Rebel

by Nick Nolte

  Mimi responded by suing me a year later. She and her lawyer wanted 10 percent of everything I would make for the rest of my film career because, she claimed, she “started” me. But the judge who finally heard our case asked me how long I had been acting before I met Mimi, to which I replied about fifteen years.

  “How many plays did you do in that time?”

  “About two hundred fifty,” I replied.

  “Well, that’s quite a rep,” he said, then asked, “Have you done movies, too?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, here and there,” I said, and that was all the judge wanted to know before telling Mimi, “I just can’t see you getting part of this man’s salary for the rest of his life. He has paid you fifteen percent of each deal in which you’ve represented him, and that’s all I believe you are fairly owed.”

  Mimi worked at ICM, and its head, Jeff Berg, had called me again and again in the days following my firing of Mimi. When I finally took his call, Jeff said, “Look, Nick, we know we fucked up, no question about it, we fucked up. But, let me tell you, we can do great things for you, we really can. This will never happen to you again. Will you come in and talk to us?”

  I thought about it for a moment, then gave him one condition. “Okay. I’ll come in if you’ll have one of your agents meet me in the parking lot with a longneck bottle of beer.”

  We made a deal, and sure enough, a guy met me with a bottle of beer, which I drank on the way up to Jeff’s office.

  He was ready for me, telling me once again that ICM had really fucked up, assuring me that it would never happen again, and adding that the company had just the agent who could handle me brilliantly, and who would doggedly pursue the ideas I had and the movies in which I wanted to star.

  Then Sue Mengers walked in, and I certainly knew who Sue was, although I’d never met her. She was big. She represented people like Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Cher, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet, Steve McQueen, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds, Barbra Streisand, and many others, and now she wanted to take me on. “Honey,” she quickly told me, “I’m so sorry you went through that shit. Of course, I will pursue everything that you’re interested in from here on out. And what’s more, I’ll get it for you.”

  Sue’s assurance—and that beer that had been waiting in the parking lot—were all I needed. I remained at ICM and Sue became my agent, and we worked together wonderfully for a long time.

  Making North Dallas Forty over the next year was both a nightmare and a dream. In my experience, sometimes these things are either luck or karma, and other times you must make change happen—remaining true to your own instincts, taking your own advice, and forging ahead to achieve what you believe is important.

  I knew what a brutal business football can be—both on and off the field. And by now I could see parallels between how ball players and actors were often treated by people whose power over them could profoundly limit their options and sometimes even wreck their lives. I couldn’t help but believe that one of my life’s important undertakings was going to be getting North Dallas Forty to the screen—who better than me, after all?—and somehow, I was pulling it off. Paramount had committed to the movie, I would choose both the producer and the director, and the legendary Sue Mengers was now by my side. I felt like I had just scored on a ninety-nine-yard run from scrimmage.

  I WOULD PLAY PHIL ELLIOTT IN NORTH DALLAS FORTY, A character largely based on Pete Gent himself. As producer, I chose Frank Yablans—a guy who was as tough a motherfucker as they come. Yablans had been Paramount’s president until he’d tried to throw the studio’s owner, Charlie Bluhdorn, out a window one day when the two had encountered what you could call a substantive disagreement. Frank fired away at me from the get-go, declaring, “I’ll be the goddamned owner of the franchise! I don’t give a fuck!” For a split second, I thought he was auditioning for the role of the team owner in the film, but then I caught his drift. Frank didn’t care who he had to run over. Whatever it took, he was going to get the picture made.

  Ted Kotcheff was the director I selected from among those Paramount offered for the project. I had seen his film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, with Richard Dreyfuss, which had won the Golden Bear at the 1974 Berlin Film Festival. It’s an excellent picture, and I was already comfortable with the idea that Ted would direct us, but he won me over entirely when we first met and he confessed, “Nick, I don’t know anything about football.” That was exactly what I wanted to hear, and I told him the movie was much more about fighting corrupt institutions—any institution—than it was a sports film, and he had proven his chops as a dramatist a number of times over. What I didn’t immediately tell him was that he was taking on an impossible job—not simply directing the picture, but also attempting to find some common ground between Yablans and the rest of us.

