Categories
Music

It is still one of my all-time favourites!!

How Jimmy Iovine Made It ‘A Very Special Christmas’ in 1985

Jimmy Iovine recalls the exact moment he decided to make A Very Special Christmas. It was January 1985, the day of his father Vincent “Jimmy” Iovine’s funeral. A Brooklyn longshoreman “who loved Christmas,” the elder Iovine had fallen sick during the holidays and died shortly after the new year at the age of 63.

“His passing was bigger than I could have imagined,” says the 61-year-old Iovine. And when Bruce Springsteen called to offer his condolences, Iovine, who had engineered both Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town and gone on to produce such landmark albums as Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes, Patti Smith’s Easter, Dire Straits’ Making Movies and Graham Parker and the Rumour’s The Up Escalator, says he told the artist, “The only thing I know how to do in life, Bruce, is make music. I’m going to make a Christmas album for my dad.”

So began Iovine’s quest to make an all-star holiday record for charity that would honor the memory of his father. “I didn’t want to make any money on it,” he tells Billboard. “I wanted to take money out of the equation.” The album featured the biggest acts of the time: Springsteen, Madonna, Bon Jovi, Run-DMC, Sting, John Mellencamp, Stevie Nicks, the Pointer Sisters and U2. Released in late 1987 with a distinctive red-and-gold Keith Haring cover, A Very Special Christmas has sold an estimated 4.5 million copies (when its RIAA double-platinum certification and Nielsen SoundScan numbers are combined). All of its profits continue to go to the Special Olympics — a sports organization founded in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver for children and adults with intellectual disabilities — thanks to Iovine’s then-wife Vicki, who was working for the organization, and her longtime friend (and Eunice’s son) Bobby Shriver.

Since then, Iovine has risen to a rarefied position in the music industry. In early 2014, he sold Beats Electronics, the company he founded with Dr. Dre, to Apple in a $3 billion deal and became a senior adviser to the house that Steve Jobs built. Looking back, he says making A Very Special Christmas “was the purest thing I’ve ever done.”

Shriver, 60, an attorney and activist who ran unsuccessfully in 2014 for a Los Angeles County supervisor’s seat, remembers the experience as a more quixotic adventure. “You have no idea the amount of shenanigans that went into persuading people to participate in this,” he says with a laugh.

The first major step was meeting with A&M founder Jerry Moss to secure funding for the album. “I’d just been introduced to Jimmy and he tells me, ‘We’ve got to meet with Jerry.’ I said, ‘I’ll work up a business plan,’ and Jimmy says, ‘We don’t need a business plan.’ At this point, I’m working in venture capital, where we make business plans all day long,” Shriver recalls. “So, I go, ‘OK, you’re the boss.’ Jimmy and I walk into A&M. Jerry talks to me for a half-hour about how much he loved Uncle Bobby [Robert F. Kennedy]. And then Jimmy tells him how we’re going to get all these incredible artists for the record.” At that point, Shriver says, Moss looked at his watch and declared, “Jesus, I’m late for lunch.” After bolting for the door without giving any indication that A&M was on board, “Jimmy goes, ‘We got the money, Bobby.’ I said, ‘You’re totally out of your mind.’ But he was right, and to this day, I don’t know how Jimmy knew.”

Two days later, the money arrived and the hard work began. “At the time, the labels were very competitive and wouldn’t let their artists record on other labels,” Iovine says. “So I said, ‘OK, the only way this album is going to get done is if no one is making a penny in any way.'” That included the label releasing the album. “A&M made zero on it. It was an unprecedented deal,” he explains. “Jerry Moss was so generous.”

“And it wasn’t just the $250,000 A&M gave us to make the record,” Shriver adds. “The label put its whole A team on the playing field to work the record.”

Still, lining up talent proved to be a heavy lift. “We were calling everybody — artists’ record companies, lawyers, girlfriends, the bands’ drummers,” Shriver says. “No one wanted to hear from us.” Producer Quincy Jones was among those approached because of his involvement in the successful 1985 “We Are the World” project, but he declined to get involved. “Quincy told us, ‘This will never work,'” Shriver says. “That made Jimmy only more determined to get it done.” (Iovine produced or co-produced seven of the 15 tracks on the album.)

