Nichols brought a talented monologuist to Broadway, supervising the one-woman show — it was called, simply, “Whoopi Goldberg” — that propelled her to fame. Not every project was a winner; he had a number of duds, and for periods — part of the 1970s, when he made the science-fiction thriller The Day of the Dolphin and a comedy about bumbling hustlers, The Fortune; and the late ’80s and early ’90s, when his work included Regarding Henry and Wolf, the macabre tale of a book editor (Jack Nicholson) who turns into a werewolf — his career lost a bit of luster. While paying tribute to Nichols during his program in Los Angeles. Those experiences later became grist 2003 Kennedy Center Honors, Meryl Streep and Candace Bergen for her caustic, comic novel Postcards From the Edge, whose read Nichols' “Five Rules for Filmmaking”: 1: The careful chapters are variously presented as letters, diary entries, application of terror is an important form of communication. 2: monologues and third-person narratives. She was, at one point, Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for. 3: There's one of Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctors, using her absolutely no substitute for genuine lack of preparation. 4: If you signature wit to punch up everything from Sister Act (1992) to, think there's good in everybody, you haven't met everybody. 5: yes, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). Friends may come and go, but enemies will certainly become Primarily a writer later in life, Fisher’s voice is known for her studio heads. Some of his other directorial credits include unmistakable self-deprecating humor. Consider her self-written Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Closer (2004), Angels in America obituary, which described in her one-woman show Wishful (2003, TV Mini-Series), Wit (2001,TV Movie), What Planet Are Drinking: You From? (2000), Primary Colors (1998), The Birdcage (1996), Wolf (1994), Regarding Henry (1991), Working Girl (1988), George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one Biloxi Blues (1988), Heartburn (1986), Silkwood (1983), The look at the dress and says, “You can't wear a bra under that Fortune (1975), The Day of the Dolphin (1973), Carnal dress.” Knowledge (1971), Catch-22 (1970), The Graduate (1967) and So, I say, “Okay, I'll bite. Why?” Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). And he says, “Because. there's no underwear in space.” Right! Of course! There are, however, gold bikinis in space; CARRIE FISHER (b. October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California— everyone knows that. d. December 27, 2016, age 60, in Los Angeles, California) will forever be known Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise. Nichols—POSTCARDS FOM THE EDGE—3 What happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So foundering on infidelity, ego and drug use. Taylor would far so good, right? But then your body expands?? But your bra eventually kick his heroin habit, but not before their relationship doesn't—so you get strangled by your own bra. crumbled. In the 1970s Carly was a household name with multi- Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit—so I tell platinum albums such as Playing Possum (1975) and her my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported Grammy-winning debut No Secrets (1972), by the 1980s she was that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.