The Big Picture - Snubs, Surprises, and WTFs of the Golden Globe Nominations, With Mark Harris

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is up to its old tricks again, so Amanda and Sean are here to break down the nominations for the Golden Globes, some of which are truly ludicrous (0:52). Then, they’re joined by journalist, author, and film historian Mark Harris to talk about this strange award season and his new book, ‘Mike Nichols: A Life,’ a biography of the famed film and theater director (32:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mark Harris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about those darn Golden Globes. That's right. The scamps at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are up to their old tricks. So Amanda and I are here to break down the just announced nominations for the Golden Globes, and some of them are quite bizarre. Later in the show, we will be joined by the great journalist, author, and film historian Mark Harris to talk about this strange award season

and his terrific new book, Mike Nichols, A Life, a marvelously written and reported biography of the famed film and theater director. But first, we're talking Globes, noms, snubs, surprises, and what the hell these awards will even mean. If anything at all, it's all coming up on The Big Picture. Amanda, since we last spoke, so much has happened in the movie theater and movie industry. GameStop saved movie theaters. The Sundance Film Festival arrived and concluded in a flash. We lost some giants of the screen, including Cicely Tyson and Hal Holbrook. We're going to talk about all that stuff later this week. Instead, today, we have to talk about the Golden Globes. The Globe nominations happened, and boy, they seem like a mess. How do you feel? How are you feeling about award season being back? I guess I'm glad to have award season back, though. Is it? We can discuss.

Specific to these nominations, I feel a little bit like Charlie Brown with the football, you know, because every year we talk about we make fun of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. And let's be clear, we're going to continue to make fun of them. They are traditionally it's a small group of international journalists who do not have a lot of renown or even really known outside of the fact that they are in this mysterious, pretty small group of people. They really like celebrities or their definition of celebrities. Another thing we'll discuss. And they're star fuckers and they give nominations to people they want in a room rather than merit or at least our interpretation of merit. It seems like to win an award, you just have to go to as many parties as possible and then thank the association from the stage. We know that there are always bad choices, always mysterious choices. We're always like, what is going on? Who are these people? Why do we do

this? But I would say even for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and even for a film year that had some challenges, aka a pandemic, theaters being closed, and far fewer films released than usual. These are embarrassing. And I woke up just being like, are you serious? We have to do this again? Like, come on. Yeah. It's hard to know if we've gone through the looking glass or not. Some of these, I think, were fairly standard and expected. And there are plenty of movies that I'm sure we'll be talking about when we get to the Oscar nominations in a couple of months. But there were a handful of nominations. What I will generously call the surprises that just took my breath away.

That I think even in my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined the HFPA concocting. So let's just talk about them because this award show is happening really soon. It's February 28th. It's going to be hosted by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. It's going to be on NBC. And so we're going to actually have an awards season to cover for real for real. I think we have to start with the Jared Leto nomination for The Little Things. This is probably the single biggest WTF of this collection.

And it's funny because when we talked about the little things on the show last week, I think we both walked away from the little things thinking Jared Leto is pretty entertaining in it and maybe rising to the challenge of this camp script. And that being said, I never considered him award-worthy in any way. I don't know. Were you surprised to see this nomination? I enjoyed watching him in the little things in the context of the little things, which was not a film that worked at all. And so at least someone was doing something, you know, and there was, I was talking with friends about it.

There was like a really, a nice, like vintage, this is bad feeling to the little things that I found pretty comforting. You know, it's like, it's not like someone just made a twitter thread into a movie on an iphone like someone wrote a script and they tried to do this old 90s thing and then Jared Leto is doing the weird villain and having too much fun with it it's like I know what's happening here even if it's not working and and I'm glad to have it back I do not know that it needed to rise to the level of Golden Globes nomination, especially because the Golden Globes supporting category does not differentiate between drama and comedy.

So like in some of the comedy nominations, things get wild, but that's because you're kind of, you're filling it out. There are some extra slots. A lot of people didn't get nominated in supporting actor. So Jared Leto's like weird joke of a serial killer. I think he was right. Can we just talk about that for a second? Did he do it? This is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down. I have no idea. The truth is, I don't know. I think you're meant to believe that he did not. If you haven't seen this movie, sorry for spoiling it for you, but it's unspoilable in many ways because it has an ambiguous ending of a sort i i don't know i i i i jared leto obviously is it is has

won an academy award he is a very famous person and has been celebrated he's also like kind of a joke you know like i really enjoy him as a performer and as a famous person but he's kind of a joke i mean he's he's so, has all of the pretensions and absurdity of the method actor who's sort of, you know, pulling pranks on his cast members

by trying to get into character and so outsized and so masking his beauty all the time with these ridiculous roles. You know, like, in the little things, that character has like a,

is fat and walks with a limp? And, like, why why it's just pure actorly affectation and the the role is actually affectation and i guess the hfpa was impressed by that or impressed by the idea of having jared sit in on their award show but jared leto is not tom hanks for example someone who did not get nominated. And this goes to the next nomination, which we have to talk about and what the purpose of these quote unquote sort of celebrity endorsements are really for. And this was the most confounding. So Kate Hudson was nominated for a movie called Music, which was written and directed by the pop star Sia. Music was also nominated for Best Musical or Comedy.

And I have not heard of the movie Music. I saw 800 movies last year, Amanda. I literally, in my downtime, I just Google release date change in Google News just to see what movies are changing their release dates so we can do this podcast effectively. I don't know what music is. Have you heard of the film Music? Googled it before 7 a.m. this morning. Like, I literally just looked at this. You know, I used the thank you to the New York Times for your service of aggregating all of the nominations. And, you know, they normally include links to

related New York Times content about the movies. Music was blank. Nothing about music. Couldn't even click through. I said, what is going on? No, I have no idea what this is. And listen, I'm going to be honest. There are a few movies on this list that I haven't seen because 2020 was a weird film year. There are some where I was like, oh, I know. I didn't realize that that made it to VOD because the release dates, because I don't really google release dates every day I just like wait for you to do it and then you to tell me but a few things get lost so it's like it it's not like I am the I know everything I don't know everything I do my best but this has been a strange year and even in a strange year I was like what is this it's truly confounding and this movie this? It's truly confounding. And this movie is not out yet. Apparently, it's coming out. It's going to

be released by Vertical Entertainment. It's coming out in February. There are a handful of films here, I think, that have people scratching their heads, among them The Mauritanian or The United States versus Billie Holiday that are just not out yet and people haven't had a chance to see. And that's not necessarily uncommon in awards season, especially for the Globes, which announces typically in the winter before the new year begins. So, you know, you have like Christmas releases that are not necessarily out in the world. But, you know, like I said, music's coming out from Vertical Entertainment. This is a small movie company. This is a very small film. Kate Hudson is famous, but are Kate Hudson and Jared Leto famous enough to be worthy of these what the fuck nominations?

Like, is it is there so much upside to being in a photo op with Jared Leto that he should be here at this? It's just I'm trying to wrap my head around what the thinking is. I think it is a one of many miscalculations, but it just and I say say this respectfully and as a, as a woman of a certain age herself, but Kate Hudson and Jared Leto are both in their forties. And that's just like, not where this celebrity or certainly the new celebrity energy is. They're famous to you and me, but like, we're already going to watch the award show. And you know, the crown got nominated for 45 different things. So the old, the truly top tier bracket of

age is already sewn up. So they need young people. And I don't think that Jared Leto and Kate Hudson are famous to a younger generation. If they are, it's because Kate Hudson makes yoga pants, which I haven't tried. I mean, it's so complicated because you can see clearly that there's no logic here, of course, right? There's no calculation. There's no one presiding over this that's saying, here's how we will maximize our attention. I'll give you an example of that. Stepping on some snubs, Zendaya was not nominated for Malcolm & Marie.

