by Nick Nolte
Next, I connected with Norman Cromwell in Los Angeles, a reclusive guy who was a leader in the city’s underground medical community—someone who was successfully using ozone therapy as a way to detox the body. I met Dr. Eric Braverman, a New York City physician whose focus is brain health, at an anti-aging conference and I was immediately impressed by the work he was doing as well. At his PATH—Place for Achieving Total Health—Foundation, his research included models for weight control, modulating addictive behavior, early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, hormone replacement therapy, and a form of brain mapping he labeled BEAM, the brain electrical assessment method.
I became such a committed patient over time that Dr. Braverman quipped that I was probably the most studied person on earth. With BEAM and additional diagnostic tools, he studied my concentration and memory; he used positron emission tomography, PET scanning, to hunt for minuscule tumors and diseases throughout my body; DXA scans to check for loss of bone density; and a brain SPECT scan, a nuclear imaging procedure designed to diagnose Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and to evaluate memory loss. Whew.
When all the results were in, he concluded that I had the brain of a man who would battle with addictive behavior all his life, and that my brain was physiologically predisposed to fundamental anxieties that trigger stress-induced behavior, including alcohol consumption. For virtually all of my adult life, I had endeavored to figure myself out, to better understand what I was made of and how and why I interacted with the world around me in the ways I did. I long had searched for my essence, so to speak, so it wasn’t surprising that I wanted to learn as much as I could about my physical body as well. It told my real story better than any I could concoct. Soon I became a student of health and read everything I could from scientific journals, especially European journals, which seem to be way ahead of their time.
During those years I was regarded as “Nick the weirdo,” because I would constantly look at blood under the dark-field microscope in my bedroom, whether it was my blood or Brawley’s blood. I projected the image on a high-definition screen on the wall. The longer I spent looking at our blood, the more I realized it’s another universe. It’s vibrant. And the longer I studied the blood, the more humbled I was by the intricacies of life. The inner world and the outer are separated by the thinnest veneer of a façade.
What I learned during that time confirmed essential truths I already knew—that something inside me couldn’t be entirely at ease in the world, couldn’t find the peace I had always wanted. Yet adding a medical overlay to my introspection allowed me to relax and accept myself in new ways. My physiology dramatically affected my behavior, I learned—and it also gave me a new determination to take control of my life. I chose to continue to inject HGH; to supplement my nutrition with vitamins, hormones, ozone, and other modalities; and to be “Nick the weirdo.”
CHAPTER 15
Fathers and Mothers
JUST AS MY PARENTS HAD LONG PREDICTED, THEY ENDED their marriage after their children were grown. My mother remained in Phoenix, where she ultimately opened an antiques shop. Mom and Dad remained friends even though they no longer wanted to live under the same roof, and my father moved back to the Midwest, remaining in the irrigation-equipment business until he retired. Circulatory problems led to his having a leg amputated, then in 1978 he was hospitalized in Denver, suffering from cancer.
I received a call from my mother at my ranch near Agoura, telling me that she had heard from Dad and had spoken with his doctors. It was time. I dropped everything, drove to Phoenix, and collected her, and we continued on, driving like crazy to Denver. At the hospital, we found my sister, Nancy, who was crying as she shared the news with us that Dad had died not long before our arrival. In his room, they had packed his small suitcase and on top of it lay the wooden leg he had used since his amputation.
I was desperate to get the hell out of that hospital as soon as we could, and off we went to an unappealing motor hotel on Colfax Avenue, where I began to sob uncontrollably once I was alone in my room. My tears didn’t flow because of the loss of Franklin Arthur Nolte as much as they were caused by the weight of our relationship. The connection I had to my father was peeling off, and it hurt. When I was done with the process, I was lighter; it was as if I could float. We don’t know how heavy our relationships are. They are very heavy; they carry a lot of energy. With that release, I felt suddenly different and everything seemed okay—except that I couldn’t stay in that dreary place.