Shriver recalls driving to an appointment when Iovine asked him a memorable question. “I still see him in his baseball cap,” he says with a laugh. “He was behind the wheel and he turned to me and said, ‘The stuff we’re doing — calling people, sending flowers and books about the Kennedys — what’s it called when good people do it? When bad people do it, it’s called manipulation, but what’s the word in English when good people do it?'” The implication, Shriver adds, “was that we were the good people. And I said, ‘Jimmy, I don’t know.'”

“The first artist to record was Chrissie Hynde,” says Vicki. “She sang my favorite holiday song, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ Once we got that, we new we at least had a single.”

When it came to wrangle some of the other artists, Shriver and Vicki got downright creative. “Bobby and I were constantly scheming,” says Vicki, who tells Billboard that among the people close to Madonna who were coaxing her to record a song for the album — she chose “Santa Baby” — was Shriver’s cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. “We asked [John] to reach out to her to help seal the deal.” (JFK and Madonna reportedly dated in the 1980s.) And Shriver recalls enlisting Arnold Schwarzenegger, who married his sister Maria in 1986, to help convince Jon Bon Jovi, who was a fan of the action-movie hero, to record a song. (He did.)

Iovine says he was unaware of these machinations because he was focused on making an album he hoped would endure as long as the classic A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector. “Bob Seger sang my father’s favorite song, ‘The Little Drummer Boy,'” he says. Springsteen contributed a live cover of Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore’s “Merry Christmas Baby.” Iovine flew to Glasgow, Scotland, to record U2 singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” during a concert soundcheck (Darlene Love, who had sung the original on the Spector album, would contribute backing vocals). And he traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to record Whitney Houston’s vocals for “Do You Hear What I Hear?” “She came into the studio. I went to get a cup of tea, and when I got back, she was finished,” he says. “She sang so powerfully.”

Shortly after A Very Special Christmas hit record stores, Shriver arrived home to find a voicemail from Quincy Jones. “He said, ‘Bobby, I just heard the record. Oh my God. I told you it couldn’t be done. You guys did it.'”

A Very Special Christmas would spawn nine more releases that have raised more than $100 million for the Special Olympics, but save for a few songs on the second LP, Iovine’s involvement ended with the first. “I wanted it to stand on its own,” he says.

Categories
Nirvana

I really hope there is a lot of music in there!!

Hoard The Hoarders: The Promise Of Kurt Cobain’s Vault

Note to all aspiring legendary rock gods: save everything. That means everything. That demo tape where you accidentally just recorded yourself trying to plug an amp in for twenty minutes. That selfie you took on the loo. That doodle you’re currently scrawling in the margins of Huysmans’ ‘À Rebours’. If things go to plan your kids will be buying a new kitchen with that stuff one day.

These days saving all that stuff just means buying a spare external hard-drive, but back in the almost unimaginable pre-internet era rock icons had to preserve their legacy the old fashioned way: in boxes and boxes and of old belongings.

So while it’s unlikely that your iCloud will end up printed in bound leather, let’s give thanks for Kurt Cobain’s hoarder instinct. It’s long been rumoured that there is in fact a genuine Cobain ‘vault’ out there, which journalist Charles R. Cross described as “nearly 100 boxes of belongings” gathering dust in a secure storage facility. Presumably at least some of them are heart-shaped.

It was back in the news this week, when director Brett Morgen announced his new HBO documentary ‘Montage of Heck’. Morgen, who directed ‘The Kid Stays In The Picture’ and the recent Rolling Stones documentary ‘Crossfire Hurricane’, said: “Like most people, when I started, I figured there would be limited amounts of fresh material to unearth. However, once I stepped into Kurt’s archive, I discovered over 200 hours of unreleased music and audio, a vast array of art projects (oil paintings, sculptures), countless hours of never-before-seen home movies, and over 4000 pages of writings that together help paint an intimate portrait of an artist who rarely revealed himself to the media.”

He’s not the first person to be allowed access to the hallowed archives. Back when he was researching the biography ‘Heavier Than Heaven’, Cross told Rolling Stone: “When I went and saw that stuff, I called up Courtney and I said ‘Jesus fucking Christ, I cannot believe this art and how amazing all this stuff is.'”

