Word: nicholson
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That was Jack Nicholson's first try for an acting job, and it was 14 years before he was needed that badly. Then, as the one articulate, genuinely comic character in Easy Rider, Nicholson became a leading participant in the upheaval that has caused Hollywood, for better or for worse, to churn out an endless series of "relevant," youth-oriented little movies. The role won him the New York Film Critics' Award, an Academy Award nomination and a leading role in Director Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge. In the meantime he is appearing in Five Easy Pieces...
Sandra After School. How can overnight success take 14 years? Probably because Nicholson, 33, used to be the sort who'd rather let things happen than make them happen. He began acting in high school in Neptune, N.J., but not out of any burning ambition. "I got sort of talked into it by a teacher," he says. "And all the chicks that I liked were doing plays-rehearsals after school with Sandra, that kind of thing...
...mention. "I either played the clean-cut boy next door," he recalls, "or the murderer of a family of at least five." He also wrote a few himself: The Trip, starring Peter Fonda; Head, with the Monkees; and two westerns, which he also produced, made for $75,000 apiece. Nicholson personally carried them in hatboxes to European film festivals, where they won come acclaim. Still, they are too arty and paralytic for U.S. audiences...
Until Easy Rider, Nicholson seemed destined to drift endlessly in and out of second-rate horror, motorcycle and drug movies with his friends Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Easy Rider could have been, of course, just another in the cycle cycle. Fortunately for Nicholson, Rip Torn, originally cast as the Southern lawyer, bowed out and Nicholson's friends from Head, Producer Bert Schneider and Director Bob Rafelson, suggested Jack for the role. "I went immediately to work on the dialect. Drew a lot on L.B.J." For the campfire scene, his favorite, he says: "I smoked about 155 joints. Keeping...
There are also a number of disconcertin, sniggering (and sometimes sexist) jokes running throughout the film-such as a joyous intercourse scene in which Nicholson incongruously wears a T-shirt, only so that he can reveal the legend "Triumph" on its front once he has achieved orgasm...