Jack is at center court in The Forum.
These are his two seats. $500 apiece. Nicholson seats. The seats where you can feel the ball bouncing in the soles of your feet.Here he is, at 56, at the top of his game.
His picture decorates the covers of Vanity Fair and Spy. He just received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, his girlfriend's back, he settled the "alleged assault" case - the one where he took a few divots out of the roof of a Mercedes - out of court, and he's got two new movies. "Wolf," with Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by his pal Mike Nichols, is already creating such a stir that it's being pushed as Columbia's big summer movie, and he's just completed shooting Sean Penn's "The Crossing Guard." Patrick McGilligan's "Jack's Life," a full-scale biography, is on the stands this week. He's outlasted Larry, Magic, Kareem and Marlon.
Earlier, over a simple dinner of garlic spaghetti and salad at the sprawling but modest house he's lived in for nearly a quarter century atop Mulholland Drive, Nicholson says of his career, "I may not be at the beginning, but I'm nowhere near the end."
Nicholson wraps the spaghetti around his fork while Annie Marshall, his longtime assistant, prepares his supplies for the game. The tickets, his binoculars and a bottle of Evian water are placed in front of a Victorian hat rack that's overloaded with hats of every description. Hats from "Batman" and the Lakers together with caps from obscure golf clubs.
Twenty-five years ago, after more than a decade of playing ill-suited characters wearing ill-fitting costumes in ill-conceived Roger Corman pictures, Nicholson became an "overnight" star with his performance as George Hanson, the dissolute lawyer in "Easy Rider."
"I mean if you're a starving actor like I was for 10 to 12 years, and ready to give it up as I was, to suddenly turn around and have a career that's been going pretty strong for 25 years in a row isn't bad," he says. "To me the top is where you can do what you want to do. That's it. And because of the way I approach my job, fundamentally, it leaves me free to succeed or fail on terms that I choose."
And his personal life is on the upswing as well. Despite reports to the contrary, he and Rebecca Broussard - the mother of his two youngest children, Lorraine, 4, and Raymond, 2 - are on good terms while maintaining separate residences.
"We should have marriage contracts," he says. "Five, 10, 15 years. It's this forever stuff that throws everything off."
Marshall tells him Broussard's on the phone. He excuses himself.
Nicholson is relaxed and tanned - 50 pounds lighter than his "Two Jakes" days and working on his golf game.
"Ray's throwing up," he says, after returning from the call. "He's quite a guy. My main man."
Nicholson's Oscars for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Terms of Endearment" and his AFI award are on the top shelf of his bookcase - just out of reach. Pictures of Lorraine and Raymond are at eye level. The complete works of Eugene O'Neill share space with Jim Harrison, Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco and Nostradamus.
In the other room, Nicholson's art collection begins with a Picasso and ends, upstairs, with a Matisse. In between, there's a bathroom with a clear acrylic toilet seat encasing a full-length rattlesnake.
"I buy what I like," he says. "Fortunately, as an added bonus, most of what I like goes up in price." So does he.
In 1956, his first year as a professional actor, Nicholson earned less than $2,000. Now, he doesn't begin to talk unless the production can handle his minimum asking price of $5 million. And with "Batman," after everything was added up, he took in $60 million.
In 1965, some four years before "Easy Rider," Nicholson formed Proteus Films - named after the Greek God who changed his shape at will.
It's an appropriate symbol for an artist whose roles have ranged from Jonathan, the disaffected, sexually repressed youth in "Carnal Knowledge," and Jake Gittes in "Chinatown" to the rock-jawed Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" and the Joker in "Batman."
"Game time," he says. "Ready?"
On the same night that CBS is airing "The American Film Institute Salute to Jack Nicholson," a week after the event, he's off to a ball game between two also-rans - Dallas Mavericks vs. Los Angeles Lakers - and he's not having his program taped because he hates seeing himself on television.
"I saw it already," he says.
While downplaying the AFI award, he does appreciate the comments from his co-stars and the fact that the man he considers the premier of all directors - John Huston - was a previous recipient.
Candice Bergen, Faye Dunaway, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Michelle Pfeiffer all gave public testimony at the AFI ceremony about their affection for Nicholson.
"Everything the gals said was right on the money, and every one of them looked at me in the eye the whole time. It was great," he says.
What about Nicholson's AFI speech - the one that ended with the exclamation, "you ain't seen nothing yet."
"I was still writing the speech at 6:15 on the way to the show, and it still wasn't finished," he says. "When I got up there I had a bunch of note cards, which I lost track of, but other than that it was an absolutely delightful experience."
