Here’s an mp3 of a three-question chat with director Mike Nichols at MOMA about 45 minutes ago. He was there to kick off a two-week retrospective of his films. I began by mentioning production designer Richard Sylbert, who worked with Nichols on The Graduate, Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge, among others. We ended by discussing The Fortune, his 1975 bomb that costarred Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Stockard Channing (and which Nichols says he still doesn’t care for).

Diane Sawyer, Mike Nichols outside MOMA’s Titus theatre prior to this evening’s launch of a two-week Nichols retrospective.

My middle question was whether he’d be interested in directing that possible HBO narrative film, just announced as a possibility today, based on the 2008 election. In the same vein, I was thinking, as his work on Primary Colors.

Here’s his answer: “I would never again do a movie based on real life. It’s too hard. You can’t find a metaphor. You have to do what happened, and you’re chained to a series of facts. Or even pseudo-facts. It doesn’t matter [because] it’s what everybody thinks happened. And you can’t examine the story and find out what the secrets are. You have to turn yourself inside out to turn it into a metaphor and make it into a movie, but it’s really hard.”

Both Nichols and his wife Diane Sawyer looked very well tended. I’d like to look that well-tended down the road. I wouldn’t mind looking that well-tended now.

Hollywood Elsewhere hereby submits Jason Bateman‘s performance in State of Play — a performance I admittedly didn’t mention in my review posted earlier today — as the first supporting performance of 2009 deserving of award consideration. He plays a sleazy Washington, D.C. publicist named Dominic Foy, and is quite good in a sort-of sweaty and grotesque way. Why didn’t I mention Bateman earlier? No excuse. I was thinking too much about Somali pirates.

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Standard Hotel on the Lower West Side, and about to leave for the start of a two-week Mike Nichols retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. (And, just for fun, a screening of Carnal Knowledge.) I haven’t time to write anything fresh, so I’ll just quote from my 12.17.07 response to Glenn Kenny‘s profile of Nichols that ran on 12.16 in L.A. Times .

Kenny wrote that “one shouldn’t underestimate the Nichols touch” in having made Charlie Wilson’s War into a potentially popular ‘sand’ movie, despite Americans having said /no way’ to every ’07 film with the slightest whiff of any Middle Eastern elements.” Kenny was right, as it turned out — Charlie Wilson’s War went on to become a moderate hit, earning about $66 million domestically.

But “nobody has a ‘touch’ to have and to hold,” I wrote. “Artists are touched by inspiration like lightning — it passes through them, and they are nothing more than lucky conduits when this happens.

“The exceptional, long-lasting artists, of course, are those with a knack for keeping themselves open to inspiration, or who at least know how to position or trick themselves into the right state of mind so that lightning comes their way more often than not. And the fact is that Nichols-the-director went through two creative lightning phases in his life — the first from 1966 to ’75, the second from ’83 to the present. And there’s no question that the Phase One, so to speak, was the more searing and profound of the two.

The creative lightning of Phase One half-began with Nichols’ direction of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff but it really kicked in with the enormous success of The Graduate (’67) — easily his finest film — and continued with the mixed successes of Catch 22 (’70), Carnal Knowledge (’71) and The Day of the Dolphin (’73). The end of Phase One was apparently caused or at least triggered by the crash-and-burn reception to The Fortune in 1975. Nichols disappeared for seven years after that.

“NIchols got a more subdued version of the ‘lightning’ back in his Phase Two career with Silkwood, Biloxi Blues, Heartburn, The Birdcage, Wolf , Regarding Henry, Postcards from the Edge, Working Girl, Primary Colors, Closer, Angels Over America and Charlie Wilson’s War.

“Kenny mentioned a profile piece by the New Yorker’s John Lahr in which Nichols ‘described the waning inspiration that struck him in the years after his steep ascent’ and that ‘he also reveals that in the ’80s he struggled with a Halcion dependency that induced a breakdown.’

“But Kenny doesn’t acknowledge the extreme unusualness of Nichols’ career in that his Phase One brushstrokes — his signature style as a filmmaker from The Graduate to The Fortune — had totally disappeared when he returned to filmmaking in ’83 with Silkwood. He had literally abandoned his muse of the ’60s and early ’70s and become an entirely different (one could say less distinctive and more accomodating) film artist.

“The late Richard Sylbert, the fabled production designer who worked for Nichols on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff, The Graduate, Carnal Knowledge, The Day of the Dolphin and The Fortune and obviously saw it all first-hand, explained this directorial-personality-change arc a few years ago over a lunch at Swingers.”

