Mikey and Nicky (1976)

Had hoped that an eventual second viewing would leave me with something more to say than “geez, y’all, that’s some movie,” but I think that’s going to kind of be my thing with Mikey and Nicky. I know the score — how it was made, what happened after, what it took to finally bring Elaine May’s actual vision to the screen as opposed to whatever Paramount did to it in the editing room (something I’d like to see, frankly, though VHS copies of Mikey & Nicky are prohibitively expensive) — but, despite that, it still feels like what I’m watching is somewhat mythological. Like, knowing how Peter Falk and John Cassavetes are, what director in their right mind leaves the camera running in case something happens? Watching what they do here, can you blame Elaine May for fucking going for it?

It’d be a miracle, albeit a total bummer of one. Both men are bastards, abusive pricks who’ve turned their selfishness and self-loathing on one another, as if they’re tacitly competing to see which of them is the bigger coward, the lowlier worm, the guy who deserves a knife in their back. It’s just that Falk’s much quieter about it. His conversations with Cassavetes are like arguments against a hurricane. You start to feel sorry for him, then are given reason not to, then start to feel sorry for him again, then get mad at him for being such a sorry fucking loser. It’s astonishing work, and everybody who worked through the decades to make it so we could bask in Mikey and Nicky‘s sickening light is a true soldier of cinema.