Mike Nichols on Critics
"I used to think that a critic was, if honorable, performing a public service."
This interview took place by phone on April 20, 2006, the day after a production of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain had opened on Broadway. The production was suffused in media heat: The cast was led by Julia Roberts, who was supported by Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper.
I did not see the production. Mike Nichols had, and the first thing we discussed was the particularly annoying review from Ben Brantley, which opened as follows:
In Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, the existential enigmas and conundrums of faith that always pepper this playwright's work assume a tantalizingly dichotomous form that. ... Excuse me, I was talking. What? How is she? How's who? Oh, her. O.K., if you must know, she's stiff with self-consciousness (especially in the first act), only glancingly acquainted with the two characters she plays and so deeply, disturbingly beautiful that you don't want to let her out of your sight. Now can we go back to discussing Mr. Greenberg's play?
Fat chance. One of the three stars of the Broadway revival of Three Days of Rain, which opened last night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, is Julia Roberts, who is making her big-time theatrical debut. And though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia.
Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival, which ends on June 18, has become the most coveted ticket in town. Mr. Greenberg's slender, elegant play from 1997 about familial disconnectedness and the loneliness of intimacy has certainly never known—and probably will never know again—such fame and fortune. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation, directed by Joe Mantello and also starring (poor, luckless lunkheads) Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper.
The only emotion that this production generates arises not from any interaction onstage, but from the relationship between Ms. Roberts and her fans. And before we go any further, I feel a strong need to confess something: My name is Ben, and I am a Juliaholic. Ms. Roberts, after all, is one of the few real movie stars—and I mean Movie Stars, like the kind MGM used to mint in the 1930's— to have come out of Hollywood in the last several decades.
What did you think? I asked Nichols.
“Well, I am not a critic,” he replied [this exchange, regardless of a recent article of bilious fiction, appeared in Nichols’ lifetime, on an earlier iteration of my Medium account, and as one of seven posts on my Facebook page. I wrote about Nichols long before his death in 2014. Nichols was shown what I transcribed and removed only one thing—a reference to the teeth of a particular critic.] “I am grateful that I am not a critic, because I don’t know that anyone would value what I would write. I used to think that a critic was, if honorable, performing a public service. The critic was reporting on an event, and letting us know how he or she felt about the work in question. I’m not sure when it became a form of performance art. Some say it was John Simon, who took the cruel badinage of the clever failure out of the bars and back rooms and right on to the printed page. That could be right. I don’t know the lineage.”
Were you ever hurt by anything Simon wrote?
“No, but I was hurt for others. When he devoted space to the uberous, sagging breast of Zoe Caldwell, or let us know that he was so clever that in [Barbra] Streisand’s nose he saw a ziggurat of meat, he failed as a critic and a reporter. It was a performance for other critics, which is what I think critics often do. They have been doing it for some time. I remember being at a screening and seeing Kathleen Carroll—dear God, does anyone even remember there was a Kathleen Carroll?—and Rex Reed, and they were arguing over who had been meanest in their dissection of a recent film. Look, I’ve made bad films. I’ve directed plays that didn’t work. I can live with having someone come, sit, take notes, and tell their readers that it didn’t work for them. But now they review me. They reference my life, my residences, my friends. They do this with anyone who has moved to what is derogatorily known as ‘the main stem’ or ‘Broadway,’ but which often means corruption. I often wonder why some critics write for publications that advertise luxury items and still insist on walking into the sulfurous air of commercial theatre. They could abstain.”
Back to Three Days of Rain.
“Let me make my point. Far too many critics are writing for each other. To score points. To get some attention. I agree with John Gregory Dunne on a couple of things. Barely. But I do think he’s right that no one sets out to become a critic. It’s something people fall or slide or sidle into. Many critics had dreams of acting or writing plays or directing. Some of them have come up to me to ask if I might be interested in reading something they’ve written. I want to say—and I do not say—that I remember with blinding clarity what they had written about me. But I am…What am I? What was that great description of training at the [Hotel] Carlyle?”
We were trained to be polite to the point of autism.
