Mike Nichols: A Life

2021-02-15

Amidst the cacophony of social and cultural noise that’s all around us, we have too often neglected the role of the arts in shaping who we are and how we might be better, or at least different. Like almost everything else, we tend to commodify the arts. Everything from streaming revenue, to box office grosses, to the price of paintings at auction. I would argue that what we don’t do enough of is look deep into the artists themselves. Artists who because of the very nature of their work, must keep their ...

Amidst the cacophony of social and cultural noise that’s all around us, we have too often neglected the role of the arts in shaping who we are and how we might be better, or at least different.

Like almost everything else, we tend to commodify the arts. Everything from streaming revenue, to box office grosses, to the price of paintings at auction.

I would argue that what we don’t do enough of is look deep into the artists themselves. Artists who because of the very nature of their work, must keep their emotions closer to the surface. And in so doing, we can see how their work reflects the best and worst aspects of our culture.

Mike Nichols was such an artist. In a multi decade-spanning career, the films and plays he directed have in some ways impacted us all. In the early comedy of Nichols and May, to the social insights of films like The Graduate, Silkwood, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Catch 22, to his plays that reflected who we were in the human comedy, he not only understood his art and craft, but valued other artists; specifically actors and writers as creative tools to help him to help us see the world.

My guest Mark Harris gives us all of this in his new biography

Mark Harris gives us all of this in his new biography Mike Nichols: A Life

My conversation with Mark Harris:

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