As good as it gets
Twenty years ago, Jack Nicholson hopped through the streets of downtown Manhattan, trying to lớn avoid the cracks in the sidewalk in “As Good as it Gets.” Playing the obsessive-compulsive novelist Melvin Udall in the James L. Brooks-directed comedy landed Nicholson his third Oscar in 1998. It was a difficult task, channeling a character that falls in love with a waitress as his local diner (Helen Hunt) and befriends his gay neighbor (Greg Kinnear), while staying true to his core as a grumpy brute. “You make me want to lớn be a better man,” he says in an often-quoted line from the script.
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If you revisit “As Good As It Gets” now, you can see how much has changed in Hollywood. For starters, the movie cost $50 million, a much larger budget than what studios currently spend on character-driven ensembles like “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” or “Lady Bird.” When it opened in theaters on December 23, 1997, it only grossed a paltry $12.6 million its first weekend, crushed by the behemoth that was “Titanic.” But over several months, the movie became a smash hit, earning almost $150 million in North America và more than $300 million worldwide.
The Academy Awards were much bigger back then. In 1998, some 57 million viewers tuned in to watch “As Good As Gets” duke it out with “Titanic,” “Good Will Hunting,” “L.A. Confidential” và “The Full Monty” for best picture. While “Titanic” swept almost everything, “As Good As It Gets” took home a pair of important trophies: It was the last time that two lead actors (Nicholson và Hunt) from the same movie received the vị trí cao nhất acting Oscars.
As this year’s awards season comes to lớn a close, alkasirportal.com asked Brooks, Hunt và Kinnear to chia sẻ some of their favorite memories from the Warner Bros. Release, from casting to lớn script changes. Even though Nicholson wasn’t available to lớn join them, he frequently popped up in their stories.
I saw the movie again last night. It still holds up; it’s so wonderful và lovely all these years later.
Helen Hunt: Jim, say thank you.
James L. Brooks: You know something? There was this thing that happened at the Writers’ Guild, so I had to go back và look for clips. I started to watch the movie. There was a scene early in the movie where Helen confronts Jack, talking about how her kid is going khổng lồ die like everyone else. The acting was so tense & dangerously good, that I was just spellbound. I didn’t understand that I had any connection with it.
Hunt: I talked about you all the time Jim, because you hold such a giant place in my creative brain. I always looked at it, from my point of view, as a story about three people, which was already unique. I was always in opposition khổng lồ Jack; I was serving him food or answering a door or showing up at a door. We were never really in a shot together. And then we did one scene where we were shoulder to shoulder và the next day, Jim brought us in lớn look at the dailies, kind of on fire, và he said, “Do you see what I see? It’s a romantic comedy.” We were three quarters of the way through.
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How did you all first meet?
Brooks: I don’t think we met before auditions, right?
Hunt: No. I auditioned và the story I heard was that you were politely, reluctantly willing khổng lồ see me, because I seemed so not right for the part.
Brooks: What happens when an audition goes great is you see you have a shot at the movie for the first time. At a certain point, Helen said to lớn me, “I don’t mind coming back, but I think you need lớn make a decision now.”
How many actors did you see for Helen & Greg’s parts?
Brooks: I don’t think anybody could tell you the answer to that. For Greg, it was crazy how far the net was cast.
Hunt: It was epic.
Brooks: Over a period of months và months. I was meeting with people who had never acted before và people who were famous. & Greg had only done one part that had been released and a friend of mine, Garry Marshall, said you should really look at this guy. There’s something enormously likable about him. & then I went khổng lồ see him, he was filming in San Francisco, & the scenes played.
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| Greg Kinnear with Verdell the dog in “As Good As It Gets”MARK J. TERRILL/AP/REX/Shutterst |
Kinnear: There was also a scene, after we went to the hotel, he was going to lớn visit his parents in the original draft. And literally that kept getting kicked down the road. It was done for the right reason, because ultimately it wasn’t the way the second act gently folds into the third act.
Brooks: The big khuyến mãi when any picture works is, you’ve found the right tone. On this one, it was particularly difficult. There was another scene from the script, where we look for the person who had beaten Simon. We wanted lớn find that person và punish him. When I cut that scene, I had lớn cut Jack saying a line, which will not appear again in a hurry, because he’s trying lớn get a male prostitute from leaving and stall. & his line is, “I would lượt thích to purchase a blowjob!”
Hunt: You must be a little sad it’s not in the movie.
Kinnear: Here, let me try it.
Brooks: By the way, it should be mentioned, it was murder for Jack to lớn find his character. He had khổng lồ never wink at the camera, never re-assure anybody the guy wasn’t really fucked up. At times, I was no help to him whatsoever. All I was doing was being reduced to, “Not that’s not it,” & driving him crazy. And then, one day, we were so clearly stuck in the mud, and I sent the crew home with hours left to shoot, which is something you don’t do. I don’t know what we said. I know we talked for two or three hours và the next day, everything was ok.
