Mike Nichols' life in the trenches

From the very beginning of his moviemaking career, director Mike Nichols has displayed an extraordinary knack for knowing what the adult moviegoing public of America wants to see, even before said public knows it wants to see it. Given the indifference and/or hostility the American moviegoing public, adult and otherwise, has shown to movies that have even a peripheral connection to the current war in Iraq, his zeitgeist-assessment talents ought to comfort the money men behind "Charlie Wilson's War," Nichols' latest film.

"War," which stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman and opens Friday, is a fleet, witty, not-quite satire about a real-life maverick Texas congressman's campaign to fund and arm the mujahedin resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early to mid-'80s. Given that even "The Kingdom," a relatively rah-rah action flick about the U.S.'s Middle East travails, failed to scare up even $50 million at the box office, fleet and witty might not cut much ice. But one shouldn't underestimate the Nichols touch.

After all, moviegoers weren't actively clamoring for a picture defining an emerging generation when Nichols sprang "The Graduate" on them in 1967.

The Berlin-born Nichols, whose family emigrated to the U.S. in 1939, had already made a name for himself on the stage, creating an almost instantly legendary comedy team with future filmmaker Elaine May in the mid-'50s, and moving to Broadway, he directed, among other productions, Neil Simon's wildly popular "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple" in the early '60s.

Hollywood beckoned about that time, and Nichols made his film debut with an adaptation of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the leads. The piece was an envelope-pusher on Broadway and Nichols was determined to keep it so for the screen, but the picture is mostly notable for demonstrating a particular Nichols knack that goes hand in hand with his other one: "Woolf" -- even more than Taylor's Oscar-winning performance, in 1960's "Butterfield 8" -- proved that the movie megastar could "really act." Ever since, Nichols has been coaxing sometimes surprising performances from movie folk better known as stars than actors -- Ann-Margret in 1971's "Carnal Knowledge," Cher in 1983's "Silkwood," and Melanie Griffith in 1988's "Working Girl."