I found where my mother and sister were staying and proposed that we hit the road. Santa Fe was only six hours south, and it was a great town, and I insisted we needed to respond to Dad’s death by having some fun. Mom and Nancy quickly agreed and off we went.
In Santa Fe, we checked into the La Fonda hotel on the corner of the plaza and I was ready for a drink. “You’re going to drink on the day your father died?” my mother asked, and I told her I sure as hell was. Nancy said she wanted to join me, and the two of us adjourned to the hotel’s bar, then about five minutes later, Mom joined us as well.
The three of us drank for a while by ourselves before we inevitably began to make some new friends. We partied until the bar closed, then invited folks upstairs to continue the good time. But one by one, our new friends would curiously inquire about the prosthesis lying on the mantel. “Oh, that’s our dad’s wooden leg,” I would tell them. “He died today.”
The explanation inevitably sent them packing. We partied for several days at the La Fonda, and somehow it seemed to be the right thing to do. Lank would have been happy to have the three people in the world to whom he was closest send him off in such a way, I suggested to Mom and Nance, and they agreed.
EARLY IN THE 1990S, I HAD GOTTEN A CALL FROM SCREENWRITER and director Paul Schrader. He had written Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, both directed by Martin Scorsese, and was directing his own films by now, and he wanted to know if I was interested in reading the script he’d written based on Russell Banks’s much-lauded novel Affliction.
I was blown away by the power of the screenplay Paul had crafted, then I read Russell’s novel as well, and I eagerly told Paul I was all in. I said I would love to play the film’s lead, small-town cop Wade Whitehouse, but I would need to wait a couple of years. I just wasn’t ready to play the part yet, I explained.
Paul was floored. What in the hell was I talking about? It had taken him years to raise the $6 million he needed to make the film, and we both agreed that there likely wasn’t anyone other than me who was so suited to playing Wade.
“Listen,” I said, trying to explain, “there’s something in Russell’s book that is beyond me right now. I don’t fully understand it, and it’s going to be vital for me to understand it if I’m going to do the part justice. It seems to me like the affliction is universal to all men. We’re all afflicted.”
Paul knew what I meant, of course. The affliction we all suffer from is that for thousands of years, fathers have failed to teach their sons how to love. Our fathers should teach us how to love as men, yet they do not. Wade, the desperately lonely and lost character I would play, powerfully wants to love his daughter and his ex-wife, but he just doesn’t know how. It’s a tricky theme that I don’t think had been explored before Russell explored it in Affliction. If I was going to portray Wade, I knew I would have to deeply mine his predicament before I could truly become him.
My own father had suffered a mysterious but terribly debilitating emotional wound in the South Pacific during World War II. I didn’t know who he was when he returned home at the end of the war, and although he and I never fought during the years that followed, I didn’t see much of him and I never truly got to know him, never knew what it was that he cared about the most. He was a closed book.
As I began my preparation to play Wade Whitehouse, I knew I needed to consider my relationship with my late father as a piece of that process. I longed for part of him and thought about that old wooden leg. Yet when I looked for it, I cou
ldn’t find it, so I called Nancy, certain that she would have it. But she didn’t. Mom had it, we agreed, but when I called her, she told me she was sure that Nancy was safeguarding it back east. I explained that Nancy was certain she didn’t have it, then I couldn’t help but start to laugh. The only possibility now seemed to be that we had inadvertently left Dad’s leg at the hotel in Santa Fe.
BY THE TIME I FELT EMOTIONALLY READY TO PLAY WADE, I had become intrigued by the idea that Paul Newman would be perfect in the part of Wade Whitehouse’s alcoholic and abusive father, Glen. I approached him, and Paul was kind enough to read the script and say good things about it and the film we planned to make, but he replied in an interesting way as he turned my offer down. “I don’t think my audience would accept me in that role,” he said, and it took a bit for me to understand what he meant. Paul knew his on-screen persona was too good-looking, romantic, and principled to portray someone as destroyed by living as Glen is. The film would suffer, in other words, if Paul Newman appeared in it—at least as far as Paul Newman was concerned.
