Cuckoo's Nest :: Jack Nicholson :: Chinatown

From one great Nicholson role to another - connecting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Chinatown through Jack Nicholson.

OK - first things first. Let me get the whole Roman Polanski controversy out of the way. Yes, he directed some amazing movies. Yes, he won an Oscar. And yes, he drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year-old girl. As far as whether he should go to jail or not, I think the third one kinda trumps the first two by a landslide. Check out this article at Salon.com for a pretty clear-cut look at the situation.

That aside, Chinatown is still a brilliant movie. It starts like your typical film noir from the 1930's with private detective J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Nicholson) being hired to follow a suspected adulterous husband. Things of course get very twisted from there. Mistaken identity, a mysterious girl, land, water, murder, corruption, and a VERY screwed up family all come into play. By the end, there are so many layers to the mystery that it's tough to wrap your head around... but you'll really want to.

Forget it Jake. It's Chinatown.

Fast Times :: Vincent Schiavelli :: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

From his role as Mr. Vargas (who just switched to Sanka), I'm connecting Vincent Schiavelli - one of the best character actors ever - to his role as Fredrickson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I love Cuckoo's Nest. Apart from Jack Nicholson's fantastic R.P. McMurphy, this film is stacked with some of the best character actors of the past 30 years.

You've got Schiavelli of course, who was not only in Fast Times, but also in Amadeus, Batman Returns, and hundreds of other roles on TV and film.

Plus of course Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Crothers (notable for another film with Nicholson - The Shining), Brad Dourif (Grima Wormtongue from the Lord of the Rings movies - and also the voice of Chucky from the Child's Play series), and one of my favorite performances in the film from Sydney Lassick as Charley Cheswick.

But I can't discuss Cuckoo's Nest without discussing one of the greatest villains on film: Nurse Ratched. Louise Fletcher plays the role with perfect icy malevolence thinly veiled behind a mask of compassion. What's so chilling about her character is the subtle way in which she shames her patients or manipulates the group into shaming each other. She is more concerned with maintaining her power by making these men feel bad about themselves than in helping the men under her care.

Check out more on Nurse Ratched in the Villains episode of my At Home Film Festival Podcast by clicking here.