Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mark Harris Encore

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

GGACP celebrates Pride Month with this ENCORE of a 2021 interview with New York Times bestselling author, journalist and entertainment historian Mark Harris. In this episode, Mark joins Gilbert and Frank for a fascinating and informative conversation about his critically-acclaimed Mike Nichols biography ("Mike Nichols: A Life"), as well as his thoroughly-researched books, "Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War" and "Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood"). Also: Mel Blanc teams with Dr. Seuss, Bob Dylan is considered for "Bonnie and Clyde," John Ford films the Battle of Midway and Rex Harrison insults the Emperor of Ethiopia. PLUS: "Bogart Slept Here"! The brilliance of Elaine May! The disaster of "Doctor Dolittle"! The Three Stooges take on the Fuhrer! And Mark writes an Emmy-winning Netflix docuseries! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Try the new creamy parmesan and bacon Quarter P pounder today and discover how words are so unnecessary for a limited time only at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Our guest this week is a journalist, occasional columnist, a former magazine editor, film historian, and best-selling author. His debut book, 2008's Pictures at a Revolution, Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood, detailed the fall of the studio system, the dawn of the new golden age of movies, and the introduction of the motion picture rating system, and was called a first-rate and deliciously readable cultural history by the Los Angeles Times. In 2014, he published his second book, Five Came Back, a story of Hollywood and the Second World War, which explored the wartime experiences of filmmakers Frank Capra, John Huston, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Ford. 2017 Netflix docuseries based on his book featuring Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola,

and Meryl Streep, among others. His newest project, published just this year year is Mike Nichols, A Life, a magnificent 594-page biography about one of the most creative and versatile artists in the history of popular entertainment, which which the Washington Post called shrewd, in-depth, intelligent, and eloquently written. And NPR called a masterwork, endlessly engaging, and one of the best biographies of an American artist. Frank and I are excited to welcome to this show a fellow native New Yorker, a gifted writer, and someone who has probably forgotten more about cinema than the two of us will ever know. man who can't think of one single nice thing to say about Rex Harrison. Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Harris.

Mark! Hi. That's a lot to live up to. Was some of that factual? I'm gonna say all of it, yeah. I'll take all of that. So let's begin. Now, Rex Harrison, original Dr. Doolittle, and, of course, my fair lady.

Now, you're saying he was a scumbag. Well, in my defense, I want to say that the only time that I was researching Pictures at a Revolution where I actually stopped and said, I've got to go find somebody to say something nice about this person was with Rex Harrison because I thought this is too crazy it's too lopsided and so I started calling around um people who had known him and worked with him and you know that was already like you know quite some time uh after all of these events so so I was calling mostly old people or or the children children of people who'd worked with him. And I can't remember who, but somebody said to me, you know, if you were writing about Rex Harrison in the 1940s or 1950s, yeah, there are probably people

who would have said that he was still human then. But by the time you're writing, which is 1967, no, Rex was a monster. So what can i tell you i tried and an anti-semite too well there was that yes yes yes tell us more about yeah i mean it's it's i think i think you know harrison's's distaste for humanity went in many different directions, and especially on this movie, which was a really unhappy production experience for him. Dr. Doolittle is what we're talking about. Yes. I have to give Rex Harrison credit for being one of the only people involved in the movie early on

to catch on to the fact that this was not going to work. I mean, he got there before a lot of the other people involved in the movie did. But once he did get there, he took it out on everyone. And one of the people was Anthony anthony newly who who uh had worked on songs for the movie and who just became one of rex harrison's many uh punching bags and and yeah there was definitely uh some anti-semitism involved yeah you know and sammy davis was a was a second punching bag. Yeah. Right. He didn't want to work with a song and dance man. He wanted to work with actors.

Right. And Sidney Poitier had turned down the part of this African king that is really something that makes you cringe now. But Rex Harrison, you know, they – he it's just it's too terrible i mean this this thing that he said how do you like our jungle when when um this oh when highly salasi showed up yeah when he came to the set right um you just that that was really flabbergasting and and i i only put that in the book after getting it confirmed by a couple of people, including one person who was there. And Anthony Newley, of course, was a Jew. And yeah, I heard he used to make anti-Semitic remarks to him all the time. Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, Anthony Newley had passed away long before I started working on the book, so I didn't get to talk

to him. And I'm sure there were a lot of firsthand stories that he really could have told me about that. But yeah, it's I mean, we should also say that Rex Harrison was a huge drinker. And, you know, I always think that, like, alcoholism is the secret character in my books. It's like the sixth director in Five Came Back and it's the sixth movie in Pictures at a Revolution. It affects so much and so many people. And I really do think that when Rex Harrison drank a lot, he became even more monstrous and less censored. You know, the things that he probably would have had the discretion not to say out loud started to come out.

He was kind of like Paul Lynn. Paul Lynn was a horrible drunk and really vicious yes and viciously anti-semitic so the two go hand in hand this is the fastest I've ever

gotten to Paul Lynn in an interview I couldn't be happier you're in the right place, Mark. That's all right. For those of you who don't know, Anthony Newley used to sing, What kinds of you and I

Who never fell in love You'd think that I'm the only one that I've been thinking of. Mark, in all the interviews you've done for Pictures at a Revolution, did anyone treat you to an Anthony Newley impression? It has not yet come up. It's a first. This is a first. Yeah, I do it because the kids like it. We won't stay on Harrison, but you have to tell Gilbert one thing from the book.

There are certain things I find when I'm doing research, and I should circle it and put a little G next to it, because I know it's a special tidbit for Gilbert. And this would be the oddest piece of information about Rex Harrison that came out of the book. And you know what I'm referring to, the song lyrics about his genitalia while his wife did handstands. Oh, right. Yes, yes. I should probably have those lyrics in front of me, although I couldn't do them justice. Yeah.

Rex Harrison was married to Rachel Roberts who was really a wonderful actress but suffered from very serious mental illness issues and at one point she literally when they were filming in the Caribbean

after a day's shooting she decided that she was going to swim out to the seal cage and set them all free so there was a lot of stuff like that but yeah there was a big Hollywood party where she

did handstands pantyless handstands while Rex Harrison sang an ode to his junk. There you go, Gil. And Frank was telling me this, that during Dr. Doolittle,

the animals were attacking the people. A lot of bites. There were bites. There was like a truly epic amount of poop and pee because this was the, you know, pre-CG era. You know, they spent six months teaching a chimpanzee to fry an egg. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. There's also the squirrel.

They were wiring down a squirrel? They tried to tie a squirrel to a fence post or something with a wire so that it would just... Yeah, I mean, things like... You know that thing that you see saying no animals were harmed in the making

of this motion picture? This movie was made before that. Yes, sadly. Yeah, it would not get that seal of approval. This is of that era when Westerns, they used to have trick wires for horses to trip over to look like they'd been shot. And then they'd have to be shot afterwards. Right.

I don't think they did anything that sadistic. But I don't know if I can use this word, but you'll cut it out if I can. There was one point when the shooting shut down for three days. Nichols because Herbert Ross, who was doing all the choreography for Dr. Dolittle, was also working with Mike Nichols on a Broadway show and suddenly showed up in the rehearsal room and Mike said, what are you doing here? I thought you were on Dolittle all week.

And Herbert Ross said, we're shut down for three days. The giraffe tripped over his own cock. Yes, you don't have to have any question about using profanity here. Gilbert insists on it. Yeah, it has to be a certain amount of profanity in each episode.

Oh, and the baby in Family Guy is based on Rex Harrison. There you go. That really sort of evil, yeah, that very dry delivery, yeah. I mean, you know, I saw Dr. Doolittle when I was a kid. You know, I was very, very young when it came out, but I remember loving it

and thinking he was great. So his lack of professionalism did not extend to in front of the camera. He did his job, but uh but he was a rough rough guy to work with and i was i was in the eddie murphy dr dooly there you go oh how was that yeah i well i just did the voice of the obsessive compulsive dog so So there was no, like, you did not contend with animals face-to-face? No, no. But I heard chimpanzees

are horrible creatures. They said the same thing about Rex Harrison. Gilbert, did you trip over your own cock at any point while making the... Oh, it's a curse. Let's talk about Poitier, Mark, because, and by the way, the way you write both Five Came Back and Pictures of a Revolution is fascinating to me because you are moving between stories all the time, which is dizzying, but so grandly entertaining.

