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Mike Nichols on standup in Vanity Fair

In the opening few paragraphs of what must be the ninth or tenth profile that VF has done on Mike Nichols, Sam Kashner writes about the breakup of the comedy duo Nichols and May:

Then they walked away from it all. It was Elaine May’s idea. She wanted to devote more time to writing and she also felt, with Kennedy just installed in the White House, there had been a seismic shift in the country’s mood, and the duo’s uptight, Eisenhower-era targets were no longer relevant. On July 1, 1961, they gave their last performance. “I stopped being a comedian,” Nichols now says, not the least bit wistfully. “Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it’s soul destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks.”

You mean, like… a director?

Uh… it doesn’t turn all of us into control freaks. (Ever notice how the only people who piss and moan about control freaks are… control freaks?)

Thanks to FOS Al Romas for pointing us toward the article!