Episode 900 - Nick Nolte
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fuckanucks?
Marc:What the fucktuckians?
Marc:What the fuckarekans?
Marc:What the fuckacrats?
Marc:What the fuckpublicans?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:I just throw a few out there because we are marking a milestone.
Marc:We're marking something.
Marc:Today is the 900th episode.
Marc:This episode, today's episode is the 900th episode of this podcast.
Marc:Sure, some podcasts have more episodes than that.
Marc:Some have less.
Marc:Some had whatever.
Marc:None of that matters.
Marc:We've been doing two new shows a week for 900 episodes.
Marc:Wow, that's crazy.
Marc:And most of them, most of them took place in this garage.
Marc:And that's really...
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:That is what is happening.
Marc:The garage, we're moving.
Marc:We're moving.
Marc:In a couple weeks, it's all going to be in a new place.
Marc:I'm going out to buy.
Marc:I got to rent a pickup.
Marc:Got to rent a pickup and be a guy with a pickup for a day or two.
Marc:All I'm really replacing is maybe this table that I have the mics on.
Marc:Only because I think it should be black.
Marc:But other than that, it's all going.
Marc:But that is really what marks...
Marc:this podcast we've only got a few more interviews in here i'm nervous to get started over at the other place but i'm going to get it set up it's going to be a mess at first and it's not going to be together but i will get the mics over there and we'll get the equipment up and we'll get to talking to people over there and we'll have that experience but that is what's happening that's marking the 900th episode is the the last days of the garage
Marc:I mean, I can't believe it.
Marc:I mean, I can't believe I've done 900 of these.
Marc:And I'm really at that point now where sometimes I don't know if I've talked to somebody on here.
Marc:I don't remember what we talked about.
Marc:Thank God, Brendan McDonald, my producer and business partner, has a memory long term, all the way through 900 of them.
Marc:I have to be reminded.
Marc:He obviously has a much better memory than me.
Marc:But but also like he has to listen to these things again.
Marc:Really, as I've told you before, probably that the experience for me in these conversations and when the people leave this garage.
Marc:So it's I can only remember organically.
Marc:I don't have to edit it and hear it again or a third time.
Marc:But they all start to drift, don't they?
Marc:Don't they?
Marc:The experiences, the conversations, the events in one's life.
Marc:That's what's interesting about this garage is that, you know, what am I keeping up there?
Marc:And a lot of it needs to be triggered.
Marc:Do you know?
Marc:I mean, a lot of it, a lot of the memories need, I need a, I need a, I need them to get a jumpstart.
Marc:Give me a time.
Marc:Give me a place.
Marc:Give me a person.
Marc:Give me a tone.
Yeah.
Marc:So in a few minutes, I'm going to go through some of this stuff in the garage here.
Marc:Those are the triggers.
Marc:You know?
Marc:If I look at the list of the 900 people I've talked to in here, most of them, those would be the triggers.
Marc:Just those moments all shared in here.
Marc:This air, this space, the dust.
Marc:If most of dust is skin, there's a little bit of skin from a lot of fucking people around this garage.
Marc:But I'll get into that.
Marc:I'll get into the transition to the spiritual, mental, emotional transition and the
Marc:jogging of memories in a few minutes.
Marc:Nick Nolte is on the show today.
Marc:Nick Nolte has written a memoir.
Marc:He's gotten some help writing the memoir that's gone on for a while, so he claims.
Marc:It's called Rebel, My Life Outside the Lines.
Marc:You can get that book wherever you get books, but
Marc:I'm happy that he just so happens to be the one on the 900th episode for reasons that I'm still sort of ruminating on.
Marc:So the garage, memories.
Marc:sorting through things transitions i spent a bit of time with a handheld mic and a bit on this mic over a few days spread out over a couple of weeks kind of starting to process moving and and actually going through stuff and uh so this is a this is how we're going to do this today i'm going to sort of uh
Marc:cut to myself here going through the garage and having that experience having memories jogged a lot a lot of the memories that were jogged are still sort of hanging over me today some of them good some of them bad but uh but uh let's do it together let's do it right now
Marc:So this is what the plan is.
Marc:I'm going to take down stuff here in the garage moving towards the selling of the house.
Marc:So I've set up a few boxes here.
Marc:I've got a box for documents and I've got a box for stuff I'm going to keep and I've got a box for stuff that I'm probably not going to keep, nothing personal.
