The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington • 19

i rr nji iTr 0 yiTJii Spokane, Dec. 17, 1983. I HE iPCHCESMAN-KEVEW 19 Nicholson has right stuff for playing eccentric astronaut 'DAW Hi on his deathbed that dying is easy; comedy is hard. I find comedy hard enough, but that doesnt mean it isnt fun to act in. Youre there to make jokes, and unlike real life, they dont all have to work.

You end up only using the ones that do. Anyway, Id done five movies back to back, and no matter what youre playing, its a hard-stress job. I took a year directing Goin South, and that overlapped with The Shining. Then there were Postman, Reds and The Border, one after the other, every day for three solid years. So before Endearment I needed time for the old tank to fill up and to get happy about the movie business again.

I came late to it, after casting had already begun. The best thing about it for me was that people I didnt know very well really wanted me and liked my work. When youve worked as much with friends as I have, you bring the background of your relationships to the job. This means you never quite trust your own judgment. But the only one on Terms of Endearment I knew at all was Shirley MacLaine.

Ive known her for a long time we both worked on the McGovern campaign, and her brother Warren Beatty and I are old pals but I didnt really know her very well. based on. I saw him as claustrophobic and squeamish, as well as a bit of a lecher and semi-alcoholic. Garrett does what most retired astronauts do to supplement their pensions: They stay in aviation somehow, or go on the lecture circuit, do public relations for NASA, and occasional consultant work. I also talked to Walt Cunningham when I was in Houston, and I remember John Glenn from when he used to appear on Name That Tune.

I never saw The Right Stuff, though, because I didnt want to be influenced by it. Ive never known a movie to be hyped as much as that one is. If not enough people are going to see it, maybe its because people never want to see a movie about anything they think is in the news, as Glenn is. They may think they can see the real Glenn for free on TV. Did Nicholson play the amiably pixilated Breedlove to assure his fans he wasnt really the psychotic killer he portrayed in The Shining or the down-and-outer in The Postman Always Rings Twice? Im not much of a show-people-prover, he answers.

Ive done comedy before, and didnt have to prove anything. But I must admit I was looking for a sympathetic character for a change one I hadnt done for quite a while. The great English actor Edmund Kean said By RICHARD FREEDMAN Newhous News Service NEW YORK If the astronaut heroes of The Right Stuff are exactly that, Jack Nichol- son as the retired astronaut hero of Terms of Endearment can only be called the wrong stuff. Still living in Houston, the base of his former triumphs in space, hes the aptly named Garrett -Breedlove, the decidedly eccentric neighbor of Shirley MacLaine, who co-stars with Debra Winger as her daughter in this appealing movie about 30 years in the lives of a Norman Rockwell, middle-American family. I But theres nothing conventionally middle-America about Nicholsons astronaut.

He be- lieves in wine (preferably strong), women (preferably underaged) and song (preferably bawdy). For an astronaut, he confines his physical exercise to swimming a few laps in his backyard pool, and hes so uncoordinated he cant drop his -garbage in a trash can and ogle pretty girls at the same time. The humor he brings to Terms of Endear-Zment cuts through the movies sentimentality like lye through grease. Comedy comes from real, Nicholson was here recently about his role. And however manic his portrayal may be, its based on long experience with real astronauts.

Ive known about four in my life, he says, including my brother-in-law, who was testing jets at a time when Id never even seen one be- fore. Some 40 percent of his Air Force graduating class died in flight accidents, so Im at home with funeral experiences, too. He himself died in a freak accident when he simply fell down two steps one day and broke his neck. Some end for a test pilot. Before that, hed been one of the first to cov- er the news and dust crops by helicopter.

I based a lot of Garrett Breedlove on him. The character replaces and augments several suitors in the Larry McMurtry novel the movies AP Photo Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine star in Terms of Jl nrS. 51 SPKAGtO mzH 31 IOJ (5 11018 (3 11018 526 YZ4 M. C. HI AND 1224 MATINEES DAILY! 3 25, 5:25, 7:30, 9:30 Sorry, No Passes! RHEEH 1 Of 5 Fabulous Productions.

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