I don't know how you do it. Thank you. That's the most challenging part, honestly, of writing those books was knowing how many plot lines I could keep in the air at once and when to cut away from one to the other. Oh, it's expertly done. And I mean, I can't, I will say several times during this episode, I will tell our listeners to get these books, but also to any writers, you know, it's textbook to see how somebody keeps these threads going and moving. So for anybody who hasn't read Pictures of a Revolution, you're telling the story of the making of The Graduate,

Dr. Doolittle in the heat of the night, guess who's coming to dinner, and Bonnie and Clyde all at once, and shifting and moving between the stories and looking for connective tissues and segues. Sometimes you don't even use segues, and it's wonderful. But you're my hero for doing that. But talk about Poitier, who comes up a lot in the book. Right.

Well, he was one reason that I was able to juggle five different plot lines because he stars in two of the movies, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and almost had a co-starring role in Dr. Dolittle. So I was always looking for places to bring those stories together, and he was a really big one. And his journey from being the first black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar in 1963

for Lilies of the Field to you know, through the mid-1960s all the way to the 1968 Oscars where he stars in two of the Best Picture nominees and becomes you know, the number one box office star in America. I just found

that a completely fascinating story to tell it is fascinating he's a fascinating guy and and poitier of course he had different challenges he did not want to play heavies because he thought that would work against him he well he thought it would work against him and also he he genuinely felt it would be um irresponsible to his race. I mean, he said, I could afford to play bad guys if there were six black stars in movies right now. But if I'm the only one, I can't do that.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And he had to be very careful about what he said publicly about civil rights. Yeah, absolutely. So as not to alienate a major part of the audience of the movie going public. I mean, walking this tightrope where, you know, he – it was really tricky because he wanted to serve his own people well. He wanted to represent his own people well. own people well uh he wanted to represent his own people well um he was also very conscious that he was largely at the mercy of uh white filmmakers white directors white producers white audiences

um and and you know he gets to this really fascinating place where he finally does have not just public acceptance but massive public acceptance, you know, this was at a time when the Klan would picket movie theaters that were showing some of his movies in the South. And just when he gets there, a younger generation of African-American moviegoers begins to turn a little bit against him and to say, yeah, he's too much of an accommodator. He's not radical enough.

He's not, you know, aggressive enough about civil rights. So it was really just almost an impossible bind for someone to be in. Yeah, he couldn't win. Yeah, I mean. And there were a lot of black performers who have been attacked like i remember flip wilson they would say oh it's just variety and and i'm i would always think well no they're entertainers they want to entertain and they they get attacked for. Like they should be doing like something more political. Right.

It's an unbelievable burden to have to carry. I mean, it's absurd. It's like you have to carry the expectations of an entire race of people and to be like the embodiment of their best values and all of their hopes. Like no one person can do that or hope to do it. So I think he bore that burden with incredible grace. I think probably of all the people in Pictures of the Revolution, he was the one I was most moved to write about. Yeah, yeah. And it's heartbreaking to read about that Times op-ed. Like I said, when I say he

couldn't win, I mean, he was getting blowback from every direction, including from his own race, from people of his own race. Looking back, I can't believe the Times published that, that hit piece. You know, it's like then as now, you know, there's always going to be a market for, you know, an op-ed or an essay that throws a grenade into the middle of a conversation. really felt um kind of shocked and angry that that people he felt he had been working on behalf of um he felt they were turning against him uh and just sort of rejecting him as yesterday's news and and saying i mean it's a lot like the fights uh you know between like hard left progressives and the the rest of the democratic party you know if you have someone saying listen i have to try to get as many people in this coalition as possible of course

and someone on your left flank always saying like yeah but you know what you're letting us down this isn't good enough it's it's um i think uh you know in the case case of Poitier, it's upsetting to realize that he was blamed for things that really the whole system should have been blamed for. But it's always easier to go after a person than it is to go after a system. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. We're going to jump around in this interview much the way you do in the books. And we'll come back to Pictures at a Revolution.

We have to talk just a little bit about, a lot actually, about Five Came Back. We both watch, I have the book, Gilbert, watch the docu-series. I mean, riveting about Five Came Back. We both watched. I have the book. Gilbert watched the docu-series. I mean, riveting. Thanks. Thanks. That was an exciting book to do.

Completely different than the first one. And tell us the whole story of it. Okay. Sure. Well, Five Came Back came about for me because that was a period of moviemaking and of Hollywood history that I had always avoided. You know, the time when suddenly people disappeared and didn't make movies for a while because they were fighting a war. And I wanted to know more about it. So the story of the book is the story of five directors, George Stevens, William Wyler, John Hust John Ford, and Frank Capra, who...

All Academy Award winners. All Academy Award winners. That's right. Really like the sort of powerhouses of Hollywood, who pretty soon after Pearl Harbor suspended their careers to go, in Capra's case to Washington, D.C., and in the case of the other four, all around the world, to film documentaries, to shoot propaganda films, to document the war, and really spent the next several years of their lives doing that everywhere from the Aleutian Islands to Italy, to the liberation of Paris, to ultimately the liberation of the camps, where George Stevens' work ended up being used as evidence in the Nuremberg trial.

That's fascinating. Yeah. And I heard, I mean, all of them were affected, but George Stevens especially so. I think he was affected most. I mean, they all, it was a defining thing for all of them for the rest of their lives. And that's something I did not know when I started the book, that it really, like for better and for worse, reshaped them and reshaped their careers. But probably no one more than George Stevensvens because he was the only one i mean he saw the worst of it he he he was the one who led a crew of of uh cameramen and sound men uh into um into the camps and filmed what you know ended up being documentary evidence. I mean, literal evidence.

You know, these images that we now know from many documentaries and from a number of fiction films, he was the first filmmaker really to see that. And it's amazing to me that his, because what he saw was so awful that most of it could never have been shown in a newsreel or in a documentary in an American theater at the time. But he shot it anyway. that the job of anyone there who was holding a camera was to document this, to make it that much harder for people to say, no, that it could never have happened. It didn't happen like that. That's not true. I mean, people still said it, but at least there was this footage.

I mean, it affected him so much that he felt that he could not make frivolous films and frivolous comedies anymore, a man who was known for a light touch right as a director yeah i mean of all five of the directors stevens is the one whose post-war career and uh whose pre-war career look like the work of two different men in a way i mean the you know he did uh a stare and rogers musicals before the war and laurel and Hardy films and light screwball comedies. And then after the war, it's much heavier. It's stuff like A Place in the Sun and Giant and The Diary of Anne Frank, really big, epic dramas. He just felt – it wasn't that he felt comedies are frivolous and I can only do important things now.

That wasn't the thinking. It was more that he just felt he didn't have a comedy heart left in him after what he had seen. Understandably. And the other one affected in a strange way William Wilder. Right. I mean he's he and physically well yeah physically I mean he lost his hearing and that was a really significant thing for for the rest of his career um but I think I think for Wyler uh it kind of impelled him to greatness I mean he was making

pretty wonderful movies before the war but then you know he comes back and does this this to me his defining work the best years of our lives uh and it's it's really incredible to me because you know things move so fast now but but the the extraordinary fact of a hollywood filmmaker in 1946 one year after the end of the war, making a movie about this thing that everyone was experiencing on some level or another, the return of servicemen to their towns, to their cities, to their wives and children, to their workplaces, and what kind of stresses that was causing. And what kind of stresses that was causing to make a movie that that depicted those guys not as larger than life heroes, but as fragile, flawed men who were actually vulnerable and struggling with something. That movie genuinely changed people's understanding of what the issues for returning veterans were. It's a great work of art. And everybody saw it. Everybody went to see that movie. And tell us how William Wyler went to F. He was – one of the things he did was to film bomber missions um and uh that meant he

literally would go up in the in the bombers with with a crew of 10 people and shoot sometimes you know he'd crawl around in the belly of the plane to shoot through this opening in the bottom. And those planes were all unpressurized. So you had to have oxygen over your mouth. It was freezing cold. You had to wear gloves. I mean, the conditions were really rough. And then it's not clear exactly what happened, but he was shooting the Italian coast in an unpressurized plane, kind of surveying possible locations to make another documentary.