In fact, Malcolm & Marie did not get any nominations, which is notable. And we'll talk a lot more about that movie in the next week or so. But Andra Day, the star of the United States vs. Billie Holiday, was nominated in that category for Best Actress in a Drama. Zendaya is significantly more famous than Andra Day, and that would be a way to draw in a younger audience Hudson and Jared Leto, is the HFPA just dumb? Are they just old? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And also, frankly, they don't like non-white actors or non-white directors or non-white performers. And we have to talk more about that. We definitely will talk about that. So I think that the Andra Day thing is like the Golden Globes do like to nominate a new person. You know, they like to anoint someone. That's true. They usually do that in the TV categories, but I think they maybe saw an opportunity there.

But I just, it's not a good look. It's really not a good look. Other interesting, notable surprises. I mentioned the Mauritanian. This is a Kevin McDonald film about a prisoner who was detained in Guantanamo Bay for many years. It's a true story.

It stars Jodie Foster and Tahar Rahim, both of whom were nominated. Tahar Rahim in particular, I think I might've mentioned it on the show. He's a terrific actor. He's been in many great films over the years. He's very good in this movie. I think it actually would be cool

if he got some recognition for the movie. The movie itself is fine. It's like, it great films over the years. He's very good in this movie. I think it actually would be cool if he got some recognition for the movie. The movie itself is fine. It's like it's a docudrama. And again, like drama that skips over all the actual drama, but whatever. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, you know where the movie is headed right away. It's a very Wikipedia esque film. And so it does feel like the Globes is trying to do some sort of like predictive work on a movie like this, on a movie like the United States versus Billie Holiday, on a movie like

music. And like, there's not going to be a huge movement for the Mauritanian. So this seems really odd. Other surprises, James Corden nominated for the prom. So, you know, we briefly mentioned the prom on the show. The prom is not good. It's a Netflix musical directed by Ryan Murphy. If we knew it was going to be recognized by the globes because it fits a lot of the parameters, obviously it's a traditional musical. It's got tons of famous people in it. It has a kind of like glossy putting on a show energy that the globes tends

to respond to the person who I thought was the absolute worst in this movie was James Corden. And he's the only person who was recognized for the prom. Other people not recognized include Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. Were you pro Corden? I thought he was fine. I watched that movie in total mystification. The only moment of spark was when Nicole Kidman showed up and they didn't

let her do anything. So I just, this, I don't know. the musicals that get nominated for the golden gloves there is like a cottage industry of we'll make a year at the end musical and then it will like pad this category and we'll make some money because it'll greatest showman or whatever and it's just not for me extremely at least with the greatest showman like that movie was a big hit and And it seemed to resonate with people.

It didn't resonate with me, but it did seem to resonate with people. So I was like, okay, this is a cynical game to draw people's attention. But was The Prom a hit? I mean, how many conversations did you have about The Prom? Well, I had one on TV Concierge with Juliette Lipman. And then I had a second one with you. I guess I had a third one when I was sitting in our living room alone watching it. And my husband walked in and out and was like, what is going on here? So three, not enough to make it a huge hit.

Not enough. Two nominations for Anya Taylor-Joy. This will be the one notification about a TV nomination, which is that she got recognized for Queen's Gambit, a show we talked about here. And also for Emma,

which was a nice surprise. Emma was a good film. We've talked about it a few times on the show. Another surprise was Rosamund Pike for I Care A Lot, another movie that is not yet out that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Globes really likes Rosamund Pike. This is her third nomination.

I'll be curious to see if she can make any headway in the awards race. We'll definitely talk about that movie at some point in the next few weeks. Have you had a chance to see that one yet? I haven't yet. Okay. Well, that should make for an interesting episode because I think that there is a growing theme around films like I Care A Lot. Dev Patel got recognized for The Personal History of David

Copperfield, a movie that I found, frankly, quite disappointing. But this speaks to what happens when you split up the musical or comedy and drama categories is sometimes there's not a ton of candidates for musical or comedy. And so Dev sometimes there's not a ton of candidates for musical or comedy. And so Dev Patel did slide in here. Gonna be honest, this is the one. I didn't know it finally made it to VOD. They held onto it for so long. Just went right by me.

It is available. Is it available on Disney Plus? I think it might be. I don't even know what to say if that's true. I think it is available because it's a searchlight film. And I think it didn't go to Hulu, but did go to Disney+.

Nevertheless, a good surprise, two nominations for Palm Springs, which was delightful, including best musical or comedy. Well-deserved. Very happy for that. We love that movie. Helena Zengel, someone that you spotlit in our best performances of the year episode, was nominated for News of the World, one of the vanishing few nominations for News of the World. We will talk about that shortly. And another surprise I was really happy about was Ludwig Joransson, who did the score for Tenet, which absolutely rips. Just one of the great scores of the year. I was very happy to see that. I did not think he was going to be

contending, and Tenet was otherwise largely shut out. So those are surprises. Let's talk about snubs because as usual, the Globes has a lot of issues, frankly, many of which are racially connected. And I mean, we can start first and foremost with Defy Bloods, which is Spike Lee's film that was completely ignored. And I don't think either one of us think The Five Bloods is Spike Lee's best film. I don't think we think it's even in his top five films, but it certainly was one of the best films that came out last year. And when you look at it in the constellation of nominees on this list, it's notable in its absence, particularly Delroy Lindo, particularly Spike as best director. Were you surprised

the Seed of Five Bloods get shafted? Yes, especially when, as you point out, Spike Lee's children are serving as the Golden Globes ambassadors. Is it still

Mr. and Ms. Golden Globe? I don't really know. I feel like we could... Can we update that? I think they did update it. That's why we're using ambassador rather than the historical nomenclature. So, and did you see the interview when it was announced and Spike Lee was like very excited for his children? It was very sweet. He was like, great. I think they should go for it.

So I, yeah, that's, again, it's part of a pattern. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. If you're going to nominate famous people, I mentioned Meryl Streep. You left her sitting on the cutting room floor for both Let Them All Talk and for the prom. You also left Ben Affleck sitting on the cutting room floor. Now, is the way back the best movie of 2020? It's not. Do we have an unhealthy affection for the work of Ben Affleck on this podcast?

We do. Yes. However, you're the Golden Globes. Ben Affleck on this podcast? We do. Yes. However, you're the Golden Globes. Ben Affleck's uber famous. He was literally campaigning for an award. What's the downside here? Just nominate the guy. You have no credibility in the first place. Just get the famous guy on the show. I can't make any of this stuff make sense. It's just completely ridiculous. I was looking last night at the photograph that was taken of the audience during the uh la la land moonlight um debacle do you remember this it's a very famous photograph of all the people in the front row michelle

williams and busy phillips are in the front row and ben affleck is right there in the front row and i just feel like ben affleck is just giving a really underrated performance in that photograph as a person reacting to other awards shows mistakes. So you just want him, you want his energy, okay? He's a great performer and presence. And I really am a huge Ben Affleck fan. Tracking back to some of the concerns about whether or not some of these nominations have a race problem, there were two nominations for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Predictably, Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman were recognized for their work. I think many people saw that as a lock,

ourselves included. The movie was not nominated in any other categories despite being, I think, a front runner for many categories this year. And then there were just two nominations for Judas and the Black Messiah. Another movie that is, has not out yet, but if we're comparing things like The Mauritanian for Judas and the Black Messiah. Another movie that is has not out yet. But if we're comparing things like the Mauritanian and Judas and the Black Messiah, I would take Judas and the Black Messiah over it 100 times out of 100.