Nicholson asks Dan Cahill, his driver, to slip in a cassette of guitar music Nicholson had assembled. "I make the tapes up myself."
"I think I'll take a year off," Nicholson says, after taking a long puff on his cigar.
For a man whose life is most often defined by his work, this isn't an idle decision.
"I'm a working man," he says proudly, as if he never left his New Jersey birthplace. "It'll be an interesting experiment."
Many of his friends doubt that he'll last the year.
Though Nicholson says he's taking a year off, a few minutes later he's considering a remake of Sinclair Lewis' "Dodsworth." The original starred John Huston's father, Walter.
"I think it's time for that picture, and I think I could do something with it," he says.
What about the other Huston? Anjelica Huston, who spent nearly two decades in an on-again, off-again relationship with Nicholson?
"She's in this Sean Penn picture with me," he says. "She's married."
Nicholson glances out the window.
"How we doing, Dan?" he asks. "Be there on time?"
"This AFI thing forces me to do things I wouldn't have done ordinarily," he says. "You know that I hate reminiscing. But it got me thinking. I'm very proud of the directors I've worked with. And I think one of the reasons I've worked with so many good directors is that I can punch through a project that's not selling itself. I'm good at giving assists in that department."
Nicholson's list of directors is impressive - Huston, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski, Michelangelo Antonioni, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Milos Forman, Jim Brooks, Hector Babenco, Tony Richardson, Elia Kazan and Ken Russell, among others.
Nicholson says he is particularly fond of Kubrick's "The Shining" and Polanski's "Chinatown."
So why aren't there any successors to these filmmakers?
"The machine took over," he says. "In a year when `Fearless' is the most adventurous movie we made - I love the movie, don't get me wrong - and I liked `Searching for Bobby Fischer.' But that's it for movies taking chances. It's not just the imagery. It's the sensibility and the writing that get so pressured in one way. We've almost become self-censoring. Anything idiosyncratic inside the writing, we tend to plane it off, rather than risk going for it, which is what I'm mainly interested in."
Nicholson reflects some more as the street lights dance by on his sunglasses.
He hates to lose - at anything - and it sticks in his craw that "The Two Jakes," his most recent directorial effort, died at the box office.
"It's a shame we dropped the ball with `Two Jakes,' " he says. "When you make the movie in a key that the audience is not hearing right now, it's the director's mistake, after all."
His mind shifts to the game. "Dallas doesn't have much. But, then again, neither do we. And neither do the Celtics. We're all at least three years away. . . . I'll tell you something, coaching is not the Celtics' problem. They've got excellent coaches. They're just a mite short in the talent pool."
The closer we get to the Forum, the darker it becomes as the shadows created by Queen palms and ponderosa pines flicker across Nicholson's face.
"While we're in the past, I almost turned down `Batman.' I'm glad I didn't." He grins. "I did turn it down, but then I met Tim Burton. I like it for the same reason I like basketball - night sports."
The limousine cuts through the traffic waiting in line at the Great Western Forum - home of the Los Angeles Lakers. Jack doesn't wait. His driver urges the limousine down into a long driveway. The reserved section. Nicholson checks the tickets.
"Won't be long, Dan," he says, as he leads the way through several corridors and out to center court, where the Lakers are already leading 42 to 16 after the first quarter.
"Looks like an early night," he says, as he strides toward the seats, while murmurs of his name follow in his wake.
During the break, the Laker girls begin their dancing. They're all staring at him. He's showtime.
The Mavericks begin to cut into the Lakers' lead, and Nicholson shifts in his seat.
Nicholson pans the crowd with his binoculars. He doesn't say what he's looking for. But it's no secret, either. Night sports.
"I'm not a frontrunner," he says. "I'm with them from the bottom to the top. Besides, if the Lakers play it right they could end up with two lottery picks."
The Mavericks continue to press but the Lakers hold on to win 106 to 101 - a victory that Lakers forward James Worthy refers to later as "embarrassing."
Seconds before the final buzzer, Nicholson springs to his feet. A quick spin move to the right, and Nicholson is behind the security guards. In moments, he's back in the car headed northeast. Cahill behind the wheel.
"They've won the last seven games I've been to," he says, as he grabs the bottle of Evian. "A win is a win."
It's been quite a life - so far - for Nicholson, and he's had many substantial offers to put it all down on paper. He hasn't. But what does he think of "Jack's Life," McGilligan's biography?
"I didn't talk to him and I didn't tell my friends not to talk to him," he says. "And I haven't read it. If they asked, I advised them. I won't say what I said."
"I'd like to think that I can retain a little bit of mystery about myself," he says, as Cahill accelerates back up the Hollywood hills toward home.