A birdcage, in the modernist tradition

By Steven Zeitchik

Mike Nichols may have made his film name as the director of sly comedies like "Catch-22" and American zeitgeist-y films like "The Graduate" and "Silkwood," but his cinematic roots lie in...museums?

The other half of the Elaine May comedy duo told the crowd honoring him at the Museum of Modern Art Tuesday that his formative cinematic memories were of stealing away to the MOMA basement to see movies from the likes of Preston Sturges and George Cukor.

"I had been so deep into movies that I memorized how an actor looked from the back," he said. "Just as Holden Caufield was described as hopelessly impaled on beauty, I was hopelessly impaled on movies. MOMA is where I found that out."

But comedy wasn't that far from him even in the truth-seeking and, er, more satisfied precincts of modern art. "Funny is a unique way of telling the truth because in laughing they agree with you," he said.

Also, at the Nichols event, former New York mayor Ed Koch may have found a second life as an amateur Roger Ebert, but don't expect the current holder of the hizzoner title to follow in his footsteps.

Bloomberg acknowledged he doesn't get to the multiplex very much. In fact, he only had one such foray this year, and it was for...Charlie Wilson's War, of course. "It's my favorite movie of the year," the mayor said -- totally coincidentally -- in front of Nichols. "It's also the only movie I saw this year."

Then again, given the quality of some of Koch's reviews, maybe it's better when a mayor sees fewer films.