Top 10 Jack Nicholson scenes

4. ‘Here’s to five miserable months on the wagon.’
Lloyd sets ‘em up and Jack Torrance knocks ‘em back in “The Shining”
Apparently it all happened on a Wednesday. Jack’s nightmare, Danny getting choked, Wendy accusing Jack of choking Danny: It’s enough to make a man wanna drink. So there’s Jack wandering the hallways of that huge, snowbound hotel, fighting off his demons (literally, or in pantomime), when he comes across the Gold Room, or the Cold Room, you can’t really tell from the sign. He turns on the lights, walks to the bar and declares — his lips smacking in anticipation — that he’d sell his goddamned soul for a glass of beer. Bing! Lloyd appears. Best goddamned bartender from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

All of Jack’s choices in this scene are great. The lead-footed gait, his almost animalistic hulk. The dazed joy in his eyes after he downs that first drink of bourbon. The way he rattles the ice in the glass during the second. We learn that he’s been sober for five months, that he hurt Danny three years ago, and that he’s insane. We suspected things weren’t going well, but this scene let’s us know by how much the hotel is winning.

3. ‘You wanna go with me?’
Fighting to get out of another straightjacket in “Five Easy Pieces”
In the early 1970s people talked up the chicken salad sandwich scene as if it were an attack on the system; when I watched it again 20 years later I realized it was just an attack on an overworked waitress. Yeah, she’s a bit touchy. Yeah, Bobby has a point, and, yeah, he maneuvers around the diner’s idiotic “no toast” policy with aplomb (until he explodes), but in the end he’s an ass. Doesn’t make the scene bad, just misinterpreted. Why it’s not my favorite.

My favorite scene occurs shortly after he finds out his father —whose upper-crust roots and classically trained background he’s fleeing — is dying. He decides to return to him, but without Rayette, his pregnant girlfriend, who, let’s face it, just wouldn’t fit in there. As he packs, and as she speaks to him through country music code (“D-I-V-O-R-C-E”), their relationship seems to dissolve. First he tells her he’ll be back in a few weeks. Then he tells her he’ll “try” to call her. Then he tells her he didn’t promise her anything. Then he leaves. Throws the suitcase in the backseat, gets behind the wheel. Almost free. But not at all. Because suddenly he’s spewing curse words and punching the roof and the steering wheel and anything he can get his hands on. It’s as if fighting to get out of an imaginary straightjacket. A second later he’s back in the house, wearily inviting her along. A basic (but temporary) decency has won out, making Bobby another great American character, like Huck Finn, who gets angry at himself for doing the right thing.

2. ‘Gimme a little of THIS!’
Carpe Diem in “The Last Detail”
Billy “Bad Ass” Buddusky is an MP who tries to inject a little life into the death sentence (or eight-year prison sentence) of Larry Meadows, a dumb kid caught stealing 40 bucks. He tries to teach him how to live before he’s incarcerated. Success will thus inevitably bring failure — the game is rigged from the start — but it doesn’t keep Billy from trying. At one point he provokes a bathroom fight with Marines, and after he and Larry and fellow MP Mule escape, they walk through Central Park, he tries to get the others to share in his enthusiasm:

“He fought like a champ, though, didn’t he, Mule? Jesus. Goddamn, that was great. It was great, wasn’t it? It was great. Admit it! C’mahn, give me a little of THIS! Give me just because they call me Shine in here, huh?”

Look at that dialogue. No way it was written like that. Screenwriters are clean bastards, and this thing is as messy as life. It’s beautiful. And when he says, “C’mahn, give me a little of THIS” his fingers flutter near his smile. Yeah, we could all use a little of that.

1. ‘Alright Chief, you’re our last chance.’
Watching the World Series in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
I knew this would be my number-one scene from the get-go. Maybe because in my younger days, women — teachers, mothers — kept me from watching baseball, too. Back then, in the early 1970s, baseball was usually played during the daytime and I remember getting into a lot of arguments with teachers over the playoffs and World Series. I remember losing. Somewhere important baseball games were being played and I wasn’t watching them.

But of course the scene is more. It’s about the way authority usually wins. It’s about the rigged game. McMurphy wants to change the schedule to watch the World Series but Big Nurse claims the schedule is for the patients’ benefit and to change it requires a majority vote in the group meeting. McMurphy only gets three votes. The next day — after he attempts to lift a sink, fails and says, “At least I tried” — he gets all nine votes. But Big Nurse claims there are 18 patients in the ward — meaning the guys so out of it that they don’t know where they are. That’s the “rigged game” that McMurphy speaks of later, but — being McMurphy — he still tries to win it, and he does, getting supposedly deaf-and-dumb Chief Bromden to raise a hand in favor of watching the Series. But Big Nurse keeps the game rigged. She claims the meeting was adjourned and the final vote was 9 to 9, not 10 to 8. Frustrated, McMurphy stares at the blank TV set mounted on the wall. Then he begins to describe the action. He talks about Koufax winding up. He talks about home runs being hit. The other patients gather and cheer. They go crazy, while Big Nurse’s mask finally slips. It’s a great, beautiful, temporary victory.

Sidenote. The Series he’s describing is the 1963 Series between the New York Yankees and the L.A. Dodgers. In his description the Yankees get three straight extra-base hits against Koufax, including back-to-back homeruns. Koufax did in fact give up three runs to the Yankees, including homeruns to the players McMurphy credits (Tom Tresh and Mickey Mantle); but those three runs were spread out over two games, both of which Koufax, and the Dodgers, won, as they did the Series, four games to none. As an avowed Yankee hater — and knowing the Yankees are Jack’s favorite team — I felt I had to set the record straight.

Yes, Erik Lundegaard wants to watch baseball, the World Series, particularly if the Yankees aren’t in it. He can be reached at:

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