Marc:And the first thing I'm looking at over here is these are the notes.
Marc:For the Obama interview.
Marc:And I saved this thing from the Secret Service.
Marc:Telephone trap sheet.
Marc:Please fill out the blank spaces with as much information as possible.
Marc:Special agents may sign as a witness.
Marc:And then bomb threat sheet.
Marc:i don't know what all that meant but it as a page it looks pretty good oh i see you had a checklist i guess i checked this stuff it didn't fill out here and then there's just the notes from brendan that we put together to talk to obama about and then there's my notes and some more notes so i should keep this uh it was a fairly complicated day so that goes in the document box oh it's already it's already happening
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:This weird thing is a strange man made out of pipe cleaners straddling a rat, a plastic, a rubber rat.
Marc:I've had this since college.
Marc:I remember making it when I was high.
Marc:The pipe cleaner guy has a very defined cock and balls for some reason, and he's riding a rat.
Marc:It seems like a rare piece of ephemera.
Marc:I will keep that.
Marc:This is the first iPod.
Marc:That seems like I should keep that.
Marc:Oh, this is some notes.
Marc:Who is this?
Marc:Father, politics, why?
Marc:Enlisted in Navy, political help as fathers.
Marc:Oh, Al Gore.
Marc:Al Gore notes.
Marc:I'll keep those.
Marc:This is a Spider-Man comic with the not ready for primetime players.
Marc:And I think it's close to the original cast.
Marc:of uh snl yeah minus chevy and spider-man i don't know where i got this but i'll keep that oh here's my high school diploma i did it i did it mark david marin satisfactorily completed the course of study prescribed for graduation from highland high school
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:I did it, folks.
Marc:I should keep that.
Marc:These are some weird fake stamps I got.
Marc:Dr. Kevorkian stamps.
Marc:I should keep those.
Marc:This is a picture of St.
Marc:Maximilian Kolbe, a monk who fought fascism on the radio.
Marc:It was given to me by Roger Corman with some expectations.
Marc:And I don't know if I lived up to them.
Marc:Maybe I do.
Marc:But it was a lot of pressure.
Marc:This is a Richard Pryor, is it something I said, 8-track, and a Take Offs and Put Ons, a George Carlin.
Marc:These are both 8-tracks.
Marc:They're kind of nice to have around.
Marc:They look good.
Marc:And this is a David Koresh CD, Voice of Fire.
Marc:It's recordings of actually David Koresh singing, which I'll keep because it's part of a weird time, right?
Marc:Why did I have that?
Marc:Why would you want that?
Marc:Well, there was a time where I thought, well, that's really cool.
Marc:It's a David Koresh CD.
Marc:This is someone knitted me some dog shit.
Marc:This is knitted dog shit.
Marc:I know it's what it is.
Marc:I don't know if you would know that's what it is.
Marc:Kind of looks like a donut that didn't come out right, but it's like crocheted, I think.
Marc:Yeah, it's supposed to be dog shit, but it's knitted.
Marc:People and their crafts.
Marc:I'm not sure I need to keep that one.
Marc:Oh, and here, look, we have a box of pictures from my entire life.
Marc:Just a mess of Polaroids and pictures from my entire life.
Marc:Oh, there's me holding my first wife's sister's daughter, who's probably in her 20s now.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:This is me right after I got out of rehab the first time back in the 80s, wearing a devil suit kind of robe.
Marc:Me and my dad's wedding.
Marc:Me, oh, the WBCN Comedy Riot, 1988.
Marc:This is the moment that I lost and came in second.
Marc:Oh my God, look at these pictures.
Marc:Me, freshman year of college.
Marc:Me, naked with a guitar.
Marc:Who took that?
Marc:That's the big question.
Marc:Who took that?
Marc:oh here's my mom and my brother and that was at my second wedding oh my god me and the second wife what is this oh this is me on the honeymoon that happened late doing a selfie looking not happy
Marc:oh man you know what maybe it's not a good day to go through pictures maybe i should just close this thing up oh what is this envelope these look like old pictures what's in here oh look at that it's my parents they must have been like newlyweds oh look there's my mom at the height of her anorexia looking oh my god
Marc:all righty well this didn't turn out to be as fun as i thought it would be with the pictures what do we got over here uh-oh it's a big plastic box labeled journals and personal oh boy i don't know if i should be reading these out loud or anything there was a period there where i was writing every day to keep my sanity during the divorce and some of these i thought would yield something
Marc:In waking consciousness today, I felt truly alone on the planet with my heart.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:And then I talk about seeing my ex-wife.
