Mike Nichols, the multi-disciplined artist, passed away yesterday. When I read the news, I was amazed at how accomplished he was. Not only film, but stage and performance as well. He was one of the few who achieved the EGOT. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. In fact, he had more Tony’s than any other stage director. Although he helmed many memorable films, there was none more memorable for me than The Graduate.

I don’t know when I first saw The Graduate, but I know I had seen it quite a few times before I was 16, as that was the age when I met my first love, Cheryl. Our first kiss, the first time we met, was magic. Soon we…

Decades Project: 1/6 of the 60's

"It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up."

The Graduate was so much weirder than I expected, and I don't mean because of all the sex stuff. It was weird in the best way possible. I (wrongly) assumed it would be a fairly traditional coming-of-age comedy. This is not the case at all—and not merely because it's exceptionally well built. The weirdest thing about The Graduate is the way it smuggles in satirical social commentary where you least expect it.

Straight from…

I'm probably going to get into my more self-indulgent mode when I'm talking about something like this but it's necessary when I want to talk about a film like The Graduate. I once wrote in a personal diary entry that at certain points of my life where I just have absolutely nothing, I'm simply Benjamin Braddock. It feels especially reasonable as I feel I'm only living in a world where all I see are nothing but different age groups failing to understand what it is defining what satisfies another. This is a film that understands the loneliness in one's life and how the outside world just comes in and interferes.

From the opening alone, we get an idea of how…