Dustin Hoffman. Melanie Griffith. Nathan Lane. Without the foresight and vision of director Mike Nichols, none of these actors (and probably countless others) ever would have entered the coveted pantheon of household names.
In fact, Nichols may be about to work his magic again. His sex comedy "What Planet Are You From?" might be just the ticket to springboard television star Garry Shandling to the successful film career which he has sought after for years.
Think "Planet," in which Shandling plays an alien sent to Earth in order to reproduce, sounds a little juvenile? Perhaps a tad lame? I certainly do. I think the film sounds downright stupid.
But I have faith that "Planet" is actually more than a visit to the world of erotica. And with a cast that also includes Annette Bening, Janeane Garofalo, John Goodman and Greg Kinnear, I am not alone.
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Nichols is legendary, in fact, for assembling immensely talented ensemble casts, a reputation that he established immediately following his directorial debut. His adaptation of Edward Albee's landmark play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" not only proved Nichols' faithfulness to the original work (barely excising a single line of dialogue from the original), but also his integrity as an actor's director.
Long before "American Beauty" found the allure in marital discord, there was "Woolf," a very dark comedy that depicted the pathologically twisted and often sado-masochistic battle of wills between a husband and wife (then-real-life marrieds Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.)
Giving the most wrenching performance of her career, Taylor dispelled any lingering doubt of her talents and won the Best Actress Oscar for "Woolf." Sandy Dennis also won the Supporting Actress statuette for her role in the film, and both Burton and fellow cast member George Segal were nominated, as was Nichols himself.
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Nichols balanced Albee's searing dissection of the dichotomy between truth and illusion with his use of Haskell Wexler's black-and-white cinematography - done at a time when most other filmmakers had settled comfortably into Technicolor. Wexler also won an Oscar for his work.
Nichols managed to avoid the sophomore slump with his next film, 1967's "The Graduate." Hoffman, in his first starring film role, played Benjamin Braddock, a dissatisfied 20-year-old who begins an affair with his neighbor, the older Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft, in peak form) - and then falls in love with her daughter (Katharine Ross).
"The Graduate" used Benjamin as a filter for much late-1960s anxiety. The film never mentions the Vietnam War, but we see Benjamin's internalized war on the homefront, an emotional abyss from which Mrs. Robinson offers only temporary solace.
We still feel the reverberations of "The Graduate" for another reason: Nichols' choice of Simon and Garfunkel's songs in the film. Not only are they great songs with sophisticated melodies, but they also help structure the film's action, halting lyrics and playing guitar chords at key moments just like a Greek chorus would. We have seen this done time and again, in films ranging from "Purple Rain" to "Magnolia." And don't think Nichols' work went unnoticed here; he won the Best Director Oscar this time around.
Nichols enjoyed his greatest commercial success with the modern Cinderella story "Working Girl," a film as mesmerizing as it is funny. It follows Tess's (Griffith) climb up the corporate ladder while trying to outsmart her devious boss (Sigourney Weaver, playing one of the great shrews in modern film); in the process of smashing the glass ceiling, Tess even manages to fall in love with her business partner (Harrison Ford, never funnier nor more charming).
Nichols also dazzled with the opening sequence of "Girl," in which cinematographer Michael Ballhaus zoomed in to a panoramic shot of the Statue of Liberty while Tess takes the Staten Island ferry into her Manhattan office. As a result, we know that this film will be Tess's story, and we know that her American Dream will come true. Then, as the camera pans out of her office to encompass the city skyline in the final scene, Nichols makes it clear that Tess' success story is just one human triumph in a city full of them.
Baullhaus also teamed with Nichols in the adaptation of Carrie Fisher's "Postcards from the Edge." This time, the film begins with a panoramic shot of an exotic country. Once star Meryl Streep enters the scene, we realize that Nichols has duped us: it's just a soundstage where the coked-up actress Suzanne Vale (Streep) keeps fumbling her scenes.
But Streep has never been better, or funnier, than she is here as a bad girl. As she peels away the layers in a seemingly effortless and often riotous way, we come to see Suzanne as a dependent creature struggling to find her own voice and break free of her mother's (Shirley MacLaine) shadow. When the two go head-to-head during the film, Nichols shows us that underneath their egos, all that they really want is each other's approval.
Just as he gave those unfamiliar with it a glimpse into both celebrity life and mother-daughter friction, Nichols gave outsiders another chance to see the interaction between members of a family defined by performance in "The Birdcage." With Emmanuel Lubezki as director of photography, the film begins with a camera scrolling the Atlantic, until it moves into the crowded South Beach area where the nightclub sits, and then, in one apparently continuous shot, takes viewers directly into the club.
By setting "The Birdcage" in an almost farcical world, Nichols juxtaposed the high-strung, flamboyant world of the Birdcage revue with the world of even wackier, more high-strung politicians. In addition to starring such Oscar-winners as Robin Williams, Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest, the film made a star out of Lane and featured a pre-"Ally McBeal" Calista Flockhart.
So if "What Planet are you From?" seems a little out of this world, fear not. With so many stars on his roster, Nichols clearly knows what he is doing. His greatest films balance wit and tenderness, social commentary and emotional depth. If anyone can find the humanity in an extra-terrestrial, leave it to Nichols.
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