Nicholson Movie Quotes

But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.

Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange diminishing effect on works of fantasy (of course there are exceptions; The Wizard of Oz is an example which springs immediately to mind). In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly. I've always thought Robert Duvall would make a splendid Randall Flagg, but I've heard people suggest such people as Clint Eastwood, Bruce Dern and Christopher Walken. They all sound good, just as Bruce Springsteen would seem to make an interesting Larry Underwood, if ever he chose to try acting (and, based on his videos, I think he would do very well ... although my personal choice would be Marshall Crenshaw). But in the end, I think it's best for Stu, Larry, Glen, Frannie, Ralph, Tom Cullen, Lloyd, and that dark fellow to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of the imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction - anyone who has ever seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and then reads Ken Kesey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad ... but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

His first wife said it made him look like Jack Nicholson with the ax in that movie.

You have demons?" "Yes." That answer didn't surprise me, although how these demons connected with the movie was anybody's guess. "Volkswagen demons," he said. "You have Volkswagen demons?" "Yes. There. I said it. Happy now?

George Lucas based Han Solo on his friend, director Francis Ford Coppola. Before Harrison Ford was chosen to play the role, Kurt Russell, Nick Nolte, Christopher Walken, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Bill Murray were considered.

TV stars are cool. Even if their characters are less than admirable, they come across as somehow sympathetic, maybe even neighborly. They are, after all, people you invite into your home every week. If you don't like them, you won't watch them. Movie stars, by contrast, are hot. They have to blaze so fiercely that they fill a screen forty feet high and demand the attention of a crowded theater. That's why very few TV stars have graduated successfully to features. It requires not only different skills but a different personality. You have to go from amiable to commanding. Likewise, some movie stars are simply too big for television. Jack Nicholson is riveting on-screen, but you wouldn't want him in your living room week after week. The television simply couldn't contain his personality.

The thing about life is that life is an infinite subject matter. At any one moment you can say only what' before your mind just then. You have some control over what comes before your mind - you can influence the influx by reading, or by looking through your old notes, or by going to movies, or by talking to people, and you can choose what room of the house or what corner of the yard to sit in, and you can choose to write before or after you've masturbated - this is crucial - and you can choose to tell the truth or not to. And the difficult is that sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because you think that the truth is too personal, or too boring, to tell. Or both. And sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren't.

Bad or good, movies nearly always have a strange diminishing effect on works of fantasy... In discussions, people are willing to cast various parts endlessly... But in the end, I think it's perhaps best for [the characters] to belong to the reader, who will visualize them through the lens of imagination in a vivid and constantly changing way no camera can duplicate. Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow. Films, even the best of them, freeze fiction―anyone who has ever seen 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and then reads Ken Kesey's novel will find it hard or impossible not to see Jack Nicholson's face on Randle Patrick McMurphy. That is not necessarily bad . . . but it is limiting. The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.

I decided to begin with romantic films specifically mentioned by Rosie. There were four: Casablanca, The Bridges of Madison County, When Harry Met Sally, and An Affair to Remember. I added To Kill a Mockingbird and The Big Country for Gregory Peck, whom Rosie had cited as the sexiest man ever. It took a full week to watch all six, including time for pausing the DVD player and taking notes. The films were incredibly useful but also highly challenging. The emotional dynamics were so complex! I persevered, drawing on movies recommended by Claudia about male-female relationships with both happy and unhappy outcomes. I watched Hitch, Gone with the Wind, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Annie Hall, Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Fatal Attraction. Claudia also suggested I watch As Good as It Gets, “just for fun.” Although her advice was to use it as an example of what not to do, I was impressed that the Jack Nicholson character handled a jacket problem with more finesse than I had. It was also encouraging that, despite serious social incompetence, a significant difference in age between him and the Helen Hunt character, probable multiple psychiatric disorders, and a level of intolerance far more severe than mine, he succeeded in winning the love of the woman in the end. An excellent choice by Claudia.

Zane continued to look at her. Even better, he kept her hand in his, his thumb rubbing up and down the length of her fingers. Over and over. Up and down. It was very rhythmic. And sexual. Her thighs took on a life of their own, getting all hot and shaking slightly. Her mouth went dry, her breasts were jealous of the attention her hand was getting and her hormones were singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Obviously she needed intensive therapy…or maybe just sex. Zane’s eyes darkened. The muscles in his face tightened, and he stared at her with a hawkish expression. Had he been anyone else, she would have sworn that he’d just had a physical awakening of his own. Awareness crackled around them, like self-generated lightning. The tightness in her chest eased just enough for her to suck in a breath, which was really good, because the next second it all came rushing out again when he kissed her. Just like that. With no warning, Zane Nicholson bent his head and claimed her mouth. It wasn’t a movie-perfect kiss. They didn’t magically melt into each other. Instead their noses bumped, and somehow the hand still holding hers got trapped between them. But all that was fairly insignificant when compared with the intense, sensual heat generated by the pressure of his lips on hers. That part was exactly right. Not too hard, not too soft. When he moved against her, need shot through her body. Had she been breathing again, she would have whimpered. Had he tried to pull away, she would have fallen at his feet and begged him not to stop. Somehow he released her hand and pulled his free. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him so her entire body pressed against his. The man was a rock. Big, unyielding and warmed by the sun. She wanted to snuggle even closer. She wanted to rip off her clothes and give the goats something to talk about. She wanted-- He licked her lower lip. The unexpected moist heat made her gasp as fire raced through her. Every singed nerve ending vibrated with need for more. The masculine, slightly piney scent of him surrounded her. Operating only on instinct, she parted her lips to allow him entry. She had a single heartbeat to brace herself for the power of his tongue touching hers. Then he swept inside and blew her away.

