Rebel

by Nick Nolte

  It was something of a stroke of genius for Paul to cast Little Richard as the Whitemans’ eccentric next-door neighbor Orvis Goodnight. The role is a cameo but the legendary singer shines, although he struggled with a long speech in which he rants at the Beverly Hills police about not protecting him in the same way they do his white neighbors. He worked through take after take on a Friday afternoon to deliver his speech with righteous anger and without a single flub, but a word or two always kept tripping him up.

  Finally, he called Paul over to his limousine and said, “You know, Paul, I’m Jewish,” and Paul acknowledged that yes, he was aware of that.

  “Well, the Sabbath’s about to begin and I can’t work on the Sabbath.”

  But we had to get the scene shot, so Paul implored him. “You know, Little Richard, I’m Jewish, too, and if we both get on our knees and pray, I’m sure we’ll be forgiven for a tiny little bit of work on the Sabbath.” So, they prayed, and Little Richard nailed his speech and Paul got the shot.

  Paul was always on the lookout for something unusual, something out of the ordinary. And he wouldn’t let any of us get away with our usual shtick. When Richard Dreyfuss—whom I had called Lumpy for years—would throw in one of the little twists that were his stock in trade, Paul would say, “No, no, Richard, let’s leave that out.” And he was very gentle with Bette. She had been nominated for an Academy Award for The Rose but had been treated like dirt on her next picture, Jinxed! She was feeling fragile and Paul made sure all of us were particularly kind to her so she could get her confidence back—and we were, and she did. Some filmmakers can be real pigs. Especially with actresses. But not Paul.

  The fun part for me was transforming my character from a guy who’s so desperate he wants to call it a day into a man who, with Dave Whiteman’s help, comes to understand both himself and his hosts so well that he’s able to wrap them around his fingers. I loved the satire on power and prestige and the development of equality after those roles have been reversed. Jerry and Dave help each other out of their own sadnesses and are renewed with hope and vigor for life. It was a perfect role for me at that moment in time because at last I was ready to live again. I was blessed and my bowl of dog food was overflowing.

  CHAPTER 12

  Family

  DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS WAS AN ENORMOUS success. Critics said it was one of the freshest satires produced in years. The picture, which had cost about $14 million to make, earned more than $62 million in the U.S. alone. And it had been damn good for me personally, bringing humor back into my life as well as introducing me to the brilliance of Paul Mazursky, who would remain my dear friend until his death twenty-eight years later. The role had helped my career as well. I was in demand and able to stay out of trouble working only on projects I believed in.

  Rebecca continued to bring nurturing stability to my life. Our age difference didn’t get in our way and she was a good and calming influence on me. She became pregnant again and six months after Down and Out was released, our beautiful and perfectly healthy son, Brawley, was born. Our shared relief and excitement helped heal the deep hurt of past losses. For the first time in my life I experienced unconditional love in the way that only a parent can. It was wonderful.

  For the next five years, the three of us were a family and I always took them with me whenever I needed to shoot away from Los Angeles. I made eight pictures during that time—some more memorable than others—yet I continued to accept only roles in which I saw a story worth telling, a character that I wanted to explore, a challenge I hadn’t encountered, or an opportunity for me to stretch and to grow.

  SCORSESE WAS GREAT TO WORK WITH. MARTY DIRECTED ME as abstract painter Lionel Dobie in New York Stories, three one-acts bundled into a film about life in the Big Apple. Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen each told a separate story in the film. My segment was a great little study of an artist, especially a painter. I hung with a few during that time and they would say that painting is a physical activity; you must attack the canvas and engage it intimately and physically. It was as if they spoke of acting.

  Unfortunately, having three stories bundled together was so unusual for American audiences that they focused on comparing the three instead of seeing them for their own individual merits and the film did not fare well. Regardless, it was a treat for me to work with Marty.

