Its All About Jack Nicholson Ch 04

I dedicate this story to Amanda, a fan of Jack Nicholson and a fan of Bostonfictionwriter. She asked me to write a story about Jack Nicholson with her in the starring role.

I agreed to write the story because I've always been a fan of Jack Nicholson's, too. Normally, as you can discern from my name, Bostonfictionwriter, I only write fiction, generally fiction about Boston, Massachusetts. Only, this time, I decided to sway a bit from fiction and from Boston to write the true story of my meeting with Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles, California, only reverting from non-fiction to fiction by changing the character of Jana, Marty Scorsese's real script assistant with Amanda's name and description.

Jack Nicholson's last starring role, the end of an era.

*

"I've always admired your work, Marty. I'm a big fan. The Godfather movies were my favorite, but now I'm late for a meeting," he said looking away from him and up at the lighted floor numbers anticipation of leaving the elevator to attend his meeting.

Unable to get a word in, Marty looked from Jack to me and to Amanda while smiling an uncomfortable and equally impatient smile and waiting for his moment to speak.

"Godfather movies? You have me confused with my illustrious colleague, Francis Ford Coppola. He made those wonderful movies. I made—"

"Sorry," interrupted Jack again while smiling and staring at Marty's assistant, Amanda and making eye contact with her. "After a while all the movies get jumbled up in my head," he said twirling a finger at his temple and smiling at her, as he would have done in his movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest when he played R. P. McMurphy while mocking and making fun of one of the other crazy patients.

Jack's voice knocked me back to reality.

"Still, we should do a movie together," he said to Marty. "Something where I play an aging movie star falling in love with a young, tall, and very beautiful woman," he said while leering at Amanda. "Yeah, I think we could make a great movie," he said now addressing all of his conversation to Amanda instead of to Marty. "Who knows, maybe we'd even win an Oscar for the best movie, yes, an Academy Award for making the best love scene." He gave her a warm smile. "Of course, we'd have to do a lot of rehearsing to pull that off, don't you think, my Dear?"

"Yes," she said, "especially since I'm not an actress. I'm Marty's assistant."

"We did do a movie, Jack," said Marty with a nervous chuckle and snapping Jack out of his sudden and immediate infatuation with Amanda. "Don't you remember?" Marty touched his arm and lowered his voice. "Are you feeling okay, Jack?"

"We did?"

"Yeah, we made The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Mark Wahlberg. You played the infamous, South Boston crime king, the ruthless mobster, Whitey Bulger as Frank Costello and—"

I drifted off remembering a scene from the movie where Jack was having a meeting with the Asians to buy some drugs.

"For his own good, tell Bruce Lee and the Karate Kids none of us are carrying automatic weapons because here, in this country, it don't add inches to your dick. You get a life sentence for it."

Even though he doesn't look his age, I realized how old Jack really is by an exchange of dialogue in the movie The Departed said by Billy Costigan played by Leonardo DiCaprio that hit close to home with Jack.

"You're seventy fucking years old. One of these guys is going to pop you. As for running drugs, what the fuck? You don't need the pain in the ass, and they're going to catch you. And you don't need the money."

"I haven't needed the money since I took Archie's milk money in the third grade. Tell you the truth, I don't need pussy any more either...but I like it."

Again Jack's voice jolted me back to present time.

"Just funning with you Marty," he said giving Marty a warm smile before throwing an arm across his shoulders and giving him a big squeeze. Jack towered over Marty. At only 5'4" tall, everyone towered over Marty. "I'm just funning with you. Can't you take a joke," in the way that he said the word joke, enunciating the k, made me smile.

I felt as if I was watching him act in a movie. It was surreal. This is Jack Nicholson breathing the same air that I am while confined in this small elevator. I felt as if I was an extra watching him perform. He was acting so typical Jack. He was wonderful and I was so in awe of him that I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

Suddenly, in the way he talked to Marty and in the way that he looked so expressively when talking to him, he reminded me of Dr. Buddy Rydell in Anger Management when he was talking to Adam Sandler as Dave Buznik. I laughed recalling the exchange of dialogue between the two men in the movie.

"Now then we need to go over some ground rules. You are to refrain from any acts of violence including verbal assault and vulgar hand gestures. You may not use rage enhancing substances, such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, crack cocaine, slippy-flippy's, jelly stingers, trick sticks, bing bangs or flying willards," said Jack as Dr. Rydell.

"How about fiddle-faddels?"

"Under my supervision. Also, if you are unable to stop masturbating please, do so without the use of any pornographic images depicting quote, unquote 'angry sex'. That having been said, I'm a pretty good guy and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how much fun we can have together," said Adam Sandler as Dave Buznik.

"Gees, without slippy-flippy's or angry masturbating I don't see how that's possible.

"Sarcasm is anger's ugly cousin...from now on, unacceptable."

