A TWIST FROM URANUS - NICHOLSON DOES SCHMIDT
By Judi Vitale

What's His Sign?
Most people would never guess Jack Nicholson's Sun sign. But just for fun, take a stab at it. The renegade who took us on a wild trip in Easy Rider and soared to fame as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest must have been born in a raucous sign like Saggitarius or under the downright radical vibes of Aquarius, right? No? Well, then maybe the Jack who starred in The Shining, or the one who dumped Anjelica Houston (or got dumped by her) could be a very scary Scorpio...

Any guesses along these lines might make sense, but they'd be dead wrong. If you want a revealing clue about Nicholson's Sun sign, check out the opening sequence to his most recent - and marvelous - performance in About Schmidt. Images of bulls are flung at the audience, both subliminally and blatantly, as the opening credits roll. Steers... statues of horned heads... for a moment it looks like this might be a movie about cattle farms or Wall Street or something. (Jack as a Capricorn? Now there's a kinky idea...) But soon thereafter, as we first see Warren Schmidt (Jack's character) seated at his desk, patiently waiting for the clock to painstakingly tick its way to five on his last day at work, the images begin to merge, and we finally get it. Jack's found the role of his life - and it's a lot more like him than he'd like us to think.

Not the Ordinary Bull
Jack Nicholson is a Taurus. Are you shocked? You're not alone - probably most people he comes in contact with would be, too. Check almost any description of Taurus, and you'll read about a stable and tenacious person whose love for material delights motivates him or her to achieve great success and stability. Read almost any description of Jack Nicholson, and you'll hear stories about a decadent, over-the-top hell-raiser whose love of chemical and sexual stimulation has led him to more bad-boy misadventures than most of us are able to dream up.

Anti-Taurus or Xtreme Pleasure-Seeker?
Jack's seemingly contradictory profile demonstrates how astrology signs manifest differently from one individual to the next. While Taurus can be protective and constructive, there's another side to the sign that is over-indulgent, and as in Jack's case, somewhat hedonistic. Sometimes, it's the planets that surround the Sun in a person's chart that really dictate the direction a personality will go.

Wacky Uranus Pushes Jack Over the Edge
Jack's Sun in Taurus was traveling very close to the edgy planet Uranus when he was born. This gives his Sun - his inner sense of being - a very erratic and independent nature. He wants to make sure that he does the exact opposite of what you'd expect. He's an innovator, and likes to be the first one to impress - even shock - people with his original ideas. He's the kind of person no one will ever tame, and who goes out of his way to ensure no one can ever completely characterize. Furthermore, the mid-point between his Sun and Uranus vibrates strongly with his Ascendant - the part of him he wants the rest of the world to see as his "persona". So this is another reason that Jack is the poster boy for outrageousness and new standards of decadence. He was a pioneer at being "in your face" before it became popular, and even now, in a time when Ozzy Ozborne is beginning to seem normal to us, Jack is still a stand out.

But the years (and the dangers that became more grave as time passed - like herpes and other STDs) have mellowed Nicholson. He points out during an interview in Entertainment Weekly (Jan 3, 2003) that since sex has become more risky, even he's become "less libidinous". He goes on to describe his present, and comparatively "ordinary", existence - at least for a guy who lives in a sprawling multi-structure compound that spans his lives with more than one woman and is just up the block from his buddy (and fellow eccentric) Marlon Brando. And if there is indeed a part of Jack that's a lot less raucous and rowdy than the image he's crafted up until now, he gave us all of it when he played Warren Schmidt.

Jack's Conservative Core Shows - At Last
The Jack that becomes Warren is toned down enough to evoke R.P. McMurphy after the lobotomy. He is the establishment in this film. Once he loses his equally conservative wife, Warren flounders as he tries to bond with his feisty and independent daughter. She's about to marry a waterbed salesman who wears a mullet and seems to have just about no chance at success. That might be hard enough for a steady, reliable man like Warren to accept, but when he meets his cherished daughter's potential in-laws, his tidy version of the way things should be unravels. The experiences Warren has when he meets the other characters in the movie drive the point of the story (that we can't always control the ones we love) right home. The fact that Warren's lost his grip on what he'd consider a normal life for his daughter becomes more obvious when Schmidt meets his daughter's futre mother-in-law, played by Kathy Bates.

In this film, the characters depicted by Bates (Sun in Cancer, conjunct Venus and the Moon) and Nicholson play off one another like oil and water. We can watch him squirm in one scene where the two of them share a hot tub. She's an ex-hippie/Earth mother type with no inhibitions, while he's left to writhe and struggle with the waterbed she gave him to sleep in. Everything about Bates' emasculating and domineering character grates at Warren, down to (maybe especially) the young man she gave birth to - his soon-to-be son-in-law. In the end, Warren realizes that if he doesn't go along with his daughter's plans, he will lose her, so he gently accepts her fate - and his. He does this by giving at least some part of himself over to the truth about life that he ultimately that he discovers.

Taurus to a T
In Schmidt, Jack Nicholson plays a man who embodies his own Sun sign. He's practical, traditional and intent on protecting the status quo - which in this case, happens to be his daughter. He shares the details of his quest to protect his daughter (played by Aries Hope Davis) with Ndugu, the little African boy to whom he sends monthly $22 checks and long, rambling letters that might be more appropriately addressed to one's shrink. By doing this, Warren makes his internal struggles sound reasonable and worth sharing, and he gets his worries off his chest. And perhaps more important than anything, he forces himself to see who he really is.

The more mature Jack Nicholson we're allowed to see through this character isn't afraid to show us that, underneath all the bravado and brashness, there's a soppy, sentimental and archetypal Taurean guy under there. And by the end of the movie, we see that despite the mundane nature of most of his deeds, Warren Schmidt ultimately fulfills the dream of every Taurus - in his or her own way, to find out that all of his deeds did, in fact, make a difference.

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