So, next I approached James Coburn, another actor I greatly admired. Jimmy, born in Nebraska like me, suffered terribly from rheumatoid arthritis and hadn’t appeared in many films in recent years, yet he had begun to use something called MSM, methylsulfonylmethane, a sulfur compound available at most health food stores. The result was amazing, he claimed, and although it didn’t cure his arthritis, it did relieve his pain, allowing him to move more freely and ultimately say yes to the dark and complex character of Glen Whitehouse.
Then I called Sissy Spacek and said, “Sissy, I’ve got a role for you. It’s not a big role, but it’s a vital role.” She responded in her Southern twang, “Niiiick, I’m retired.” I said, “Sissy, you can’t retire.”
“Well, they don’t send me scripts,” she explained.
“Well, I’m sending you a script,” I told her. “And it’s based on a novel by a well-known writer. And there is a pivotal scene that tells the audience about the whole tragedy of the story when the woman—you—realizes that her man doesn’t know how to love. The woman sees his masculine violence and she rejects it. She totally rejects this idea that violence makes the world go ’round. Because it doesn’t. Violence stops the world.”
That was all Sissy needed to hear, and she was in. Paul Schrader was the perfect director for this difficult material. Russell Banks himself drove me around impoverished rural New England, pointing out his old haunts and the places he re-created as he brought Wade and his story to life on the page. He helped me understand that Wade doesn’t believe he’s insane, and so neither could the audience. The insanity is simply Wade’s denial of his utterly trapped circumstances.
Affliction premiered in February 1999 to strong critical praise, and Janet Maslin in the New York Times wrote that I gave the performance of my career. The San Francisco Chronicle’s critic Edward Guthmann agreed that I had “never been better. Nolte has played angry blue-collar men like Wade before, but never so heartbreakingly and never in material as deeply felt.”
By the time the film was completed, I already knew that Wade was one of my favorite roles ever. I had mustered something deep inside me in order to portray the rage and violence that is primary to Wade’s character—a capacity for violence that’s in us all, but which very few of us ever confront. By the time Affliction was in theaters and gaining a small but very enthusiastic following, I had successfully come to terms with who Wade is and how he is afflicted by his father, but I couldn’t be sure I knew my own father or understood my relationship with him any better than before making the film. Lank Nolte remained something of a mystery to me—despite the depth of my feelings for him.
I RECEIVED MY SECOND ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION FOR best actor for Affliction and was nominated for a Golden Globe as well. I won in the best-actor category at the awards presented by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics, but on the night of the Academy Awards, the smart money was probably on Tom Hanks’s winning for his performance in Saving Private Ryan. I was seated beside James Coburn at the ceremony, and very early in the proceedings, Jimmy won as best supporting actor, being selected over heavyweight actors like Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, Geoffrey Rush, and Billy Bob Thornton, and I was delighted for him. His work in Affliction had been astounding.
A few moments later, I received a call on my cell phone during a television commercial break. It was my friend Alan Rudolph, who had directed me in both Afterglow and Breakfast of Champions and who is one of the most deviously fun guys in the business. Alan simply wanted me to know that in the history of the Academy Awards, “no lead actor has ever won if the costar wins.”
“Oh, shit,” I whispered to him as the commercial break ended, and I chuckled with resignation. And sure enough, near the end of the evening Sophia Loren announced that Italian actor-director Roberto Benigni had won the best-actor Oscar for Life Is Beautiful—and that was that.
WHEN WORD GOT OUT THAT DIRECTOR TERRENCE MALICK planned to make a new film for the first time in nearly two decades, the buzz among A-list actors was immediate and loud. Everyone in town wanted a role in the new picture, which would be based on James Jones’s World War II novel The Thin Red Line. Ironically, I was preparing at the time for a film in which I would play the part of James Jones himself. Also, I was a lot older than most of the guys who were determined to be cast by Terry, and that was a worry to both Terry and me.
