Member-only story
The Boy from Berlin: Mark Harris on Mike Nichols
I recently interviewed the author Mark Harris about his terrific new biography Mike Nichols: A Life (Penguin) for a live Zoom event as part of the speaker series from the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center. (You can see our full hour-long conversation here.)
I was a huge fan of Mark’s 2008 book Pictures at a Revolution (Penguin again), which brilliantly uses the story of the five Best Picture nominees for the 1968 Oscars — The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and (believe it or not) Dr. Doolittle — to capture the moment when “Old Hollywood” gave way to “New Hollywood.”
(Bonus points for anyone who knows which picture won. Hint: it’s not one of the ones now remembered as a turning point in American cinema.)
For me, reading that book was like digging into a huge piece of chocolate cake (and I have a sweet tooth like you wouldn’t believe). It includes quite a bit about Mike Nichols, for obvious reasons, so when I learned that Harris was writing a full-length biography, thanks to an excerpt in New York Magazine, I was very excited and ready for a second helping of cake and a possible diabetic coma. The end product did not disappoint, though fortunately no trip to the emergency room was necessary.
