Cinema: Some are More Yossarian than Others

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and formed a lasting grudge against the unfeeling. To this day he remembers learning in terms of combat. "In grammar school you fight for your life and try not to get the crap beat out of you after school," he recalls. "In high school you figure things are frozen forever in a certain pattern; there are a couple of guys you can beat up and a lot who can beat you up, and there are a few girls who'll go out with you and some more that won't, and that's the way the rest of life will be. Then you get to college, and things seem to be a little more open." A little, but not enough. Faced with this anatomy of melancholy, he opted for heavy anesthetic. He slept 16 and 18 hours a day.

Waugh Parties in a Dirigible

Yet, because of the director's persistent focus, it all makes the kind of perfect nonsense that finally is the concomitant of wisdom. Like Through the Looking Glass, Catch-22 overturns commonplaces and makes them fresh. Its optimism is despairing; its doubt is born of faith. "When Yossarian runs away in the end," says Heller, "I never said that he would get all the way. I wrote: 'The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.' But he tries, he changes. That's the best that can be said for any of us." It is the best that can be said of Nichols, who with this major film has discernibly altered not only his career but himself.

"Catch-22 has made me feel differently about what I lay on the line and what I do with my money too," Nichols says. "There are suddenly so many urgent things that we must do for one another to make sure that we continue to live on this earth. The kind of après-moi-le-dé-luge parties and life-style that goes with them seem more and more distasteful. The accounts of such rounds are beginning to sound like Evelyn Waugh parties in a dirigible during a war."

That general critique could be writ ten in the margin of Nichols' auto biography. If he is indeed breaking camp, his move is Yossarianic in its scope. Nichols was the original enthusiast of urbane Waughfare. In the '60s he compiled an unbroken string of Broadway smashes. He was a certified Beautiful Person, intimate of Lenny and Jackie, chum of Gloria Steinem, an original backer of Arthur, the slipped discotheque. Twice married, once divorced, once separated, he was the most eligible married male in Manhattan. His upper West Side triplex was decorated by Billy Baldwin. His Rolls waited obediently at the curb while he visited his fellow greats. His corporation was acquired by AVCO Embassy Pictures Corp. for $4,500,000. And yet, and yet, at that palmy time —was it only the day before yesterday? —there was a reason offered for Mike's acidulous tongue and his lofty penthouse picture of society. It was the standard one, heavily merchandised by paperback Freudians: an unhappy childhood.

With Nichols, the reason was real. An émigré from Hitler Germany, Michael Igor Peschkowsky arrived in the U.S. in 1939. The seven-year-old could speak but two sentences in his new tongue: "I do not speak English" and "Please do not kiss me." Forbearance is difficult for a little boy; there are people who will kiss a child no matter what he pleads. Mike learned how to offer a cheek and withdraw a psyche. He was a great sponge of a boy who decided to