Over the course of four separate lunches together, Terry and I mulled over whether the film had a role I was right for. He considered the possibility of creating an entirely new character—a general far away from the battlefield—but neither of us ever became enthusiastic about that approach for bringing me into the project. As we ate, we talked as much about philosophy, poetry, and even birds as we did about the picture. Terry’s meanderings were always captivating, and he was an excellent listener. During our fourth lunch, he announced that he’d changed his mind. Yes, I was older than the other actors he had cast, but I would play Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall, and he knew I would play the hell out of the role, he told me. I was elated.
I was scheduled to arrive on location in Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, several weeks after shooting commenced, and while I was at home preparing for the role of Colonel Tall, I received a note from Terry that simply said, “Self will run riot.” As part of my turn toward bringing my body back to optimal health via a variety of alternative medical therapies and supplementation, I also had quit drinking and doing cocaine and had started regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. So I was quite familiar with the phrase, pulled from a quote by AA founder Bill Wilson, who wrote, “The alcoholic is an extreme example of self will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.” Alcoholics and control junkies want to have power over the world around them. They’re selfish and will do anything they can, knowingly or not, to get what they want from people and life. So it’s a problem that can manifest in self-destruction.
Colonel Tall is a man who puts himself in jeopardy repeatedly, regardless of how the world is exploding around him, determined to impose his self-will on the course of history no matter the cost. It was a brilliant note from a director whose talent was enormous—and I took it to heart.
When I reached the set in Australia, I was greeted by some uneasy actors. No one was sure who was the central character in the story, and several guys were determined to make themselves the lead. And they were bothered, too, by the way in which Malick would repeatedly stop shooting three-quarters of the way through a scene, then mutter about getting back to it later. The idea of picking up a performance at an unspecified date in the future had some of the boys doubting their abilities and Terry’s approach.
The grumblings were growing so loud that Terry agreed to schedule a cast meeting, one at which he listened carefully as, one by one, actors articulated their dismay at his disorienting directorial style. Some warned of uneven performances, begging him for a schedule that gave
them a reasonable shot at emotional continuity. After patiently hearing them out, he responded, saying, “You know what, guys, you’re right. So, let’s go do it!”
Everyone in the room was dumbfounded. Terry managed to take the air out of the uproar without giving an inch. He listened to his cast’s many complaints, told them they were right, then went on directing just as he had before. Brilliant.
EARLY ON, ONE OF THE CONSTANT CONVERSATIONS AMONG cast and crew was the war of one-upmanship between Woody Harrelson and Sean Penn. First, Woody threw a snake into Sean’s trailer, then Sean retaliated by calling a local radio station, posing as Woody’s assistant, and promising that Woody would appear at a local park, offering signed photographs for ten bucks apiece. Woody was furious about the setup but showed up at the park anyway and gave away autographs for free.
I had met Woody briefly once before, and one morning he called me, saying, “I really need your help. I need to get Sean to go to a certain place at a certain time. And if I suggest it, he’ll know I’m up to something. Would you do this?”
I asked, “We’re not going to hurt him, are we?” And Woody swore that absolutely not, no one would be injured in any way, so I said sure, I was in.
Early on a Saturday evening, Woody phoned again and asked me to come down to the police station. Port Douglas was just a one-street town with restaurants and bars on both sides, and dirt roads leading out into the jungles of northern Australia. It’s a rough little frontier town, and it’s beautiful. The police station is simply a small beach bungalow, and Woody met me at the entrance with a devilish grin, then led me down a hall to a back room.
“Should we use a gun?” he conspiratorially asked a policeman in the room, who was filling a handgun with blanks. I couldn’t imagine what Woody had promised them in order to bring the cops on board, but before I could find out, it was time for me to play my little role. Woody coached me to telephone Sean, telling him I had been in a minor fender bender, explaining that it wasn’t my fault, but that I had to undergo a blood-alcohol test because I was a foreigner. I needed Sean to vouch for me in person with the cops, I told him, and he fell for it.