And that seems to be a little bit troubling. Respectfully, if we're comparing the Trial of Chicago 7 and Judas and the Black Messiah, which have some they are overlapping time, they have some overlapping characters. And one was nominated in Best Picture Drama and one was not. Yeah. Very unfortunate. I mean, there's, I'm sure that campaigning and release dates are a factor to some extent in some of these outcomes, but you can't help but be suspicious, especially when you look at a movie like One Night in Miami. Now, on the one hand, they did recognize Regina King as best director for this movie. And Leslie Odom Jr. also was recognized for best supporting actor. But that's kind of a low number relative to some of the other

big name films that were released this year. And then you start to sense a trend here and you're like, why? How is after everything that has happened in the world and in an award season, not just in the last year, but in the last five to 10 years, given Oscar so white, et cetera, et cetera. It's not so much like a woke outrage. It's more just a general confusion about strategy. Like in how, how is Jared Leto in the little things, the move as a, as a, as a comparison point to films that most people agree are at least solid, if not like utterly moving. I would just say that there's been an awards conversation, you know, among the other people who do this, you and I have been talking about a lot of films. There are a lot of films, not a lot less than usual, but there are a

substantial number of films to choose from in this year. And in every choice, pretty much they chose the film that had was more focused on a white cast than not and like at some point it's just like the pattern of choice and you just have to point it out i do also want to add we are going to talk more about malcolm and ray truly truly truly can't wait to have this conversation um fired up too but john david washington and in the day are just movie stars like they are straight up movie stars and to not consider them at all i have some suspicions as to why um both in terms of the the content of that movie and also because of the you know the race issues in these nominations but it just you want famous people and you want famous people to a

young generation at your awards show, nominate these people. Yeah, I agree. On the flip side, like I said, no Tom Hanks and very little recognition for News of the World, which is also a traditional classical Hollywood production. It's a Western, it's from Paul Greengrass, a celebrated filmmaker. You'd think there'd be a lot of love there, nothing there.

So there's a kind of inconsistency. Sophia Loren, another example of a person who was snubbed you know did i think that the work that sofia loren did in that in that film um was her best work no but it actually feel that would have felt of a pattern with what the hfpa does with what award season typically does and so instead what you have is this kind of scrambled eggs brain thing where i'm like so no tom h Hanks, no Sophia Loren, no Zendaya. What are you guys doing? Like you could be old and traditional and boring, or you could be provocative and young and exciting,

or you could just be lame and weird. And like, I guess lame and weird is good for a headline, but it's not going to be good for the show. It's not going to be good for our coverage of award season. And so I find myself, again, taking this stuff way too seriously as I always do this time of year. Well, I do too, but I think,

nevermind, it is really lame and weird, but I think, I was speaking with Juliet, our pal Juliet on Jam Session, and she was kind of like, why are we having an awards season this year? Like, why? And the best explanation that I could give for her is that, like, movies are in trouble and we need advocates for movies.

And I think the Golden Globes and the Oscars, to the extent that people watch them this year, are going to play an outsized role in just being like, hey, you should watch this. And hey, you know, this is worth your time and you didn't see this. Go seek this out. And so I, like, I do take it seriously because these people who I don't respect have even more of an opportunity than usual this year to influence not just what movies people are seeing and taking seriously, but kind of the future of this industry. And they just did their like worst. And it's, you know, it's that combined with, I think the nebulousness

of 2020 and award season and movies in general. And I don't know when David Copperfield is on VOD or Disney Plus or whatever combines to just, this is a reflection of personal preference. People are just like, eh, I'm not really going to think about it. And this is not my personal preference. Yeah, that's the thing is because we turn over so much of our mindshare to stuff like the Golden Globe nominations, they inevitably have more significance. Now, we could boycott the Golden Globes on the show. I'm not really sure what that accomplishes. It's not as if we're going to start some revolution of quality awards giving because we don't recognize these people. And you're right, it's part of a machine. And because that machine has been contorted and

distorted this year it some things take on an even greater significance than they otherwise would have and so you know it's not surprising that like paul rocky from sound of metal was not recognized by the golden globes performances like that never are nobody knows who paul rocky is despite him being a terrific actor and that movie is on a streamer and it's smaller, et cetera, et cetera. But to replace the, the, the like, but to recognize Helena Zengel and not Zendaya,

you know, like I'm, I'm just, I'm having such a hard time unpacking the idiosyncrasy this year, as opposed to the obstinacy of the globes. This isn't even like Pia Zadora winning an award for best new star, despite being an objectively terrible actress. You know what I mean?

It's there's, there's a lot of weirdness. It's confused as well as disappointing, which I suppose is the world we're living in now, I guess. I don't know. I mean, the one thing that did not happen that is not surprising is that the arthouse films that came out in the earlier part of 2020 that we thought would get some love during award season and may still obviously were not recognized by the Globes. You know, no first cow, no, no, never rarely, sometimes, always. Those movies never had a chance in this award show. I was not holding my breath for never rarely, sometimes, always. And I think it was the best film released last year. So there you go. So let's just do narratives really quickly because a few things emerged from this that I do think are going to be meaningful

to the point that you're making, which is that people are going to see these nominations and they're going to think this is what award season is the first being that the film that led all nominations is Manc and it does it has certainly felt but this is the thing where every year I feel like they the Hollywood Foreign Press Association like screws it up except for one thing that we really like. And then I'm like, oh, no. You know, it's like the influencer phenomenon. When you see like these people that you don't respect like this thing you like, then you no longer feel good about liking it, which happens to me all the time on Instagram. And it's definitely how I feel about Mank. I'm like, oh, God, I took the bait just like these dummies.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing is obviously I think in many respects you and I have gone against the grain by being as passionate about mank as we have been and mank has really kind of fallen back in some respects in the award season conversation i think a lot of people feel like you know it certainly was not a quote-unquote hit on netflix there's not a ton of word of mouth about it i think some people feel like it is kind of artfully mounted but a little bit cold as is often the case with the feeling about fincher movies. And obviously, there's the whole fucking Citizen Kane, Orson Welles nonsense in the critical community to deal with. Do you think anyone in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association watched Citizen Kane before watching Mank? Okay. I'm not worried about that. But they seem to like Mank

because they gave that movie six nominations. And whether or not this is like a meaningful bump in the Oscar race, I genuinely do not know. I genuinely do not know where a movie like this sits. I'm obviously a big fan of it, but I feel worse about myself because the Globes thinks it's good. So that's a bit challenging. Likewise for Nomadland, I think Nomadland held serve here. Nomadland basically needed to get these key nominations and they did. Yeah, but I think it's entering into danger zone. And this is anecdotal, but I have my movie nerd friends who were texting about the nominations this morning and they were both like, we still want to see Nomadland, but also I have the screener, I haven't fired it up yet. The expectations

at this point are really, really high for what is... You and I both thought it was a beautiful film, but we kind of saw it sight unseen, no thing around it. And when it finally comes out and people are watching it at home with all this buildup, I'm curious. It's a very interesting point. They're starting to become a kind of fait accompli about that movie and Chloe Zhao, the director, as Best Picture and Best Director winners.

