Riffs on life, in the key of Jack

Jack Nicholson inhales a steady stream of cigarettes as if fumigating his brain, and runs his hands through what remains of his hair, giving the longish salt-and-pepper locks a vaguely “Shining” air. Dressed in khakis and a blue sweatshirt, the 65-year-old star is settled into a velvety leopard-skin-print chair (Jack’s apparent equivalent of the Barcalounger) in his longtime lair high atop Mulholland Drive. He’s been in this unpretentious womb-like ranch house for 30 years, and Picassos and Bacons compete for attention with jumbles of pictures of his kids and friends.

Across from him is Alexander Payne, the Omaha native who so memorably co-wrote and directed the satires “Citizen Ruth,” “Election” and the upcoming film “About Schmidt,” in which Nicholson plays the title character. At 41, Payne resembles a schoolboy in gray pants, a navy pullover and a pristine white shirt.

This interview is supposed to be a two-hander, but Nicholson has the gravitational pull of Jupiter, and Payne, who describes himself as “laconic,” sits back and lets his star indulge his merry instinct to entertain. Nicholson approaches conversation like a gourmand -- each juicy tidbit, anecdote and Jack-ism presented as a delicious idiosyncratic morsel, in what turns out to be a banquet touching on everything from Winston Churchill to his all-time favorite bad movies -- one of which, “Serpent of the Nile” (1953)he incongruously leaps up to act out.

His patter, delivered in his idiosyncratic inflections of irony and delight, brings back all the messy inquisitiveness of the ‘70s.

The effect of the 90-minute discussion is not unlike the film they’re here to talk about, in which a gray-faced, tubby Nicholson dominates the screen in what seems destined to be another Oscar-nominated performance. Yet his paunchy pyrotechnics wouldn’t be possible without the dryly witty, self-effacing world so tightly constructed by Payne. Nicholson might be the match, but he’s been ignited in pure oxygen.

The film is a satire about a 67-year-old former insurance actuary who discovers that his life has no meaning. The newly retired and widowed Schmidt tools aimlessly around the cows and the Dairy Queens of the Midwest in a super-sized Winnebago. He visits childhood haunts and local sites of dubious interest, and ultimately ends up at the wedding of his churlish daughter, who’s marrying a pea-brain waterbed salesman he disdains. His only hope for intimacy lies in the long, heartfelt letters he writes to Ngudu, an illiterate African orphan whom he’s “adopted” for $22 a month through a TV charity.

The movie is ostensibly based on the novel by Louis Begley, though it derives most of its thrust from an original script co-written by Payne (and Jim Taylor) about a decade ago, as he was emerging from UCLA film school. “This was supposed to be my first feature,” says Payne. “Somehow a guy retiring in a crisis, kind of like Benjamin Braddock in ‘The Graduate,’ but different and in Omaha.”

It’s a comedy about obliviousness. “If I wanted to key in what this piece is about,” says Nicholson, laughing, “a guy goes to his best friend having discovered that his friend had an affair with his wife some long while ago, and at first his best friend doesn’t remember. That’s key to know.”

You announced at the Cannes Film Festival that this was your least vain performance.

Nicholson: I didn’t hide any of the real things about me. After all, I’m actually this age. The comb-over was my original piece of inspiration.

Do you usually hide things about how you look?

Nicholson: Yes, of course you do. It’s not necessarily hiding. It’s more shaping. All of these things you learn intuitively about the graphic image of the big silver. Early on, I used to say you have to understand when you smile, it’s eight Buicks in a drive-in theater. All the adjectives that deal with shaping -- look sharp, thin, wise, chiseled -- I just didn’t do that. It’s challenging to your vanity.

What was the hardest to give up?

Nicholson: [He sinks low in his chair in a slouch that gives him the appearance of a double chin.] Not to worry when you’re sitting in a chair or low angle.. I can’t tell you how many offstage discussions I’ve watched about how do we shoot the couple flat in the bed without either propping them up or shooting up their noses.

Payne: You talked about the process you were taught. I don’t know if it was Jeff Corey [Nicholson’s acting teacher] who said it, “When an actor takes on a part, he or she should feel free to assume they have 85% in common with them.”

Nicholson: Not “in common” -- synonymous. Man, woman or child, 85% of you is exactly like the character you’re playing, and isolating the other 15% and deciding how to act it is beginning the analysis. And the 85% that is you is the main element of all acting -- which is relaxation so you’re not overwhelmed by the tension and pressure of acting.

Payne: It’s very liberating.

Nicholson: Another thing Jeff always said, if you can’t drop the character within 10 minutes after you’ve done the performance, then you’re in trouble.

Payne: Why?

Nicholson: You’re invested psychically in it in a way that’ s not good for you as a person.

Is Nicholson different when he’s working?

Payne: On “Schmidt,” he was by his own admission depressed a lot, like the character. He was quieter than usual, a little more dour. When he finished shooting, he did feel a weight begin to lift from his shoulders.

Nicholson: If you’re depressed and the scene you’re going to be playing is about that, there’s no point in unacting yourself and then having to act your way back in.

(to Nicholson) You’ve done a lot of movies recently -- “As Good as It Gets,” “The Crossing Guard,” this one -- that deal with a man’s inability to connect.

Nicholson: It’s more about the literature of my age group than it is about me. I always had an idea that as an actor I wanted to in some way reinvest, let’s not call it old age, let’s call it latter middle age, with an honest sexual component. Underline “honest” rather than “sexual.” I thought that was an element in movies that’s really never comfortably dealt with. Superstructurally.

