Nora Ephron first got to know Mike Nichols in 1969 when she was assigned by The New York Times Magazine to visit the set of Catch-22. Nichols, shooting in Mexico, had been given carte blanche to burn through money on what turned out to be an immensely complex and vexed production. Ephron, a decade younger, was not yet a famous screenwriter but, according to her Times bio, “a freelance writer specializing in popular culture.” She wrote:
“Whether Catch-22 will be a masterpiece, merely a very funny film, or the first failure for Mike Nichols after two smash hit movies (The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and seven hit plays (among them The Odd Couple, Luv, and Plaza Suite) is at this point almost an irrelevant question for the actors in it. What matters is that the film is a chance to work with Nichols, who, at 37, is the most successful director in America and probably the most popular actors’ director in the world. Says Orson Welles: ‘Nobody’s in his league with actors.’ What’s more, he is the first American director since Welles made Citizen Kane in 1941 to have complete creative control over his final product— including the contractual right of final cut and the option of not showing his rushes to studio executives.”
Excerpt adapted from Mike Nichols: A Life, by Mark Harris. Copyright © 2021 by Mark Harris. To be published by Penguin Press. Reproduced by permission of the Wylie Agency.
Denne historien er fra January 18–31, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra January 18–31, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
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