And so, Jack Nicholson learns what is like to be Cesar Romero.
Cesar Romero originated (to my knowledge) the first filmic incarnation of Bob Kane’s brilliantly devised villain, The Joker, on the “campy” ABC-TV sixties TV show, “Batman” in 1966 (and through 1968; Romero appeared many times on the show.) Romero was, for better or worse, the definitive Joker on film for a good 20 years As sixties TV series performances went, it wasn’t half bad really…with a decidedly fair dose of scary-laugh dementia and a rather coarse-and-curdled approach to the role (the tall and muscled Romero’s Joker was also big on joining his henchmen in duke-out brawls with Batman and Robin – Romero was a very TOUGH Joker.)
Came 1989, the Joker was given a new incarnation, in the grand Major Motion Picture introduction of Batman – mercifully sans Robin – with one of the greatest film actors of his generation: Jack Nicholson. Cesar Romero was old news – a misfired early attempt to give us a great villain. Romero was ham; Nicholson was hip.
It was quite something to see, this actor who had already won the Best Actor Oscar (for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,”) the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (for a mini-comeback turn in “Terms of Endearment”) and who had staked a claim as the First Countercultural Movie Star with a streak from “Easy Rider” to “Five Easy Pieces” to “Carnal Knowledge” to “The Last Detail” to the immortal “Chinatown.”
Some purists rightfully griped – Nicholson at age 52 was too old and far too stout for the part – but as a matter of “the movies,” Jack Nicholson was absolutely the epitome of what “Batman” needed to have to have impact at all.
Simply put, Hollywood circa 1988 (when “Batman” went into production) lacked the connection to the comic book world to think in terms of the comic book world FOR correct casting. It was suggested at the time that David Bowie or Tim Curry might be the best casting for the Joker, and that James Woods could even play him (without makeup!) Malcolm McDowell was mentioned (rightfully so, given his maniacal hero Alex in “A Clockwork Orange,” which reportedly influenced Heath Ledger’s modern take.)
But Hollywood wanted a Star. It wanted Jack.
After all, “Superman” in 1978 had been carefully orchestrated around a legendary Oscar-winning “star actor”: Marlon Brando. Brando only showed up for the first 20 minutes of “Superman”, but by his mere presence, he secured funding for the movie and elevated the entire enterprise (and helped lure estimable Best Actor Oscar winner Gene Hackman into the film as supervillain Lex Luthor, and allowed for near-unknown Chris Reeve to play Supes.)
“Batman” needed a Brando, and Nicholson circa 1988 was the next best thing.
For his part, Nicholson had held off on blockbusters for his entire career to that date. Within bounds. He turned down the Redford part in “The Sting” and the Dreyfuss part in “Close Encounters.” More to the point, Jack Nicholson really didn’t FIT the 80
Blockbusters like “Indiana Jones” and “Star Wars” and “Ghostbusters” and “Star Trek.”Instead, Nicholson carefully built a prestige career based on solidly written properties that could, once in a while, yield a big hit or a classic.
Two pre-Batman Nicholson movies were summer blockbusters…except they weren’t. Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980)was a summer chiller hit, but also very much a Kubrick film, which is to say: artful, serious, meaningful. George Miller’s “The Witches of Eastwick” (1987) had plenty of effects and Jack as the Devil himself versus a trio of color-coordinated star actresses (Cher, Sarandon, Pffeifer) , but the movie was from John Updike and wore its “thinking-adults-only” intellect on its sleeve.
Jack’s haunted madman in “The Shining” and Horny Lil’ Devil in “The Witches of Eastwick” made him a natural for the Joker – Batman creator Bob Kane retouched a photo of Jack from Kubrick’s movie with Joker make-up to prove his point to the studios. The producers of “Eastwick” – the superrich, supershowmen Jon Peters and Peter Guber – were producing “Batman” too, and set their sights on Big Jack.
And Big Jack, after two decades of treating his career as a rare and precious thing, with an emphasis on prestige drama…decided that it was time to cash in.
But not before playing coy. Nicholson wasn’t the biggest of stars in 1988, but he had a prestige name and a track record, and he knew how to make a deal. He held out for a long, long time on “Batman.” He was courted. He was flown to London to see the sets in pre-production and party with the ladies. And for all of it…Nicholson delayed. Stalled. Parried.
Finally, even Guber-Peters had enough, and talks began with Robin Williams to play the Joker. Williams was a star back then – “Good Morning, Vietnam” had recently hit – and of course he made a certain kind of sense to play the manic Joker. But the mere thought of what goofiness he would have brought to the role chills the bone. And, unlike Jack Nicholson, at the time, Williams carried no weight as either a serious actor or a villain.
A happy ending emerged: Jack said yes. Robin Williams was tossed to the sidelines (and then tossed again a few years later when his shot at the Riddler went to the hotter Jim Carrey.)