So amazing, in fact, Cross went on to publish a whole other book called ‘Cobain Unseen’ in 2008 which collected together some of the best art, photos and journal entries that he came across in his rummaging.

What he obviously couldn’t put in his book was any of those hours of unreleased music, which is one of the reasons Nirvana fans are so excited about Morgen’s documentary – and why they’re currently fervently whipping up a rumour mill around whether the documentary will have an accompanying tie-in soundtrack release.

Cannily the filmmakers have already released the titular ‘Montage of Heck’ mixtape online for free, which featured everything from Iron Butterfly’s ‘In A Gadda Da Vida’ to ‘ABC by The Jackson Five and from ‘I Want Your Sex’ by George Michael to ‘Run to the Hills’ by Iron Maiden. However, previously unreleased recordings of tracks like ‘Sappy’ or ‘Dressed For Success’. While some obscure material has been released before, on bootlegs and on 2004 rarities compilation ‘With The Lights Out’, the promise of Kurt solo material is an exciting one for anyone who cares about the man, his mind and his songwriting process. Fans are also speculating that releases could include non-Nirvana music from Kurt’s earlier band Fecal Matter, such as ‘Illiteracy Will Prevail’, or his first ever multi-tracked recording, made in 1982 at his aunt’s house and known as ‘Organised Confusion’. Who knows, it could even give an insight into where Nirvana might have gone next.

We have Kurt’s fastidious collecting and collating of his own work to thank for this insight – so next time someone tells you to clear out your room, tell them you’re just working on your archive.

Categories
Television

If I’m being honest, I never cared for Craig Ferguson’s show — and I don’t expect much from James Corden.

Guest subs to host ‘Late Late Show’ until Corden’s arrival

CBS is preparing for life after Craig Ferguson — and before James Corden.

The network on Wednesday announced its roster of guest hosts who will fill in on “The Late Late Show” (12:35 a.m.) after Ferguson leaves Dec. 19 and is succeeded in March by James Corden.

Drew Carey will sub the week of Jan. 5 and the week of March 2 leading into Corden’s debut.

Also on the slate of guest hosts are Judd Apatow, comedian Jim Gaffigan and musician John Mayer and a slew of CBS talent: Billy Gardell (“Mike and Molly”), Wayne Brady (“Let’s Make a Deal”), Will Arnett and Sean Hayes — both from the recently axed “The Millers” — and Kunal Nayyar (“The Big Bang Theory”).

Thomas Lennon, who will co-star with Matthew Perry in CBS’ reboot of “The Odd Couple,” will also guest-host.

In addition, CBS announced that its daytime show, “The Talk”—hosted by Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Sara Gilbert, Aisha Tyler and Sheryl Underwood — will air for one week in the 12:35 a.m. timeslot (Jan. 12-16).
“The Talk” will also air in its regular timeslot that week with original shows (2 p.m. on Ch. 2).

Categories
Music

Cool, awesome news!!!

Fall Out Boy Announces ‘American Beauty/American Psycho’ Album, Shares Title Track

Fall Out Boy fans had to wait five long years between the band’s pre-hiatus 2008 album Folie à Deux and its post-hiatus 2013 comeback record Save Rock and Roll; fortunately, they won’t even have to wait two years for the latter’s sequel. On Monday (Nov. 24), the pop-punk stalwarts announced that its new studio album, American Beauty/American Psycho, will be released on Jan. 20, 2015. Its title track was unveiled today, and will be released digitally on Dec. 8.

The group’s sixth studio album was introduced in a post on the official Fall Out Boy website, which was tweeted out following the debut of “American Beauty/American Psycho” on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 program. “We thought about where this all began but razing it and starting again,” the band wrote of the wild new track. “So we reached out to a kindred spirit in sebastiAn- from the past he mined some of the future. the mission is the heart pure and simple as it can be- distilled but never fragmented or disguised. through these experiments, that were sometimes lost in translation, we persevered- ‘they tried to bury us but they didnt realize we were seeds’…”

Earlier this year, Fall Out Boy previewed the new album with the single “Centuries,” which contained a sample of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” and peaked at No. 22 on the Hot 100 chart. Another song, “Immortals,” was released on the Big Hero 6 soundtrack.

