2/11/11

In which our hero contemplates his next project, chases a mouse around his apartment, and reads emails from his ex-girlfriend.

Welcome to my blog. Previous readers have expressed confusion as to whether the narrator of this blog – or what Henry James refers to as the center of consciousness – really is Jack Nicholson. All I can tell you is that I, the writer of the blog, am indeed Jack Nicholson. However, I should mention that the characters in this rather disjointed chronicle are NOT intended to represent any real people, living or dead. And so, I felt this preface necessary.

LATEST NEWS!
From now on my blog will be distributed online here instead of on my official website.  As I have no control over the content of my own “official” website, my agent suggested I begin this unofficial blog as a kind of outlet for my thoughts and feelings – which I believe have caused him some unrest as of late.

Letters:
I would like to formally apologize to the Heath Ledger family– one: for calling him Keith instead of Heath in last week’s blog, and two: for any inappropriate and disparaging remarks concerning his impersonation in the Batman remake. Heath was a talented performer who will be dearly missed by a generation unfamiliar with Tim Burton’s original Batman film.


 Excerpt from a spat that occurred on the set of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie:

Jack Nicholson: Da da da da da da, da da da da da da BATMAN!
Tim Burton: It’s na na na na na na, na na na na na na BATMAN!
Jack Nicholson: No it’s not. It’s da da da da da da, da da da da da da BATMAN!
TB: What are you talking about? It’s na na na na na na
JN: Da! It’s da da da da da da!
TB: This is ridiculous!
JN: Fuck you…
TB: Fuck you!
JN: You’re never gonna make another movie!
TB: I’ll make more money than you!
JN: No you won’t!
TB: Fuck you.
JN: Fuck you.
TB: Fuck you.
Jack Nicholson pours his cup of hot coffee all over Tim Burton’s new white shirt. Brookes Brothers. “It was an accident,” he explains.

Charlie Chaplin hated barbers and waiters.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of taking a script meeting with Woody Allen.
I am currently in New York, preparing to undertake the “Holy Trinity” of writer, director and star in my next film. My bookshelves are crowded with biographies on others who have assumed all three roles in a single motion picture: Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, Erich von Stroheim, etc.

In his chapter about the production of von Stroheim’s The Wedding March, Thomas Quinn Curtiss digresses in a paragraph about Anton Wawerka, the Czech actor who was cast in the role of Emperor Franz-Joseph. Were I to write my story out as formal autobiography instead of blog, I’d choose this paragraph as the opening quote for my book:


To inspire him with confidence, von Stroheim ruled that the Austrian national anthem by Haydn be played whenever he appeared. This practice was repeated whenever Wawerka visited a cafĂ© in Hollywood, and its thrilling notes always caused him to adopt the Imperial stride. After the film was finished and his empire gone, he was greatly depressed over the fact that the anthem no longer greeted his arrival. He fell into deep melancholia and suffered a nervous breakdown, another victim of von Stroheim “realism.”[1]



Five years earlier, Wawerka played Franz-Joseph in von Stroheim’s Merry-Go-Round. Two years later, he was credited with the same role in the Columbia Pictures film Melody Man. I have no knowledge of any other character portrayed by the actor.

After grabbing the above quote for this blog, I closed the von Stroheim book before comfortably slipping into dumbness. From there, I caught the tail of Cragganmore’s scamper across the wood floor, and the waking flutter shook my drowse.

No cheese in the unmarred cage. I gently scrape a miniature cube of cheese from my finger onto the inviting metallic swing, but I do this with little faith in the device. Somehow, the mouse has repeatedly proved himself capable of sneaking inside the cage and escaping, cheese in mouth, without setting off the mechanism that would shut the trap door. The humane alternative for trapping my little buddy has not brought out the gamesman in me – I had hoped to feel like John Wayne in Hatari! but I feel instead like a jeweler fiddling with crosshatched strands of metal (something like Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker). Not that the oblong cage hadn’t proved to be a success for the earlier release of Mr. Morangie (or Glen) into a public trashcan – an alternative that likely resulted in a freezing death or a less compassionate trap in another home.

