Heeeeere’s Jaaaaack!

Regarding “Still Simmering Under the Shades,” Hilary de Vries’ interview with Jack Nicholson (Dec. 6):

As an independent-minded writer and director, I always find it refreshing to read Nicholson’s extended riffs on sex, drugs, politics and film.

While at a party the night before reading the Calendar piece, I was verbally accosted by a young-20s woman who works for “one of the biggest film producers in town” and has “a lot of ‘important’ deals going down.” Here was this film illiterate saying I was for Big Brother when I said that as artists we should set examples with our work--that it would be refreshing to see leaders and artists illuminate the contradictions and evils in society and the human spirit, rather than pander to lowest common denominators.

This woman, without any seeming understanding of history, was saying that we would be cultural Hitlers if we tried to make films of meaning. That it would be godlike for us to try to make a difference with our work.

She was mirroring why Nicholson’s work has remained so angry and so vital all the years that he has graced our screens with his spirited work. With every angry young (or middle-aged) man that he has portrayed, he has railed against the very forces that this woman represents with her misguided sensibilities on morality and “leadership.” As Nicholson’s passion seems to say, we are decimating the lost youth of our culture.

When a generation has lost touch with the essential distinction between good and evil, we are all very much in trouble. This, to me, has been Nicholson’s humanistic, scalding message as seen in his portrayals of the human spirit all these years.

Keep screaming, Jack, and don’t look back. I’m with you all the way.

ALEX DOWNS

Encino