Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nicholswas a German-American film and theatre director, producer, actor and comedian. He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and an aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their acting experience. Nichols began his career in the 1950s with the comedy improvisational troupe, The Compass Players, predecessor of The Second City, in Chicago. He then teamed up with his improv partner, Elaine May, to form the comedy duo Nichols and May...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 November 1931
CityBerlin, Germany
CountryGermany
Whether something is a success or not has never had much to do with what you do next.
We've all heard those fatal words in a relationship where someone says, 'Just tell me. I promise I won't be mad. I just want the answer,' ... Clive Owen asks his wife that question in 'Closer,' but he really doesn't want the answer because it's just a slide into great pain.
The producers want us to sell, sell, sell. That's my little joke. That's what we do by day; by night, we're artists.
Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.
Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks.
Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.
I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.
We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
In a weird way, when I was looking back, I didn't know I was going to be a director until I was.
I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on.
The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.
That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.