Last year’s Save Rock and Roll was announced in conjunction with the reveal that Fall Out Boy was no longer on hiatus in early 2013, and the album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart upon its release. Lead single “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” became a Top 20 hit on the Hot 100, and Fall Out Boy joined Paramore on the Momentour this year after headlining arenas in 2013.

“American Beauty/American Psycho” is the “new U.K. single” from Fall Out Boy, according to a tweet from the band. Another song from the upcoming album of the same name may serve as the next radio release in America.

Categories
Television

Should be another great season!!

‘True Detective’: Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch, Kelly Reilly Confirmed for Season 2

HBO has rounded out the cast of “True Detective,” tapping Kelly Reilly for a key role as wife of the crime boss played by Vince Vaughn.

Reilly will play Jordan, described as a former D-list actress who is an active partner in the criminal enterprises run by her husband, Frank Semyon.

HBO has also confirmed at long last that Taylor Kitsch and Rachel McAdams are co-starring the sophomore season of “True Detective” opposite Vaughn and Colin Farrell. Production on the eight-episode season has begun in California, HBO said Monday.

Variety first reported that McAdams was in talks for the role in September. Taylor Kitsch also said himself last month that he was joining the cast.

Kitsch plays Paul Woodrugh, a war veteran and motorcycle officer for the California Highway Patrol on the run from a difficult past.

McAdams is Ani Bezzerides, a Ventura County Sheriff’s detective whose uncompromising ethics put her at odds with others and the system she serves. Presumably, she goes up against Farrell’s Ray Velcoro, who is described as a corrupt detective ruled by Semyon.

The casting on “True Detective’s” second installment have dribbled out over the summer and early fall amid feverish speculation about the show’s next incarnation. There’s no word yet on a premiere date.

Correction: A previous version of this post said the show had been set for January premiere. HBO has yet to formally announce a premiere date.

Categories
Polls

There are some great songs on this list.

‘Monty Python’ song tops poll to discover Britain’s most popular funeral songs

Monty Python’s ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ is the most popular song played at funerals in Britain, a new poll has discovered.

The data gathered by Co-operative Funeralcare shows that the upbeat song, as featured in the 1979 film The Life Of Brian, was the most popular choice of the 30,000 funerals the group.

Just nine of the top twenty are traditional pieces of music, with TV themes and pop songs becoming increasingly popular. Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ (pictured right) and ‘My Way’ by Frank both feature in the top ten alongside ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ by Gerry & The Pacemakers.

Among the less expected choices that people have chosen to be buried to include the Match Of The Day theme tune as well as other songs from TV including Last Of The Summer Wine and Coronation Street.

Hinting at a move in fashion between generations, Co-operative Funeralcare’s operations director David Collingwood said: “We think we may be seeing a generational shift in attitudes towards funerals, and the choice of music being requested. Music plays such an important part in people’s lives that it now acts as the theme tune to their passing. Modern funerals are very much about personal choice, which can be reflected in the choice of music, dress, coffin, flowers, hearses or memorials.”

The Funeralcare top twenty is as follows:

1. ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ – Monty Python
2. The Lord is My Shepherd Psalm 23/Crimond
3. ‘Abide with Me’
4. Match of the Day theme
5. ‘My Way’ – Frank Sinatra
6. ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful
7. ‘Angels’ – Robbie Williams
8. Enigma Variations – Nimrod (Elgar)
9. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – Gerry and the Pacemakers
10. Soul Limbo – Booker T. & the MG’s
11. Canon in D – Pachelbel
12. ‘My Heart Will Go On’ – Celine Dion
13= Last of the Summer Wine Theme Tune
13= Only Fools and Horses Theme Tune
14. Time to Say Goodbye – Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli
15. Four Seasons – Vivaldi
16. Ave Maria – Schubert
17. Coronation Street TV Theme Theme Tune
18= ‘You Raise Me Up’ – Westlife
18= ‘Over the Rainbow’ – Eva Cassidy
19. ‘World in Union’ – Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
20= ‘Nessun Dorma’ – Puccini
20= Adagio’ – Bizet/Albinoni

Categories
Sports

And finally, a confirmation of something that everyone knew!!

Katy Perry to headline next Super Bowl halftime show

NFL announced late Sunday — after rumours swirled for weeks — that pop star Katy Perry will headline the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 1 at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona.

