Mike Nichols was an acclaimed director of theater and film, but also acted and performed comedy in his early career, particularly with the writer Elaine May. His most famous movies include "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, "The Graduate" with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, and "Silkwood" with Meryl Streep, Cher, and Kurt Russell, just to name a few. On Broadway, he directed "Barefoot in the Park", "The Odd Couple", and many others. He died in 2014.
This book is an encyclopedic compendium of his many projects, with a tremendous amount of detail, many interviews, and quotations, but it is not an insightful interpretation of the man and what made him tick. The author presents Nichols's life chronologically, with many pages devoted to his childhood and early career. I kept waiting for the author to get into the meat of Nichols's career, and it took a long time for that to happen. I found that his approach made me impatient, and I began skipping sections and chapters to get to the highlights that most interested me.
I found the sheer volume of material to be overwhelming, and felt the book would have been more effective with closer editing and the shortening of some of the chapters. Still, if you are interested in learning everything there is to know about such subjects as the disastrous making of the film "Catch-22", but also the triumph of "The Graduate", then this is the book for you.
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