by Nick Nolte
That seemed to explain a great deal and Debra got away with all kinds of capricious behavior because of her family crisis. The picture really suffered due to her antics and the way they affected everyone on both sides of the camera, and it wasn’t surprising that Debra thought it was just funny as hell when she invited her father—whose health had been fine all along—to join her at the wrap party when our shoot was finished.
All I knew was that I was very happy to be moving on. She had toyed with virtually everyone on the set in her quest for her own kind of control, and it wasn’t any surprise that audiences and critics responded to the film as a very mixed bag. I got generally good notices—and Debra did, too—but it wasn’t the film I had poured my heart into early on, and I was learning that that was often simply the way things went.
CANNERY ROW WAS A FILM WITH A FINE YOUNG DIRECTOR and a brilliant art director, and it was the first U.S. film by Sven Nykvist, the legendary Swedish cinematographer who shot Ingmar Bergman’s films. The set was magical, as I’ve mentioned; the story was Steinbeck at his best; and our cast—Debra included—was comprised of strong actors. But the film, in the end, was a picture that was much less than the sum of its parts.
Sometimes a film’s many elements simply don’t come together as they might have. Other times—and it occurred with my next film, Under Fire—everything goes wrong during the shoot and even getting the picture completed looks like a hell of a long shot, but somehow the finished film is brilliant by the time it reaches theaters. It’s my opinion that Under Fire is an overlooked gem.
I didn’t know about the chaos under way in Nicaragua until I chanced on Roger Spottiswoode, who had written 48 Hrs., and screenwriter Ron Shelton in the commissary at Paramount one day, where they were about to pitch the Under Fire script, which they had cowritten. I expressed interest in the project, which they said was about journalists caught in the midst of a Central American revolution, and when I read it I was blown away. I wanted in, wanted to play Russell Price, an apolitical news photographer who falls for a radio journalist in war-ravaged Nicaragua, and both Roger and Ron were happy to attach me to the project and get my support.
Sue Mengers was able to wrangle about $7 million in financing; we found $5 million more, and just as we arrived in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca to shoot, the peso was devalued by half, so we had effectively $24 million with which to make something epic in scope.
As the story unfolds, it doesn’t take my character Russell long to see the vast difference between the corrupt, U.S.-backed dictatorship and the struggling guerrilla forces who have been fighting for their independence for a decade already. As his eyes are opened, he and Claire, who was played by Joanna Cassidy, decide to go along with the rebels and film their fighting behind the lines. During one battle, a much-venerated rebel leader is shot dead, and Russell reluctantly agrees to fake a photo of the man as though he were still living to boost the spirits of the rebels. The photo appears in the news around the world, and the idea that the leader could still be alive causes such a furor that Claire’s lover, Alex, a television newsman, thinking the leader is alive as well, shows up to interview him for American TV. It’s on the way to the interview that Alex leaves the car for a moment and is senselessly shot and killed by a government soldier, the whole episode filmed for the world by Russell.
It’s a powerful story, and it was very topical at the time we shot it—by then Nicaragua had spiraled from civil war to revolution—but the Mexico shoot was like a revolution itself much of the time. The string of catastrophes began when we accidentally blew up a Mexican citizen’s car in Oaxaca, and the local press referred to us as “Under Fire Under Assholes.” Then, I was at dinner one night with a Mexican guy who was supplying me with a little local blow, and he became indignant that I didn’t speak any Spanish, even though our little business relationship was working pretty well for him. “Why do you not learn Spanish?” he asked as he ominously grabbed me by the cheek. “You come down here a lot but you don’t learn nothing.” I apologized, promised him I would try to learn Spanish, then successfully freed my cheek from his fingers. It was spooky.