Somali pirates “captured four ships earlier today and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree,” a new report says. U.S. funded freelance commando squads — a tough mercenary corps of right-thinking Rambos — need to infiltrate Mombasa in force and get those guys. Use the rage about the economic collapse as fuel. Make the pirates scream for mercy and then really turn on the screws. Feed them to hungry beasts, and then use their guts to grease the treads of tanks. And get Sly Stallone to direct the film.

If I’m reading Michael Fleming‘s hazily-phrased Variety story correctly, HBO Films intends to make a narrative feature out of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann‘s “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.” HBO has optioned the rights to the forthcoming book (i.e., out next year) and hired Blood Diamond screenwriter Charles Leavitt to adapt.

In other words, they want to make a Recount or Primary Colors-type movie about the ’08 election. Which means if and when they roll film, they’ll have to cast actors to play Barack Obama, Hillary Cilnton, John McCain, etc. Any suggestions as to who could play whom? I’m assuming Will Smith is out of their price range for the Obama role. Maybe they could hire Mike Nichols to direct? Who’d play McCain,

Hillary, John Edwards, etc.?

“”When are Republicans going to give up the ghost on this?” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked this morning in the wake of a special three-judge Minnesota panel ruling that Democrat Al Franken has won the most votes in his 2008 Senate race against Republican Norm Coleman.

“Seriously. Norm, I like you,” Scarborough said. “[But] you lost…okay? Can we seat a senator so Amy [Klobuchar] doesn’t have to do the job of two Senators? It is seriously not fair to constituents in Minnesota to drag this out any longer. It’s over, Norm…okay? It’s over.”

Today’s ruling “is not expected to be the final word in the case,” the AP has reported, “because Coleman previously announced plans to appeal to the State Supreme Court. He has10 days to do so. That appeal could mean a delay of several more weeks in seating Minnesota’s second senator.

“After a statewide recount and a seven-week trial, Franken is 312 votes ahead. He gained more votes from the election challenge than Coleman, the candidate who filed it.

“The state law Coleman sued under merely required three judges to determine who got the most votes and is therefore entitled to an election certificate. That certificate is being held up pending appeal.”

Hollywood & Fine’s Marshall Fine says he’s “totally stumped” about why Bill Maher would devote a half-hour last weekend to an interview with Ron Howard. Perhaps Maher sees the director of the already controversial Angels and Demons as a fellow iconoclast? Invalid, says Fine, since Howard “just happens to be directing a movie that caused controversy — not because he believed in its ideas but because it’s based on a best-seller and pretty much guaranteed to make big dough.

“So why would Maher kiss Ron Howard’s ass, giving him the one-on-one treatment as though he were a major filmmaker? What — Joel Schumacher wasn’t available? Is Richard Donner dead? God knows there’s a long list of hacks of similar mediocrity.

“I hate to be harsh about Howard. I’ve interviewed him a number of times over the years (beginning with Cocoon) and he’s always been gracious, articulate and friendly.

But is he a major filmmaker deserving of the kind of attention [that Maher provided]? That’s the kind of hagiography I expect from Turner Classics (which ran a Richard Schickel-produced career retrospective of Howard last year.)

“Howard is a highly competent middle-brow movie director. Nothing wrong with that. Given a film as rousing and over-the-plate as, say, Apollo 13, Howard can hit it out of the park. (I still believe he deserved the Oscar for that film far more than Mel Gibson’s overlong, overrated Braveheart). Even last year’s Frost/Nixon showed that Howard had a mastery over a certain kind of material and an ability to work with actors that can’t be denied.

“Give him a sweet-natured comedy – Splash, Parenthood – and he’s all over it. On the other side of the ledger [are] Willow, The Paper, Edtv and – can I even type this without gagging? – How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

“For that matter, there’s A Beautiful Mind, which gave mental illness a heroic Hollywood gloss – and The DaVinci Code itself, as lumbering a thriller as you’re likely to find. Even Tom Hanks looked bored during that one.

“Perhaps some critic in the distant future will look back and crown Howard the king of some school of filmmaking that has yet to be recognized or named. It will be a stretch, even then.

But for the moment, he’s simply a successful commercial director. No visionary, no ground-breaker, no voice-of-a-generation.”

Kevin McDonald‘s State of Play is a straightforward, right-down-the-middle, old-fashioned print newspaper story — well-ordered and comprehensible. (More or less.) “Old fashioned,” I mean, in the following of a well-trod path. It’s a thriller about a dogged print reporter (Russell Crowe) getting to the bottom of a complex Washington scandal involving the usual killings, corruptions, strained alliances, infidelities, chase sequences, etc. Lord knows we’ve been down that road time and again.

The wrinkle this time is Crowe’s shaggy-haired Washington Globe reporter pooling forces with a fellow employee who is also, in a sense, the enemy — a bloggy-blog columnist (Rachel McAdams) who riffs about the social dirt in Washington, D.C., but who now needs to follow Crowe’s shoe-leather methodology to open up a story that involves a U.S. Congressman (Ben Affleck) and the killings of persons tied to his background as well as ongoing investigations into a Halliburton-like corporation.