  As the self-indulgent painter in New York Stories, my hair was long and I was bearded and heavy—a bit of a paunchy bear. A couple of years later, I was buff and clean-shaven and I wanted to work with Scorsese again, this time on his planned remake of Cape Fear, the 1962 film starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck. Scorsese already had cast his friend and longtime colleague Robert De Niro as the revenge-obsessed rapist and ex-convict Max Cady. I wanted the role of the lawyer who Cady believes is responsible for his imprisonment, and whom Cady wants to destroy.

  I don’t think Marty could see me in the role of lawyer Sam Bowden. I’m thinking when my name would come up for it Marty would say he didn’t want a big beefy bear (like in New York Stories); it had to be a sharp lawyer type. So I decided to show him I was the role. I always seem to stick my head in at just the right moment. That was especially true on Cape Fear. To help make my case to Marty, I told my assistant Billy Cross we were going to the premiere party for Marty’s new film Goodfellas, starring De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci. I told Billy, “Let’s get our best suits on and go!”

  The room was packed with people, and Billy and I stood against a wall quietly watching, doing our best to look like unassuming lawyers in expensive suits. Marty walked past us a couple of times without noticing me—which I took to be a good sign—before he walked past us a third time, stopped in his tracks, turned to me, and exclaimed, “Nick!”

  I introduced him to Billy and congratulated him on his new film, and Marty quickly wanted to bring Bob De Niro over to say hello. One of the shyest people I’ve ever known, Bob simply shook my hand and in a soft voice said it was nice to meet me before he walked away. But I could see Marty’s mind churning. He wanted to know if I could stop by his office the following day, and I said absolutely I could.

  I added a pair of eyeglass frames (with no glass in them) to my professional look before I met Marty at noon the following day. Bob was in his office as well, and the three of us talked for a bit about Cape Fear and its challenges and opportunities. I told them I was sure it was going to be a great piece; Marty asked if I would be interested in the lawyer role, and I told him by God, I was very interested. So, he cast me, and I couldn’t wait to play a part that Marty and others initially didn’t think was right for me—big bear or not.

  REBECCA AND I HAD PURCHASED A HILLTOP HOUSE OUTSIDE Charleston, West Virginia, so she could see her family often, and we spent a lot of time there. And when Marty told me I’d need to research small-town lawyers because he knew nothing about them or the day-to-day work they did, I was way ahead of him. I had already driven around much of the state, visiting small courts, getting to know the clerks, and they would tell me when an interesting case was about to go to trial, and I’d be sure to be on hand to watch the lawyers at work in the courtroom, and watch how the judges presided, too.

  One time I got a call from a clerk I’d created a good rapport with, and she had news she eagerly wanted to share. “I’ve got a real good one for you, Nick,” she told me. “This girl was on a paper route on her bike and her boyfriend pulled up in his car, knocked her off the bike, and raped her. Then he bit her cheek and took a hunk of flesh, spit it at her, and shouted, ‘I got you now, bitch!’ Rape isn’t really about sex.”

  “Jesus, I’m getting that,” I responded, and, of course, I immediately wanted to discuss the case with Marty and Bob. They both responded in the way I was sure they would. Bobby was stunned for a while before he turned to Marty and said, “We’ve got to add this. We’ve got to do this,” and so they did, revising the storyline of the character played by Illeana Douglas to include Max Cady giving her a grisly bite
during their sex scene.

  Jessica Lange, who played my wife in the film, was great to work with. She and I really clicked on-screen right from the start of our shoot, and off-screen we had a ball. Sometimes we fell into crazy laughter as we would slip and fall on our asses in all the blood Marty insisted on soaking the set with—it was a bloody picture, after all. Our daughter was beautifully played by Juliette Lewis. When we broke for Christmas, she flew home to Los Angeles, where her boyfriend Brad Pitt promptly broke up with her. She was heartbroken and angry, and when shooting started again early in January, she did what you might expect a teenage girl to do: she took all her emotions out on her dad—at least her make-believe dad, and that was me. She repeatedly wanted me to know that I wasn’t half the actor Bob De Niro was, and she found a way to give me shit on the set virtually every day. It was just like parenthood!