At that same dinner, other locals came up and expressed outrage that the production hadn’t paid the city a fee to shoot there. We had paid the governor of Oaxaca, I explained, but paying him off was something entirely different from paying the officials of the city, I quickly learned. Then three thousand indigenous people—who each had been promised fifteen dollars a day to work as “revolution” extras—mutinied when there was only enough budgeted to pay fifteen hundred of them. I intervened by pulling a local aside and advising him to have them sit down all around our vehicles on set and refuse to move until the producers found the money. It worked; they apologized profusely and paid those poor people, and we were rolling again. The suits may have an entirely different version of this event, but I’m sticking to mine.
Joanna Cassidy, who played Claire, the love interest of both my character Russell and Alex, the newsman played by Gene Hackman, treated us both a bit like we had leprosy throughout the shoot, and neither one of us understood why until someone explained that she was dating the very married British director Ridley Scott. Ridley—knowing how quickly on-set romances could catch fire—had instructed her to stay the hell away and not give either of us a glimmer of hope for shenanigans with her, and Joanna was strictly obeying.
Then our cast and crew of about eighty people flew south to Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas. We had eighty crew members on the plane. I was sitting with a Mexican stuntman, Tarzan, who was kind of a charismatic, fun guy, and the dolly grip, Apache. I was with the Mexican crew because I just found them more comfortable. As we came in to Tuxtla, it was heavily fogged and we were in the cloud bank. The airport runway was at a very high altitude and the pilot was trying to find the landing strip. I was looking out the window and I couldn’t see the ground, or anything, really. It was terrifying, and the pilot decided to pull up and fly back to Oaxaca.
That sudden change in plans outraged director Roger Spottiswoode and his lapdog assistant director enough that they stormed the cockpit, screaming, “Land us! Land us right now, you Mexican motherfuckers!”
But many others on board, me among them, had absolutely no interest in dying that day and we were delighted when our fine cinematographer, John Alcott, and his gaffer jumped Spottiswoode and his AD and pinned them down long enough for the pilots to get their door safely locked and continue us on toward Oaxaca.
In the scuffle that continued, terror and tempers flared even further; Tarzan and Apache got into the action and things were real Western when we landed back in Oaxaca. Once back in the lobby, we heard an overhead announcement: “The following people will not be allowed in Mexican airspace on any plane, private or commercial: Roger Spottiswoode, Nick Nolte . . . ,” and a list of everyone on the crew. I said, “There you go, boys, deal with that. I hear there is not even a road to Tuxtla.” We were screwed.
Well, there was a road, but it could barely be called that. What it turned out to be was a seventeen-hour taxi ride over jeep roads and two-track trails to get south to Chiapas. I was out of pain pills, out of all my stashes, and I was sure, at times, that I wasn’t going to make it. When we finally arrived, we just had a couple of action scenes remaining to shoot, but sure enough, things turned once again into chaos. We succeeded in destroying a thousand-year-old cemetery with tanks we had rented from the Mexican army, and for that, we were informed, everything of any value we possessed was going to be confiscated by the national government—our final rolls of exposed film included.
Mike Medavoy, the chairman of Orion Pictures, had received word back in Los Angeles about the planned confiscations and had reached me at my hotel in Tuxtla to give me precise instructions. He evidently couldn’t trust Spottiswoode to safely get the film out of the country, but he did trust me. On the last day of shooting, we would be out in boats on nearby Lago Malpaso, filming the final day of the revolution as my character and Joanna�
��s character flee by water with victorious Sandinista soldiers in tow.
Late in the afternoon, as Spottiswoode was filming from shore, I did precisely as Mike had requested, telling the boat’s driver to turn us around and get us back to camp as fast as the boat could travel. From the shore, Spottiswoode screamed, “Where are you going? Stop! Stop!” from a bullhorn. The boat’s driver looked at me nervously but I motioned him forward and we pressed on. At that point, a worried Joanna said to me, “You know, Nick, I have not been a really warm compatriot on this shoot. I was not very warm with Gene either; I am sorry for that. But you obviously know something is about to go down. Could I go with you?” I said, “Sure, Joanna.”
