Jack Nicholson wears a Swatch

Melvin Udall is sitting in his apartment with a hardback book held up to the light and a small dog tucked against his arm. It is a quiet beat in As Good as It Gets (1997), the James L. Brooks film that won Jack Nicholson his third Oscar, and it is one of the few moments where you can actually see his watch. Udall is a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist who brings his own plastic cutlery to the same restaurant booth every day and checks his locks in fixed counts, a man whose whole life runs on routine.

A plain, unfussy watch fits him better than anything precious would. On his wrist, as he holds the book, is a round-cased watch on a dark leather strap with a simple buckle. The dial sits in shadow, and no brand or model resolves on screen. Watch-spotters have long tagged it as a Swatch, the inexpensive Swiss quartz that came to define affordable, disposable fun in the 1980s, which would suit a man who prizes sameness over status. On screen, though, the dial never gives up the brand.

What can be said for certain is small, and a little funny. On a character who notices and controls every detail of his world, this is the one detail almost nobody notices.