Mike Nichols and Silkwood with Meryl Streep

Have you ever wondered who Mike Nichols was or what the movie Silkwood is all about?  Spanning from 1931 till the present 2012 we will find a connection between the Director and the Film, which was made in1983.  Mike Nichols was the director of the American motion picture film “Silkwood” that stared Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt.

Mike Nichols an actor, American motion picture film, television, stage director, writer, producer and comedian; was born in Berlin, Germany November 6, 1931 with the name Michael Igor Peschkowsky. His grandparents had moved to Germany in 1917 from Russia as Jews and were allowed to leave Germany during Hitler’s rule just before the war started, due to a treaty with Russia (Beloff, 2007). As an immigrant at the age of seven he and his family sought a better life in the United States. As a child he attended a school with poor boys and wealthy girls, so he remembers.  His first recollection of a film was a classmates mother gave them tickets to “A Streetcar Named Desire”, which he was so enthralled with he didn’t even get up or talk during either of the two intermissions (Nichols Director, 2012). His father a doctor and a mother who was always ill and in the hospital, he lived a disconnected life, always searching for a connection to parents.  His father died due to radiation contracted while treating patients, not knowing what the effects of radiation would due (Berloff, 2007). 

He later became a citizen of the United States in 1944. His formal education was at the University of Chicago in 1550-53 and later studied acting with a renowned instructor Lee Strasberg in 1954 in New York (Beloff, 2007). During school he met a lady named Elaine May in which they became very good friends and soon turned their comedic fascinations and anomalies into a traveling comedy production. As the years progressed he developed a love for directing productions as he learned from Lee Stasberg. 

Within his personal life, he has been married four times and has three children.  His present wife, whom he married in 1988, is news anchor:  Diane Sawyer (Mike Nichols Director, 2012). His career has spanned 60 years, with a large arsenal of awards and recognitions including one of a handful of celebrities to have garnered the coveted quartet of an Oscar(2), Grammy, Tony (7) and Emmy(2) throughout his career.  Receiving the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003; chairing the emeritus non-profit organization Friends in Deed, founded in 1991 to provide support for individuals of life –threatening illnesses (Berloff, 2007).  As a developed writer, Nichols wrote:  Women are from Pluto, and Men are from Uranus (1996), Real Men Bealch Downward (1993), and Life and Other Ways to Kill Time (1988) (Berloff, 2007). 

Nichols decorated with directing and producing awards, numbering 35 plus; his accomplishments contained 16 Broadway acting and directing series; 17 films, and 3 TV movie series that  won him a wealth of awards.  A list of  comedy productions include:  Barefoot in the Park (1963), Luv (1964), The Odd Couple (1965, Plaza Suite (19680, The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), The Real Thing (1984) and Monty Python’s Spamolot (2005), The Gin Game (1977) and the latest Death of A Salesmen (2012) (Britannica,2012).  His films include: Who’d afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967), Catch-22 (1970), Knowledge (1971), Silkwood (1983), edge (1990), Wolf (1994), The Birdcage (1996), Closer (2004), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) (Britannica, 2012).   His works in TV included Wit (2001), Angels in America (2003) (Britannica, 2012). 

His focuses within his productions have a common denominator of “absurdities and horrors of modern life relative to his personal relationships” (Mike Nichols Director, 2012).   Marked with a cynical commentary on contemporary life, Nicholas typically often underlined his movies with humor (Britannica, 2012).  As J. Rank commented in his article, so well written, “In clubs, recording, radio, television or Broadway, Nichols aimed at literate, self-awareness with the audiences, gleeful anatomized family relationships, with men and women dueling in post-Freudian combat, by turns straying from the marriage bond and clinging to it for dear life” (Rank, 2012).  Nicholas was a skilled Broadway director devising a particular flair for innovative stage business and eliciting unusually polished performances (Rank, 2012).  Generally dissections of the American psyche; Nicholas begins several of his comedies, and then evolves into mordant individual characters isolated from the landscapes of their lives.  Manufacturing illusions to shield themselves against the realities of society whose values they alone perceive as neurotic or murderous (Rank, 2012).