I guess you're right. We'll see. We'll see if people are disappointed. We'll see if it does not hold the fascination of Oscar voters in the months to come. Trial of Chicago 7, five nominations, pretty predictable. I think it will be there in most major categories at the Academy Awards. This frankly just feels very Academy Awards-y. This is not Aaron Sorkin's best work. And it's a movie that is attempting to reflect the times, but also feels a bit like a neoliberal fantasy. And so it will probably be recognized in a big way. One thing I noted that I think is probably important to this conversation in the future of this show period is that six of the 10 films that were reason for that because fewer films were released in theaters because some films were sold to streamers trial chicago 7 for example was a paramount film sold to netflix still this does feel like a pretty big breakthrough where like i'm as recently as a

year ago we had all this anxiety about like can netflix do it can they pull it off and get recognized the way that you know warner brothers is recognized and now i'm like i don't even think about that i'm netflix feels like the most powerful you know the the giant in the room of the award season it's amazing how quickly it happens and how quickly we forget everything that went before which is also i think kind of predictive of i think it is a sea change because the world might go back but it will be reconfigured completely differently. And I think if we go back to a place where like eight arthouse movies that have only been in theaters that like 2 million people have seen

are nominated for Best Picture. I mean, I just can't imagine that anymore. We're going to ask Mark Harris about that when he comes on because he obviously has a wealth of Oscars history and he understands award season as well as anyone. So hopefully he can give us some context. A couple of more notable narrative stuff. I gotta say, a lot of people have asked us to do an episode

about Promising Young Woman. Complicated for us to do that. If you guys want! Yeah, I think we both have some complicated feelings about that film. And so maybe we'll dig into it a little bit because it seems inevitable now that it's going to be recognized. It's got four nominations here today, including for Emerald Fennell for Best Director. Three women nominated for Best Director at the Globes. If we're going

to give them laurels for anything, I think that's, yeah, I mean, it's better than they've done in the past. Okay. I mean, sure. Great. It's better than they've done in the past. Call me when we've made up for all of history, honestly. Fair enough. So Promising Young Woman, I think it similarly keeps its narrative momentum going. Borat 2 is clearly an Oscar contender. Maria Bakalova, Sacha Baron Cohen, both recognized in Best Actor and Best Actress. This movie was nominated for Best Musical or Comedy. Borat, the original Borat, was nominated for Best Screenplay back in the day at the Oscars. So I guess maybe I have to watch Borat's subsequent movie film again, just to refresh. So I know what I'm talking about. Yeah. You know, I thought that music was the new,

have you seen the wife, but you're suggesting that perhaps the father is the new, have you seen the wife? I have personally designated the father to be my own, the wife, because I have not seen the father. And it's a similar thing. And I do want to say last night, my husband out of nowhere was just like, have you seen the father? because we were both looking at the Golden Globe nominations I believe it is also a Sony Pictures classic film and it seems to be a similar thing where it is a you know a noun title starring a beloved actor of a certain age that like maybe 10 people have seen and yet has been in the awards conversation for a year. And I just have no way of seeing it. And I actually did earlier this week. I was like,

should I try to see the father? And I was like, no, the father is coming to me, which is how I know it's really the new, the wife. Yeah. The father is it's like, so not news of the world, but the father, you know, like, who does this benefit at the HFPA? I guess it's an international production, but otherwise, you know, at the father, I've said it before on the show. I thought it was just fine. I saw it at Sundance last year in 2020

and I thought it was okay. Anthony Hopkins is always wonderful and he's particularly good in this movie. Is he significantly better than the 20 other people who are not recognized? No. Is he better than Jared Leto? Maybe not.

I enjoyed Jared Leto in the little things. Any other like outrages, shocks, surprises, snubs, anything else you noticed about what's happening here? We'll have plenty of time to unpack it over the course of the next month. No, I that's there's so much. I just we just did so many things. I'm sure there are a lot of a lot more things that we will find to be outraged about. And this was only filmed, by the way. I'm told that TV, I mean, you know, I'm happy for The Crown, but otherwise it was just like not representative of all of what people watched or enjoyed in 2020. Oh, forget the TV stuff is a mess.

I made a story. I did not get a single nomination. That's just a nightmare. There we go. Perfect example of what we're discussing here. Anyhow, let's talk more about award season and also Mike Nichols with the great Mark Harris in just a minute, but let's take a quick break first. What an honor to be joined by Mark Harris. Mark, how are you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. Great to be here.

We are obviously obsessed with awards here on this show, and so before we talk about your great book, let's talk about Golden Globes. Before we get into the nominations or anything like that, help us put this award season in context, because you've been covering this space for a long time. You know as much about this world as just about anybody in the universe. And this has obviously been an unusual, to say the least, awards season. How are you feeling about it? Are you surprised by how it's playing out thus far? Well, I have to say that in the face of a year-long pandemic, an existential threat to movie theaters, a paradigm shift in the way we consume movies, an attempted overthrow of the US government. I was incredibly relieved to see that none of that seems to have touched the Golden Globes at all. They are still their insane, star-loving, unwoke taste adjacent self

and you know I guess I have looked at all the outrage on Twitter with things like I May Destroy You getting ignored and Minari being consigned to only the best foreign language film

but you know it's not as if... I understand the anger, I really do, but I'm laughing at it a little only because it's not as if some sacred tradition of upholding rigorous standards of taste that the Golden Globes have always adhered to

has suddenly been violated by this set of nominations. It's like, of course they are going to nominate James Corden for the prom. Of course that would be the one performance they will single out for honors. Of course they're going

to act like Spike Lee's movie did not exist this year and then ask his children to serve as like awards ambassadors it's of course they're going to look at the huge array of of male dramatic performances on tv and decide that al pacino playing a Jewish Nazi hunter was absolutely essential to nominate. So, you know, it's the Globes. And to try to put it in the context of the whole awards season, it never is, is it? It's just this really bizarre speed bump.

And, you know, this year it'll all be remote I guess so it'll go the selling point used to be this is the place where everybody gets together and gets drunk and I guess this year it'll be like this is the place where everybody gets drunk at home which isn't quite as exciting but

you know it's the globes Jake you know Amanda was just making a point about how because there is this existential threat to movie theaters and to mainstream movies oddly

perversely the Globes are actually going to be one of the noisiest movie events that we've had in a while and it's hard to draw a kind of consensus and attention to these movie events. And I wonder if maybe this is way off Amanda, maybe you can help me clarify this thought,

but is it possible that the globes actually matters more this year, despite its absolute absence of taste and, and, and sense. I thought that was good, John. That was it. Just the idea that there is going to be an outsize. Well, I don't know if there will be attention, but in terms of the role that they play in just telling people what movies to watch this year, as opposed to any other year. wave of awards are always critics critics critics online critics regional critics national critics

um and then we we get this really interesting piece of information when the guilds and sag and the producers guild and the directors guild and entities like that start to give awards which is is there is there a taste gap between what critics really like this year and what the industry really liked this year? And of course, that culminates with the Oscars. But the Globes always land right between critics and the industry. And that's kind of perfect because that's what those voters are. I mean, they're journalists. Scare quotes around journalists. Is that what you're indicating there?

