Jack Nicholson didn't make his own party. He had quick-tripped to N.Y. for Tuesday's preem of "The Departed" and back to L.A. Wednesday to try to host his Thursday screening and party on the WB lot. His longtime friend and manager Sandy Bresler made apologies for him to the SRO-celeb crowd. He kiddingly said Nicholson had aggravated him for years and was a pain in the neck. This night, he said, it was a pain in the neck that KO'd him.
"It's a minor thing," Nicholson told me the next morning, "But I'm about being real." And facing reality, he may have to undergo surgery next week. It might delay the start of his next film, "The Bucket List."
Meanwhile Nicholson was enjoying dozens of phone calls from those of us who loved "The Departed" and were delighted by his non-stop tour de force performance. But he tossed the bouquets to Martin Scorsese. "We both love movies," he enthused, while also toasting the rest of the cast and saying younger players Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon have made "great ad-vancements."
Outstanding among the guests -- who included many of Nicholson's pals on the Lakers -- was L.A'.s Police Chief William Bratton. He's a part of the history of Boston in the '80s when he served on its police force -- before heading to N.Y. where he became Police Commissioner pre-L.A. During this same period, Bratton's wife, Rikki Klieman was Boston's leading criminal defense attorney. She was not with Bratton at the screening -- she was delivering a speech in Chicago to the Mentoring Council of Northwestern, her alma mater. But she told me she knew all the principals in the story -- from the FBI to the police to the Irish and Italian Mafia.
Chief Bratton was at the screening with Tita Cahn who invited them both. "I was husband-sitting," she told me. She had been a Court TV "addict" and thus became friends with Klieman -- and Bratton. The chief liked the movie. He knew the characters the movie fictionalized -- he recognized them....
Among some of the others on hand -- Bob Evans, who helped launch Nicholson's career, Candice Bergen, Sally Kirkland, Faye Dunaway, Billy Crystal, Hugh Hefner and friends.
P.S. I'd like to see "Departed" again.