When we finally reached the shore, we jumped into a waiting cab, sped to Joanna’s trailer so she could grab some essentials, then went on to the Tuxtla airport, where John Alcott’s gaffer was waiting with the last rolls of film, along with a plane Medavoy had sent from L.A.
Joanna and I jumped on board—ignoring the immigration officials who were pissed off about what we gringos were up to—and we safely flew west out of Mexican airspace, then northwest to LAX and a wild end to the roughest shoot I’d ever been part of.
MIKE MEDAVOY HAD ALREADY BECOME A LEGEND IN THE INTERNATIONAL film community by the time he saved the day and got the final essential images of Under Fire safely out of Mexico, escorted by Joanna and me. I was grateful for his leadership and his friendship—especially after learning once we were back home in California that the Mexican government had indeed confiscated everything of which the production was in possession, and that Spottiswoode and the rest of our American crew had been locked in a Chiapas jail for a couple days before they were given stiff fines and released.
Medavoy’s expertise was enough to ensure that the picture made money—at least once the international box office was tallied—but the critical response was mixed. Roger Ebert wrote that it was “surprisingly, one of the year’s best films.” But Vincent Canby said the film “means well but it is fatally confused.” Personally, although I certainly didn’t like every film in which I acted, I was enormously impressed by Under Fire when I first saw it, and I couldn’t believe that a film that good could have risen out of the ashes of our Mexico shoot.
I seldom find myself siding with producers but I credit Mike Medavoy for ensuring that what might have been a disaster in every way became a film I’ll always be proud of. Mike once famously quipped that the Hollywood film industry “is a business that eats its elders instead of its young.” He was right about that, and although I had turned forty-two, I was still lucky enough to be perceived as a “young” actor. But the truth was that I was beat up. Legs and I had been living large for several years by now, and the intensity with which we partied had taken a real toll. I’d made a lot of movies in only a few years, and after completing each one I needed at least a month—often much longer—to get back to a state of equilibrium. And once I was home and Under Fire was behind me, I was utterly exhausted.
Although Legs and I had settled in Malibu by now, I couldn’t stay home and simply recuperate because, she contended, I had to go to West Virginia to help one of her family members celebrate his birthday, as I’d done in previous years. She would stay home from the boys’ weekend and tend to her own adventures. Our marriage was in a very precarious condition, as she was a young woman committed to a life of hard partying and I was feeling like an old man tiring of the scene rapidly. We were leading separate lives, yet Uncle Bachir, one of Legs’s favorite relatives, was someone I liked to support if I could.
Bachir was a storied gambler—the guy could throw craps like nobody’s business—yet more than once I had to go and buy his house back for him. He wanted me to return to Charleston, where he and his wife, Jenny, hailed from. As he’d done in previous years, Bachir wanted a bachelor birthday party and let it be known that Nick Nolte was in town—news that would attract high-ranking partygoers to his legendary soiree as well as the girls who would keep them entertained.
At first I refused to go, but when Legs pressed me hard I finally relented. In a telephone call from Malibu, I told Bachir, “I’ll go under one condition. You must provide me with a full bottle of pharmaceutical cocaine. I know you guys can get it because there are about five dentists in that group of yours.” Bachir wasn’t happy, but he and his buddies reluctantly agreed, so I went. Legs stayed home to go partying with her friends the Carbinol brothers, who happened to run a gang in East L.A.
I was already exhausted when I arrived in West Virginia, and the quality and quantity of cocaine that was waiting for me wasn’t helping a bit. Seriously strung out, and in real need of help, I began to panic. Bachir had put me up in a friend’s palatial house on a golf course, in a red-velvet room with a heart-shaped bathtub, and there were always several goons around whose only job seemed to be making sure that I didn’t go anywhere. But when I learned that Bachir and company had even taken out ads in the local paper offering the pleasure of my company at their party, I knew I had to escape. I didn’t want to involve the police because Bachir was still family and my nose wasn’t exactly clean, pun intended. But I knew I had to get out.
One afternoon, a young woman named Terri came in to check whether I needed anything. She looked trustworthy and I took a chance. “You know, I am in a dire situation here,” I quietly said to her.