And the plane came in for a landing, and when he got out of the plane, he couldn't hear. Like, all of a sudden. He went up, a hearing person, came down, a hearing-impaired person, and he waited for his hearing to come back. And with every day, it just became more apparent that it was not going to. A real sacrifice. And the other harrowing thing about Wyler in the film and in the book is when he goes back to his village. Right.

And there isn't anybody left yeah well i mean weiler uh was uh an immigrant he he he came from this uh this sort of borderline part of france that was at various times in his life under the control of france under the control of germany um and uh you, so the war was very firsthand personal to him. You know, he had relatives who were desperately trying, you know, he was trying to bring them over before it became too late. And at that point, that meant that he had to kind of financially guarantee everyone he brought over.

And so there's a point in the war where he has this opportunity to kind of go semi-awol for a few days and take a convoy back to his hometown where he'd lived until he was, I think, 17 or 18. And he gets there and almost everyone he knew was just gone. And the people in the village didn't really talk about it that much. They just said they were gone.

It was almost as if it was too much to say, we think they're dead or we think they're in the camps. It was just, you know, so just a stunningly painful thing to have to contend with. And one time there was a story that he was coming

out of a hotel. I think it's in the movie. You talking about when he took the swing at the cab driver? Yeah, like the guy says like calls his passenger a Jew son of a bitch right i think it was like the the the he the cab driver was saying that uh about the person who had just gotten out or something as weiler was getting in but but um weiler uh weiler took a swing at him and and um came really really close to to being court-martialed.

I mean that could have cut his military career very short. Weiler is the only Jewish director of the five that I wrote about. And his story is obviously incredibly important for me to have it in there. There are so many major moments, both in the book and in the movie. Gilbert and I were also fascinated by Ford. And for many reasons, both of being present at the Battle of Midway, also what happened when he saw the carnage at D-Day, he disappeared into a bottle. Right. I mean, Ford probably struggled with alcohol more than any of the directors that I wrote about. And he did a great deal during the war.

You know, and I think you can tell this from his movies that he was constantly fascinated and obsessed with stories of what courage means, what risking yourself means, what putting yourself on the line means. And he saw the war in so many ways as a test for himself. Like, what kind of man am I? He was old enough, just old enough to have served in World War I. And so World War II was really going to be his test. And he was at Midway and then, you know, did a lot of work elsewhere, you know, in the Pacific. you know, in the Pacific. But Midway was really significant for him because although that was one of the first really big American victories in the Pacific in 1942,

what really struck Ford so hard was the losses. That one day he could be, you know, shooting a group of 30 young men clowning around and that the next day, some of those men would be gone. Yeah. So you can see in the movie he made the Battle of Midway, which is about a 20 minute film that that showed over and over and over again in in theaters that everyone who went to the movie saw it. You can see that where another director might have just made a big, rah-rah, cheerful thing about this gigantic American victory,

Ford makes room for grief and sadness and sorrow, and you can't come away from that film without understanding that this experience was about loss not just about victory and uh also at for while he was alive the biggest most courageous toughest hero was john wayne he was the symbol of uh for many people being a hero right and so what was the symbol of being a hero. Right. And so what was the real story? And Ford was, you know, Ford had sort of made Wayne's reputation, you know, that it was stagecoach in 1939 that really started to cement Ford or started to cement Wayne in the public eye as, you know, the cowboy hero. And in reality, John Wayne was not particularly interested in serving in World War II. He had kids. He kept hemming and hawing and telling Ford,

yeah, I'm going to do it, you know, in three months or in six months, I'm going to do it. And finally, he just said, you know, I have kids and I'm married and, you know, it would be bad for war morale if I got killed in action or something, which in fairness is something that the, that the war department in Washington was very worried about. They were not enthusiastic about having movie stars go to war because they knew how crushing it would be if, you know, Jimmy Stewart went down in a plane

or if John Wayne was killed in action. And yet Stewart went and flew missions. Stewart went and flew missions. I think Jimmy Stewart was actually ended up higher ranking than any other Hollywood star who served in World War II. Yeah, he went on Bomber.

Right. And Wayne did not end up serving. He did USO shows and things like that and fundraising. But I think Ford really objected to it and was angry at Wayne. I think he felt let down by Wayne. And so in the first movie that Ford makes after the war is just about over, a film about World War II and about the Pacific called They Were Expendable, he puts John he puts john wayne in it uh but he's really

brutal to wayne during the shooting and finally like uh lashes out at him uh so so harshly what he say something about scanning why stay home and scanning scanning for air raids and collecting paychecks i yeah i think he said that in said that in a letter to his wife or something. But when they were shooting the movie, he actually said to Wayne, in front of the whole cast and crew, you know, something like, you know, my God, don't you even know how to give us a loot? And Wayne was just, like like really shocked and hurt and i think

ford was shocked at like that he had like gone farther than he had intended to or meant to um and and uh he apologized but uh and and of course he worked with Wayne many, many more times. But, you know, I think the tension between people who served and people who didn't was very real, and it was just embodied in that relationship. I'm sure. One of the harrowing moments, one of the most dramatic moments, both in the book and in the docuseries, is when Capra screens Triumph of the Will. And he's so knocked out by what Lenny Riefenstahl was able to do that he lost hope. Right. I mean, one of the things that really surprised me was that after this massive recruitment effort where Washington and the Defense Department, basically the War Department, excuse me, basically sends emissaries to hollywood saying we need your best and brightest to to create the u.s documentary and propaganda war effort they get to washington

and they have almost no money no budget to make these movies with so uh you know uh capra sees triumph of the will because I think the Museum of Modern Art may have had a print or the Treasury Department may have seized a print and he looks at it and his reaction is, we're going to lose. We're doomed. There's no way

that we can match the kind of spectacle and size because one of the things you really get from Triumph of the Will, one of the most effective pieces of the propaganda that it is, is this feeling that there are endless unified seas of Germans, like the wideness of that image, the sheer number of people makes you think this is

a kind of invincible, unified fighting force. And out of that, out of that dejection that Capra felt comes his great inspiration, which is that he's going to use all of the foreign propaganda films

that have been seized by the government. He's going to use that footage and turn it against them and that will not only solve the problem of what kind of movies uh he needs to make but solve the problem that he has no money to make them it was a stroke of brilliance really yeah and when william wyler was making mrs miniver uh he was having trouble with the studio heads. Right. Mrs. Miniver is such a fascinating movie because it literally splits right down the middle in terms of being made before Pearl Harbor and after Pearl Harbor.

I mean, it's a movie that was conceived and written and started to shoot at a moment when the war was something that was of great concern because it was happening in england and you know england was under siege uh from from germany um but but then suddenly um the the pearl harbor happens and it's our war we're we're in it it's happening and um so there's a why i love to tell this this story that there's this – there's a scene where a downed German soldier comes and holds Mrs. Miniver, who's them and who you know was doing business with germany until very very late in the game sort of said you know does does the german have to be such a murderous bad guy and and weiler said um you know if we had six germans in the movie we could have all kinds of different germans but i have one. And so I'm going to

show people what we're fighting. And then Pearl Harbor happened and suddenly Mayer's objections just went away and said, you know, do whatever you want with that German. It's fine. Which brings up the larger question. I assume you saw Mank.

Yes. Yeah, this came up in Mank, too, as you'll remember, which was the studio's – what's the word? Passivity? And the reasons for it, which I always thought were commerce, were strictly commerce reasons, as you point out in the book, the reasons were more complicated than that because these men, these moguls, were Jewish. They feared a certain kind of anti-Semitism or negative reaction in their own country. Yeah, anti-Semitism is definitely a fair thing to call it. I mean, this, you know, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in America in those years. And a lot of it was directed at Hollywood. I mean, a lot of it is still directed at Hollywood.

and a lot of it was directed at Hollywood. I mean, a lot of it is still directed at Hollywood, but back then it was a very, it was a pretty common thing to talk about these, the first and second generation Jews who ran movie studios. It was pretty common for anti-Semites to talk about them as people of divided loyalty. Like, yeah, they're Americans,

but really isn't there allegiance to the old country? And if they're making movies, this is in the late 30s and early 40s, if they're making movies kind of advocating that we should get into the war, aren't they really doing that to protect their people, whether it's in America's interest or not? I mean, there was a lot of that kind of rhetoric and it really did not. I mean,

it took Pearl Harbor for that to get put away because literally the week before Pearl Harbor, there were still, you know, congressional hearings were happening about whether Hollywood was guilty of making too much pro-war propaganda. No, and movies were scared for the longest time of making Germans look bad and or addressing Hitler. And then there was the mortal storm. We've talked about the mortal storm on this show, yeah. And also importantly, before the great dictator, you Nazi spies. The Three Stooges. The Three Stooges did.

