Jack Nicholson: The Early Years

Bruce Dern

59 bruCe dern Bruce Dern gained widespread popularity for killing John Wayne. He did it in the Mark Rydell film The Cowboys, where he played a lunatic cattle rustler. Dern, like his good friend Jack Nicholson, became an overnight success after about ten years in the business. He rose to stardom through a lot of low-budget horror and exploitation films and by playing numerous small roles in major films. In the first category there were films like The Trip, Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte, and The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda. And in the second there were Waterhole #3, Will Penny with Charlton Heston, and Marnie. Dern worked with Nicholson on quite a few films, from Roger Corman’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and Richard Rush’s Psych-Out to his fine supporting role in Nicholson’s Drive, He Said. Jack and Bruce also did a small film together called Rebel Rousers, which was not released until 1970, despite being made in 1967. Although Bruce Dern is a quiet, peaceful man offscreen, he has the ability to play the most disconcerting madman you’d ever like to see on the screen. He did it in Psych-Out and, as mentioned, in The Cowboys. He also was a spaced-out astronaut in Silent Running, his first starring role in a major film. After that film, to display his remarkable versatility as an actor, Dern did a complete role reversal. He costarred with Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson’s extraordinary low-key film The King of Marvin Gardens, and there was a lot of speculation that he might have an Oscar nomination for it, along with Nicholson, but the film was sorely overlooked in the balloting. Having broken the psycho stereotype once and for all, Dern went on to costar with Walter Matthau in The Laughing Policeman, a real-life look at two homicide detectives. Then, in The Great Gatsby, Bruce Dern played Tom Buchanan opposite Mia Farrow and Robert Redford. Dern’s portrayal of Fitzgerald’s upper-crust Buchanan brought rave reviews and talk of an Oscar, but the film was hardly a success at the box office. From the Fitzgerald twenties Dern went on to star with Kirk Douglas in a Western JACK NICHOLSON: THE EARLY YEARS 60 called Posse, which Douglas directed, and then he did Michael Ritchie’s look at the beauty pageant world, Smile. We spoke with Bruce Dern at BBS Productions and arranged to meet him there for the interview. Dern talks in an engaging manner, but every so often we’d catch a glimpse of that calculated craziness that has marked so many of his roles. We held the interview on the third floor at BBS, Dern providing riotous moments with a fantastically manic impersonation of Jack Nicholson. Question: How long have you known Jack Nicholson and how did you meet him? Bruce Dern: I met him in 1961 in the summer, when I first came out here. He was studying in an acting class that Marty Landau was teaching, and Marty Landau went to Europe to do Cleopatra so his acting class fell apart. I was living at Normandie Village, which is a pathetic little place up on the Strip—it’s torn down now—and I had just come out from New York and I was a member of the Actors Studio, and I was like the only other bona fide member of the Actors Studio who was into knowing some of these people, though I didn’t know Jack Nicholson. So I met this guy who studied with Jack, named Eric Morrison, and they were going to do this play, a Calder Willingham play, End as a Man, which was later made into a movie called The Strange One, which starred Ben Gazzara. It was about a boys’ military school. So I went to his house because of the Actors Studio, and when I went to the house they were casting the play out of Marty Landau’s class, and all these guys were there, and Jack was there. And his wife, Sandra, was there, and that was the first time I ever met him. Jack, evidently, was revered as a good actor at the time, as were two or three other people, as was I, although I was like an outsider coming in, and they were all very happy that Jack could not play the part of Jocko. Jack’s air force unit was just activated and he had to...