  During the development process, we had gone through lots of writers, including one who was convinced that North Dallas Forty was properly a slapstick comedy, complete with a player who sported a wooden leg. I grew worried that we could lose the very essence of our film, so I called Pete Gent and asked him to come join us on the set, which made Frank Yablans crazy. “Get this guy the hell off our set!” he screamed.

  I explained to Frank that this was the man who wrote the novel. This was Phil Elliott, the character I was playing. I needed him. We all did.

  Frank grumbled and acquiesced, and Ted got Pete busy rewriting the script. Frank wasn’t on set the first time we shot one of Pete’s rewritten scenes, and when he later saw it in dailies, he came up to us and announced that it was brilliant. “Who wrote this?” he demanded.

  When Pete humbly raised his hand, Frank barked back, “Well, keep writing, goddamn it!” But there was never any love lost between the two men as we continued to shoot. One time, in fact, Pete became so frustrated by Frank’s changing demands that he picked him up by the lapels, apparently determined to throw him for a touchdown. But then he thought better of the idea, and set Yablans down and began to cry with frustration. His decision not to go absolutely postal only resulted in Yablans’s taunting him. “You’ve got no guts, Gent. You didn’t have the guts to kill me. That’s the difference between us. I’d have killed you!” It would have been the most dramatic scene in the movie if we had filmed it.

  Even though we were shooting Pete Gent’s own fictionalized story, I felt I really needed more consultative input from an NFL player—and a wide receiver specifically—than Pete alone could offer. As I initially read the novel, I kept imagining the legendary Oakland Raiders receiver Fred Biletnikoff as Phil Elliott physically. Biletnikoff wasn’t big or fast by NFL standards. Instead he used guile, guts, and a remarkable pair of hands to overachieve his way into the Hall of Fame. He was a student and great practitioner of the game. When I reached out to Fred, we talked about the correlations between the art of film and the art of sports, and once he was convinced of my commitment to excellence, he agreed to become a consultant.

  Fred looked much more like a chain-smoking used-car salesman than your usual image of a football player. Yet he was a well-grounded, detail-oriented, nuts-and-bolts workaholic. But he could be a little far-out, too. “Don’t carry the route in your head because a cornerback can read your mind,” he coached me. “Forget where you’re going until you get there. Improvise precisely.” His understanding of the wide receiver position was extraordinary, and I took every cue from him I possibly could as I created the film version of Phil Elliott.

  Fred didn’t wear knee pads and so neither did Phil. Fred yanked the middle flaps out of his shoulder pads to increase his chances of making overhead catches, and so did Phil. I made sure that Phil taped his arms up precisely like Fred did before each game. And on-screen I also imitated Fred’s final act of preparation before every game, lying on his back and meditatively tossing a football toward the ceiling. Fred coached me through every scene we shot, and the film wouldn’t have been the same—or nearly as good—without him.

  The NFL did its best to torpedo the film once i
ts administrators got word that we were in production. They hated the idea that we might tarnish their image if we demonstrated what second-class citizens its players were—regardless of their race—and how terribly crippled almost every veteran became. It was a wild ride, but with Pete’s great story, Fred’s inspired consulting, and wonderful performances from actors like Mac Davis, the country singing sensation who made his on-screen debut in the film, I felt confident we were creating something special. Mac played Seth Maxwell, a character based closely on the colorful Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith, and Mac simply sparkled on camera.

  He couldn’t throw a football to save his life, but we were just making a movie, after all; Mac only had to pretend he was a quarterback, and I was happy reviewers gave him glowing notices when the film premiered. You can imagine how sweet it felt when the film was a financial success and a critical one as well. It was my film; I’d fought for it and bled for it and given it my all. I’ll never forget the afternoon when Sue Mengers pushed a New York Times review of North Dallas Forty under my nose. “The uncontested star of the show is Mr. Nolte,” it read, “who may surprise a lot of people who had the ill fortune to see him in The Deep and the even worse luck to miss him in Who’ll Stop the Rain. His performance in Who’ll Stop the Rain was altogether stunning; this time out he’s engaging and full of surprises. Either way, he’s something to see.”

  IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES, THERE WAS A BAR AT THE corner of the Pacific Coast Highway and Trancas Canyon Road. It was a local hangout, legendary for hard partying and unannounced, off-the-cuff rock shows. Fleetwood Mac, the Stones, and other world-famous acts would appear out of the blue, plug in, and tear it up. You never knew when it would happen, but when it did, the place went nuts. On a quiet night in 1980, I met the actor and playwright Jason Miller there. A black-Irishman from Scranton, Pennsylvania, he had written a Pulitzer Prize–winning play called That Championship Season about a reunion of high school basketball teammates.

  After Jason and I talked at length at the bar, getting more than a little slaughtered, we continued to his house, where he showed me his screenplay based on the play. It was about to become a film directed by William Friedkin, who had won an Academy Award for directing The French Connection a few years before. Jason then asked me, was I interested?

  Damn right I was. Martin Sheen and Paul Sorvino were already attached to play team members, and George C. Scott was on board to play the coach. Friedkin himself was a basketball junkie in addition to being one of the nation’s finest directors, so I couldn’t see how the film could go wrong. But then, a couple of weeks before shooting was set to begin, I got a call from George C. Scott while Legs and I were staying at Caesars in Lake Tahoe with our friend Don Johnson and Amarillo Slim, the notorious gambler.

  “There was a fight. I wasn’t drunk. This guy Friedkin is a nut. He’s crazy. I’ve already lost one testicle in this business, I’m not going to lose another,” Scott shouted.

  Scott and Friedkin had gotten embroiled in an argument at a party at Martin Sheen’s. Ugly words had been spoken. Serious threats had been made, and Scott swore he would walk if Friedkin continued as the picture’s director.

  The situation was clearly quite serious, so I left Legs to continue her partying—pulling her away from a good time was like separating a lion from fresh meat—and I flew back to Southern California, where I found Jason at his house in Malibu, halfway into a bottle of whiskey and shouting, “It’s over! It’s over!”

  But it wasn’t, of course. I helped Jason with his whiskey and convinced him we were just getting started, and the two of us determined over several hours that it was up to us to come up with a new plan. We knew we couldn’t replace Billy Friedkin. Directors are less selfish and a little more human than actors. They hold themselves with a certain decorum, making them less likely to eat their own. No director worth a goddamn would take the job if Friedkin was out, so another coach was the answer. We bandied names around, and finally, Jason suggested William Holden. Perfect, I said, and I promised I would go get him.

  With the help of Sue Mengers, I was able to reach Holden by phone, capture his interest, and secure his promise to read the script. A week later, he met Jason at a bar, where the two shared several drinks and Holden offered the news that he loved the script and would accept the role. Next, we tracked down Billy Friedkin in Europe, he immediately approved Holden as the coach, and we finally appeared to be all set.

  A new shooting schedule was created and start date was chosen, and everything was lining up nicely a few weeks later when Jason, deeply depressed, informed me that Stefanie Powers had recently dumped Holden while he was in Africa, and his boozing had gotten so out of control that none of his buddies would drink with him anymore; even Glenn Ford’s wife wouldn’t let Glenn drink with Bill anymore.

  “Well, shit,” I replied, “all we have to do is find him and drink with him, set him straight, and get him ready to shoot.” But we couldn’t find him. We tried his house, his bar, his friends’ houses and friends’ bars. We even tried to find him in Africa, but we couldn’t.

  After coming up empty for three days, I was fried. I went home. The next morning, I was in bed asleep when Jason came in and shook me awake, saying, “Did you hear? Did you hear? Bill Holden is dead.” He’d been alone and drunk and had fallen, hitting his head on a coffee table and bleeding to death in his living room. The police told us they counted twenty-eight messages on his answering machine, which were left by Jason and me as his body waited for days to be discovered.