And so, without even giving consideration to the nature of Jack Nicholson’s performance in “Batman,” it must be noted and remembered: he was the actor they never thought they could get to make a summer blockbuster, let alone play the Joker. And they got him. And those of us who admired him were pretty astonished to even READ that in 1988, and showed up pretty excited to see Jack in the part.
Flash-forward a bit: Jack Nicholson as the Joker created within the studios a rather self-defeating objective: to keep casting superstars (or at least stars) in the Batman movies. Superstars attracted included Jim Carrey (on the way up) as the Riddler and Arnold Schwarzenegger (on the way down) as Mr. Freeze. Slightly lesser lights like Danny DeVito (Penguin), Tommy Lee Jones(Two Face), Uma Thurman (Poison Ivy) and above all Michelle Pffeifer (Catwoman) made their own magic at these starry costume parties. (On the side, Big Al Pacino got an Oscar nom and a comeback role as the villain in Beatty’s “Dick Tracy.”)
But Big Jack scored the biggest – a $60 million dollar payday on percentages of movies AND “Batman” toys – and it took until 2002 for the studios to figure it out: WHY hire superstars for comic book movies and give them so many of the bucks? Enter: Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Thomas Hayden Church. Spiderman made zillions and the producers got to keep more change.
Thus, Jack Nicholson’s Joker looks to be an anomaly of sorts, the likes of which we’ll never see again.
His performance? It was great. And it was not campy. Tim Burton’s vision of “Batman” would be his: garish and gothic and somewhat gory – but with a heavy restraint on the violence: Hollywood still saw “Batman” as a kids movie in 1989, a vehicle for Happy Meals.
Nicholson ran the show in accord with Burton’s vision and the “kid’s movie” restraints on playing the Joker’s madness. Nicholson agreed not only to wear the Joker’s white-face pancake makeup and lip gloss, he agreed to have his mouth stretched out in two directions so as to create a permanent, horrific version of the famous Nicholson leer. He alternated his lines from sky-high laughter to Deep Sea seductiveness, and inaugurated a rather stereophonic and lugubrious new version of his once-young drawl. (“People say this is pretty, that is handsome…well, that…is…all…over…for me.”)
Jack’s Joker was a psycho killer, if a rather blood-free one. He shot Jack Palance, stabbed another gangster in the throat with a feather pen, and memorably electrocuted another one with a zillion-jolt hand buzzer (Nicholson’s truly mad and murmuring speech to the charred corpse was filled with weirdly effective choices…the Joker had lost all control, and was talking to himself as the corpse.)
If it paid off for Jack to be the Joker, it was surely the Joker that re-made Jack. A year after his blockbuster “Batman,” Jack directed and starred in a sequel to “Chinatown” (“The Two Jakes”) that failed utterly at the box office. Jack wasn't worthy of 60 million without Batman. But Jack WAS rebooted to grab top roles in the 90's, perhaps capped by his "A Few Good Men" cameo tirade.
In today’s world, Jack is now the ham, and Heath is hip (hipper still with his James Dean for the 00’s tragic legacy.) But that is not quite fair, and rather ignores the different eras in which these two Jokers functioned. In 1989, a Jack Nicholson was REQUIRED to play the Joker. Heath Ledger wouldn’t have cut it back then on the track record Ledger had when he was cast this time around. Indeed, Hollywood kept coming at Jack Nicholson for big movies with a sort of dead-ended lack of imagination: Nicholson was offered Hannibal Lecter before Hopkins was. One figure Nicholson said: enough is enough.
As a major established movie star in 1989, Nicholson had to funnel the Joker through his star personality, just as Brando or Cagney might have had to in an earlier era. There was no avoiding our familiarity with Jack’s voice and Jack’s grin (and he did the first half hour of “Batman” sans make-up as himself pre-Joker acid-bath.)
Heath Ledger’s great performance benefits in certain ways from his not being from a star of Nicholson’s stature: we don’t really know Ledger or his voice (his guttural grunt in “Brokeback Mountain” was reportedly inspired by pal Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade guy). And Ledger’s performance benefits from “The Dark Knight” going almost all the way away from being a kid’s movie. THIS Joker is a knife-wielding psycho sadist. It’s almost not fair. Nicholson had to do the Disney version. In Nicholson’s favor: he got a lot more scenes in the original. In both movies, the Joker steals the show. (That’s why Chris Nolan cleverly DIDN’T put the Joker in his “Batman Begins” origin reboot of 2005.)
No matter. Two Jokers are better than one. There were, after all, two Max Cadys (Roberts Mitchum and DeNiro) and two Hannibal Lecters (Brian Cox first, and THEN Anthony Hopkins.) And two Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins and…Vince Vaughn?!! No scratch that. There was only one Norman Bates.)
Here’s a toast to the first Joker, lest he be tossed to the curb too soon. And sadly, he’s the Joker who is still here: Jack.