Here I was expecting someone else and he was exactly the same person as he appears on screen. Only, I wondered how that was acting when he is just playing himself all the time. Certainly, he was more entertaining now playing himself than he would have been had he shown a different side of his personality and acted like some other character in real life, someone who was nothing like the way he was in the movies. Watching him interact with Marty now was like watching him act in a movie. I was mesmerized by him. In that regard, he was a natural.

"Gees, Jack, I never know with you if you are fooling or being serious," said Marty with a nervous laugh. "You gave me a scare. I thought for a minute that you had Alzheimer's or a head injury or you had a little too much to drink."

"God forbid if I ever got Alzheimer's. It's an awful disease. Imagine always having the feeling that you have to take a piss and not remembering if you actually already peed or not?" He gave Marty a sad face, "I have a friend in Cedar's Sinai Hospital who doesn't even remember his name, his wife, and his children."

"I'm sorry for your friend, Jack." As if an old friend, Marty turned to me, smiled, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let me introduce you to Freddie, Bostonfictionwriter. He's a wonderfully talented writer and he wrote the script that I am excited about and that we are meeting about for the movie—"

Jack interrupted Marty and eyed Marty's assistant before focusing on me.

"Hello," he said. "It's a pleasure to meet, yet, another writer who will make me look good on the silver screen," he said with a pause. "I like writers," he said and then he qualified it. "Sometimes," he said haughtily raising his head high, as if letting out a puff of cigarette smoke, only he wasn't smoking. "It all depends how they act with rewrites," he mused, "if they are sensitive or thick skinned about editing even one of their sacred words."

"Well, Freddie is a fabulous writer," said Martin.

Jack ignored Marty's comment as much as he ignored me. It was obvious that he was playing to an audience and that audience of one was beautiful Amanda. He looked at her, as if to see if he impressed her with his celebrity and/or with his words.

"For me, that is the telling sign," he said puffing out his chest. "Which will I have...pleasure or misery working with them?" He shot me a look. "Of course, I prefer the thick skinned kind, a writer who doesn't think that he created a new religion when writing a God damn sentence." He gave me a look of contemplative circumspection. "Which type of writer are you, thick skinned or...sensitive?"

"I'm whichever writer you want me to be, Mr. Nicholson." I gave him my best smile. "I'm at your service, Mr. Nicholson. After all, this is a movie about your life. This is your movie. You tell me what to write and I'll write it exactly the way you want to act it.

"Ah, I see...you're my kind of writer. That's a good answer. There's nothing I like better than a writer with talent who is not too proud to brown nose the star of the movie."

Just to hear him speak was thrilling and to hear him direct his words at me was more than I could have imagined in a dream. Jack briefly took my hand to shake it with a limp grasp, but as quickly as he glanced at me, he returned his stare to Marty's assistant. It was obvious to all of us that he was more interested in her than he was in me.

"And who is this delightful creature?"

"Oh," said Marty shrugging me his apology at Jack's obvious rudeness in paying more attention to Amanda than to me. "This is Amanda. She's my new assistant. She'll be—"

His attention to her made me feel ignored. Here I am the writer of the script to the movie that he may play and he's more interested in the script woman, albeit, to his defense, a beautiful script woman. Typical Jack, it was then that I remembered what Marty had said when talking about what Jack was like when not on camera.

"He's the same off screen as he is on screen. Quick witted, funny, personable, but irreverent, there's no difference with him when he's playing a role or playing a round of golf. What you see is what you get. He has no off switch from his intensity. He's always on and he'll be like that until the day he dies."

Then, I remembered Marty's fatherly warning to Amanda when she admitted her embarrassment after volunteering her sexual attraction for Jack.

"Save the embarrassment for when you meet Jack. Without a doubt, he'll surely do something or say something to embarrass you more than you've ever been embarrassed before."

Again, it was Jack's mellow drawl that returned me to the present moment.

"Well, hello, my dear. It's my pleasure to meet you," he said giving her his trademark smile. "Aren't you quite the eyeful?"

It was then that he acted so much like Darryl Van Horn, the Devil himself, in the Witches of Eastwick, in the way he was putting the moves on Amanda. He was smooth, so smooth. I could see her falling for him and him seducing her.

Amanda turned bright red while shaking Jack's hand.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Nicholson. I've seen all of your movies."

"Jack, call me Jack," he said breathing out his name as if they were alone and he was whispering it in her ear before putting the moves on her.

"Jack," she said with a flushed glow.

I couldn't believe it. I was crushed. He didn't ask me to call him Jack when I called him Mr. Nicholson.

"I so love tall women," he said still holding her hand and lightly shaking it while patting it and looking deeply in her eyes. "You remind me of an old girlfriend of mine, Angelica Houston."

"I do," swooned Amanda. "Oh, I just love her."

She was tall, taller than you even and thin but with a womanly figure," he said letting go of her hand to make an hour glass gesture with his hands. "I love a woman with hips," he said looking down at her full, round ass. "Forget sugar and spice, hips and lips are what women are all about and she had both." He looked at her and put a finger to her lips. "You have nice, full lips." He looked down at her round ass. "And I see that you have hips, too. Bravo."

