Mike Nichols Elaine May

Mike Nichols is a German-American television, stage and film director, writer, and producer. Nichols is one of only twelve people to have won an EGOT, all the major American entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. In 2001, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Nichols and Elaine May created flawlessly improvised scenes that were outrageously funny, yet simply understated. Their dry wit and wry satire enabled them to lampoon faceless bureaucracy and such previously sacrosanct institutions as hospitals, politics, funeral homes, and even motherhood. Like other great comedy duos, Nichols and May perfectly complemented each other. They seemed so attuned and at ease with each other that the miscommunication they often based their skits on were all the funnier.

Elaine May became the most important figure in Nichols' personal and professional life. They quickly formed a creative partnership developing inspired comic riffs on the archetypal man-woman dynamics: mother/son, boyfriend/girlfriend, doctor/patient, student/teacher, etc. After leaving The Compass, they became superstars of the Satire Boom of the period. Along with Lenny Bruce, Jules Feiffer, Mort Sahl, Lord Buckley, and Terry Southern, they were pioneers in extending the range and subject matter of American comedy. From 1956 through 1961, Nichols and May achieved mainstream success by making fun of the mainstream middle class sacred cows—going to college, dating and sexual etiquette, psychoanalysis, the distinction between high and low culture, doing the right thing with respect to one's parents/employer/spouse/president/personal God. The recordings and film footage of their best years has for, the most part, not dated. Although they poked fun at the middle class, they did so from the inside out. The delightful agony of making the first romantic move on a date, the banality of talk-show chatter, the difficulty of explaining a career choice to one's parents, or the officiousness of doctors, funeral directors, or other figures of good standing in the community remain fertile situations for comic and satiric study. Over time they developed a repertoire of popular skits, but each live performance took on the quality of jazz. In fact it was this high-wire quality that led to Nichols and May parting ways. May was easily bored and wanted to improvise more, whereas Nichols loved to refine and fine-tune what already existed. By the time Arthur Penn directed them in An Evening With Nichols and May, the two were sick of working with each other.



Tags: mike nichols,