8 Little Known Ways Jack Nicholson Made Burton’s Joker Awesome
2. What A Day
Everyone remembers the "mirror!" scene, but that's nothing compared to the full-on introduction of Napier's alter ego. Confronting mob boss Carl Grissom (played by another screen icon Jack, Palance), we finally get to see just how horrific the Joker's new look really is and experience one of the film's best death scenes; to circus music Joker delightedly fills Grissom with a full round of bullets, afterwards drolly muttering "what a day". You're probably expecting the usual "it was improvised" spiel here, but actually it's something even more interesting here; the line is from another Nicholson film, The Witches Of Eastwick (if you haven't seen it don't worry - it's very eighties in just about every manner imaginable). There Jack plays an reimagined devil who inbetween all his nefarious actions utters the same line. Sharing producers, distributor and actor, odds are this line (which is pretty by the by) was included as a very basic in-joke. Although it means very little now, at the time, when Witches was only two years old, it was a little acceptance on the film's part of just how big the actor was.