Marc:You know, let's not do this now either.
Marc:But I have them.
Marc:I have them all.
Marc:I have all of those journals.
Marc:Uh, what else is in here?
Marc:This is my dad's stethoscope without the rubber on it that he's had since medical school.
Marc:That he used to carry in his bag.
Marc:I should keep that.
Marc:This is a box of candles that somebody made with their teeth.
Marc:Carved with their teeth.
Marc:I'm gonna keep that.
Marc:This is, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, that fell down.
Marc:I don't need it.
Marc:I wasn't gonna keep that.
Marc:This is a little fuck sampler.
Marc:Just a framed fuck in, you know, in that knitted sampler look.
Marc:Oh, this is half of George Orwell's 1984.
Marc:It was sawed in half by Ross Broccoli when we were converting a bookshelf into a CD shelf in my apartment in New York City on East 16th Street.
Marc:He just brought a fucking power saw thing, handsaw.
Marc:And we just cut that thing in half.
Marc:And somehow or another, George Orwell's 1984 was cut in half as well.
Marc:And I keep it.
Marc:It's a weird moment.
Marc:It seemed to be hilarious at the time.
Marc:Morning Sedition Mouse Pad with me and Mark Riley from Air America.
Marc:I'm going to keep that.
Marc:There's the cup, the Obama cup.
Marc:I'm going to have to keep that.
Marc:I don't know how to do this because I think what I really want to talk about on some level is the importance of this place, which many of you already know and I already know what's happened in this garage, the people that have been through here.
Marc:I can read a list of the
Marc:900 plus people that have sat across from me some of them famous some of them not so famous but all of them engaging and interesting and a lot of things in my heart and in my mind you know changed here in this garage through having these conversations over the last uh what eight years or so i mean it's it's pretty astounding and i know a lot of people are
Marc:Freaked out or panicky about what happens next.
Marc:But this garage, as sacred as it is, will become a sacred space for the next person.
Marc:I know that the person who was in here before me recorded music in here.
Marc:I know that this space is a special space, but it doesn't have to just be my special space.
Marc:I can move on to a new special space.
Marc:I can move on with my new skills that I learned in this special space.
Marc:But it is kind of wild to think of the people that sat in here and what I've moved through in my own life.
Marc:in here and as i sort of kind of move through the garage and i look around at these books i can i've i i have books in here that i've accumulated my whole life you know through college through the beginning of comedy through you know my entire life there are books in here that that i've taken with me and they mean something even if they're just to look at i have you know pieces of art on the wall photographs that that means something to me me and sam kennison
Marc:Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now, the cast of Freaks, the poster for my HBO comedy Half Hour from 1995.
Marc:I've got a picture of black and white 8x10 of Howlin' Wolf on the floor singing his heart out.
Marc:I've got a picture of me and my mentor Gus Blaisdell from the Living Batch Bookstore.
Marc:With his business card under it, rest his soul, man.
Marc:Got a pic of me and my brother.
Marc:I got the first Zap comic.
Marc:I've got the envelope that destroyed my life when it was sent to my house when I was living with my wife and it was addressed to the woman who became my second wife.
Marc:I've got a picture of me in a towel and my brother in a tux on his wedding day.
Marc:I've got a cutout of the New Yorker listing of Jerusalem syndrome.
Marc:I've got an eight by 10 of muddy waters.
Marc:I've got the laminated Times piece that changed the course of my life up on the wall.
Marc:The full New York Times piece by Dan Saltstein that profiled me in the beginning of this podcast in this garage.
Marc:I've still got the picture of me and my mother when I was a baby on top of the shelf.
Marc:I've got some old high school yearbooks.
Marc:I've got some this and that, a fire truck that was from the old days at Aramarka.
Marc:A fan brought me a fire truck to a gig.
Marc:It's all here.
Marc:But I'm basically saying that everything that I've ever lived through or everything I've ever accumulated, it's represented here for my entire life, for my entire life.
Marc:This is what surrounded me and my guests.
Marc:This is a sort of functional depiction of the inside of my mind of what made me.
