“No, no, no,” Polanski said. “No, wait a moment.”
Grinning. “Yes, Roman. What is it?”
“Look at this script. It’s a hundred-and-whatever pages long. In order to have a movie at a screenable length with the amount of things that you have to say, for no other reason than that, you have to talk faster.”
He took the note, no problem—he always would—but there was a fair amount of ballbusting along the way:
“Roman, I don’t think I should stand here.”
“Stand there! That’s where you should stand!”
“Roman—”
“Stand there and say your fucking lines! Roll camera, fuck you, action!”
He looked straight into the camera: “Hi, I’m Jack Nicholson and I’m making a movie.”
Unlike working for Nichols and Rafelson, working for Polanski was a technical challenge for Nicholson. “I saw immediately that I wasn’t going to be able to do the kind of character work that I’d have done with another kind of director,” he said. “Working like this doesn’t allow you the time or the rhythm—in other words your interior monologue is broken too often by ‘now I’ve gotta move’ and ‘clear the mark’ and ‘check the light’ and ‘make the turn’ and ‘match the look.’ The interference is too frequent to allow the character to grow on you as you work with it over the weeks.” What kept Nicholson afloat was the knowledge that all the niggling details were somehow serving Polanski. Even if he didn’t always understand it, his respect for systems and methodology, his trusting adherence to the director’s vision, were, Koch said, “total and complete.”
But the Lakers were the Lakers. One day on the Paramount stage, setting up for the scene in which Gittes is kept waiting in the Department of Water and Power, Polanski was staring down the artificial “afternoon light” through the Venetian blinds, testing changes in the angle of the slats to produce the precise feel of the waning sun. “It was a tough shot,” Koch said, “tough to get focus because we were panning from Jack’s face to the photographs on the wall.” Nicholson, standing by as Polanski tinkered, was getting restless; there was a Lakers-Celtics game he needed to see, and since they were in Boston, it was probably getting close to the fourth quarter.
He turned to Alonzo. “Is this shot about me or the Venetian blinds?”
As Polanski toiled, Nicholson dashed to the TV in his trailer to catch what he could of the game. He reappeared when called, urging Polanski, who had already kept the crew overtime, to wrap for the day. Polanski refused, and the Lakers went into overtime. Nicholson kept running to and fro from his trailer, and Polanski seemed not to get any closer.
Nearing seven o’clock—uncharacteristically late for the production—Polanski was finally ready, but there was only a minute left in the game.
“I’ll be right there,” Nicholson told the second AD.
The minute stretched on.
“Where’s Jack?” Polanski asked Koch.
Koch appeared at Jack’s trailer.
“Bullhorn, it’s overtime,” Jack said. “I’m not leaving now. There’s thirty seconds left in the game. Just tell Roman I’ve been waiting for an hour and a half. Let him wait for a few minutes.”
The game went into double overtime.
“Where is he?” Polanski asked Koch.
“Roman, it’s double overtime.”
“What the fuck is double overtime?”
Roman didn’t care; he ordered them to tear Jack from the TV. But Jack wasn’t moving.
Outraged, Polanski grabbed the nearest weapon, a mop, and stormed the trailer to smash in the TV, but the trailer wasn’t tall enough inside to get the mop up, so cracking it on the TV screen, he didn’t do much damage, but Polanski kept smashing. “You know what you are?” he was shouting, smashing. “You’re a fucking asshole!”
Tossing the mop, Polanski yanked the TV from its perch and flung it out of the trailer. It smashed all over the stage floor.
“Who do you think you are?!” Jack screamed.
“I’m the director, and I’m trying to get the fucking shot!”
Jack threw anything he could at Polanski—his hat, his shoes, his tie. He stripped his pants and threw them, he threw his jacket and ripped off and threw his shirt. Then Roman started throwing his clothes at Jack. They were down to their underwear, screaming at each other, and Jack bolted from the stage and Polanski ran after him.
“Wrap!” Koch yelled.
Jack sped off in his car; Polanski jumped in his and chased him out of the studio.
They locked eyes a few minutes later at a red light at Gower and Sunset, Jack in his old VW, Roman in his Mercedes, “smiling like a monkey.” Both in their underwear.
“Fucking Polack.” Jack laughed.
Polanski started laughing. Getting out of their cars in the middle of the street, they guessed the crew had figured they’d both quit the movie. That made them laugh even harder.
“Let’s not tell anyone,” Jack said. “Keep ’em guessing.”
Jack got back in his car and disappeared down the road, thinking how great it was to have this lunatic, a great artist, for a friend. “That’s a fantastic relationship to have,” he would say.
* * *
Up in Bel-Air, at the Stone Canyon Reservoir, Nicholson was nervous about the nostril-slitting scene.
“It will be okay, Jack,” Roman kept saying, suppressing a smile. “Don’t worry.”
But Jack knew Polanski. He knew he wouldn’t hedge it, that for the effect to look real the blade had to appear to actually slice his nostril, and Polanski wanted the whole thing on camera. Special-effects supervisor Logan Frazee suggested a prosthetic nose for Jack, then reconsidered—he knew in close-up the makeup would look fake. Versed in all manner of mechanics, Polanski came up with the solution.
“Okay,” he said. “I do it.”
He envisioned a blade with a hinged tip. On impact the hinge would give and a hidden tube on the off-camera side of the knife would squirt a gurgle of blood onto Jack’s nose. But the hinge would have to be weak or the blood might be real.
“Jack, Jack,” Polanski said. “Don’t worry.”
Polanski had cast himself as Nicholson’s assailant. To his casting associates he protested he had done his due diligence searching for the right actor to no avail, and while it’s true that Polanski cast many smaller parts at the eleventh hour (casting director Mike Fenton had busloads of actors hauled to location), some in the crew, relishing the mischievous off-camera rapport between Nicholson and his director, suspected that the part must have appealed to Polanski from the beginning.
Frazee built the prop, a nine-inch switchblade that didn’t quell Nicholson’s worry. The thing looked so real, and despite the tests there was no telling if the spring hinge, at the fearful moment, would respond precisely as demonstrated. Further, Nicholson knew Polanski was a daredevil on skis and raceways, and had a hunch he expected the same of others. Nicholson inspected the prop; the hinge, he saw, went only one way. That was unexpected. Cautioning Polanski to be sure to slice in the right direction, Nicholson asked him to please be careful, but Polanski put the prop back in the actor’s hands. “Jack, please,” he said. “Before every shot, make sure the thing goes.”