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As Good As It
Gets, The Movie With Jack
Nicholson 1997
James L. Brooks
(Terms
of Endearment,
Broadcast News)
directed this $50 million-plus
romantic comedy, set in
Manhattan. Dysfunctional,
acid-tongued romance novelist
Melvin Udall (Jack
Nicholson), who suffers from
an obsessive-compulsive
disorder, takes pride in his
ability to offend. At a nearby
cafe, the only waitress willing
to stand up to his sarcastic
tirades is Carol Connelly (Helen
Hunt), a single mother
struggling to raise her
chronically asthmatic son. In
Melvin's West Village apartment
building, talented contemporary
artist Simon Nye (Greg
Kinnear) lives across the
hall from Melvin. Simon is the
current darling of the New York
art world, reason enough to draw
Melvin's verbal fire, but
Simon's gay lifestyle is further
grist for the novelist's
malicious mill. These three New
Yorkers, none of whom appears to
have a chance in hell at finding
true happiness, discover their
fates intertwined because of the
fourth complicated character in
the piece, Verdell, a tiny
Brussels Griffon dog (played by
newcomer Jill, after a 15-week
training program). Melvin seems
to have no friends or family,
and he lives alone, working on
his 62nd book.
When Simon goes into the
hospital after a brutal mugging,
Melvin has to take care of
Verdell, and the dog actually
warms Melvin's cold heart -- to
the degree that he sets up
unsolicited medical care for
Carol's son. Eventually, Melvin
is cornered into driving Simon
and Carol to Baltimore, and
during a hotel stopover, Melvin
confesses to Carol, "You make me
want to be a better man." The
trip becomes an odyssey of
self-realization for all three.
Locations included Brooklyn's
Prospect Park (Carol's
neighborhood) and Greenwich
Village (where Melvin's building
is on 12th Street between Fifth
and Sixth Avenues). Other
exteriors were shot in downtown
Los Angeles, where a dilapidated
transient hotel at the corner of
4th Street and Main was
transformed into the chic cafe
where Carol works. Sets for the
Simon/Melvin apartment interiors
were erected on a soundstage at
the Sony Pictures lot. Simon's
paintings were created for the
film by New York artist Billy
Sullivan, whose work is part of
the modern art collection at
NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the New Orleans Museum of
Art.
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