Marc:Representations of what made me who I am surround me in this space.
Marc:And in a lot of ways, you know, people walking into this space are walking into my mind, into my heart, you know, into my soul.
Marc:If you want to believe that kind of stuff that, you know, despite the sort of comfy sort of, there's a rug on the floor there, you know, everything seems a bit, uh,
Marc:Not chaotic, but it's wall-to-wall stuff.
Marc:There's a lot of stuff here on the desk itself, just little things that people can play with, a half a hammer, a knife, a pair of dice, exercise hand thing, a weird melted record.
Marc:Bits and pieces, coasters, pencils, pieces of rocks, guitar picks.
Marc:It's everything that I've ever been and everything that I've become really is represented in this space.
Marc:In this cozy, strange, basically single car garage built in the 1920s.
Marc:But all this stuff is going with me, people.
Marc:I'm moving to a bigger place, but I know that the magic is here.
Marc:But it's not like a ghost.
Marc:Magic is not like a ghost.
Marc:You know, this space, you know, it was a space that I occupied.
Marc:When I got this space, you know, it had a crumbling concrete floor.
Marc:I put a wood floor in here and I had plans that were never realized for this space.
Marc:And then it just became a junk.
Marc:It just became, you know, stuff.
Marc:That didn't fit in the house, in my small house.
Marc:And then when we started the podcast, I just stuck a table in the middle of that junk.
Marc:There was no order.
Marc:There were no shelves.
Marc:There was no sense of style or pictures on the wall.
Marc:It was just a table in the middle of some junk.
Marc:And I started recording on my laptop the first time.
Marc:After like maybe podcast 11 or 12, that's how it was.
Marc:Just me sitting with these SM7 mics on desk, you know, mic stands, you know, the ones that sort of freestanding short ones that sit on a table with these big mics that are supposed to be on booms.
Marc:And I was doing it.
Marc:I knew I needed these mics.
Marc:And what do I really get attached to in here?
Marc:These mics I think are special.
Marc:And these old bookshelves that I bought at a thrift store that were once at the LA Mental Hospital.
Marc:I love them.
Marc:And then these like acoustic panels, foamy stuff that I replaced because Laughing Andy, who was the board op for the Marin show, the last incarnation of me on radio at Air America, which was
Marc:on KTLK, he had some laying around his house.
Marc:He came over, laughing Andy, and set me up.
Marc:You know, because I didn't know what mixer to get, and I knew the mixer that we used to take on remotes when we were working at Air America, and it was this little Samson, they don't make him anymore, MDR6, the analog mixer that I plug into GarageBand with RCA cable,
Marc:And I run the mics into it.
Marc:It's a little blue mixer.
Marc:They don't make them anymore, but this is the secret.
Marc:This is the magic.
Marc:Everybody I've talked to in here has gone through this mixer, has run through this mixer, has run through these mics.
Marc:These are magic.
Marc:I believe these are more magic than the garage sometimes, this mixer, because it's fucked up.
Marc:It's short now.
Marc:Watch, I bet you if I play with this knob, you'll hear it.
Marc:Did it short out?
Marc:No, it didn't.
Marc:Hey, maybe it hears me.
Marc:Maybe it fixed itself.
Marc:But the mixer's going with me.
Marc:The mics are going with me.
Marc:And I guarantee you all this stuff is going with me.
Marc:Am I going to miss this space?
Marc:Did something happen in this space?
Marc:Is this space cozy?
Marc:Is there like the barn doors on this thing that I've locked with padlocks that wing out and open that I've replaced once because of the rain?
Marc:The memories I have outside of people coming in here are memories of almost flooding the garage because there was no drainage when the monsoon season hits.
Marc:I put these drains in.
Marc:I remember being out there with Dean Del Rey and Brenton Bilcombe, who they happened to be in the neighborhood, and they drove me to the Home Depot.
Marc:We got sandbags, and we sandbagged the front of the garage in pouring rain so it wouldn't flood out.
Marc:Save the garage.
Marc:Save the garage.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Even with the noise outside, the planes, the lawn equipment, the dogs,
Marc:It's quiet in here.
Marc:It's cozy.
Marc:The fact that it was somewhere that most people who live in L.A.
Marc:have never been.
Marc:There's something about the fact that it was a media stop, you know, in a strange kind of run down neighborhood back then.
