Remembering 'The Graduate' Director Mike Nichols

​

Mike Nichols, one of America's most celebrated artistic minds,  ​passed away from cardiac arrest yesterday at the age of 83. His influence on film, theater, and comedy is immeasurable. It seemed like he could do (and did) everything. The 30 Rock character Tracy Jordan popularized the term EGOT to describe someone who won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award in their career, but Mike Nichols personified that achievement, and then some.

Self-identifying as a Mike Nichols fan is one of those things people often do to seem esoteric, arty, and intelligent in the same way that you can say you love The Kinks more than The Beatles or you read Kafka for fun. But in his prime, Nichols was not just a brilliant artist, he was also a commercial force to be reckoned with in ways few performers, writers, or directors could ever hope to be. His work in the cinema, in sketch comedy, theater, and television touched millions of people while also having wit, class, and impeccable craft behind it all.

When Nichols first caught the attention of the public in the early 1960s, it was as a performer—half of the sketch comedy duo Nichols and May. Post-war American comedy was in the process of evolving from a purposefully proletarian, working class artistic medium to one in which the urbane, the neurotic, and the literary were prized above all else. Nichols and his partner, the legendary Elaine May, joined Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Dick Cavett, and others in pulling live comedy toward a more rarefied space of sophistication. After winning a Grammy for the album recording of their successful Broadway show, An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, they parted ways. Both went on to write and direct films separately (and eventually teamed up on The Birdcage), but it wouldn't be hyperbolic to say that their output together was never equaled.

Looking at the filmography of Mike Nichols would leave even a contemporary master of the form envious. You can't sneeze without hitting a masterpiece. Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? The Graduate. The Birdcage. Postcards from the Edge. Working Girl. Even the obscure bits and alleged misfires are a kind of treasure.

Catch-22 is an imperfect, but fascinating adaptation of an unfilmable book. Wolf, the Jack Nicholson vehicle where Jack and James Spader play publishing industry rivals who turn into werewolves, was a satire that fell flat, but that description alone should make you rush out to watch it immediately just for the absurdly ballsy climax.

Day of the Dolphin is literally about a dolphin trained to assassinate the President of the United States. Relish the fact that a movie like that exists at all. I would even go to bat for What Planet Are You From? Garry Shandling, fresh off The Larry Sanders Show, made a go of film stardom in a picture about an alien tasked by his home planet (that has run out of females to breed with) to impregnate a woman to keep their species from dying off. He also has a mechanical penis that makes a whirring noise when he's aroused that sounds like a broken electric razor. The eccentric, noble failures mark Mike Nichols as a creative force who wasn't afraid to take a misstep in the service of trying something challenging, something unique, or something just plain weird.

One of the least well-known entries on Nichols's IMDB page is the film version of Gilda Live, the one-woman show starring the late original SNL cast member Gilda Radner. Gilda Live is one of the few feature-length documents of the enormous comedic ability of its star. That Gilda never saw the success of contemporaries like Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and John Belushi is a great missed opportunity and "what if" of comedy history. She could do as much, if not more, than the guys on SNL, but it didn't click for her the way it didn't click for so many amazing female comedic performers. Hollywood is still dominated by a patriarchal hierarchy in many ways, but you could never accuse Mike Nichols of being complicit in that.

What should be remembered as much as the accolades and awards is that Mike Nichols seemed to live a life where he was neither threatened nor intimidated by the talent of the incredible women around him. Be it Elaine May, Gilda, Sigourney Weaver, Annette Bening, Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, or his wife, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, he appeared to get the best out of his female collaborators. It's not that he was responsible for their success. Rather, he got out of the way and let them showcase. While we're all grappling with ​revelations about our remaining comedy legends, it's vital to laude Mike Nichols for not giving us a reason to temper our praise as we say goodbye.​

Follow Dave Schilling on ​Twitter.