Nick Nolte circa The Thin Red Line
The infamous Nick Nolte "mug shot" that resulted from the actor's 2002 DUI arrest wasn't, strictly speaking, a mug shot. An opportunistic policeman snapped it at the hospital, and Nolte only agreed to it after making the cop promise to share the proceeds with his co-workers.
This is one of several minor revelations offered up in Nick Nolte: No Exit, which is available on demand, starting Wednesday, from Sundance Selects. Tom Thurman's documentary profile of the misunderstood actor consists primarily of Nick Nolte interviewing...Nick Nolte. What's the one question, Nolte asks a pre-recorded version of himself, that he wishes he'd been asked but never has? The weary, somewhat sour response from the other side of the monitor: "Nobody's asked me to be silent."
Nolte sounds (and looks) like he's been to hell and back, but seems have embraced the opportunity to talk about himself–on his own terms, of course, which allows him to evade any question that smells of the tabloids. "How many wives can you have?... Next question." Nolte doesn't say much about his bizarre attachment to chemicals, except that he did the date-rape drug GBH for four years and never once got raped.
Although it's not as candid as it would like to be, No Exit does offer a peek at a man of remarkable qualities: his rock-grinder voice and rough sense of humor are obvious enough, and hints of his fiercely independent–or maybe just plain wacked-out–streak emerge from Nolte's conversations with himself. "He's only crazy in that he dispenses with the bullshit," says Alan Rudolph, one of several Hollywood pals who offer supportive commentary. Well, sometimes. When Nolte is spinning the "story" he says he knows the media is hunting for, he's fighting back with his own form of bullshit.
That Nolte, blonde and athletic, grew up the spitting image of the Midwestern alpha male makes it more interesting that he's struggled to fit in–and less surprising that he bonded early on with Brando, another Nebraska native who always resisted being turned into an icon. Brando's favorite Nolte film, the actor reveals in the course of his self-interrogation, was the edgy but less-than-legendary cop drama Q&A. Coincidence?
No Exit: Nick Nolte is available on Sundance Selects this Wednesday.
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