War, Peace & Mike Nichols

Yet what seems to bug Nichols's critics is that many of his films don't measure up to his reputation for genius: they're accessible, even shamelessly entertaining ("Working Girl," "The Birdcage"). "If you want to be immortal," Nichols says, "stick to one kind of movie. Be the master of suspense. Be our greatest comedian to cause warm laughter. And then all the guys in France with cigarette ashes all over them can make their lists, and the bloggers can write each other about arcana. I say, do something you want to do, as well as you can—who cares if you're immortal?"

Whatever he's doing, Nichols still looks over his shoulder to his beginnings in improv. "There's very little that's better to teach you what makes a scene," he says. "First and foremost is a fight—a fight is a scene. And then, Elaine used to say, if all else fails, seduce. It works in life, too, but that's another story." At the heart of those scenes are the characters. "We might do some visual experiments, but then he would change his mind and say, 'Nah'," says Stephen Goldblatt, the cinematographer on "Charlie Wilson's War." "What he meant was that it didn't show Charlie Wilson's character."

That focus on character has won Nichols the devotion of actors. In rehearsal, "he talks about the state of the world and the human condition," says Emma Thompson, a star of "Primary Colors" and "Wit." He doesn't instruct but suggests a human quality or impulse. What Nichols loves about movies is that "a lot of people are sitting in the dark sharing something that can't be put into words. And since all of life is basically not mentioning the main thing—that we're going to die—we're used to the idea of something bigger than anything going on but unspoken."

If that sounds glum—if Nichols is, as the critic John Lahr wrote, "fundamentally inconsolable"—it's an occupational hazard of the artist. Yet Nichols, who spent years giving his unconscious a workout, hasn't been in analysis for decades and seems—dare we say?—happy. "I feel like I've been almost unbelievably lucky—lucky that all the awful stuff was in the beginning of my life. Whatever it did to me, it didn't take too much away." He's been happily married to Sawyer for almost 20 years—"there are no words to use except to say it is never anything but surprising and sustaining"—he loves his kids, he has serious money and a vast circle of friends. "He's met practically everybody from God to Muhammad Ali," says Thompson. Then there's work. This spring, he'll stage a Broadway revival of "The Country Girl." And Elaine May is writing a "small movie" about Jerusalem that he'll direct: "It's a comedy about reconciliation," he says.

Nichols once figured out there were only two movies that "tell us pretty much what movies are." One was "The Wizard of Oz": "I saw it with my dad when we first got to this country." Much later, he realized that it was the story of all searches for knowledge—full of adventure and peril. The other was "Casablanca"—"though I'm hilariously aware of its flaws," says Nichols—with its story of giving up what you love for something more important. We know where Nichols's latest movie fits. "The main thing about Charlie and what his story expresses is that a person can make a difference," he says. Wilson, a cheerful libertine who'd done almost nothing in Congress, has his heart touched by Afghan refugees and decides to take action. As in "Casablanca," Charlie loses the girl—his Houston socialite—but gains an unlikely buddy—Gust, a maverick CIA spook. But Charlie's no Bogart. He's too paradoxical, too funny and far too flawed. In other words, a perfect Nichols hero.

© 2007