Before making Birdman, director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu met Nichols to discuss the project. Upon hearing how Inarritu planned to shoot, in long shots that together would look like one very long shot, Nichols reportedly grabbed him and urged him not to proceed because it would never work.
OK, so he got that one wrong, but look at all the things he got right!
He was a succesful comedian in a team with Elaine May, with their comedy album An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May remaining a classic. One of my favorite bits of theirs went something like this---
"Yes, I would like the $20 funeral, please."
"Of course, sir, and would you like a coffin with that?"
Tickets to Nichols' and May's comedy show on Broadway sold like hot cakes and Nichols naturally wound up being one of the youngest succesful Broadway directors ever, eventually winning a record six Tony awards during his career. His most recent win was for his 2012 revival of Death of a Salesman starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
His work in film is notorious. His first picture was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, a film that infamously pushed the barriers of what kind of language and situations were appropriate for the movies, quickly leading to the all-out destruction of the censorship system of Hollywood. He became one of the youngest ever winners of an Academy Award for directing his second feature The Graduate, a defining achievement of American film that still stands strong today.
The Graduate is of special significance to me as one of the handful of movies that were part of the critical turning point in how I viewed movies as a young person. Mike Nichols was a life-changing artist and will definitely be missed. His other film work includes Catch-22, Silkwood, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Closer, and Charlie Wilson's War.
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