Any chance you might sit on my face?' 'Carnal Knowledge' 'That's the stuff.' 'No, I mean 'Carnal Knowledge, the movie. Jack Nicholson says that to Ann Margret when they first meet. She's a skater.' 'Well, is there?' 'Are you always this direct?

and Boyer has to be on the Jack Nicholson end of the old routine in which he tries to order a slice of cheese that comes only with the apple pie. (Why did no one mention that Five Easy Pieces [1970], with its “hold the chicken salad, just give me the toast” routine, was recycling old-movie dialogue that had appeared in many films?)

We talked for a while about the difficulty he and others had had trying to make a movie of The Monkey Wrench Gang. Part of the difficulty was that while Hollywood is fine with violence toward people and cars and buildings, they don’t want to make a movie where the principal and intended victims are private or industrial property. Peacock cursed the various producers and directors. He had written several drafts of scripts for the movie and even had one in his room at that moment. The movie had almost been made a dozen times, with actors from Jack Nicholson to Matthew McConaughey cast as Hayduke.

mean, Phaethon? In Ancient Greek, that means The Shining. His dad was the sun god, so I guess it makes sense. Still, any kid named after an old movie with Jack Nicholson as a psycho ax-murderer—that kid is not going to have a happy life.

Bouquet list. You've heard of the Jack Nicholson movie, right? The Bucket List? Two old guys who make a list of everything they want to do before they die. Well, when I was starting to recover, I wrote a list of the things I want to do now that I know I'm not going to die - my bouquet list.

Where’s Muriel, Walt?” Mel asked. He was tired of explaining about this, and it hadn’t been all that long. “Making a movie,” he said unhappily. “Really? How exciting! Since she was looking forward to a long break from that, it must be quite an important film.” “Yeah, so she says. Jack Whatshisname is the star.” “Jack What’s… Jack who?” “You know. Big star. Cuckoo’s Nest guy…” “Nicholson? Holy shit,” Mel said. “Melinda, we were going to stop saying shit in front of the kids,” Jack patiently reminded her, glancing over his shoulder toward David in the backpack. “Oh shit, I forgot. But, Walt, that’s really something, isn’t it? I mean, he’s huge. This must be a thrill for her.” Walt got a fairly dangerous gleam in his eye. “I suppose she’s thrilled to the heart of her bottom.” “Well, no wonder you’re so pissy,” Mel said with a laugh.

Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we’re wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we’re not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can’t flirt, we feel like dummies discussing movies or books, we aren’t in some moral bind with a woman that we need to confess, we’ve each said the other is a genius several times already, and the whole thing is depressing and the tone is false and we might as well go home to our wives and children and rent buddy movies like Midnight Run or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or The Pope of Greenwich Village> when we need a shot of the old camaraderie.

You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. They were all songs that Zach Braff liked, so he put them in his movie. And there's that beautiful moment near the beginning where Natalie Portman hands him the headphones and she watches him listen to the song and she smiles her huge, innocent Natalie Portman smile.

The success of “Batman” gave the studio executives a feeling of invincibility. They asked themselves if the movie owed its success to Guber and Peters after all, or if it had really been the star, Jack Nicholson, who’d made it work, or Mark Canton, the chief production executive of Warner Bros.

Dustin Hoffman once said to me, “Alec, we’re all in line; some of us are just in a shorter line.” It was a very wise statement, because that competition between performers to get scripts and parts is very real and very aggressive, even to people at his level. The biggest stars in the world, when I came into this business there was Nicholson, De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, and Michael Douglas—a lot of great movie stars, and they were all jockeying to get material. That’s something that never changes. The preciousness of good writing, it’s very tough to come by.

The Achilles of the Iliad was an invention of Homer, but many think this way in real life. One of the most common strategies to avoid the agony of being forgotten is by trying to engineer a professional legacy. In my conversations for this book, many people in the end stages of their careers talked about how they wanted to be remembered. But it doesn’t work: they forget you. People move on. In the popular Jack Nicholson movie About Schmidt, the lead character is a retiring successful actuary, stunned to find that no one seeks out his advice; when he drops by the office to help out a few days after retirement, he finds them throwing all his old work in the dumpster. It’s a scene with a lot of pathos, but it is based on truth. As one retired CEO told me as I was writing this book, “In just six months I went from ‘Who’s Who’ to ‘Who’s He?’