Well, there was also Confessions of a Nazi Spy was also a turning point for me. Yeah, so I think by 1938, 1939, some of the studios, especially Warner Brothers, which was the most kind of upfront, out there, you know, pro-intervention of all the studios, were getting a little bolder about saying we're not going to tiptoe around this subject matter anymore. But it took a while to get there. this subject matter anymore. But it took a while to get there. And the Stooges followed it up with one, that's one of my favorite Three Stooges titles, of I'll Never Heil Again. You know, there's this big woman's melodrama that came out around that time called

Valiant is the word for carry and the stooges made a parody of it called violent is the word for curly this man knows his onions yeah we'll we'll come back to we're gonna we're gonna jump around as you do as i said well and we'll come back to 5K and back. Have to get into the Nichols book, which is your newest project, and as Gilbert explained in the introduction, a massive undertaking. I read it, and honestly, I could say I'd like to put this down for a month and read it again. It was absolutely fascinating, not only to dig inside his creative process, but the man, the man was troubled. The man was complicated.

Yeah, very complicated. You know, this was a big departure for me. I'd never written a biography before. And, you know, you talked about the trickiness, a little bit of structuring those five-stranded narratives. Was this one any easier? Well, it was way easier. To write in a linear fashion? In terms of structuring, yeah, because the structure is his life. But on the other hand, there's nothing to cut away to.

Right, good point. You're kind of at the mercy of what happened. And so for me, like the journey of this book, which I really love taking, was just trying to understand a really fascinating and resourceful and great creative artist

in his 20s and his 30s and 40s and 50s and then his 60s and 70s and 80s to try to think like at any stage of your life, at any stage of your career, what are priorities are you still learning from things what kind of mistakes are you making and how do you recover from them what are your artistic goals like what do you hope for i just like i i honestly can say i never had a day on this book when I was bored.

How could you be? I had some frustrating days when I couldn't find something I wanted to find or couldn't talk to someone I wanted to talk to. But I interviewed about 250 people for it. And honestly, if I had had more time, I could have kept going. I was not out of people to interview. I just had to stop talking to people and start writing. And what was his childhood like?

Turbulent. Really rough. I mean, yeah. And, you know, it's interesting that we're talking about this right out of Five Came Back because Mike was a German emigre. He was born in Berlin. He was born in Berlin. He lost his hair permanently when he was four, when and then finally his mother fled Berlin for New York. And he got to New York in, I think, 1939 or 1940. And that's where his story begins, on the Upper West Side.

He was also close to an aunt that was killed by a bus. Right. Just a lot of terrible breaks and tragedies. Right, and really rough things. I mean, his father, who was a doctor, the first work he got when he came to New York was as an x-ray technician. And he was trying to set up a viable life

so that he could bring his family over. And the feeling is that because of exposure to radiation he got leukemia and died very very quickly went from sick to gone within about two weeks when mike was um just about uh 12 years old uh and that in turn um slid the family into temporary poverty and his mother really suffered from a lot of depression and some hypochondria. So he did not have in any way

a really privileged start in life. He came in with sort of several strikes against him. We should also point out too, and you've been asked a lot, you've been doing a lot of interviews for this book, you knew the man a bit. You're married to the celebrated playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner. I believe Mike and Diane Sawyer were at your, was it your wedding or your commitment? Yep, our wedding.

And then you asked the family for permission before you dived into this daunting project. I did. I did. I knew Mike for the last 12 or so years of his life, and I just – I knew it was going to take years to do this book. And if Diane or any of Mike's three children had not wanted it to happen, had found it objectionable for any reason i just wouldn't have done it because you know it doing a book like this is hard enough and and you know i just wouldn't have felt right about it but they were very gracious about giving their consent and um uh and that helped i think particularly d particularly Diane giving me permission to say publicly that she was OK with my writing. This opened a lot of doors in terms of getting to talk to people, which was such an essential part of this book. So I really appreciate that.

And and there's a story that made me laugh out loud. Well, originally, they they were all afterbert redford to star in the story and could could you tell that story yeah he um redford really wanted to do it well and they had they had a working relationship from barefoot in the park right right barefoot in the park was the first thing that mike directed on broadway and redford was the male lead. So Redford really wanted to do it. And, you know, now when you think of The Graduate, you think, well, that's crazy. But if you read the novel The Graduate, the character is actually much more Redford-like than Dustin Hoffman. I mean, he's blonde.

He's a track star. He goes off and fights forest fires in Northern California at one point in the book, which is a good thing to leave out of the movie. So it wasn't a huge stretch for Redford to think he was right for it, but Nichols saw the character completely differently and finally said to Redford, I'm sorry, it's not going to be you. And Redford said, why not? And he said, it's not going to be you. And Redford said, why not? And he said, well, you know, no one will believe you.

I mean, like, when was the last time you struck out with a girl? And according to Nichols, Redford literally responded, what do you mean? It took him forever to cast it. It did. It took a really long time. And now, you know, you think, well, Dustin Hoffman, of course, it could only be him. Sure. He's completely not famous.

I mean, you know, it's Mike's second movie after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which starred literally the most famous couple in the world. And he casts a complete unknown in the leading part. Yeah, it's amazing. And Hoffman, his reaction was anything other than what you would expect. He thought he was miscast.

Yeah, it's true. He said that his reaction was really like, I'm working with the hottest filmmaker in the country right now, and I'm going to ruin his movie. This is going to fail, and it's going to fail because of me. Their relationship on the set during the shoot was very, very complicated because Nichols could be stern and almost sadistic sometimes and edging toward the cruel, and at other times very encouraging and very engaged and very willingft had issues. Why was he working over Hoffman so much? To create a feeling of neurosis? Because he was cruel at times. because he was cruel at times. I don't think it was that strategic necessarily.

I think it was, you know, it's interesting. With Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which he had made just before that, Mike's attitude was really, it only has a cast of four, and so his attitude was really, it's us against the world. Like, the four of us and I are on the same, the four of you and I are on the same team, and we're going to do this, we're going to show them. And this movie, The Graduate, I think it was more somehow locked inside of Mike's head while he was making it. I mean, he eventually gave all the actors

what they need, and, you know, he was able to get the movie he wanted, but I don't think he was that able to articulate the movie he wanted. It was a little bit more of an I'll know it when I see it thing. So I know that on The Graduate, he felt very alone as a director in many ways. You know, just desperate to prove that virginia wolf wasn't a fluke and and very much keeping his own counsel and and you know he worked really closely with the cinematographer and that was a good relationship but even even that kind of went sour after mike was you know yelled at the crew one too many times. So it was a really complicated production. And I think none of the actors were necessarily the easiest people in the world.

And, you know, there were, and it took a very long time to shoot. You know, it was Mike's first time shooting at a lot of different locations. So much complexity to it. He winds up firing Hackman, who's an old friend of Hoffman's. We know the history that Hoffman used to sleep on Gene Hackman's floor. He fires Hackman, replaces him with Murray Hamilton. By the way, Hackman comes back. I imagine they stayed cordial because Hackman comes back and works for Nichols, both in Postcards from the Edge and The Birdcage. He never worked with Hoffman again. No, he didn't. Oh, he did in that one, what, the jury? No, no, I mean Nichols never worked with Hoffman. Oh, Nichols never worked with Hoffman.

Is that particularly telling? I don't know. I mean, I know that it's a tense, you know, that was a very tense relationship but but hoffman in recent years um has said that one of his great regrets is that he he had he said three or four further opportunities to work with mike and he didn't take any of them and i i don't know what they all were but i know at least one of them which was was the Beckett play, Waiting for Godot, that eventually— With Robin Williams. With Robin Williams and Steve Martin.

