Jack Nicholson: Lakers Fan, Script Doctor
We all remember how Jack Nicholson's dedication to craft led him to lobby his The Departed director Martin Scorses to juice up the realism of his sex scenes with liberal amounts of dildos and blow. Now Radar reports that Jack was even more hands-on during shooting than previously suspected:
[S]tudio sources say Nicholson went way beyond making occasional changes to the script, and would actually rewrite each day’s shoot—to the point where Scorsese was forced to shoot the actor’s doctored script before shooting his own version just to keep Nicholson happy.
But Scorsese wasn’t the only one subject to Nicholson’s eccentric rule, we hear. While filming in Boston, the notorious Lakers superfan banned all Celtics merchandise from the premises, a top-level production source says. “If he caught anyone wearing a Celtics T-shirt, he’d literally shut down the set. It was no joke,” says the source. [...]
With the embargo on Celtics fashion keeping things tight on the Boston shoot, everyone was primed for a meltdown the day that co-star Leonardo DiCaprio showed up wearing the same strap-on as Jack. A tense silence descended on the set as Nicholson approached the young actor, his anger about DiCaprio's gaffe twisted onto his iconic face, the air thick with the threat of sudden violence. But Nicholson surprised everyone by exploding into laughter, embracing his peer—yes, he was truly a peer now—and joining bold Leo in a playful swordfight with the two prosthetic appendages. A bond was strengthened that day, and the two men would later share a laugh over those initial tense moments while buried underneath a pile of Beantown's finest hookers.