You put them there. I didn't. I refuse to acknowledge anything more than an ellipsis after that word. But they're journalists, but they're generally not critics. And they're very, very plugged into, especially the

the la machinery of the industry and so they can be a kind of interesting clue about whether um a movie that really really is landing with um uh critics who are a distinct demographic um is making an impression uh with uh other voters you know people in the industry or or not because there are some movies definitely that critics have been recognizing that the globe's recognized and that the oscars are going to recognize and then there are some where there's like a real gap, I think. Do you think that the absence of widely seen films is an issue for the Academy when it comes to the Oscars? That's something that Amanda and I have been trying to wrap our heads around, I think. I am so fascinated by that question, and I'm trying to wrap my head around it too. And one of the things I'm trying to wrap my head around is what widely seen

means. Like is, I assume that anything on Netflix is widely seen, or at least has the potential to be widely seen. But I'm also trying to remind myself at this point that, you know, the general public really has not had access to movies that we've been talking about for months in terms of awards like Nomadland. That's just beginning to get a little bit of attention. One of the,

I think, surprising nominations this morning was for Rosamund Pike for a movie called I Care A Lot, which I actually think is quite a funny movie and it's a good performance, but it's not a movie that's been on anybody's radar yet because it's a Netflix movie that hasn't landed. So since the Oscars this year are really far away, like in April, what one would hope is that this all levels out by then and that everything that has been in any

corner of the discussion at least has the chance to be seen including stuff like Minari you know another movie that that is widely seen as having been maltreated today that has been very well regarded by critics but that we really have no sense of overall industry or audience reaction to. Mark, can I ask you kind of a behind the scenes question, which is what is your sense of the Academy's relationship or view of the Golden Globes? And like, are all of the Academy voters or the people who are in charge of the ceremony looking at these nominations like oh god look what they did like look at the mess that we have to clean up um are they or are they like glad that there's someone else going out in front kind of

shaking up the the terrain a bit um i you know there is a certain portion of extremely online Academy voters, but it's a pretty small one. I think it's a pretty small percentage of the Academy. And I am frankly reluctant to characterize Academy voters since that membership has changed so dramatically, expanded and changed in the last few years. I think to the extent that Academy voters pay attention to everything, including the Golden Globes, this year the Globes may have a lot less impact on Academy voting because there's such a long gap. I mean, Academy voters have not begun to vote yet for nominations, and they won't for a while. And the voters I know are largely sort of, I think people would be surprised at how plugged in they are not. Like, they're still figuring out what's eligible, what are we seeing this year? Was the cutoff in December or the cutoff at the end of February? I mean, it's a baffling year for people. And so I think what may happen is not that any one entity like the Globes has disproportionate influence on academy voters but that the the general accumulated noise of what gets discussed

uh is boiled down into a particular long list of movies that people have to see and that the nominations will come from from there but but whether any movie is um surging or waning or you know the sort of micro twitches that odds makers like to track about like, oh, well, Ellen Burstyn for pieces of a woman is down right now. I don't think that's really connecting at this point to what's going on with Academy voters. As much as we like to do that sort of thing on the show, we really haven't done it this year. I think because there is just this kind of confusion about the landscape.

And also I think there's like my concern, frankly, is that most general consumers of movies, of podcasts, of Oscar commentary are not as engaged. And I'm curious if, you know, for example, if the ratings are significantly down this year,

and I suspect that they will be because ratings are down for everything across the board. Yeah. And there are not as many, you know, well-seen films. What does that really mean for, for the Academy?

What does it really mean for, you know, movies, relationships to awards and how they're maybe funded, maybe how, what, how they're positioned, how they're marketed.

Like, do you see a correlation there if we have a down year or is this just kind of an asterisk moment as it is with so many other things in life right now? I think that everyone will rush to say that this year was an asterisk and, and, and really invest in the idea that next year will be more normal

but of course next year will not be normal it will be a 10-month year for awards following a 14-month year for awards uh maybe we'll have movies back in theaters for part of the year we hope um but um it seems really clear that the trend towards streaming um is is going to continue and and it's going to be really strong and and that um you know one thing we tend to forget is that most academy members were already seeing most movies that they voted for at home. They were seeing them on DVD and Blu-ray screeners rather than via streaming services, but they were seeing them at home. So the theatrical experience has already largely divorced itself from the awards process and you know i think a lot of the trends that the pandemic accelerated are things that were in place already and are just now happening at a greater rate than we might have imagined they were so i think next year is going to be odd too but just odd in a different

way but i think for this year you know how when you talk to anyone you haven't talked to for a while and you say, so how's it going? How's your pandemic been? A lot of times people will answer with some version of, you know, I'm just trying to get through. I'm just trying to wait for the vaccine. It's been a really long time. I'm okay. You know, I just, we're trying to get to the finish line. I kind of feel like that's where awards voters are right now. There, nobody is thinking like, this is the most important year ever for me to figure out who the five best supporting actors are. I think they're Jared Leto, Jared Leto, Jared Leto, and Jared Leto. I mean, I do not know what to say.

Like, I'm speechless. So are we. Yeah. So, I think I saw that nomination and I instantly blocked it out. Like I was able to take in, I could take in James Corden. I could take in Al Pacino. I could take in the fact that a movie called music apparently exists. Yeah.

We're just discussing this morning. No idea. But, but Jared Leto. Nope. I just like, I, I suddenly saw red and went white and then black and then i woke up somewhere else like it never happened um so yeah see i don't even remember what i was going to say because you said his name it it wiped me i think we were just talking about whether it's an asterisk season and your sense was yes. Yeah, it's an asterisk season, but not the only asterisk season.

And not everything that makes this an anomaly is going to go away. I was thinking about the Aaron Taylor Johnson nomination for Nocturnal Animals. And then he ended up winning that Golden Globe and then went on to get an Oscar nomination in light of the Jared Leto nomination. But even then, I think Nocturnal Animals had a higher pedigree, so to speak. I don't think that he did get an Oscar nomination though. Did he not? I don't think so.

Maybe he did not. I think that was a complete globe-contained phenomenon. Maybe it was Michael Shannon was nominated for that film instead of Aaronaron taylor johnson um yeah it's uh it's i mean they really do their own thing and the weird thing is often when you see some like shocker of a globe nomination you find out later that oh well they did this really elaborate press conference and everybody got a gift bag afterwards

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there was none of that this year. So, you know, I guess that's when it becomes useful to remember that the Globes are really a pretty tiny group. It's not a large number of voters at all. And one thing that I do think they have in common with some small critics groups is that you can all of a sudden kind of get collectively high on a particular idea. You know, you can catch excitement about something or contempt about something from your colleagues. And that is one way of accounting for some of the nominations, I guess. Now I'm just imagining the HFPA Zoom and like, just even if, you know, how it works and is everyone, does it have their video on? Can we move from, you know, weird Jared Leto stuff

to maybe films or nominations you actually liked? Like, was there anything in 2020 that you were excited about? Are there any narratives you're invested in? Oh, you mean in terms of the Globes or in terms of movies in particular? If you want to include the Globes, sure. Or we can just forget them forever. I mean, I'm, you know, well, first of all, the Globes did some things that I really like.

I mean, it's not as if there's no overlap between, like, general, like, I'm a huge fan of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. I was happy to see that recognized for some awards. I really liked Judas and the Black Messiah, and I'm glad to see that in there. The miscategorization of Minari aside, it's great that it is nominated for something. And even things that might make people scratch their heads, like Tahar Rahim nominated for The Mauritanian.

That is actually a really excellent performance in a movie that arrived too late to get into the best actor discussion for critics. So it's not as if they just all blindfolded themselves and started throwing darts at an issue of, an issue of the Hollywood reporter with four year consideration ads in it. Um, you know, they, they there's like, I, I love,

um, promising young woman. And I, I'm really glad to see, uh, that get some attention. So, so in terms of narratives this year,

um, no, there, I think one casualty of the, the whole strangeness of the year for me has been I don't think fascinating narratives have for me really developed. How about for you guys? We were just discussing this. I mean, I think six months ago or maybe four months ago, there was a kind of Nomadland

versus Manc kind of story. And the Globes actually, I think in some respects, reflects this. And maybe Trial of the Chicago 7 in there as well. And yet the Globes, in many ways, feels kind of outside of wherever the Academy narrative is going to be going. So I think Amanda and I were just trying to unpack, should we even believe what it means to have the most Golden Globe nominations? Does that indicate anything to us beyond what we were already feeling?