But the first try at that, the first read-through of it, was with Hoffman. And I think if Hoffman had wanted to do that and had been available, Mike absolutely would have worked with him again. So there was no grudge held like there was with Matthau, say. I don't think so. No, definitely it was not a Walter Matthau or George C. Scott situation. When Hoffman and Nichols both got to the age of sort of lifetime achievement awards, they didn't really show up for each other, but they would send funny messages. When Nichols was honored

by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and got up to make his acceptance speech, he said, where's Dustin Hoffman? It's like the monster not showing up for Frankenstein. So

there was a kind of warm, jesting, you know, ribbing thing between them. And another great actor who I hear terrible things about, and that's George C. Scott. You won't hear too many nice things about him in Mark's book either. That's good to see Scott. You won't hear too many nice things about him in Mark's book either.

Yeah, I think, again, alcohol was a big factor there. Physically dragging his wife around the set of, was it The Day of the Dolphin? The Day of the Dolphin, yeah. This is unpleasant. Mike actually worked with Scott four times in a pretty compressed period of time. And The Day of the Dolphin was really, it was a sort of one for you, one for me thing where I think Mike kind of said, look, if you star in this movie for me, because George C. Scott was a big star at that moment. That was just a couple of years after patton um if you start in this movie for me i'll direct you uh in new york on broadway

in uncle vanya um and and he did i mean uh and scott was as good as his word but but uh after a very rough time i mean scott was not easy on day of the Dolphin, and then Uncle Vanya is when they really fell out and just wouldn't work together again. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Day of the Dolphin, since you brought it up, I mean, is a fascinating – Catch-22, his first taste of failure after he has been this infallible, almost boy genius, is fascinating. But Day of the Dolphin, which Buck Henry also wrote, and we had Buck here on the show, nobody seems to know what it was or why they were doing it. Yeah. It's a very puzzling film to watch.

Yeah, it's like dolphins fighting for the army. And not at all something that you would expect from the, I guess, what Mike Nichols was known for. Right, and it's based on this truly insane French novel where the dolphins not only talk, but they talk in long, long paragraphs about things like the necessity of staying in Vietnam. I mean, it's like as crazy as the movie is, the novel is crazier. And, you know, Mike never really told the same story twice about why he made that movie.

Like once he said he did it as a favor to Roman Polanski, who was originally supposed to direct it, but that doesn't really track. And another time, and I think there's some truth in this, he and Buck Henry both said he contractually owed Joe Levine, who was the producer of The Graduate, one more film, and he had to get it done. Why did it have to be that film? Right, right. But I found this funny old audio tape of from from probably six or seven years earlier of of him improvising something with Elaine May.

And he's he's going off on this wildly enthusiastic riff about how he's just read this thing that dolphins can understand human speech and that dolphins can talk dolphins can be and you can hear that like mike is genuinely uh enthusiastic and excited about this and it's like one of the few times you will ever hear elaine may at a loss for words like she she does not know what to give him back in this improv moment. So I think part of the reason he made the movie was kind of as simple and as strange as he really liked the idea.

It's fascinating. And getting to George C. Scott and Patton, Roth Steiger was originally asked to be part of it. Yeah, Mark talks about that in Revolution. Yeah, all of those... Which he kicked himself for forever. Right. I mean, all the casting misses,

the almosts are such fascinating things. Really fascinating. Like, what if Bob Dylan and Shirley MacLaine had starred in Bonnie and Clyde? Which was Beatty's Vision. Right. My God. Like, it could, you know, I feel like that's one of those butterfly flaps its wings things where, you know, the whole course of movie history could have been changed if it had been them instead of Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

What if Robert De Niro had starred in The Goodbye Girl? Oh, wait. It almost happened. What if Mike had finished that? What if Bogart slept here? It happened. And Roth Steiger always thought that by turning down Patton,

had he done Patton, he could have been Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Right. I think Steiger really was one of the few people who turned down a role and then envisioned the whole domino effect that that would have had on the rest of his career. So then what if he had been in The Godfather? And what would, like, would Brando have had his amazing comeback? Yes. Or, you know, where would he have found it? That's one of the things when reading these books, a lot of that turns up.

A lot of that is the person not cast, the project not made. Nichols is turning down things like Animal House and Heaven Can Wait, projects he didn't make. So much of these documents that you've assembled is about roads not taken. Well, I love that material always because it's not – I think people don't understand always that it's not about fate. Everything isn't predestined. happens by accident or by coincidence or because someone isn't available or because someone says no or because someone happens to see a script that they weren't even going to be offered.

Well, Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl is a great example of that. He wins the Oscar. Nichols starts out to make this picture with Marsha Mason based on a Simon script, Neil Simon called Bogart Slept Here, and De Niro is cast and he's coming off a taxi driver and everything goes wrong. Right, right.

And it's one of the really rare times, because this doesn't even happen now, that they're a week into shooting and Mike fires De Niro because they're not clicking at all and Mike just can't seem to stand working with him and De Niro

who talked to me for the book was really like so gracious and smart and interesting about that experience but then after a couple more weeks after having failed to replace him they thought about Raul Julia and Tony LoBianco and a whole bunch of other people. Rex Harrison.

Rex Harrison did not go back. Tony LoBianco. He shuts the movie down. Like, they just give up. And you never hear about that anymore. Like, a movie stops shooting after a week basically because everyone involved says actually this sucks and i don't think we should do it like that never happens but it you know in this case it led to neil simon rewriting the script and it becomes the goodbye

girl and you know it led to almost everyone's finest hour with the possible exception of Simon himself. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Tell us about the banking of the pawnbroker. Well, that's another turning point, yeah, for Steiger. And a turning point for the production code. That's a really interesting one. I mean, it's, yeah, I think that's the big historical thing about that, that there were bare breasts in the pawnbroker. That was a really big deal in 1964.

That was like the first non-porn, I think, it had. Right. And it had. And so, you know, Sidney Lumet, who made that movie, did such a beautiful job of like, I think it's it's absolutely one of Steiger's best performances. Oh, it's great. revolution and i really didn't need to but it was like this was one of those things where i just had to chase my own curiosity and like i'm not gonna pass up any opportunity to meet sydney lumet and talk to him and he was so great and so funny and so frank talking about this stuff and i said so what was Rod Steiger what was Rod Steiger like as an actor and Sidney Lumet sort of shrugged

and he said you know this designer Boris Aronson this Broadway designer once was asked what he thought of a certain columnist in a newspaper and he said oh I can't stand him for five cents he gives you too much.

And he said, that's how I felt about Rod Steiger. For five cents, he gives you too much. But I think Lumet did an amazing job at maybe holding Steiger back a little bit, taming some of his, you know, cedary-chewing instincts. And it's a great performance i think it seemed like steiger had faith in uh sydney lamette sydney lamette wanted james mason

as you point out in the book mark right but steiger was a great choice actually i mean i think that's a more believable you know it's i mean talk about roads not taken like james mason was also the first choice for um who'sraid of Virginia Woolf? That was originally who the studio was thinking about, James Mason and Betty Davis. Pictures at a revolution opens with a Road Not Taken. Isn't Beatty, early in the book, isn't Beatty trying to convince Stanley Kubrick to direct What's New Pussycat? Yes. It's hard even to think of that as a road.

Oh, my God. Like, I don't, you know, I guess you could picture some version of What's New Pussycat, you know, that took three years to shoot. I told you in an email a couple of weeks ago, we had Paula. Paula was here with Benjamin. They are eagerly looking forward to getting their hands on the Nichols book and reading it, they told us. Oh, my gosh. Well, I should send it to them right away. I'll connect you.

Yeah. Here's a question from our mutual pal, Michael Weber, who is a new father. Michael has been on this show many times, so congratulations, Mike. Question for Mark. Why didn't Nichols direct more Neil Simon adaptations? He directed Loxie Blues, but not Barefoot in the Park, Plaza Suite, The Odd Couple, or The Prisoner of Second Avenue. When his career was in trouble, which happened more than once, or when he needed money, bringing a Neil Simon play to the big screen would have probably helped. Which is at a point I'd also like to point out, a side point of trivia,

that Gilbert saw the production of Prisoner of Second Avenue with Lee Grant and Peter Falk. Oh, wow. That was amazing. I wish I had been able to see that. Me too. You know, the New York Public Library has a lot of these older Broadway shows preserved, but that was a little too – like that was just before videotaping. So there's no record of that performance um you know mike always said that uh he had absolutely no interest in directing a movie

version of something that he had directed on stage that that once it was um once it was uh done once the stage production was done he said the material it was like the material was dead for him um and so although he did originate all of those um those neil simon i mean he he directed the first production of barefoot in the park and odd couple in plaza suite and prisoner of second avenue he he just never wanted to do the movies and the only the only neil sim Simon movie he did do, Biloxi Blues, was one he had not directed on stage.

