Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, and ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. An intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike, this portrait presents the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theatre and motion pictures have ever seen.