In the way that she was looking at him, I was expecting Amanda to take his finger in her mouth and suck it, as if it was his cock.

"I've seen a lot of her movies, too. She's a great actress. Only, I never thought that I looked anything like her," said Amanda looking from Jack to Marty to me, as if seeking confirmation from us and our opinions as to if she resembled Angelica Houston or not.

"You do look a little like her," I said.

"Yes, you have the same body type," said Jack without giving me or my comment a look of acknowledgment. He looked at her from head to toe stopping only to stare at her breasts before raising his chin and inhaling all of her with his smile. "If you don't mind me asking, how tall are you?"

"No, I don't mind you asking at all. I'm 5'9," she said with a smile.

"Splendid," he said in the way that he would have said when playing the Joker in the Batman movie. He slipped an arm around her slim waist. "I used to be 5'10" but I'm shrinking, he said in the voice of the witch that played in the Wizard of Oz and with the same copied hand and finger movement that she used in the movie when she said, "I'm melting." He was funny in a zany sort of way.

Amanda cooed with his attentiveness and it was then that I saw how Jack had a special talent with the ladies. It was obvious that he loved women, just as it was obvious that he was already working on seducing her.

The elevator doors opened and Marty and I stood back while Amanda exited first with Jack in hot pursuit of her.

"Yeow!" she screamed reacting to his pinch of her ass.

"Sorry, you had a bit of lint on the back of your skirt," he said enunciating the t of lint, as he did before with the t of late.

"Thank you, I think," she said feebly brushing his fondling hand away from her ass.

"More lint," he said half apologizing for his hand still being there but without removing his trademark grin or his exploring hand.

"I have a cat," she said this time giving his hand more of a forceful swat. "It's probably just cat hair."

"I'm a pussy man myself," said Jack. "I just love pussies. Meow!"

By the look Amanda shot him, it was obvious that she didn't know if he was talking about cats or about pussies.

Jack turned to Marty and smiled his approval of Marty's new assistant.

"Her ass is as firm as a ripe piece of fresh fruit," he said out of Amanda's earshot while moving his hand to his mouth, as if he was taking a bit of fruit.

"And, by the way, she's very capable in her work, too, Jack, which is the reason why I hired her," said Marty laughing. "And by the disparity in your ages, you ought to be ashamed. You're old enough to be her grandfather for Christ sakes," said Marty with a laugh. "Besides, Jack, she'd kill you."

"Nonsense, I only take Viagra when I am with more than one woman," said Jack flashing his shark like grin and raising his one eyebrow above the frame of his sunglasses. "Yet, if that was my fate, that someone so young, so tall, and so beautiful killed me with sex," he said giving a smile with head raised high, "...what a way to die."

When he said that I thought of another one of his quote he said in the Witches of Eastwick.

"I see men, sixty, seventy years old breaking their balls to stay fit! What for? When I die, I want to be sick, not healthy."

Then, it was Marty's voice that brought me back to the present moment.

"One more thing, Jack."

"What's that?"

"She's a virgin."

"A kidder can't kid a kidder Marty," he said with a smile. "She's no virgin. I can smell a virgin at 100 yards," he said taking a deep breathe and coughing after breathing it all in. "I have to stop smoking," he said. "I would be so happy if I didn't smoke, for a lot of reasons. I can't believe that I can't break the habit. I don't want to be lying around, dying in Cedar's Sinai Hospital and thinking that I was stupid enough, a man who is as petrified of dying as I am, to have done it to myself. I'm a real fraidy-cat about mortality," he said giving Marty a smile.

"Ah, you can't die. You're Jack Nicholson. You'll live forever."

"We've both been around the block a few times with newer, improved, and younger models. You tend to marry them while I tend to give them what they really want, a baby. You have 5 marriages and I have five kids by four different women."

"I'm a close runner up to you in that area, Jack," said Marty walking along side Jack. "I have three kids by three different women."

"What happened to the other two wives? Were they frigid or just barren?" Typical Jack, only he would say something so crass.

"Let's just say that they weren't the maternal type."

"Tell me something," said Jack turning to Marty. "How closely will Amanda and I be working together should I accept the part in this movie," he said lowering his voice and lowering his sunglasses with a purposeful finger while raising his trademark eyebrow above the frame of the sunglasses.

"Close," whispered Marty in Jack's ear, "very close, as close as you imagine," he said with a smile while staring at Jack. "And don't you ever take off those damn sunglasses? How can you see? We're indoors and not outside."

"They're prescription. Besides, with my sunglasses on, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without them, I'm fat and seventy."

Jack turned away, threw back his shoulders and confidently strode ahead of us.

"I see an Oscar for this role," he said staring at Amanda's wiggle as she walked ahead of us.

In the next chapter we discuss the script.

*

Thank you for reading my story. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. Please take a moment to vote, make a public comment, and/or give me feedback. Your support is why I write. Your feedback will motivate me to write a better story the next time.

If you haven't already, please take moment to add me and/or this story or any other of my stories to your list of favorites. Thanks, Freddie, Bostonfictionwriter.

To be continued...