  Despite his shyness and need to be alone a lot of the time, I got to know Bob well, and I liked him. He isn’t someone who could, or would even want to, make small talk. He isn’t dazzled by celebrity—his own or others’—and I think what connected us both was the way in which each of us “hides” inside the characters we play. We may not be the sorts of guys who would hang out with each other on the street. However, we do share an immense satisfaction in playing characters that liberate us from our own shyness.

  No one works harder at the craft of acting than Bob. I found out the kind of complexity that he goes through to be extremely prepared. His focus, his hours, his obsession with the role he is creating is legendary, and I observed it on the set of Cape Fear. To portray Max Cady to the depths he demanded, Bob would get out of bed at midnight and work out with weights for ninety minutes or so, then go back to bed before getting up at four to begin two full hours of makeup. By the end of the shoot, the stress he was under brought Bob near a breaking point, yet he channeled everything he was experiencing into Max’s terrifying expression of evil—a role that led to both Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for best actor on a film that made all of us who were part of it proud.

  WE SHOT MUCH OF CAPE FEAR IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA, and during the shoot Rebecca became intrigued with buying a house there; then she really began to pressure me. But the idea just didn’t make sense. “Rebecca, we have a house in North Carolina,” I told her. “We have a house in West Virginia, and we have our house in California. We never get to some of these houses, and I really don’t have any interest in coming back to Fort Lauderdale.”

  What I didn’t know—really couldn’t know without her explaining it to me—was that for a West Virginia girl like her, having a house on the Atlantic coast in South Florida was the ultimate, an accomplishment that would outshine any other. So, she persisted.

  I agreed to let her show me a couple of houses, yet I was focused entirely on Cape Fear. I was working fifteen hours a day every day, and I would come home to our rental house and simply collapse. I was working so hard, we barely saw one another. One day, when I didn’t have to be on the set, I looked for Rebecca but I couldn’t find her. Brawley was in West Virginia visiting his grandparents, but I couldn’t track down his mom anywhere.

  I asked my assistant—my sister Nancy’s son, Eric—if he knew where she was, and he didn’t. Then I had an idea, a feeling that I had to investigate. I took Eric with me and we drove to the house that Rebecca had liked best. A SOLD banner had been added to the FOR SALE sign, and a car was parked out front. “Oh, Jesus,” I said to my nephew, “she’s bought this house.”

  We got out of our car and walked toward the front door. Although the living room drapes were drawn, I could see through a crack in them, and what I saw inside was Rebecca sitting on a sofa kissing some guy. “Oh, shit, this sucks,” I whispered to Eric in a rush of emotion. Then, I went to the front door and knocked, and Rebecca gasped when she opened the door and saw me standing there.

  “Uh, you’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

  “And you’re not supposed to be doing what you’re doing,” I responded. I kept my cool and added, “Look, I’m going back to our house. I’d finish up what you’re doing in there, if I were you, and come home. We’ve got to talk.”

  “Yeah. Okay. All right,” Rebecca said. “I’ll see you there.”

  When I saw her a few minutes later, she knew what she wanted to say. “Look, Nick, I want that house and I want a divorce. I just can’t do this anymore.”

  “Oh, come on, Rebecca,” I pleaded. “You don’t really want to do this. I mean, we have a son. He’s not even six yet. We’ve got a ways to go before he’s out of the house. You don’t want to break us all up now. I know you’re younger than me, but you’re not missing anything out there, believe me. I’ve got a little knowledge on you here, so please, think about it.”

  Those kinds of conversations went on for a couple of weeks, but Rebecca did not change her mind. I think she wanted to experience her own freedom, and she was still young at thirty-two. I finally quit trying to convince her to continue our marriage and started spending lots of time in my trailer on set, yelling and kicking things around. I put a sign outside on a garbage can that read, CAMPER DIVORCE, PLEASE DONATE, but the only things the cast and crew contributed were a Canadian quarter and some rocks. Scorsese’s parents always had liked to put their trailer next to mine because I was a nice guy and all that. Well, they moved right away when I started taking it all out on the garbage can.