Marc:What they had to drive through back then was would not indicate that anything was happening here.
Marc:It was tucked away.
Marc:How many people came in here just going, where am I?
Marc:They're here.
Marc:They're at the garage.
Marc:They're at the cat ranch.
Marc:They're about to talk to me in this garage.
Marc:See, now I'm feeling it.
Marc:Now I'm starting to feel the sadness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This garage changed my fucking life.
Marc:This garage holds a lot of fucking beauty and magic.
Marc:Laughter and tears.
Marc:All of it.
Marc:That's for sure.
Marc:This garage is magic.
Marc:But I think the new garage is going to be good.
Marc:I'm gonna miss this place, but I gotta tell you, I'm excited.
Marc:I'm excited to set up the new space.
Marc:I'm excited to expand.
Marc:I'm excited to get more shit, more things, more books.
Marc:I'm excited to make that new space cozy.
Marc:I'm excited there's a bathroom in it, but this place is magic.
Marc:You guys are right, you're right.
Marc:But I think, gotta be honest with you, at this point, looking around at the slight staleness of the setting, from my point of view, I'm thinking about 89% of the magic is me.
Marc:And on the other side of it is the other person.
Marc:So I think that the new garage can make up for that magic.
Marc:If it only has to be like 7%, 6% magic, I think it's there.
Marc:That house was built before this one.
Marc:The new house is older than this one.
Marc:I'm sad, but I think this garage knows that we've done what we've done.
Marc:We've done what we could and that it's time.
Marc:It's time.
Marc:It knows it's time for me to move on.
Marc:This house knows that.
Marc:I believe that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes, it's, yeah, I, it's emotional time, emotional time, man.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:So Nick Nolte, what a treat.
Marc:What a treat to sit with Nick Nolte, who made one of my favorite movies, North Dallas 40, whose title I confused with Semi-Tough at the beginning of this interview.
Marc:That was an embarrassing moment because I just had a brain skid.
Marc:But the interesting thing about Nolte,
Marc:if I'm going to sort of create a theme that may or may not be there is that you just heard me go through the garage and have my memory and feelings triggered by bits and pieces of artifacts of my life, things that I've held onto for years that are connected to memories, but those memories are not always accessible.
Marc:It literally felt today or the day that I spoke to Nick Nolte that that his brain was not unlike my garage where he was just wandering through it, being triggered by bits and pieces of of things that happened to him.
Marc:And that was the vibe of this interview.
Marc:And I just sort of let him do it.
Marc:You know, you can put most of them together.
Marc:They all kind of come together, but there's not a real defined timeline, and we move around a lot of places.
Marc:We spend some time in the garage of Nick Nolte's mind here, so enjoy that.
Marc:His book, Rebel, My Life Outside the Lines, is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:This is me and Nick Nolte.
Marc:Be optimistic.
Marc:Is that that patch?
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Be optimistic.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:No problem.
Marc:I'm on it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a challenging one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you optimistic?
Marc:I have to be.
Guest:Otherwise, I wouldn't keep on going.
Marc:I guess that's true, right?
Marc:Sure, sure, sure.
Guest:You got to think.
Guest:Well, I'm going to get up tomorrow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I can move now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But it'll be a little sore in the morning, and I'll moan and groan and be pissy, but you know.
Marc:You know, it reminds me of just you saying that, because for some reason, the movie Semi-Tough had a profound effect on me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I remember that movie.
Marc:I loved that movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yeah it's a great movie but there's that scene where you get up and you're like cracking things you know what that is that's north dallas 40 all right north dallas 40 that's right north dallas 40 with mac davis yeah yeah davis yeah i love that fucking movie yeah you know i wanted sam elliott for that role and for the mac davis part yeah yeah i didn't know mac yeah
Guest:sam uh he he uh did a screen test three times yeah you know after the first one i asked if he'd do it again yeah he did it again yeah and the third time he did it again and uh the director i'd chosen the producer they just kept saying mac davis mac davis and
Guest:Then what I realized is Mack was an extremely successful singer, songwriter.
Guest:Yeah, singer, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That kind of charisma, that kind of go-do-it attitude was the attitude of the quarterback.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like Fred Blitnikoff would tell me that Stabler at the bar after the game, the offensive lineman,
Guest:are at the bar sitting, getting their drinks.