“Yes, you are,” she agreed.
I asked if she would help me escape and she said, “No, I don’t have the guts to do that. But my sister is coming by. Her name is Rebecca and she has the guts. If she thinks it’s right, she will do it.”
“Well, how will I know her?” I asked.
“She’ll be the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen,” Terri said matter-of-factly.
About three hours later, Rebecca arrived, and she quickly agreed with Terri and me. “You’re in a really terrible situation here. The word is out all over town that people ought to come hang out with you. But I’ll help. What do I need to do?”
I had a plan. I told Rebecca that I had just a single bag, and that I’d crawl out the bedroom window as soon as she pulled her car around to the side of the house. Then I’d jump in with her and hope she could take me someplace where no one could find me.
And the plan worked. I popped out the window’s screen, jumped to the ground, and got into Rebecca’s car, and we sped away. She took me to her parents’ big house and secreted me in her bedroom. She was twenty-three or so but was living at home, and it didn’t take long for her parents to catch on that she was hiding someone in her room.
Words were spoken. In the midst of them, and despite her parents’ disapproval, Rebecca confessed that yes, there was a man in her room whom she was helping recover from some trouble. She was doing him a favor, she explained, and that was simply the way it was going to be. She brought me food and checked on me often during the following several days, and when I finally met her parents they were perfectly friendly, and I tried to express my gratitude. “Dr. and Mrs. Linger, I want to thank you,” I told them. “Your daughter has quite literally saved me from a very difficult situation, one I had no control over. She helped me get away from this criminal element I was around, and I will leave soon. I’ll go home and get everything taken care of.”
The doctor and his wife were gracious in turn, telling me that I had been welcome in their home, and the next day I scheduled a flight back to California. But before I departed, I told Rebecca that I was going to get straight and get a divorce. I told her I was terrible about staying in touch by phone, but that I’d call once during the summer—which I did—then added that I hoped she would come stay with me in New York in the fall, where I’d be shooting a film with Katharine Hepburn.
I lived alone in Malibu during that summer; my mother and sister had rented a house on the point, and I climbed into one of the rooms and hid. The divorce proceedings were turned over to the lawyers. Legs’s parents were quite upset—their son-in-law Nick had been their meal ticket, after all—but Legs wasn’
t mad. She received a healthy percentage of my film income from while we were together, and then she was on to the next party she could find—and she always managed to find men everywhere, if she needed any. My mother and sister helped make sure I was okay, and by the time I left for New York that fall, I had ended my second marriage and was sure that better days were on their way.
CHAPTER 11
Down and Out
KATHARINE HEPBURN HAD COMPLIMENTED ME. BACK during the time when we were making North Dallas Forty, my agent had called to say, “Nick, she watched Rich Man, Poor Man and was very impressed with you. She has a piece of material she wants you to read, and she drove to your house and threw it over your backyard fence. I guess she doesn’t go the normal route. She hasn’t heard anything from you and she’s getting a little feisty.”
I looked around the yard and, sure enough, there was the script the legendary actress had “dropped off.” It was titled The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley, and it had been rained on a few times, but I could read it, and I was impressed. The idea of costarring in a film with Katharine Hepburn was fantastic. Lou quickly arranged a meeting at Hal Ashby’s Malibu beach house, and when I arrived I was eager to finally meet the renowned director as well as Katharine and the script’s writer, Martin Zweiback. Ashby’s much-heralded films included Harold & Maude, Shampoo, and Coming Home, among others, and I presumed he would be directing this new film, too. My good fortune seemed unbelievable.
I quickly learned that Hal would only be producing the film, because, he explained to me, he had done similar stories and didn’t want to repeat himself as a director. He wanted Zweiback himself to direct, and Katharine was fine with that choice, but I was young and dumb. I was too green to know that writer-directors can be the best possible people to work for. When you’re shooting and the story runs into problems, the director can simply reshape the script as needs demand—it’s great.