            Nichols movies are normally pure fiction, yet in the movie Silkwood,  he changed his standards and moved into reality, being closer to the surface of the plots (Rank, 2012).  Silkwood is a movie he directed with writer Alice Arien and Nora Ephron.  He co-produced with Buzz Hirsch, Joel Tuber, Larry Cano, Michael Hausman and tom Stovall (Silkwood, 2012). The main actress is Meryl Streep playing Karen Silkwood, who a twenty- eight year old laboratory technician was working at Kerr-McGee, an Oklahoma plant, producing fuel rods (Maychick, 1984). She died under mysterious circumstances surrounding a car crash, after contracting and being diagnosed, with contamination of nuclear radioactivity. Unsolved is her death, centering around the mystery of  hushing her outspoken voice as she was spreading word throughout the factory and state  about the dangers of nuclear energy. Her co-star is Cher playing her girlfriend and roommate, as well as Kurt Russell playing her boyfriend and second roommate.  In the movie she is a mother, yet her children live with their father. 

            Viewers all had a different opinion about the movie, about who Silkwood was.  A great deal of special interest group painted her as a woman with a halo around her head a savior, a martyr for telling what she believed the truth. Others, believed she was not completely clean and clear of all her faults, nor was she telling the truth, due to not having her children in her life, as well as her promiscuity in relationships. Karen’s parents didn’t understand the entire situation, nor thought Meryl played their daughter, as intelligent as what they thought she was in life. The acceptance of movie viewers, due to Meryl Streep’s performance, gained movie mainstream reviews in the first month of release.  In the end, the movie cost twelve million dollars to make back in 1983, which is what it made within the first month. January 11, 1984, The U.S. Supreme Court decision to reinstate the ten-million dollar award against Silkwood’s employer, The Kerr-McGee Corporation was finalized, thus this helped the box office grossed sales. The actors and actresses felt very strong about the movie due to the deep stake it played in the actual safety of lives across the country centering around the dangers of nuclear radioactivity these plants have on society’s health and longevity.

            In conclusion, Mike Nichols as a well decorated and diverse actor, comedian, director, producer, and writer has had a fascinating, and wonderfully filled career with lots of individuals who have touched his life in so many ways unimaginable, reaching to so many in society.  He has brought rip roaring laughs, sad tears of the harsh realities of life, yet opened people’s eyes up to the possibilities that are.  Whether in a negative or a positive place, in this world we can all share a story with one another, and find perhaps ourselves or someone we know lingering in the shadows on stage of a screen.  Silkwood is a movie not for the faint at heart, yet it shows the hardships people endure to have a job in this world whether they like it or not, they have a job that pays the bills. Should a person keep working in a place that deems dangerous situations on their employees without their knowledge, or do we all have a choice to be told the truth?

Works Cited 

Beloff, Ruth. "Mike Nichols." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 5 June 2012.

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Gallaway, Stephanie.  “Director Mike Nichols On His 60-Year Career: Trouble Always Seemed Glamorous”. The Hollywood Reporter Online, 18 May. 2012. Web. 5 June. 2012.  <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mike-nichols-death-salesman-career-322677>.  

Maychick, Diana.  The Reluctant Superstar: Meryl Streep. New York: St. Martins Press, 1984. Print.

 “Mike Nichols”. Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.  Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 05 June. 2012.  <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/414197/ Mike -Nichols>.  

“Mike Nichols Director – Films as Director:, Publications.” J. Rank. Web. 5 June, 2012. <http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Mi-Pe/Nichols-Mike.html>.  

Rank, J. “Mike Nichols”. Film Rank. Film Rank Online. Films 101, 2012. Web. 25 May. 2012. <http://www.films101.com/d11219r.htm>.

 
“Silkwood”. Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica