Jack Nicholson Returns to Courtside for Lakers’ Playoff Game

Actor Jack Nicholson attends Game 6 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Actor Jack Nicholson attends Game 6 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
TT

Jack Nicholson Returns to Courtside for Lakers’ Playoff Game

Actor Jack Nicholson attends Game 6 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Actor Jack Nicholson attends Game 6 of a first-round NBA basketball playoff series between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jack is back.

Los Angeles Lakers superfan Jack Nicholson was watching at courtside for the first time in nearly two years Friday night when his team hosted the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series.

The 86-year-old Nicholson hadn’t been in his usual seats in the Lakers’ downtown arena since last season’s opening game in October 2021, but the three-time Academy Award-winning actor returned to his famed spot near the opposing bench with his son.

Nicholson was a fixture in the last half-century of Lakers history, cheering on the team through several eras of success after getting his season tickets in 1970. He was the most prominent face in the Lakers’ gallery of celebrity fans, his sunglasses and famous grin ever-present at courtside — and occasionally on the court if he was particularly displeased by an official’s call.

Nicholson cheered while the Showtime Lakers racked up championships and captured Hollywood’s imagination, and he remained an avid fan while they won five more titles in the Kobe Bryant era. He famously adjusted his shooting schedules and personal meetings to keep himself free to catch every big Lakers game.

Nicholson rarely attended games after fans returned to the Lakers’ building following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the chance to watch the Lakers attempt to win a playoff series at home for the first time since 2013 was irresistible to their No. 1 fan.



Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
TT

Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)

The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits – all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ ... (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.

“To take over the world?” he laughed.

The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”

Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.

London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman.”

“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesize such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.

“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.

“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker."

“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. "He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”