And I personally don't know. is that the sort of category of traditional four-square establishment Oscar movie has shifted all the way over to those two movies. Like, Nank is a black-and-white Netflix movie about an extremely obscure episode in the early history of Hollywood. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a studio movie that was sold to Netflix. And it's really interesting to me that those two movies

are kind of holding down the flag for this is an Academy-style movie. That is partly, uh, of course, due to the fact that a whole bunch of really traditional Academy style movies did not come out this year, but I think it's an also an indicator of changing tastes. Um,

and, a really rapidly changing definition of what the establishment is. I mean, overall, when we're talking about movies, we probably have to get away from the idea that traditional means Warner Brothers, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and Universal,

and start realizing that it also means Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Apple, Disney Plus. I mean, those aren't sort of upstarts that are challenging the studios. Those are either owned by the studios or mega corporations that are larger than the studios. And fringe movies, oddities, whatever, we're going to look probably more toward companies like Neon and A24. But the definition is really, really shifting quickly. I think you've overlooked the distributor of music, Vertical Entertainment, Mark. not going to say anything bad about a movie that I could not have vouched for the existence of

at gunpoint three hours ago. Amazing. I literally googled it and I was like, oh, that's the movie that Sia directed. Is that the movie that Sia got yelled at for directing or is that another movie?

You now have the sum total of what I know about music Amanda before we go to Mike Nichols anything else you want to know from Mark about award season yeah I have I've been trying to wrap my head around the the nature of well of time generally aren't we all in the pandemic and in life um but as you mentioned it's a really long award season. And there are these movies that I think we as like, you know, critics were people who have access to screeners have seen four or five months ago. And there has been like a percolating conversation around, you know, Nomadland and Minari. And then the Oscars aren't for three months, essentially. And I think it is even drawn out in terms of the delay between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, or it certainly feels that way.

Do you think that's going to have an effect on these narratives and really like the general viewers investment in the awards season? Yeah, I do think it's going to have an effect on viewer investment. I mean, you know, late is late and this was a weird year anyway. And people tend to get more excited about movies that they go to in theaters. And with all of that absent, I think to the general public, awards are a little more immune to um the sort of rise and fall of of momentum for a movie like i don't think it matters to voters so much that uh in a certain part of the conversation nomadland peaked in october and and November and now is giving way to other movies. I think, you know, it's, this is the last year that Academy voters are going to get actual physical

screeners and they've been getting them already. And I think a movie on the pile of screeners is a movie on the pile of screeners. And we don't know when Academy voters get around to watching something. And one thing I think that levels the playing field is that people have the time to watch everything this year. And another thing is that from what I've seen, everything that's eligible plays quite well on a home screen. It's partly because there wasn't like a huge Lawrence of Arabia style blockbuster. No dude, no West Side Story. Right. I mean, probably the closest thing,

I guess you would say, is Tenet. And Tenet plays, I think the issues with playing Tenet at home are probably not that different from the issues of Tenet in a theater. The sound is the usual kind of engineered by Bane thing

that Christopher Nolan is fond of. The plot's really complicated, but it looks like a trillion bucks on TV just as it would in a theater. So I don't think any movies are unfairly disadvantaged this year. And that plus the really dramatically changed membership I think could produce some really interesting results.

Do you think a Zoom Oscars would be good? I know that's a bit of an elementary question, but picture it. How many ceremonies of the Oscars have you watched over the years? Oh my God. Too many? All of them?

I mean, certainly, I don't think by April people are going to be I mean, it's hard to guess now, but by late April maybe they will want to do some kind of an in-person ceremony but, you know how could you possibly hold it against

the Oscars if they did a remote ceremony or a Zoom ceremony I think the Emmys negotiated it really pretty fantastically this year and came up with a lot of innovative ways to do it ceremony. I think the Emmys negotiated it really pretty fantastically this year and came up with a lot of innovative ways to do it. And I think it's great that the Oscars named its producers pretty early.

And certainly Steven Soderbergh, I mean, you couldn't ask for someone who is more able to think outside the box. And you couldn't ask for someone who is stranger casting for an Oscar producer. And I think that's perfect for this year. I am genuinely excited to see what they will do with it. Let's pivot to Mike Nichols.

Mike Nichols is a real sweet spot for Amanda and I. So you can imagine how much we enjoyed your book and how excited we were to talk to you about it. Thanks. You have an interesting history with him and writing about him and his work. And you wrote about The Graduate at length in one of your previous books. And so I was actually a little surprised to see that you were tackling his mammoth life story when the book was first announced. But obviously there are significant reasons why you decided to do this. Can you help us understand why you wrote Mike Nichols' life?

Sure. Well, I was surprised too, honestly. Doing a biography after my first two books was not what I had in mind. And in the years that I had known Mike, I had never thought of writing his biography or approached him about it. I mean, if anything, I had gently nudged him once in a while to write his autobiography, because I thought that would be fun, even though it was something he had no interest in doing. And honestly, I wasn't, I was very nervous about the idea of writing about The Graduate again.

It's a strange thing. You know, this is only my third book. And I thought, am I really going to revisit territory from my first one? But ultimately, I just found his life too interesting to resist. about movies with theater and about writing about both of those careers in the context of the fact that they followed a third extraordinary career as a performing artist that a lot of people only know about by reading about it but don't realize was incredibly crucial to the development of um you know improv comedy it just seemed irresistible. And also I had so many questions about his life, so many questions about why he made the decisions he made. I felt I would just be able to spend a

great deal of time trying to get answers that satisfied me and never get bored by it. I believe that you had spent some time in Mike Nichols's company. Like how much and what circumstance can you speak a little bit about how you knew him? I got to know Mike Nichols, um, two ways. Really.

The first was, uh, around 2000 or 2001 when, um, he and, uh, my husband, Tony Kushner started meeting about the HBO production of Angels in America.

I got to know Mike a little bit then. I had never met him before. And Angels, of course, because it was so elaborate and so long, was a very, very long process. You know, it was probably more than three years from the time Mike signed on to the time they all went and collected their awards. So I got to know Mike during those years.

And then very, very soon after that, I came up with the idea for Pictures at a Revolution. And I knew that The Graduate was going to be obviously a big part of that because it was one of the five movies I was writing about. And so that was the first time that I didn't just kind of talk to him socially, but sat down with a recorder and started interviewing him.

