Al Weisel
100 Greatest Movie Moments: Five Easy Pieces
By Al Weisel
Premiere, March 2003, p. 72
No one can say exactly when the 1960s ended and the Me Decade began, but it might just have been the moment when Jack Nicholson's concert pianist-turned-rebel without a cause fights a waitress for his inalienable right to make substitutions in a diner's menu. Screenwriter Carole Eastman (credited as Adrien Joyce) kept only one scene from director Bob Rafelson's first two drafts—and that is the scene that everyone remembers. "This happens to be something I do," says Rafelson. "I know what I want to eat, and I see no reason why they can't make me what I want." Eastman added one line at the end: After the waitress (Lorna Thayer) tells Nicholson he can't order toast because it isn't on the menu, he asks for a chicken salad sandwich and tells her to hold the chicken, adding, "I want you to hold it between your knees." Now when Rafelson tries to make substitutions, "people say, 'Hey, wise guy, you must have seen the movie,' and I respond, 'Hey, wise guy, I made the movie.'" He feels that the scene's popularity has distorted the film, however. "I didn't expect people to applaud [that behavior]. He's not a hero, [although] he became one to a generation of people who were disaffected."
Not surprisingly, the food-service industry agrees. "Waitresses love that scene," says Thayer. Does she ever request substitutions? "No. I'm a cooperative person."
The moment almost came full circle for Nicholson in his current film, About Schmidt. "Alexander [Payne] did a kind of takeoff on it, where [Schmidt] orders something and she says, 'You can't have it,' and I say, 'Oh, fine,"' the actor says. "I don't like that kind of homage; it tends to throw you out of the story, so I'm glad [it didn't make the final cut]. Although it was funny."■
100 Greatest Movie Moments: North By Northwest
By Al Weisel
Premiere, March 2003, p. 62
Not everyone was amused by the idea Alfred Hitchcock had for the climax of North by Northwest, which was originally called The Man in Lincoln's Nose."There a was a lot of controversy about having us walking on the presidents' faces," says actress Eva Marie Saint. "Some people felt it was like an American going to England and making a movie about people walking all over the Queen." The National Park Service wouldn't let them film at Mount Rushmore (although they did shoot one scene in South Dakota with the monument in the background) and made Hitchcock promise not to have the actors actually tread on any presidential visages. "They built the Mount Rushmore set on a soundstage in Los Angeles," says Saint. "They had mattresses on the floor, but it was still pretty dangerous. There was an ambulance waiting."
Martin Landau who plays one of the henchmen pursuing Saint and Cary Grant, says that Hitchcock told him he wanted to correct a mistake he had made in Saboteur, which ends with the villain hanging off the Statue of Liberty. "'I made a grave error,"' he recalls Hitchcock saying. "'No one gives a darn if the bad guy is in jeopardy."' So here it's Saint and Grant who are clinging for their lives. Aside from the exotic locale and the startling ending (Grant pulls Saint up and—cut!—into a berth on a train heading phallically into a tunnel), Landau thinks the scene is made memorable by the fact that he mashes his shoe into Grant's hand. "There's something so heinous about a character asking for help and having his fingers stepped on," says Landau, who points out that the hand was Grant's and not a stuntman's. "I have the distinction of having willfully stepped on Cary Grant's hand," he says proudly.■
100 Greatest Movie Moments: Broadcast News
By Al Weisel
Premiere, March 2003, p. 58
Movies have always exploited our fears and given us new ones. Psycho made showers terrifying. Jaws made us afraid to go into the water. And Broadcast News made us think twice about TV stardom after seeing anchorman Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) sweat like Niagara Falls. "It turns out that's the biggest fear of people on television," says the actor. "It wasn't obvious, but after the film everyone thought, 'Oh my God, this really could happen."'
In fact, it really did. Writer-director James L. Brooks knew something bad had to befall Aaron, but he wasn't sure what. One night Albert was watching CNN when a reporter started sweating, "like bad Nixon," he says. He immediately called up the director. "I said, 'Jim, a guy just poured sweat,' and he started laughing, and that was it."
When people ask the actor how the deluge was accomplished, he tells them, "They showed me my deal." But it wasn't quite so easy. "Someone said, 'What if we put a space heater under your desk?' I said, 'I'll burn my feet before I can sweat that much.'" They finally decided to put thin tubes in his hair and pump water through them. "The first couple of takes looked like a Warner Bros. cartoon," he says.
"We were sweating that scene, I'll tell you," laughs director Brooks. "It had its own editing room." Though the sequence was considered crucial, it's only now, Brooks adds, that he realizes "how central it is to the three stories going on. It's the night that Jane is going out with Tom for the first time. She serves her friendship by going back to Aaron because his life is on the line. He realizes he loves her and that the love is unrequited. It's all off the sweat scene."■
Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.