“Yes! I am polite to the point of autism. A temporary aphasia visits me. My plate is full or something. So critics are by nature, I think, angry. They are also—bear with me—human, so they want attention. So they perform. Back to John Gregory Dunne: He once wrote or said—actually he both wrote and said, many times—that hateful reviews or profiles are written solely for the subject of the piece. I disagree. I do think scores are being settled. Envy slaked. But I really think they’re writing for the boys and gals in the back room. Their fellow critics, who lick each other in appreciation and on their wounds when they get shot down or fired or ignored.
“But back to John Simon. No one has ever gone to or avoided a play or musical or film based on anything he has written. No one trusts him. They laugh with him and at him. If they can find him: He has fallen to smaller and smaller venues. It was once suggested that a comedy act of people reading his reviews in his odd accent and head movements be done. His sheer delight in malice. But that would have been to give him attention, so we kept our comedy act to private rooms. Simon was read as a lark, only it wasn’t such a lark to those who picked up a magazine and read how ugly or untalented they were. But Simon knew—thank God—that no reader cared about what he wrote. He lamented this to others. We loved it.
“Now, on to the review of Three Days of Rain. I stopped reading it after the first paragraphs because it was not a review but a rancid attempt at creative writing. It announced the cleverness of the reviewer, and took its time in letting us know what he thought, and I didn’t care what he thought after that mincing introduction. If I were to be a critic, I would write about how the play and the performances affected me. Who cares about the history of the play? Write about the play and what it is saying. Did I see flaws? Yes. Could I have done better? I doubt it. Of course I could never write a review of that production because of my relationship with Julia and others with the production. But Harold Clurman managed to do it well. I don’t know how. Perhaps it was the basic decency of the man. His honesty in reminding us that he worked both sides of the street. I always felt educated by Clurman. I trusted his opinions, even when I disagreed with them.
“But back to Simon, whom I truly detest. I mean, what a waste of intelligence and erudition. I remember at our dinner with Carrie Nye a glancing mention of what she reported about Simon to New York magazine, and they retained him! I remember Liz Smith telling me that she called Carrie Nye the day after this happened—so many people had heard it and told her about it. I love that Carrie Nye quipped that her coffee wasn’t ready yet, so could they talk about other things for a bit. Isn’t that great? Then the caffeine and chicory kicked in, and Carrie told the story.
“It is bad enough that Simon knew how close Carrie Nye and Ellis Rabb were [the incendiary remark you’re about to read about was made in the lobby of the theatre where a production of Arthur Schnitzler’s The Loves of Anatol, directed by Rabb, was playing] but for Simon to say he couldn’t wait until AIDS wiped out all the homosexuals in the theatre! I mean, this is someone a publication trusts to be a critic? To offer opinion, aid, and counsel to readers on matters of taste? Simon is the worst, but they are all fairly worthless.
“Look at Tennessee [Williams]. Slaughtered by the critics, particularly Robert Brustein, another frustrated, poorly utilized talent. The piece on William Inge that Brustein wrote! That was assassination, not criticism. But a career was made. He got the attention he craved. Richard Gilman was correct about my Uncle Vanya, virtually nothing else. He was a sad disaster of a man. Bile in ill-fitting pants, keening for an audience.. Listen, only someone like you, living in a small town, desperate to learn about productions before your time, turn to microfilm and yellowing issues to see what was said about things. But now that you have begun to see things, to know the people who bring them to life, the reviews fade. A few thousand copies of the books sold, mostly to other aspiring critics. Their words will fade. The works, if good, will live on.
“And I had a good time with Three Days of Rain. Richard Greenberg is a good writer. Julia Roberts was magical. Bradley and Paul are good, magnetic actors. I did not see anyone around me having a bad time. Another thing I would do if I fell into criticism: Give people a chance. Time. Consideration. I would want to be a critic that wanted whatever I was reviewing—theatre, film, opera—to last, to thrive. Tread gently.”
This post first appeared on Facebook in 2009.
Photograph of Mike Nichols by Tony Cenicola.