Perry, 30, scored nine No. 1 hits on the on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since releasing her debut in 2008. Her sophomore effort, 2010’s multiplatinum Teenage Dream, matched the record Michael Jackson set with Bad for most songs from a single album to hit No. 1, with five.

Perry released Prism, another platinum effort, last year. It includes the No. 1 smashes Roar and Dark Horse.

The Grammy-nominated star’s upcoming performance is the fourth consecutive halftime show to display the NFL’s push to include younger acts on its large stage: Bruno Mars performed at this year’s Super Bowl, Beyonce was the top act in 2013; and there was Madonna, with Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., and the Black Eyed Peas in 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Other halftime performers in the last decade have included the Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and the Who.

The girl-power singer will also be performing at the culmination of a season where critics have assailed the NFL for its response to domestic violence cases involving women; its initial handling of former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice’s assault on his then-fiance with just a two-game suspension caused a national outrage, and led the league to toughen its penalties for such crimes. It later suspended Rice indefinitely.

Perry is currently on her Prismatic World Tour. Her other hits include I Kissed a Girl, California Gurls, Firework and Wide Awake.

Categories
Movies

I need to see BIG HERO 6!!

Box office report: ‘The Hunger Games’ wins the weekend (and the year)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 predictably topped this weekend’s box office — but less predictably didn’t do as well as the previous films in the franchise.

The previous Hunger Games film, Catching Fire, also opened on the weekend before Thanksgiving, but ended its weekend with $158 million. Mockingjay, though, grossed $123 million. Compared to $158 million, and to the original Hunger Games‘ $152.5 million opening in 2012, $123 million is disappointing. But in the context of 2014, it’s amazing: Mockingjay had a stronger opening than any other film this year, beating out Transformers: Age of Extinction’s $100 million debut.

And while Catching Fire’s domestic opening beat Mockingjay’s, Mockingjay takes the prize for foreign totals: Lionsgate premiered the film in 85 international markets this weekend and made an estimated $152 million in those markets — four percent more than the $146 million Catching Fire brought in internationally its opening weekend.

As for the rest of the top five, Disney’s Big Hero 6 stayed at the number two spot with $20.1 million while Interstellar trailed behind with $15.1 million. Big Hero 6 didn’t experience too big of a drop from last week’s $34.7 million, but Interstellar’s gross declined by 46 percent, perhaps because its action-loving audience were too busy seeing Mockingjay to journey to space for a few hours.

Dumb and Dumber To went from topping the box office last weekend to falling to the number four spot this time around with $13.8 million — that’s a 62 percent decrease, showing that Dumb and Dumber To‘s audience isn’t a reliable one. But Gone Girl proved the opposite: The thriller spent its eighth consecutive weekend in the top five, making $2.8 million.

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 – $123 million
2. Big Hero 6 – $20.1 million
3. Interstellar – $15.1 million
4. Dumb and Dumber To – $13.8 million
5. Gone Girl – $2.8 million

Outside the top five, The Theory of Everything added about 100 locations, bringing its theater total to 140 and grossed $1.5 million. Birdman added just five locations and brought in $1.9 million — not as strong as last weekend’s $2.5 million, but not bad.

Categories
Rumours

Yup Yup Yup, bring it on!!!!

Zoolander 2 Is Happening With These Huge Stars

There are few things that Hollywood does better and more often than capitalizing on trends, and a brand new one has just entered the arena. Thanks to the success of Dumb and Dumber To at the box office this past weekend, there’s a scent in the air that long-overdue comedy sequels are in, and now Paramount Pictures is looking to take advantage of it quickly by starting to move Zoolander 2 through development.

Not only are the gears starting to turn on the follow-up to Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy, but casting is already underway as well. Deadline has word that Penelope Cruz has signed a deal that will see her star alongside Stiller, who will be reprising his role as model Derek Zoolander. There have also been rumors swirling around that Zoolander 2 will feature the return of fan favorite characters from the first movie, including Will Ferrell’s villainous Mugatu and Owen Wilson’s Hansel. At this point there’s no word on what character Cruz will be playing, but given that she’s devastatingly beautiful, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if she wound up playing a fellow supermodel.

