The best way we thought to celebrate the great writer Mark Harris’s new book Mike Nichols: A Biography, a book about the famed director filled with the instructive anecdotes he used as tools for directing actors, was to find the best examples the public has to those anecdotes in Nichols’ own voice. In the DVD audio commentaries for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and Catch-22, all conducted by audio commentary-innovator Steven Soderbergh, Nichols masterclasses his way through his celebrated first three films as director. On today’s episode, Ted Haycraft is back to discuss:
how innovative it was for a commentary to have Nichols to discuss his perceived failures on Catch-22;
if these first three films were indeed his peak, his reputation on New York stage and on film as the “Michael Jordan” of directing actors;
how he runs a rehearsal;
and what particular directing questions and techniques he reveals in these commentaries.
Also:
Last year’s oral-history biography Life Isn’t Everything: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends by Ash Carter and Sam Kashner;
Nichols’s editor Sam O’Steen’s great book on editing Cut to the Chase: Forty-Five Years of Editing America’s Favorite Movies;
Soderbergh’s other incisive commentaries for his and others’ films;
how Elizabeth Taylor inspired a scene on a toilet in Catch-22;
if The Graduate is the Citizen Kane of the American New Wave;
and where Nichols stands among that New Wave.
Ted Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.
The Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? commentary is available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive. The Graduate commentary is available from Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray. Catch-22’s commentary is available from Paramount on DVD.