And so I kind of got to know him those two different ways and and you know it's a strange thing being a journalist and a writer married to a playwright and a screenwriter who knows a lot of actors and directors and producers because people in the industry are never quite sure of what to make of me like i come from the enemy profession but i am presumably neutralized by being married to a friendly um but but so so people have all kinds of odd reactions to me but i have to say that um mike whose manners were just legendary and whose sense of like elegance and generosity and hosting and and putting people at ease was kind of unmatched in my experience, just blew past that and always made me feel like, you know, I was someone he was happy to talk to. And so we had, you know, a number of really great conversations

about him and his career, which is what I was really interested in. Talk about the challenges of this book. You interviewed a lot of people, an extraordinary amount of people. And Nichols' filmography, theatrical credits, his work with Elaine May, it's a truly insane body of work to examine. Yeah. Just talk about the process of trying to put the whole book together what did you do well i interviewed about 250 people and honestly i stopped because it was really time to start writing not because i ran out of people like i could have kept going um because he worked

in so many fields for so long and knew so many people and also there was this weird anomaly that mike became famous extremely young in his 20s because an evening with mike nichols and elaine may during the eight or nine months it was on broadway was really kind of the the hamilton of its season it was the thing that every out-of-town celebrity every in-town celebrity wanted to see, everyone wanted to meet him. So the array of people he knew and worked with was staggering. And for me, it was just, the work was kind of interviewing everyone I could, seeing all of his work that I could see, reading everything I could possibly find that he had said and that had been written about him. And within that, I work the way I always work, which is to try to construct a timeline. I have to put things in chronological order and find out exactly what happened when, because that is

one of the ways I can make sense of how someone's life unfolded when I don't have the luxury of asking them. And so many of my questions about Mike Nichols and his career boiled down to, why did you do this? Why did you make this movie? Why did you turn down this movie? What made you go from doing this movie to this play? Why after 1975, did you stop and not make any movies for eight years? You know, sometimes the answers to those questions are just beyond your reach,

but often the more you dig into the timeline, not just years, but months and even weeks, the more mysteries start explaining themselves to you. This is really a question about being a biographer, I guess, and how to do that. But kind of there's a theme in your book about this idea that Mike Nichols was very involved in his own myth-making and that, you know of there's a theme in your book about this idea that Mike Nichols was very involved in his own myth-making and that, you know, there's that Meryl Streep quote about like he was playing a character and he was a storyteller and he seems to, he's revising some of his own history. And I wonder as his biographer, how do you separate, or do you even

try to separate kind of that like self-created myth from your own understanding of Mike Nichols and why he did the things that he did and those questions you're trying to answer oh yeah absolutely I mean I I mean I I definitely try to separate it um and um with Mike it was really complicated because when when you first of all, anybody famous and old tells the same stories about themselves over and over again. Like, that just happens. And as those stories get told and retold, various jewels and ornaments attach themselves to the stories.

And it's not that people are lying it's it's that they genuinely um after you've told a story a dozen times it's hard to remember whether you're telling what happened or whether you're retelling a story that you told and um you know if there's one thing i i wish i could convey it's that people talk about Mike, as you said, like a self-created myth or someone who is very conscious of presenting a certain picture to the world. That does not mean that someone is a liar or that someone is a phony. And in the case of Mike Nichols, it really is rooted in a childhood in which he had to, because he was a refugee, because he was Jewish, because, I mean, he would not have used the word refugee, but he was an immigrant, you know, whose family fled Germany in 1939, he was bald and therefore ostracized by the kids that he went to school with. So he is someone who survived by figuring out how to create a presentable version of himself and then refine it. And there's nothing dishonest about that at all to me it it um speaks of a great instinct for self-preservation and uh the fact that he was able to

uh transmute that not into just a lifetime of self-absorption but uh into a lifetime of being interested in other people and how they behave and how they create themselves, which is so much of what the key to his direction is. I find that really inspiring. So people ask me, you know, how did it, sometimes the implication of the question is, how did you dig past all the phoniness to get to the truth and I don't think of it as a phoniness versus truth binary I think of

the outside of Mike Nichols and the inside of Mike Nichols as two absolutely real parts of him and I felt like my job on this book was to figure out how each informed the other and how they worked in harmony or clashed with each other. My favorite part of the book is essentially the segment from Catch-22 through 1980 and what is happening.

And there are a lot of reasons for that. It's a period of time i'm very interested in it's a period of time that there's not a lot of reporting about and there's not a lot of been written specifically about some of the films that he made and why they didn't work a lot of those movies are kind of discarded now it was amazing to just read about his relationship with george c scott and you know the the mess of that over the years um but the thing that that really jumped out to me as i read it in context chronologically as you reported and wrote it is mike nichols failed a lot he had a lot of kind of creative fiascos and he always found a way to bounce back or do something in in the theater or back on film

that captured people's attention again and i was wondering like what you really attribute that to, like his ultimate infallibility. Well, I love writing about failure. I really do. I always have. And it's not because I'm a sadist. It's because why something goes wrong and why you were attracted to doing it in the first place is often

at least as revealing, if not more revealing about you than your big successes. And more fun to report in a way because successes, once they happen, the stories of them often are burdened by a sense of inevitability. Like I write about the graduate and I really want you to be interested in the graduate, but no matter what I write about the graduate, you know what the finish line that's going to be, which is that it becomes the graduate. And to me,

the, the mic that made catch 22 or the day of the dolphin or the fortune, or in the period you're talking about no movies for the last five years of the 70s is at least as interesting an artist because so much of what he did was search and struggle and figure out what worked for him and what didn't work for him and you know just to take these three movies um uh catch 22 the day of the dolphin and the fortune i'm leaving out carnal knowledge because i actually think it's a big success and and deserves like to be up there in the mike nichols pantheon but but those that's not just

like a flop and a flop and a flop those are three different fascinating stories uh the grant the uh catch-22 is the story of uh mike dealing with his first opportunity to have an unlimited budget and unlimited power and um really trying to wrestle seriously with uh difficult material that he only realized at the very end of the process was not his style of comedy. And, um, uh,

the fortune was a movie that taught him a lot about the, the danger of the gap between having a really good time on a set and the actual movie that you're making. Um, and also taught him a lot about, uh, the danger of going into a movie with a script and a script writer that you don't fully believe in.

Because Mike was probably the most writer-friendly of all major American directors, and The Fortune was the rare exception to that. And The Day of the Dol, is a story about like, probably among other things, not thinking enough before you say yes. Um, and, and so out of every one of those failures, Mike learned something that he later applied to his decision-making. And for me, one of the most moving things that I learned when I was doing the book comes decades after this, when he's directing a revival

of a play called The Country Girl in 2008. And by then he's quite old. He's in his late 70s. The play is miscast. It's not a success critically or commercially. G gets very bad reviews. It's injurious to him. I mean, it hurts his feelings. And then he has heart surgery because he just gets too sick to continue without it. And what moves me so much is a story that as he was recovering from surgery, he took out a legal pad and starts, he starts writing down all of the mistakes that he feels he made on the country girl. And why do you do that?

You do it so that you learn something so that you won't make those mistakes again. And I was incredibly moved and inspired to think about an artist in his late 70s with a lifetime of achievement behind him thinking ahead. Like, first of all, being willing to examine his failure in a really unsentimental way. And second, thinking, how do I do better next time? I think that's amazing. And I think the roots of it are in the years you're talking about, starting with Catch-22. There are a lot of constant collaborators in Mike Nichols' career and in your book, you know, Meryl Streep and Elaine lot of characters who you've heard of throughout the book, but how did he choose these people? And there are so many really famous people in this book who just

love working with Mike Nichols and are just so devoted to him and stay through success and failure as we just discussed. What stood out to you about those collaborations? One thing that stands out to me about those collaborations is how early and how quickly Mike knew whether someone he met was someone he wanted to work with for the rest of his life and how his instincts about that were just about always right. I mean, with Buck Henry, it's a single conversation at a Fourth of July party thrown by Jane Fonda on the beach in 1965. They have this jokey exchange under a tree and suddenly they're lifelong friends. sees her in an off-Broadway play at the public theater way before she's famous and just knows right away that he wants to work with her. With Elaine May, we will never know precisely how they met because that's a story that's kind of shrouded in legend. even uh mike nichols at one point answered the question by saying i met elaine

several ways but whatever the the specifics of it are there's it's very clear that the connection was almost instant and they got into that great kind of sudden we're going to be friends for life, college age mind meld that still happens, you know, sometimes when you're 19 or 20 or 21, but in their case, they were friends for life. I mean, it lasted for the next 60 years. So, so much of who Mike was as a director was, particularly after he came back to Hollywood in the early 80s after his first initial success and then his first initial failure so much of what he did was learning to trust his instincts learning to trust his impulses to move toward a project because he loved the material or loved the script or knew exactly what he could bring to it. And I think he was the same with people.