Actually, it was not quite a release. Mr. Morangie was trapped in the cage, making all kinds of commotion, and – as per the attached instructions – I covered everything with a plastic bag before taking it outside, where I was supposed to open the cage door to set Mr. Morangie free. However, standing there in the cold, I somehow could not open the cage door – not that the door wouldn’t open… I mean, I wouldn’t know because I never tried. I couldn’t even remove the cage from the plastic bag – and when the movement within my hands, within the plastic, within the cage, grew more aggressive, I put everything in the public trashcan and walked away. It’s entirely possible that instead of freezing to death or finding one of those old fashioned traps that break the mouse’s neck upon contact, Mr. Morangie starved a slow death, trapped in that plastic covered humanitarian cage for the remainder of his days – which numbered God knows how many.

After hunting mouse under kitchen cabinets, jostling my baseball bat within the wooden corners of my ground floor studio apartment in the heart of Greenwich Village, and scrutinizing the seemingly altered trimming that envelopes this narrow dwelling like concrete curbing, I have become ensnared by an autumn russet stitched across the unmade bed. I would be happy to waste the day tangled in the clutter of sheets, undressed and unwashed, but everything feels like a potential nest for Cragganmore.

10:30 in the morning. I am determined to return to my screenplay. I will remove my finger from my eyebrow! I’ve been sitting in front of my computer, at a table temporarily used for both eating and writing, with my finger on my eyebrow for a good fifteen minutes now.

Ten minutes later. I have now returned to this blog after opening old emails from Edith.

Here is what I have read:

This message is not flagged. [ Flag Message – Mark as Unread ]
Date:
 Tue, 28 Sep 2005 13:06:58 -0700 (PDT)
From:
Subject:
 Re:
To:
"jack nicholson" <robEdupea>@yahoo.com>

my dear ‘jack’,

every time i come home, i pass the monopoly board in my closet and i take it out to look at marvin gardens and  i think of you.

your queen of marvin gardens,
e

jack nicholson < robEdupea > wrote:

Dear Edith,
Last night I did absolutely nothing.
I sat on my bed.
I shut my eyes and drifted to sleep.

A popup appears on the computer. An attractive woman in her underwear stares at me with a cartoon bubble asking if I would like to date her. The options YES and NO are open invitations below her picture. I am tempted to select NO – just as a test – but I refrain from making any selection at all.

I dreamed of sitting on my bed
and eating a salami sandwich. I woke up,
made myself a salami sandwich, and sat on my bed
to eat it.
--- edith beaumont wrote:

> dearest jack,
>
> sometimes i find myself racing through work,
> forgetting to push patrons to take advantage of
> our lunch box specials, so i can get back to the
> important business at hand:
> replying to your emails.
>
> i don’t like to read things like ‘love is an illusion’.
> you shouldn’t be such a defeatist.
> romantics are seldom happy.
> until they are.
>
There were times when Edith read younger than she was. The idea occurred to me that she was actually a 12 year-old schoolgirl; that I would have to pretend to be upset that she lied when I found out the truth; that I should secretly be turned on by this. Then I wondered if I could relate to a 12 year-old on any kind of deeper level. Perhaps it didn’t matter as a man got older, and love became a different kind of ideal.

jack nicholson < robEdupea > wrote:

Dearest Edith,

I've dated many different kinds of girls. Long term: before
Rebecca Broussard, I had a brief marriage
with Sandra Knight and a 17 year long relationship
with Angelica Houston, but I messed those up .

Legendary for being a Hollywood bad boy, Jack Nicholson never had trouble conjuring the impression of a ladies man – but it bored him. More than being bored by the types of women he made love with, Jack Nicholson was bored of making love to them the way Jack Nicholson makes love to a woman. He posed for the mirror behind the over-sized sunglasses he had purchased on St. Marks Street for the purpose of concealing his celebrity eyebrows. BluBlockers. He looked ridiculous.



[1] Thomas Quinn Curtiss, VON STROHEIM, Angus & Robertson, UK 1971, p.227-228