It's a pretty good movie. Yeah. By the way, it was a great performance by Christopher Walken. Mike had had some tough times and was looking to get back into directing movies by doing something that he felt was really in his comfort zone,

and it was. There was a cartoon during World War II that Mel Blanc did the voice for. Oh, and the thing with Dr. Seuss was involved, too. Oh, right. Is this Private Snafu? Private Snafu. Yes, yes.

Fascinating. It's in the Netflix doc. Private Snafu is just amazing, and sometimes, you know, the short cartoons, I think there's a couple of dozen of them, sometimes they show up on YouTube. And if you can ever find them, they're so worth chasing down. Because they were basically like little kind of instructional things for GIs. And they were never meant to be seen by a civilian audience. It was only for soldiers.

You know, here's like, some of them were just like, don't be lazy or don't repeat things that you overhear. And some of them were a little, you know, rougher, like here's how not to get, you know, a sexually transmitted disease. But it's all done in like the persona of this cartoon character, Private Snafu, who looks a lot like Elmer Fudd. He's like an early try at Elmer Fudd and he can't do anything right. And usually, you know, at the end of half the cartoons, I think he ends up dead or blown up or, or blowing up something, um, only to kind of miraculously return for the next one. But they're really, they're really funny and they're really racy and like, Yeah, I can't believe what they got away with.

The 40s. Right, well, they got away with it because it was, it was for soldiers. And, and, you know, no one else was ever supposed to see them. So, and, you know, it's funny, these like little cartoons for all the sort of serious propaganda that Frank Capra did. It was these cartoons that GIs just went crazy for. You know, they just loved them. And it is a lot of sexual content it's amazing to see something like that existing on in the 1940s yeah there's not a stag reel i mean you know there's

there's like a boner joke in one of them yeah shocking like there's a a sort of freeze the balls off a jeep joke like it's it's like it's so easy to watch 40s movies and and think that they're the same thing as the 40s world that like because everyone was sort of polite and didn't talk about certain things in 40s movies that must have been the way it was in real life and these cartoons are a great reminder that that no there were like really dirty jokes even back then and you know in screenwriting terms mark now that you've put this gun on the mantle, we have to fire it. Other roads not taken from your books. George Stevens directing an early version of Paths of Glory, which didn't happen, which Kubrick would wind up making.

Right, that movie didn't happen. Capra's never seen or never developed George Washington movie. Oh, yeah, there's so much of that. Here's another one. Whoopi and Richard Pryor in a Star is Born remake that Nichols was swimming around. Yeah, and the writer-director George Wolfe was going to write that, and I think actually did a couple of drafts of it. You know, it's like

I try not to be too grief-stricken about these movies that didn't happen. I know, but they're fun. I mean, the one that people really can't believe when I say it is Mike directing The Exorcist. Oh yeah, tell

Gilbert about that. They wanted him you know at warner brothers to direct the exorcist he turned it down um and uh he he said you know it's an mike in horror is an odd thing but but he said you know i have a little girl i just can't picture doing that to a little girl on the set every day like going in and having that be my job to like have her vomit um so then the the exorcist opens and and john callie who's running warner brothers literally takes him on a car tour past the theater where it's playing in los angeles so he can see just how long the lines are. And Mike calls Elaine May and is really in mourning at this point and saying, do you know how much money I would have made

if I had made The Exorcist? And Elaine May says to him, oh, don't even think about that, Mike. If you had directed it, it wouldn't have made any money. Go ahead, Gil. There's a story of when Dustin Hoffman auditioned for The Graduate. It's in the book. Yeah, and he was at, you know, he was at rock bottom.

And when he was getting ready to leave a subway token fell out of that was a disastrous audition right yeah right he screened somebody falls out of his pocket and one of the crew guys picks it up and gives it to him the screen test was in la and and hoffman was heading back to new york and he the guy picked it up and handed it to him and said you'll need this um but but that was an amazing screen test it turned out because even though everyone felt that the day had gone badly including mike that was the test that convinced mike to hire him because he he said you know he said the film went through a miracle in the chemical bath, which is that, you know,

he said Hoffman and Elizabeth Taylor were the only two actors he ever worked with who appeared to be doing nothing very much when you shot the film, but when you saw it and played it back, when you developed it, you realized they were doing everything. And that, like,

how Dustin Hoffman came off on camera as opposed to in the audition room is what convinced Mike to cast him. And isn't that part of Nichols' genius, though, in the first place? I mean, a lesser director would have put Redford in there. To find Hoffman, to put Hoffman in there, the unlikeliest possible choice, and then to have the savvy to see it on film in the screen test. How many people could have done that? Yeah, well, you know, there's so many stories about Mike's kind of genius with actors. And the first part of that genius is going with your instinct about casting, you know, spotting them, realizing that even a very unlikely choice might be the perfect person for this movie. And by Dustin Hoffman being cast, I remember they were calling that that they were opening the door for what they were calling the uglies.

And among the uglies were Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Right, and Gene Hackman. Yes. Like guys who didn't look like movie stars. And it's amazing when you read the press about Dustin Hoffman in 1967 when The Graduate came out. It's so brutal and kind of like they call him ugly. I mean they make fun of his nose.

They make fun of his skin. They make fun of his voice. Some of it is like right on the border of anti-Smitic it was i was really surprised by how free the press felt to just um kind of savage his appearance um but but he did you know it changed everything so did arthur miller when when ulu grossbard reproached him about hoffman made a comment about his nose yeah said it was forever stuffed or something of that nature here's another fun road not taken that turns up in the nickels book uh developing melvin and howard as a project for yes elvis right right um and and you know of all the movies that mike didn't direct um

melvin and howard is probably the one that still has his imprint on it anyway. He worked with Bo Goldman, the guy who eventually won an Oscar for writing Melvin and Howard. And according to Bo Goldman, it was Mike's supervision that really turned that script into the movie that it was, know the decision to make it more

about melvin than about howard um uh and then you know mike at that point uh had not directed a movie in four or five years and uh a lot of people feel that he was really you know he he was looking for reasons he would get interested in something and then look for reasons not to direct it. And I wonder if the idea that Elvis should have starred in it was his way of getting out of it. I see. Elvis and then I think Jack Nicholson was who he wanted after Elvis died. And Jack Nicholson gets to that, a movie that either Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis should have done. And that was The Fortune.

Right. Gilbert and I were on the phone talking about The Fortune, which has its moments. But Gilbert said what it was missing was a comedy team. Yeah, I think that's right. I think especially, I think Warren Beatty coming in had a pretty different idea of what the tone of that movie was going to be. He thought he was going to be a kind, you know, he had his hair frizzed out, and it's a big performance, and he's really going for it. And then Stalker Channing, probably of the three of them, comes the closest to finding the actual tone of what the movie was. You know, she really, she's quite good at it.

But, yeah, I mean, that's a strange, funny movie to watch because it doesn't work. Like you can see why people said it didn't work. But there's a lot of little odd things to enjoy along the way. Well, you know what I liken it to is another movie where two actors, one of them being the same actor, Beatty, were cast where you might have put a comedy team. You know where I'm going with this. Is Ishtar, which is to me more success. I hope you like it as much as we do. I do.

I know you became friendly with Elaine. They're both good at it, and I think it's unfairly maligned. Not perfect in any way. Right, but maybe those road—I mean, none of those road comedies are perfect. You know, like when you go back to the Hope and Crosby ones, they're kind of ramshackle, and it's a different thing every five minutes, and if you don't think this five minutes is funny, something will get you in the next five minutes.