  BY THE TIME WE WRAPPED CAPE FEAR—A FILM THAT WOULD ultimately gross $182 million worldwide—Rebecca and I had set divorce proceedings in motion. We negotiated our dissolution back home in California; I suggested we use a psychiatrist instead of a lawyer—or dozens of lawyers—and Rebecca agreed. I was intent on splitting our lives as easily as possible, and I wrote down everything we owned in chalk on a blackboard and told Rebecca she could pick the half she wanted.

  At the end of our time with the psychiatrist, Rebecca announced a final demand, saying, “I’ve got to take Brawley to Florida with me,” and her words hit me hard. As far as I was concerned, the only really great thing about marriage was the children it produced. The love that’s engendered in you by your child is what love truly is, I had discovered. I’m not sure I would have died for Rebecca, or any wife, but I readily would have died for Brawley in 1991—and I still would.

  I couldn’t bear the prospect of being separated from him, but I had to consider his welfare, too, and I knew it would be terrible for us to fight over him. So I agreed that he would live with his mom in Florida but would spend as much time as possible with me, whether at home in Malibu or in whatever location movie-making had taken me to temporarily. The arrangement was working quite well for a few months until the day I got a telephone call from Rebecca that set us dramatically at odds again.

  “Brawley’s first-grade teacher has decided that he has ADD and we are going to put him on Ritalin,” she declared.

  “Oh, no you are not,” I responded. “They are not going to put him on any amphetamines or Ritalin or anything until I get there. When I get there, I will discuss it with a psychiatrist, with the principal, with the teachers, with you, and then we will make an informed decision. But I am not going to give him something that nobody knows how it works. We are not going to do that.”

  Then I immediately called my mother in Phoenix, asking if she happened to have any Ritalin. When she told me she did, I asked her to get it to me quickly. We were about to complete the filming of Lorenzo’s Oil—a movie about two parents’ effort to find a treatment for their son’s very rare neurological disease—in Pittsburgh, and I flew to Fort Lauderdale as soon as I could.

  At a meeting with Brawley’s teachers and principal and Rebecca and me, they described behaviors that convinced them that he suffered from attention deficit disorder, things like disobeying authority because he claimed he had superpowers. I was unconvinced. I asked if any of them had considered that this little boy has just been through the most traumatic experience he’d had. I said, “His parents have just divorced and he is
not comfortable and he is forced to be with you people who he doesn’t know. Have you thought that that could be driving this behavior?” They responded that they were professionals, and we were dealing with ADD; they were certain.

  So, I asked if any of them had any personal experience with Ritalin and its effects, and when all of them said no, they had never taken the drug, I took out a small bottle and poured some pills on the desk. “Well, then let’s each take a ten-milligram capsule and we’ll see what it does, and then each of us will be more knowledgeable about how it can or can’t help Brawley,” I suggested.

  This was not an idea to which anyone responded positively, however. “No, no, no, I don’t need those pills. I can’t take those pills. That doesn’t do anything for me,” I heard. Each of them knew plenty about Ritalin and its effects without having actually taken the drug.

  “So, you’re recommending this drug for a child, but you still don’t know what it is. How do you figure that works? You are just going to take a shot and maybe mess up his life, is that your intention?” I asked.

  I was assured by everyone present that they were intent on helping Brawley, not hurting him, but I wouldn’t back down. “Here is how we can help him,” I said. “You give me a couple of weeks to spend some time with my boy and figure out what is going on and what he’s really mad about. I have a pretty good idea. Give me a couple of weeks, and if I can’t find a solution to this, then we’ll discuss Ritalin at that point. Understood? Because I am not going to agree to anything you have presented. I will not allow it, and I will hold you personally responsible for introducing any drugs into his system.” And I just left it at that—a veiled threat that hung in the air as our meeting adjourned.