Remember that infamous scene from “The Graduate” whereBenjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) tells Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), “Mrs.Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
Of course she was. And if you’ve seen the movie, then youremember not only that moment in the darkness when America gazed in at somesexual gawkiness but the accompanying whoops of laughter that filled theaterseverywhere.
But the real seducer wasn’t Mrs. Robinson. It was MikhailIgor Peschkowsky, directing the film under his American name, Mike Nichols.
For over half a century, Nichols seduced the hell out of us.He directed movies and shows, comedies and dramas, and partnered with ElaineMay to help us laugh at our mid-20th century cultural neuroses.
Peschkowsky, the little boy outsider who became Nichols, waschased out of Germany to America by Hitler. Jews didn’t belong in Hitler’sworld. So Nichols spent half a century in his new home, figuring out what hesaw, falling in love with it, and attempting to seduce us the way any outsider attemptsto understand his new surroundings and then endear himself in order to becomepart of it.
That’s the message from a brand new book, “Life Isn’tEverything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends” (Henry Holt& Co.) by Ash Carter and Sam Kashner. I couldn’t put it down. It’s smart, funnyand insightful, and it helps fill in American pop culture history of the last60 years, as well as insights into the realMike Nichols, who died in 2014.
Among the friends offering insights are Hoffman, MerylStreep, Jack Nicholson, Nathan Lane, Al Pacino, Candice Bergen, NataliePortman, Cher, Matthew Broderick, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Shirley MacLaine,Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams …
Oh, hell, that’s just for starters. They all came underNichols’ influence in movies or shows ranging from ‘Who’s Afraid of VirginiaWoolf?” to “Angels in America” to “The Birdcage” to “The Odd Couple” to “Annie”to “Carnal Knowledge” to …
Oh, hell, that’s just for starters, too.
But “Life Isn’t Everything” – the title’s taken from a wryexpression of Nichols’ – is much more than a compilation of terrific storiesout of Hollywood and Broadway. It’s an implicit tale about outsiders,immigrants to a new country or a new culture, or both.
They’re the ones who make up America, no? They’re the onesstudying the mainstream culture when most of us simply take it for granted.They’re the ones figuring out the nuances, pushing at the edges, seeing thingsthe rest of us hadn’t previously noticed. They’re hungry to make themselvespart of it.
Leonard Bernstein once told Nichols, “Oh, Mike, you’re sogood. I don’t know at what. But you’re so good.”
That was Nichols’ journey, finding out what he was good at. Itturned out that he was good at just about everything.His movies and shows didn’t just make us laugh and cry. They told us stuff wedidn’t quite know before young Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky arrived on the scene.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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