In a way, State of Play feels like a kind of farewell valentine to the traditions and disicplines that define serious journalism. McDonald is clearly lamenting their erosion, which is mainly due to competition and influence from the 24/7 digital-blog economy, which tends to favor shoot-from-the-hip analysis over in-depth investigations. And yet the film’s undercurrent is telling us that the economic system that supports traditional reporting is weakening and perhaps losing its will.

I was reminded of the emotional currents in Jack Webb‘s -30-, a cornball newsroom drama made in 1959 . (And which is pretty much extinct itself, not being on VHS or DVD or, to my knowledge, broadcast TV.) Webb’s sentimental depictions of the lives of reporters and copy boys and editors cranking out a daily edition are echoed after a fashion by State of Play‘s closing-credits montage. It shows a newspaper being printed with huge paper rolls and printing presses and delivered by huge ten-wheeler trucks — all of these being phased out as we speak. Talk about your sad elegies.

Plus I loved that you can actually comprehend what’s going on — I was always trying to chase the revelations in my head and keep up with it, but it never got too far ahead of me. (Unlike with Tony Gilroy‘s Duplicity, which made me feel a little bit like a dumb-ass.)

I found the portrayal of the tension and rivalry between the online and print newspaper cultures via Crowe and McAdams’ relationship to be satisfying and symmetrical and the right way to go. And I loved that Crowe was strictly nuts-and-bolts in this — ballpoint pen, note pad, shoe leather, just-the-facts, no swaggering-actor crap.

I had been skeptical about the pruning choices in getting the original six episode, 300-minute British miniseries down to two-hours plus. (What is it, 130 minutes?) I’ve watched the British version, which is obviously a fuller and more detailed meal in some respects.( I loved the relative anonymity of the British actors, the standout being Bill Nighy as the paper’s senior editor). The upside is that the honing has demanded a story discipline on the part of McDonald & Co. that kept everything extra disciplined and tightly focused. No time for any funny stuff.

Jack Webb, William Conrad in -30-.

I love that McDonald directed and not Ridley or Tony Scott or (no offense) Paul Greengrass. All of these guys would have made State of Play into something a lot more style-hyper. (And I don’t mean this as a putdown — it’s just who they are & what they’re expected to do.) They would have flash-edited and whirly-gigged this film into a kind of power-pop fashion statement about breathless shooting styles in the Age of Obama — agitation and coolness first, newspaper reporting second.

McDonald, appropriately and fittingly, adheres to just the facts. He keeps the visual style moderate and makes the story clear and understandable, the way a good piece of reporting in the N.Y. Times or the Washington Post would be. On top of which McDonald seems to almost go out of his way to avoid the usual urban-thriller elements. Which is my book is a good thing.

Beware of mini-spoiler!: Crowe’s shaggy Kodiak bear appearance gets in the way of believing in a subplot about his character having previously had an affair with Affleck’s wife, Robin Wright Penn . I’ve never written a paragraph about Washington, D.C., but it’s impossible to buy into the notion of a classy Congressional wife fucking around with an overweight, hippie-haired reporter, even if they’ve known each other since college.

Helen Mirren brings a certain agitated saracasm to her one-note role as the Globe‘s editor. Jeff Daniels is droll and fully believable as a senior D.C. legislator who’s peripherally involved.

[Note: The preceding ran last Friday in the reader comments section, but has been rewritten and expanded upon.]

As much as I’m looking forward to Lars von Trier Antichrist, which will presumably play at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, this just-posted trailer isn’t very good. It has a kind of jagged off-rhythm and on-the-nose quality that doesn’t feel right. It suggests, however accurately or inaccurately, that the film, clearly a kind of forest-primeval horror piece, is on the crude side and dependent on cheap “boo!” cuts. Von Trier should give it the hook, fire the people who cut it, and make a better one.

On 3.24 I summarized Antichrist as being about “a married couple (Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg) grieving over the death of their son. Dafoe’s character is a therapist. They retreat to a cabin in the woods and eventually run into all sorts of horrific manifestations, which are at least partly based in their psychologies. Because Lars von Trier doesn’t do horror-for-horror’s-sake.”

A day later I ran a photo that seemed to identify the inspiration for Von Trier’s use of a Dante-esque image of writhing bodies and tree roots — i.e., Henry Otto’s 1924 silent Dante’s Inferno.

My favorite Antichrist observation, however valid or loony, came from an IMDB poster: “It was originally a horror film about a demiurge” — a deity responsible for the creation of the physical universe — “but now it’s a horror movie about two bankable actors in a forest with a few trained animals.”