  It was a crushing blow. That was it; there would be no Championship Season for me. I was spooked. I wanted nothing more to do with that picture, regardless of the quality of the story, the writing, or the cast. I bailed, and then so did Billy Friedkin. Jason finally directed the movie himself, replacing me with Bruce Dern, and he made a good picture in the end.

  Coming down off a successful film takes me a month or more, and always has. But getting over a sad fiasco like that one seemed impossible, and I didn’t know how to move beyond it. I found a rental house near Point Dume in Malibu, where only Legs and a couple of other people knew I was hiding out. I took the phone off the hook, I didn’t venture out, and I drank, snorted coke, and sank into my biggest depression in many years.

  Only five years had passed since I’d portrayed Tom Jordache to great acclaim in Rich Man, Poor Man, and my career had then taken a meteoric rise. I’d gotten remarkably good reviews in three more theatrical films in the intervening years, and I had brought one of those stories to the screen with only my own tenacity. I’d met a wild woman I adored, one who shared my rebellious streak. We had married and were living full tilt. How could this forty-year-old imagine a better half decade than the one he’d just had?

  Yet there I was again—stymied by real life, laid low by the kinds of challenges that come everyone’s way. I hid for weeks inside that house perched on the edge of paradise, wishing that I could always live my life inside a script.

  CHAPTER 10

  Under Fire

  THE FUNK INTO WHICH I FELL AFTER THAT CHAMPIONSHIP Season didn’t disappear until my friend Dino Conti knocked on my door. I’d known Dino for a long time—it was Dino who had whispered a few words into Legs’s ear on the evening I met her—and I always enjoyed his company. Sure, everybody said that Dino was mob connected, and that seemed like a likely enough possibility, but I didn’t care.

  I’d met him through another Dino—Dino De Laurentiis, a self-made movie mogul from Italy who had relocated to the U.S. and shaken up the industry with a series of films that included Serpico, Death Wish, Ragtime, Conan the Barbarian, Blue Velvet, and many others. Tiny in stature and always larger than life, Dino was one of the most prolific producers in the history of film. He made pictures of every kind and made them with panache. The fact that people could never figure out where his money came from added an air of intrigue to him and his operation. They don’t make them like him anymore, and I was drawn to him as soon as I met
him.

  He had originally hired Dino Conti to protect his children following a death threat, but the two Dinos clearly had more than their Italian roots in common and spent lots of time together. Dino De Laurentiis began to pitch a steady stream of projects to me early in my career, and every time we met, Dino the bodyguard, Dino the reputed mob guy, was with him.

  Our regular meetings were fantastic—always a blast—if seldom fruitful for either of us. He was set to produce a lavish remake of The Great Train Robbery for a while, and it was a film I really wanted a piece of. He’d assure me in his heavy accent, “Of course, you’ll do Train Robbery, but first you do Orca.” But I wouldn’t have it. I’d hold my ground and answer, “No, Dino, I’m not going to do Orca. Just forget it.” Round and round we went like that for years, and when De Laurentiis would throw up his arms in frustration, I’d look over at Dino Conti, who was always present, and say, “Dino, let’s grab a bite to eat.”

  Conti walked me out of the office every time, and when we hit the sidewalk, the first thing he would do was stroll over to the FBI guys permanently parked outside his boss De Laurentiis’s office to say hello. It always made me nervous, and I’d implore him not to mess with those guys, but he assured me that it was clean fun. We shared many lunches and I always had a good time. I’m a talker, and Conti was a good listener. But his boss never understood why I liked hanging out with him as much as I did. He’d repeatedly ask, “Why you like this guy? You know what he does?”

  I knew; I just didn’t want to know too much, and Conti wasn’t about to offer me details in any case. There was just something about him that made me want to say yes to virtually anything he suggested. So I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw Conti standing in the doorway at the house in Point Dume. “Come on, Nick,” he announced. “Enough of this laying around. Let’s go play with the boys.”