What do you mean, “superstructurally”?

Nicholson: I know how I feel inside. I’m not Judge Hardy. There’s [an assumption in Hollywood] that it would be unattractive for anyone over 60 years old to be an outwardly sexual person. One of the most memorable moments of Laurence Olivier’s career, to me, came in a bad movie called “The Betsy.” In England, if they’re not Welsh, they’re actors very light in the sexual area, and in this it’s a long shot through a door to a bed and Olivier like an old satyr in a tuxedo over his son’s bride -- [he describes the sex act in graphic detail] -- on the bed, just before the wedding. It’s just that one shot and baby, I believed it! It’s one of the most memorable moments in his career for me. I’m a McLuhan baby. When you break a cliche, you release all the energy that’s been held within that.

Yet, there is an underlying sadness in many of these films.

Nicholson: It’s always about what’s written. I could be in a thriller, and be the horrible judge or general this, but it’s all specific vocations related to melodrama. Once you’re reading in other areas, you’re dealing with this stuff. I read a lot, and I’m really alerted to the very limited nature of the stories about people who are towards, let’s call them autumnal, years of life. This is a long way of saying the old saying there are no third acts in American life. There’s a futility, generationally. Payne: [He’s gone back to his car to get a piece of paper. Earlier in the week, Payne introduced Nicholson and his 1971 film, “Drive, He Said,” at a special screening.] In preparation, I read a bunch of reviews of “Drive, She Said.” I just had them ready.

Nicholson: In case I failed you.

Payne: [quoting] “There’s an aura of profound despair about Nicholson’s work. His universe, though it fills with positive possibilities, remains bleak because his characters have no chance of latching on to something secure.”

Nicholson: [laughs] That was the kind of answer I didn’t want to give! Every time in the old Roger Corman movies, the view I got, I’d be the young James Stewart, or the young this or that. ... Then in my early 30s, it was the premature balding wrinkled guy ... then the symbol of alienation. There is always this kind of schematic. What is the view? It’s one scene at a time, really! I’ve always worked with really fine directors who as a group, they’re about the truth!

This is about a man who regrets the decision of his life. Do you have any regrets?

Nicholson: [Slowly and emphatically, he blows out smoke before answering.] Not really. There are areas that I wished I functioned better in or things I might have known sooner that might have changed my behavior. Or maybe I shot off my mouth too many times. But not major regrets. I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve worked in the movies for a long time and no one can ever come to me that I worked with and say that I lied or cheated them. I love the people in show business. I can’t think of any other life I might have functioned in other than show business.

(to Payne) Do you like show business?

Payne: I don’t know enough about show business to know if I like it or not. I like my corner of it. I like movies. I ‘m so happy to be born in the century where movies were invented. I can’t tell you how many times I think of all those people who lived and died and never had movies.

Nicholson: This is basically what movies are -- the learning process. Education. We learn how to kiss, or to drink, talk to our buddies. All the things that you can’t really teach in social studies or history, we all learn them at the movies.

For you, what movies were instructive?

Nicholson: I don’t know if I could put [it] in movies but I could put [it] in scenes from old movies. When Lawrence is talking to Alec Guinness in “Lawrence of Arabia” and they’re having this big argument about what should be done and who should do it, and Guinness turns and says, “Look, Lawrence, you do things according to your real and honest passions of the moment, I do things according to the way in which they should be done traditionally. I ask you to judge which is more trustworthy over the long run.” I love that scene.

Is it different working with a director from a younger generation?

Nicholson: I don’t want to think about Alexander as a younger director because then I have to start thinking about myself as an older person. Philosophically, I try to live in the now. That’s the closest I have to a philosophy or a religion. Alex’s attitude on set is that it’s a privilege to get to direct a movie. It’s very hard-minded. He always takes the actor aside and tells them a little thing and there’s a lot of it. He’s really watches. He doesn’t watch the TelePrompTer. It’s fun to have a director there when you’re doing it. But there’s not a lot of conceptual arguments but a lot of tuning.

Payne: I just want to see a human cinema. I want to see real Americans represented and I don’t see that too much in the movies today.

Nicholson: To a lot of people, Alex is one of them, human frailties are seen everywhere you look. This doesn’t lead you to despise the people. You see it, but there’s not a meanness about it.

There seem to be a number of movies made this season about masculinity under siege? Why do you think that is?

Payne: I have no idea.

Nicholson: The white male is the target for everybody culturally. It’s obvious. You can’t almost use the phrase without being suspect in some way. [“About Schmidt”] is more [than that]. This could be about anybody. Mendacity -- this is our problem. “About Schmidt” is about America. I just came downstairs [and turned on the TV] and the world is now obsessed with this sniper situation in Washington, D.C. My inner response was “Holy God, I’m very aware of it, but somehow it’s on the East Coast. We’re not as worried about the sniper as much as they are in Washington.” It’s that isolationist nature of our country that makes us mendacious. We hold facts so tightly but for so short a period of time. People are really changing their minds publicly a lot.

Why is that mendacious and not simply indecisive?

Nicholson: Everyone dissembles. You know that. We tend to think what’s best for us is best for everyone else, and it’s like a child, you can’t help but state the case to your own advantage. We’re mendacious because we want things our way. We don’t want anybody to want nuclear weapons. That’s good for the world, but we have them.

I’m an old peacenik. That’s why I’m doing a lot of comedy. Bring on the clowns. I know I don’t know anything. That’s my one advantage.