And I like them. i like it too and and with nicholson uh he had a fairly similar story as uh bobby darren well did was did he find out about that family tragedy that weird situation while he was in production for the fortune yes he found out about it from that'll affect the performance yeah it was a it was a time magazine reporter who basically called him up and said so what about this news that you're the woman you thought was your uh sister is actually your mother and the woman you thought was your mother is actually your grandmother i mean it's just an astonishing thing for for someone to hear from a reporter and um and you know nicholson i can't remember exactly what he he said but but you know he was

such a professional he he sort of went to mike and and said i i don't want to talk about what happened but i i may be a little shaky and i may need your help. But he was really determined to kind of tough his way through the movie. And that was like the exact same thing that happened to Bobby Darin. Is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah, Bobby Darin's sister was his mother, and his mother was his grandmother. I mean, it's just mind-blowing to me that after making,

like one year after making Chinatown, where that's basically a plot point. Yes, that's strange. Nick Nicholson would find himself living this. You can't invent something like that. That's very, very strange. What I want to ask you about quickly on the subject – I want to jump to Catch-22 real quick because we've had so many people on this show now. I was telling Gilbert, Richard Benjamin's been here, Bob Balaban's been here,

Austin Pendleton, Buck, Peter Bonners, Paul Apprentice. Am I leaving anybody out? Arkin was here! Oh my gosh, well you can assemble like the definitive Catch-22 history. We could, but tell us, I mean there's so much there,

and you and I were talking over email about his regret, his depression, his state when he saw MASH. Right, well, I think this is a great sort of lesson in movie making and in movie history, which is that Catch-22 was the first movie

where Mike had everything he could possibly want. I mean, a massive budget, a giant cast with everyone from Alan Arkin to Orson Welles. The best cast. Basically, an airstrip and a fleet of planes acquired for him, you know, in Mexico. Unbelievable amounts of time to shoot in mexico in italy uh on a soundstage in los angeles um and you know he and buck henry made a really uh

serious attempt to to wrestle this mammoth novel to the mat and to to approximate its its tone which is you know so hard to find. And then they finish it, finally it goes so over budget that they say it's going to bankrupt Paramount Pictures and then a few months before it's supposed to open, they see M.A.S.H. and just instantly feel

that they're dead. Robert Altman has sort of quietly and stealthily made the movie that they were trying to make and didn't even realize they were trying to make until they saw that mash had made it successfully so just a brutal thing i think to um to have that happen and and really a pivotal moment in in mike's career because you know 39, for the first time to have to deal with a big public failure, probably the rest of your career hinges on how you handle that or don't handle that. Yeah, it's interesting.

You know, and with all those people that we brought up Catch-22 with, all of them, we got different. Bogdanovich, too, who wasn't in the movie but was there with Wells. I assume you talked to some, if not all, of those people. I talked to as many as I could. I'll tell the story of Wells showing up and basically misbehaving. Right. misbehaving. Right.

I mean, it's, you know, Wells had, had a part that required him to be on the Mexico location for about two weeks and, and came in. And I mean, Austin Pendleton,

who I did talk to just really brilliantly about how, you know, Wells was awful to Mike was awful to the cast was basically like trying to direct the movie as soon as he got there and was consumed with annoyance that Mike was directing it. And what did he say to him? He got a dig in, too. Oh, yeah. Well, finally, when the whole shoot's done and they're having dinner together, they're

talking about success and early success. And, of course, at this point, you know, Wells was more than 25 years past Citizen Kane, but Mike had come off this, you know, extraordinary one-two punch of Virginia Woolf and the graduate. And Wells says to him before leaving, well, the thing about success is better late than early. How about that, Gil?

It's basically saying, like, I was cursed. Now I'm passing the curse on to you. Goodbye. What a mensch. Elaine May was somebody that you managed to get an interview with for the Nichols book. What was that? And by the way, before I ask about Elaine, did Beatty talk to you, the famously elusive Warren Beatty? Well, I had talked to him a lot about – I talked to him a lot for Pictures of a Revolution.

Oh, okay, good. Oh, it's nice that he gave you an interview. Yeah, and then we – he was great. And then we had a more informal conversation for this book. Uh-huh. But yeah, Elaine. How pivotal was landing Elaine for assembling the Nichols book, I would imagine?

I mean, you know, I said to myself, the great thing about Mike is that he worked with so many people that if I can't get one person from a movie or a play, I can get somebody else, always. But there were a few people where there's no second name on the list.

And Elaine, you know, it would be a very different book if she had not agreed to talk to me. So I feel incredibly lucky that she not only did but that she was so open and forthcoming. I mean she really hadn't done a long interview like that in, I think, literally 50 years. And there's real gold in those stories, too. And I was talking to Frank earlier, and we were talking about Jane Fonda threw together a party.

Oh, yeah, that's a pivotal part of Pictures of a Revolution. It was a July 4th party in 1965. She was with Roger Vadimim at the time and they were uh they had like a beachfront house in malibu and i when i was researching pictures of the revolution i kept reading about this party and like in three or four different books and it was like one of the happiest research days of my life when i suddenly realized it's the same party. They're all talking about the same party.

That's cool. All of my characters who I'm researching happen to go to this one party. And just like in terms of writing, you just dream about that. Like one big event that brings all your people together. Because it was like everyone in old Hollywood, everyone in new Hollywood, Sidney Poitier was there, Mike Nichols and Buck Henry were there, because Mike had just come to Hollywood

for the first time to start directing. That's pivotal for them riding the graduate together. Right, right. That's where they meet, or re-meet. The Byrds were like the house band. Amazing. You know, studio heads were there. It's just a great, like someone should do a documentary or a movie about that party.

And why was it a turning point, that party? I mean, the way you write about it in the book, Henry Fonda's yelling to the birds, keep the music down. Peter Fonda, who we had here, by the way, is up climbing on the neighbor's roof. It's really a microcosm of what's happening in Hollywood. Yeah, I think you couldn't invent something that's more like a literal representation of the old ways giving way to the new ways and of a new generation. I think Jack Nicholson was there with with um with peter fonda yeah hopper was there too and you know like the right because this is you know the team that will

eventually make easy rider and and the old people the the older generation are staying in the house and um the younger ones are kind of wandering down to the beach where the band is playing so uh just an amazing you know to to have been at that party you describe you describe poitier sort of a man without a country at that party he doesn't really fit in with either group right sort of wandering aimlessly yeah and he's probably one of the only non-white people there i i would bet on that and and you know the idea of jane fonda presiding over it is so perfect because she is this literal daughter of old hollywood who also comes to represent you know new hollywood uh as much as anyone as much as anyone ever did so it's i i wish

i knew more about that party i think jane fondonda writes about it a little bit in her own autobiography. So there's a lot of great material there. And on the subject of Poitier, as we wind down, Mark, and you've been so forthcoming, and the stories are wonderful. And obviously, we say this a lot, but we could talk to you about this stuff for hours, if not days. It's impossible to get your arms around these wonderful, detailed books. But Poitier and Shooting the Heat of the Night did not want to go down. Jewison wanted to shoot on location, thought it was important to get off the lot. And Poitier certainly had his reasons for not going, as you alluded to earlier. Yeah, they wanted to shoot in the south.

And Poitier really was afraid of it and and not without reason as it turned out because you know they they they ended up doing a week um south of the mason dixon line to to do some location stuff and i think i think most of the movie was shot in ohio but but for this they went south and and they had a night uh Poitier and Steiger were staying in adjoining rooms in a local motel, nothing very glamorous at all. And they had a night when a bunch of, like, drunken rednecks, you know, pulled into the parking lot in pickup trucks looking for trouble. And Poitier basically said, you know, the first guy who comes through that door, I'm going to start shooting. So there was

real reason to be afraid. It was not just an actor being paranoid or insecure. So they wind up going to Illinois, but then what, one week in Tennessee? Yes, I think that's right. Illinois, sorry, not Ohio. But yeah, I think they did one week in tennessee

and and you can see it uh like they made the most of it in the movie it's it's you know i i believe it's the scene where uh one of the scenes is when um uh tibbs uh and um gillespie are driving uh through uh cotton fields fields to question someone. And tell us about the relationship of Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier. It was really good. They were really close. I mean, Steiger's politics were very progressive. And he felt like he and Poitier should be um brothers in arms but

also i think um poitier was really dazzled by steiger as an actor you know he he saw how how how deeply into character steiger was getting and and i think poitier has sort of said that steiger helped him raise his game that he thought you you know, this is going to be a real performance and I need to bring my A game against it. I have to ask you, as we wind down, Mark, what did you – you knew Mike Nichols a little bit, as you said, maybe better than a little bit. You knew him for 12, 14 years. So you undertake a project like this. What did you learn that you didn't know about the man? What was the most surprising thing? Oh, wow. Well, I mean, first of all, I should just say that what I didn't know is a much, much, much longer list than what I did know.

