Becoming Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols sits on the stage of the Golden Theatre on Broadway opposite the director Jack O'Brien and talks through his own beginning: the improvisation days in Chicago, the duo with Elaine May, and from there Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate. The film is not interested in a career summary. It is interested in the moment of learning: Nichols talks about the days when he did not know how to shoot a film, the question he could not bring himself to ask on set, and how one famous shot in The Graduate was found by accident. The subject is inexperience, not mastery. The form is two sessions: an empty theatre, two chairs and archive footage cut in. No ornament. The documentary was recorded shortly before Nichols died in November 2014 and aired on HBO. What we have is the director's last long conversation about his own work. Douglas McGrath directed. Who it is for: viewers who want first-hand talk about directing and acting. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a full biography. It looks only at the early period and barely mentions Nichols' following forty years.