This is easily the most promising news about Zoolander 2 that we’ve heard in a long time, but the truth is that we’ve been getting strung along for years and years. The movie’s less than stellar box office performance back in 2001 didn’t help the case for an immediate sequel, but Ben Stiller has been teasing the project since 2006. In that time the project has made some progress – including hiring Justin Theroux to make his directorial debut – but the process has been moving at the speed of molasses.

Thanks to the cult culture that has grown around the original in the years since its release, Zoolander 2 has long seemed like a good idea, and it’s not hard to link it’s new progress with the success of Dumb and Dumber To. Topping both Interstellar and Big Hero 6 is their second weeks, the 20-years-later sequel roped in a solid $36 million in its opening – which is enough to call it a success. It certainly wouldn’t cost much to make a Zoolander 2, the original only sporting a $28 million budget, so it seems like a winning scenario for Paramount.

But, of course, there is the looming question of whether or not we actually want to see a Zoolander sequel. The number of good comedy sequels we’ve seen over the years is a disturbingly low figure – and in this area, Dumb and Dumber To serves as an effective negative example. I’m not saying it’s impossible for Zoolander 2 to be good, as it has a great group of smart people behind it, and just this year we saw a great comedy sequel in 22 Jump Street. But the question still looms.

Categories
People

He is a true legend. May he rest in peace.

Mike Nichols, director known for The Graduate, dead at 83

Mike Nichols, the director of matchless versatility who brought fierce wit, caustic social commentary and wicked absurdity to such film, TV and stage hits as The Graduate, Angels in America and Monty Python’s Spamalot, has died. He was 83.

The death was confirmed by ABC News President James Goldston on Thursday. Nichols died Wednesday evening.

Goldston said the family was holding a small private service this week.

During a career spanning more than 50 years, Nichols, who was married to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, managed to be both an insider and outsider, an occasional White House guest and friend to countless celebrities who was as likely to satirize the elite as he was to mingle with them.

A former stand-up performer who began his career in a groundbreaking comedy duo with Elaine May and whose work brought him an Academy Award, a Grammy and multiple Tony and Emmy honours, Nichols had a remarkable gift for mixing edgy humour and dusky drama.

“No one was more passionate than Mike,” Goldston wrote in an email announcing Nichols’ death.

His 1966 film directing debut Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? unforgettably captured the vicious yet sparkling and sly dialogue of Edward Albee’s play, as a couple — played by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor — torment each other over deep-seated guilt and resentment.

Angels in America, the 2003 TV miniseries adapted from the stage sensation, blended rich pathos and whimsy in its portrait of people coping with AIDS and looking to the heavens for compassion they found lacking in Ronald Reagan’s 1980s America.

Similarly, Nichols’ 2001 TV adaptation of the play Wit packed biting levity within the stark story of a college professor dying of ovarian cancer.

Nichols, who won directing Emmys for both Angels in America and Wit, said he liked stories about the real lives of real people and that humour inevitably pervades even the bleakest of such tales.

“I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies,” Nichols said in a 2004 interview with The Associated Press. “There are more laughs in Hamlet than many Broadway comedies.”

He was a wealthy, educated man who often mocked those just like him, never more memorably than in The Graduate, which shot Dustin Hoffman to fame in the 1967 story of an earnest young man rebelling against his elders’ expectations.

Nichols himself would say that he identified with Hoffman’s awkward, perpetually flustered Benjamin Braddock.

Mixing farce and Oedipal drama, Nichols managed to capture a generation’s discontent without ever mentioning Vietnam, civil rights or any other issues of the time.

Young people laughed hard when a family friend advised Benjamin that the road to success was paved with “plastics” or at Benjamin’s lament that he felt like life was “some kind of game, but the rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.”

At the time, Nichols was “just trying to make a nice little movie,” he recalled in 2005 at a retrospective screening of The Graduate. “It wasn’t until when I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.”

Nichols won the best-director Oscar for The Graduate, which co-starred Anne Bancroft as an aging temptress pursuing Hoffman, whose character responds with the celebrated line, “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.”

Divorced three times, Nichols married TV journalist Diane Sawyer in 1988. He admitted in 2013 that many of his film and stage projects explored a familiar, naughty theme.

“I keep coming back to it, over and over — adultery and cheating,” he says. “It’s the most interesting problem in the theatre. How else do you get Oedipus? That’s the first cheating in the theatre.”

Not just actors, but great actors, clamoured to work with Nichols, who studied acting with Lee Strasberg and had an empathy that helped bring out the best from the talent he put in front of the camera.

Nichols often collaborated with Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson.

Other stars who worked with Nichols included Al Pacino (Angels in America), Gene Hackman and Robin Williams (The Birdcage), Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver (Working Girl) and Julia Roberts (Closer). In 2007, Nichols brought out Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Just as he moved easily among stage, screen and television, Nichols fearlessly switched from genre to genre. Onstage, he tackled comedy (The Odd Couple), classics (Uncle Vanya) and musicals (The Apple Tree, Spamalot, the latter winning him his sixth Tony for directing).

On Broadway, he won nine Tonys, for directing the plays Barefoot in the Park (1964), Luv and The Odd Couple”(1965), Plaza Suite (1968), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972), The Real Thing (1984), and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (2012).

He also won in other categories, for directing the musical Monty Python’s Spamalot (2005), and for producing Annie (1977) and The Real Thing (1984).

“I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you,” he said. “If you can get it right, there’s no mystery. It’s not about mystery. It’s not even mysterious. It’s about our lives.”

Though known for films with a comic edge, Nichols branched into thrillers with Day of the Dolphin, horror with Wolf, and real-life drama with Silkwood. Along with directing for television, he was an executive producer for the 1970s TV series Family.

Nichols’ golden touch failed him on occasion with such duds as the anti-war satire Catch-22, with Alan Arkin in an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s bestseller, and What Planet Are You From?, an unusually tame comedy for Nichols that starred Garry Shandling and Annette Bening.

Born Michael Igor Peschkowsky on Nov. 6, 1931, in Berlin, Nichols fled Nazi Germany for America at age seven with his family. He recalled to the AP in 1996 that at the time, he could say only two things in English: “I don’t speak English” and “Please don’t kiss me.”

He said he fell in love with the power of the stage at age 15, when the mother of his then-girlfriend gave them theatre tickets to the second night of the debut of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Marlon Brando in 1947.

“We were poleaxed, stunned. We didn’t speak to each other. We just sat like two half-unconscious people. It was so shocking. It was so alive. It was so real,” he said. “I’m amazed about our bladders because we never went to the bathroom and it was about 3½ or four hours long.”

Nichols attended the University of Chicago but left to study acting in New York. He returned to Chicago, where he began working with May in the Compass Players, a comedy troupe that later became the Second City.

In the late 1950s, Nichols and May formed a stand-up team at the forefront of a comedy movement that included Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters and Woody Allen in satirizing contemporary American life. They won a Grammy in 1961 for best comedy album — An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May — before splitting, partly because May liked to improvise and Nichols preferred set routines.

“People always thought we were making fun of other people when we were in fact making fun of ourselves,” Nichols told the AP in 1997. “We did teenagers in the back seat of the car and people committing adultery. Of course, you’re making fun of yourself. You’re making jokes about yourself. Who can you better observe?”

They reunited in the 1990s, with May writing screenplays for Nichols’ Primary Colors and The Birdcage, adapted from the French farce La Cage aux Folles.

After the break with May, Nichols found his true calling as a director, his early stage work highlighted by Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite and The Prisoner of Second Avenue, each of which earned him Tonys.

Nichols came to be a directing powerhouse on Broadway in the mid-1960s with Barefoot in the Park, the first of what would be a successful relationship with playwright Neil Simon. Later he would do Simon’s The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Time magazine called him “the most in-demand director in the American theatre.”

“I never worked with anyone in my life — nor will I ever work with anyone — as good as Mike Nichols,” Simon told the New Yorker.

Other honours included Oscar nominations for directing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Silkwood and Working Girl, a best-picture nomination for producing The Remains of the Day, and a lifetime-achievement award from the Directors Guild of America in 2004.

Never one to analyze his career and look for common themes, Nichols would shrug off questions that sought to link his far-flung body of work.

“What I sort of think about is what Orson Welles told me, which is: Leave it to the other guys, the people whose whole job it is to do that, to make patterns and say what the thread is through your work and where you stand,” Nichols told the AP in 1996. “Let somebody else worry about what it means.”