When he connected to someone, whether it was Elaine May or Emma Thompson or Tom Stoppard, Mike had relationships like that that lasted until he died. I mean, when you were in his world, you were in his world. Was there a period of his life or a piece of material that he worked on that was hard to crack in the writing of the book? Anything that presented a challenge to you? Hard to crack in terms of? How to report it, how to write effectively about what that period of time was like? Well, on a personal level,

it was very hard for me to write about The Graduate and Angels in America. Those were two things that really, they were probably the two things I was most worried about when I went into the book, The Graduate because I'd written about it before and Angels because I had personal knowledge of it and wanted to make sure that that was kept in

proportion, that I sort of right-sized angels in relation to the rest of his career and the rest of his life. But if you subtract those personal issues, I sort of lived in fear while I was working on the book that as I moved forward through his life, um, I would come to a point and I always worried about the 1990s. Like I would come to a point where I just didn't understand why he was picking the projects he was picking where, where something was going to be just,

um, kind of illegible to me. And I, I feel like the thinking of you thinking of Wolf, Mark? No, I'm not thinking of Wolf, really. You're really close. I'm not thinking of Wolf because I really understand the reason that Mike did Wolf.

I don't think that all of his reasons for doing that were very good, you know? But if you look at Wolf, what you're looking at is is a director who suddenly sees that there is this thing called summer movie season and and that you know directors are getting gigantic paydays by successfully figuring out how to weld their own interests to box office imperatives um and money did matter to Mike. So I think what he thought with Wolf is, you know how you sometimes say, I can do one project for them, one for me? I think Mike

thought Wolf could be both projects. That the really acute, funny, cutting, publishing industry comedy of that movie would be the Mike part of it and that jack nicholson turning into a werewolf would be the summer blockbuster part of it and wolf is not an uninteresting movie because you see that weird split like the the what mike was interested in what mike was not interested in and what mike couldn't crack about that movie is right on screen the movie i was thinking of is actually the movie just before Wolf, which is Regarding Henry. Like, that was a movie where I was really stumped by, I mean, I feel like I eventually found my way thematically toward an understanding that what really appealed to Mike at that point in his life was a kind of fantasy that you could wipe your own slate clean and start over that that you know a bullet to the

head changing your personality for the better was a good way of exploring the fantasy that like none of the mistakes I made before matter um but I asked Scott Rudin, who produced that movie, because I really was bewildered. I said, what of Mike is in this movie? And he really startled me, and I put this in the book, by saying, there's nothing of Mike in this movie.

And that was a real, that opened a door for me because I thought, okay, sometimes that actually happens. You know, it just, not everything is a deep personal expression. Mike was at a really comfortable, happy point in his life when he made that movie. And sometimes you make a movie because you want to be in New York.

Or you liked working with the star, Harrison Ford, on the last movie. Sometimes the reasons aren't that deep. But that was a hard... That moment, from Postcards to Regarding Henry to Wolf in the early 90ss was one I really, really had to work hard on. Was there any project that kind of revealed itself to you during the course of writing the book? Something that you didn't appreciate as much as you do now, perhaps? Oh, yeah. That's a really good question i think um i was startled by how much impact carnal knowledge had on me how how

ugly it was how brutal it was i mean i really came away from that movie thinking you know 50 years later if you made that movie right now if it were in the middle of this award season it would be the most talked about you know we'd be having discussions that that uh involved phrases that weren't around in 1971 discussions about things like toxic masculinity and representation versus endorsement um but but carnal knowledge would still be the kind of electric jolt that it was 50 years ago and the other movie was um heart um, heartburn, you know, uh, I, uh, like, I think in all of Mike's work, heartburn is the movie where the, the, the critical, um, consensus was most wrong to, to use a word you're probably not supposed to use about critics. Like, I think,

um, I think that movie got a raw deal. You know, it was very hard for Heartburn to get out from under all of the press around that marriage and that novel when it came out. I mean, movies are always hostage to the moment they're released. But I love the movie and I really love introducing it to people who

haven't seen it because um they're always so surprised that that it's good i mean heartburn has the reputation of being like a bad movie one of mike's failures and i think it's anything but so if people read the book and think oh heartburn sounds interesting. I think I'll check that out. I will be very, very happy. I think it's starting a little bit and I do want to credit your book. It's like, it's almost a meme at this point, specifically the Jack and Meryl eating the carbonara in bed, which you single out in the movies in bed or scenes in bed in the photos. But I don't know if you're aware of that. It's, it's taken on internet meme status. I'm really happy to hear that. You know, we at New York magazine did

the first excerpt from the book. And I was so happy when my editor zeroed in on the heartburn section because I thought it was kind of counterintuitive and and uh a really i also think in some ways it's a great introduction to mike because his strengths as a director the the little moments that he finds which which really are exemplified by that scene on the bed um you know those those scenes where you feel like you're catching a kind of private glimpse of behavior that you will also recognize, but that you haven't seen in a movie before. That's a very, very Mike Nichols touch, if there is a Mike Nichols touch. And Heartburn is full of it.

Also his flair for firing good actors from good parts to replace them with arguably better actors or at least actors who are better for the parts is kind of legendary throughout the book too um we could probably talk about mike nichols for five hours but we have to wrap up mark you know we usually end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen you're a film historian we're talking a little bit about oscar stuff but is there just anything in the whole wide world of movies that you've seen that you've loved? You know what? Last night for the first time I watched this 1963 movie called shock corridor

directed by Sam Fuller. You know, there, there are huge gaps. I will admit in my film education and I love that there are still gaps and I love that there are things I have to fill in. So how I missed shock corridor, which is, is you know one of the very first movies um ever picked by the criterion collection and is in the national film registry I mean I have no excuse except I

never got around to it so I saw shot corridor last night and I was flabbergasted and just enthralled by it it's it's it's incredible and and i was so happy to um discover it so so for me it's just a reminder to you like continue to to prowl around and and go you know go try to fill in those blanks it has kind of a an insane premise and it's a journalist is it not a journalist right it's a journalist who goes into an asylum. I mean, it really plays like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest if the inmates

in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had made One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. You would get shot corridor. And the filmmaking is just, there are things in it I have never seen in any other movie.

And I was just, I watched it with my mouth open. Just, you know, I think maybe because I'm talking about Mike Nichols a lot right now, I needed something that was as far away from anything Mike would ever have made or probably even seen as I could get. And boy, did I find it. Mark, thanks so much for doing this. Congrats on Mike Nichols' life. It was great chatting with you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. Thank you to Mark Harris. Amanda, that was fun, wasn't it?

It was a delight. I can't recommend that book enough. I was so sad when it was over. It's a wonderful book. As usual, all of Mark's books are wonderful. Honestly, I'd recommend all three of them. Please stay tuned to The Big Picture later this week. Probably won't be spending too much more time on the very stupid Golden Globe nominations, but we will be talking about some of the movies we loved at the Sundance Film Festival with Adam Naiman and whatever else is going on in the world of movies. We will see you then.