I mean, I thought I knew a lot the process of researching this was was really an education and how much i didn't know i think um i think the two things i learned that surprised me uh or that really stuck with me were one i i didn't realize how much uh of a role depression and a struggle with depression had played in his life. Mike was such an engaging, genial, so perfectly presented person, his outer self, that it was news to me how much he had struggled with depression for decades. And the other thing was, and I feel like this actually helps me in my own life, And I feel like I've – this actually helps me in my own life.

The idea that if you're a creative person, you constantly have to find ways to renew yourself and ways to challenge yourself. Wow. And find this balance between things that you're doing because you just really want to do them and you know they will give you pleasure and you know you can do them well. And on the other hand, things that you're doing because you've never done them before and they'll be a challenge and they'll force you into a new place. I think Mike was really extraordinary about, I don't even want to say managing his career, but kind of managing his interior creative life that way. At every point in his life until the very end, he thought, what should I be doing right now? And he didn't always pick right, and he didn't always pick for the same reason, but he never stopped thinking about it. And that is a huge lesson to me. That's valuable to any creative person. Yeah, absolutely.

And you make the point, as you've had both in the book and in interviews, that we may never see the likes of a Mike Nichols again. Someone that versatile, someone that succeeding in that many areas. I think it's an absolutely unique career to have this kind of game-changing comedy partnership and have that be in your 20s, essentially, and just turns out to be the warm-up act to this 50-year career as a director

simultaneously in two different mediums. And in television, too. Right, right. Certainly with Tony's piece, with Angels in America. Yeah, and also, besides all that, to just be someone who not only does that, but is fascinated by the world of fashion, the world of publishing, the world of politics, the world of magazines, the world of food, which was a big thing for Mike. Raising horses.

Raising horses, absolutely, an obsession. He's a great example of how rich your life can be if you're not just interesting but if you're interested in everything. It's a fascinating read, but I think you hit on something. It's also an inspiring thing for any creative person to read to i hope so i think about it it's kind of like uh you know a how-to manual uh to sort of survive a complicated complicated creative life this is the last go ahead and if after i watched uh five came back, it just took me into Five Came Back, the reference films, I think it was called.

Oh, the list of the propaganda movies and documentaries and stuff? Yeah. And Shottage of the Holocaust. Right. So that one's nightmarish. I mean, it's... Yeah, even if you think you're... you've seen it So that one's nightmarish.

Yeah, even if you think you've seen it and you're going to be insulated from having a really strong emotional reaction to it, it goes right to the deepest place in you. At least it does for me. Yeah, I had a very hard time watching that one. We want to recommend these, though, to our listeners. You know, I consider these films, looking at these films, you know, Carnal Knowledge and The Graduate and In the Heat of the Night and all these films and Pawnbroker, all that we're talking about, I consider these, you know, gifts that these artists left behind. And I have to say the same for your three books. They are gifts to creative people, but to people interested in this world, interested in this history, you really, you bring the period to life. All of it, all those periods, the 40s, as well as the 60s, as well as the 70s.

All those periods, the 40s as well as the 60s as well as the 70s. I really appreciate that. I mean, that's the whole job, to try to make you feel like you're in that moment. So I'm really glad you felt that way. And you must be tired, Mark. I'm always tired. That's a lot of research. How many years of research goes into each book, if you don't mind my asking? They usually take me – I'm a pretty fast writer and a slower researcher.

So it's usually about like three or four years of research and then a little less than a year of writing. Well, Gilbert, as soon as I saw Five Came Back, I said, this is catnip for Gilbert. And he went crazy. He ate it up. Did you binge watch all four of them in a night and then watched all the propaganda films? I watched, yeah. I was watching it like crazy.

Wow, thank you. Thank you. It's addictive. And then there was one story that came out in the reference films at this prison that they were holding Nazis, they got a report that the last inmate of a certain concentration camp had died and the Nazis had a celebration. Wow. I mean,

you know, it's, well, I'm glad you watched it all the way through, because if you hadn't, that Netflix algorithm might mean that you would get an email saying, like, are you still enjoying this Holocaust film?

Yes, that's probably. You know, I got a letter when I was much younger from Capra that I'll send you, Mark. Oh, I'd love to see it. In 1985, he wrote me a letter because I had written to him. And one of the things that Five Came Back did was in certain ways, and he's been a hero of mine, disillusioned me. Joe McBride's book has a similar effect, The Catastrophe of Success. But I learned certain things about Capra.

Such a complicated man. Such a complex guy. All of those guys. I mean, Capra and Houston and Ford were all like, you've got to take the good with the bad. But there was a lot of good. You do. You do. So to our listeners, get these books.

Five Came Back is fascinating. So is the Netflix documentary, docu-series, I guess we call it, that you can stream, which Gilbert ate up, ate with a spoon. The Mike Nichols of Life, which is unbelievably rewarding. And Pictures at a Revolution, which is such a wonderful history of Hollywood. Just want to thank a couple of people, too. Juliana and Catherine at Penguin and Random House.

And our friend Adam Shartoff. And, of course, Michael Weber. And congratulations to Tony, to your husband, who just wrote the new West Side Story. Yeah, thanks. We're excited about that. New Spielberg. Right. just wrote the new West Side Story. Yeah, thanks. We're excited about that. New Spielberg. Right. And wrote the Munich movie and Lincoln, Gilbert, for Spielberg.

Jeez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're shooting another movie that they wrote together right now. Wonderful. And before we forget, Sidney Poitier was close friends with a former podcast guest, Strangest Friendship. Sidney Poitier was friends with Marty Allen. You know Marty Allen from Allen and Rossi?

Yes. Hello there. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I think Sidney Poitier may have been a best man at Marty Allen's wedding. Well, I've got my next book. I got about 20 cards here, Mark. I could go on.

The thing you said about Netflix, it reminded me. When I went to see Schindler's List I'm walking into the theater and the guy works there recognized me and says oh I'm a big fan it's such a treat meeting you and then as I'm going into the theater to see Schindler's List he says

enjoy it oh god never told that one before. Wow. Wow. We'll go out on a high note. One last question from a fan. We'll give it to Matt Bradley.

To Shurji, or to Shirji, out of all of Rex Harrison's galling adventures and escapades and behavior on the set of Dr. Doolittle, did any not make Mark's cut? Oh, you know, I wish I could say that I'm such a tasteful person that I left something out for discretion's sake, but no, what I found out about, you got.

I think my favorite, in addition to the handstands and the penis song, was that he threw a tantrum when he heard talk to the animals because rhinoceros did not rhyme with of Corsorus. It doesn't fucking rhyme. You know, fair enough. Thank you, Mark. This was a treat for us. Yeah, for me too.

Thank you so much. And everybody get their hands on these books, and Gilbert will do a sign-off. And congratulations, Mike their hands on these books, and Gilbert will do a sign-off. And congratulations, Mike Weber. Yeah. Or as Gilbert calls him, what do you call him, Mickey Wiggly? Mickey Wiggly. Yeah.

Okay, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and a guy who says that Rex Harrison was a big scumbag. I think you said that. Mark Harris. Could you add that? I know the book came out in 2004. Can you add Gilbert's blurb?

Yes. I'm going to do it as an afterword. Thank you, Mark Harris. Thank you. That was fun. This was a great ride. It was really fun. It's incredible.

It's impossible. But it's true. A man can talk to the animals. It's a miracle. In a year from now, I guarantee, I'll be the marvel of the mammals, playing chess with camels, no more just a boring old MD.

I'll study every living creature's language so I can speak to all of them on sight. If friends say, can he talk in crab or pelican? You'll say, like Helicar. And you'll be right. And if you just stop to think a bit there's no doubt of it i shall win a place in history i can walk with the animals talk with

the animals grunt and squeak and squawk and speak and talk to me.