Guest:The defensive guys are behind them, knocking over their drinks, bumping into them and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:The defensive backs are up against the wall because they don't want anybody to get behind them.
Guest:Flankers are over in the ends in the dark, and the quarterback comes in about midnight with a blonde going, hi, guys, hi, guys, and out the door.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So...
Guest:in that metaphor that pete gent told me that's the way the game was put together right and tom keaton was playing for the oaklands he came down and watched to shoot someone he said man what you guys do is just like football only except
Guest:You don't have a halftime, you don't have a quarter, and you don't ever get in a huddle and talk about this.
Guest:Do this stuff.
Marc:Yeah, it just goes on and on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it seemed like Mac Davis was, you know, he's sort of charming enough to, he did a good job.
Guest:Oh, he did a great job.
Marc:Oh, you got railroaded in that.
Marc:Oh, it's Dabney Coleman, too, right?
Marc:Yeah, Dabney Coleman, yeah.
Marc:All those dudes.
Marc:The thing I'll never forget about that movie is, you know, when the new guy, the clean guy, the running back, when they shoot him up, you know, and he decides to take the hit because you guys talk him into it.
Marc:And then he gets nailed and just like disfigured.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'll tell you something.
Guest:The producer I picked, because, you know, it was a Paramount picture that Michael Eisner had decided to do it.
Marc:And you had choice over that?
Guest:Yeah, and then I had choice over a Paramount producer.
Guest:So that meant five or six guys that worked at Paramount that they believed in.
Guest:And five or six, a choice of director and producer.
Guest:So...
Guest:I knew a story about an old head of Paramount called Frankie Blondes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And see, Charlie Bluth owned Gulf Western.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So he had Paramount.
Marc:He was a big guy.
Marc:He was the guy that did Capua and all those guys, The Godfather.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He did all that, but he didn't care about movies.
Marc:He was oil.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was he the guy that acquired Paramount for Gulf Western or just the guy that was in charge of it?
Marc:He was Gulf Western.
Marc:He was it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:what charlie's problem was when he played golf on long island yeah was they would say uh that lily tolman john travolta film is that a gay film you know charlie would say he's gonna hit his driver he'd say i'm not in the movie business i'm an oil man you know but here's here's how it all played out
Guest:When Eisner okayed this film, my agents and manager told me, you can't do that.
Guest:Because I came back from Mexico of Who Will Stop the Rain and Anthony Zerbe said, that's your next picture.
Guest:I was reading North Dallas Warrior.
Marc:Yeah, North Dallas Warrior.
Guest:And I said, you mean I just announce it and do it?
Guest:He said, well, you got to get it written and all that.
Guest:Yeah, that's what you do.
Marc:Because you were reading the book.
Marc:Yeah, I'm reading the book.
Guest:And I could see it's going to make a wonderful film because this was vulnerable territory.
Guest:So I said, okay.
Guest:So I came back and I said to my manager, my agent, I'm going to do North House 40.
Guest:They said, well, you can't do that.
Guest:You just can't decide you want to do something.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because from the ground up, you just wanted you to take another role?
Guest:The whole industry doesn't want you to do anything you want to do.
Guest:It doesn't matter what it is.
Guest:No, it doesn't matter what it is.
Guest:They want you to do what they want to do or what they have thought of doing, which could be absolutely wrong.
Guest:And the agents want you to do what they want to do because they want to package the whole thing.
Guest:Right, sure.
Marc:They're buying their pockets, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when you want to do something, it throws a wrench into the whole system.
Marc:But the whole system is about storytelling.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:and where are they gonna get the stories right might get them from an actor might get them from a writer might get it from somewhere yeah out of life so you had this book yeah so i had the book so i got a writer friend we took eight months to write it and i turned down anything that came my way uh agents were out but i had a sign and a creek that was running and it was out in uh off of canaan road yeah by triumphal canyon
Guest:in the old place where McQueen used to hang out.
Guest:But I had a sign that said, Nervous M16.
Guest:We got a job for you, Nick.
Guest:Give you $2 million.
Guest:Can't hear you.
Guest:Can't hear you.
Guest:Writing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So after eight months, we had just finished the script.
Guest:Eisner called me the next day.
Guest:He called me and said, what's this about North California?
Guest:I said, Mike, we just finished the script.
Guest:I can bring it in right now and pitch it to you.
Guest:he said do that so i went in drove in from the guard i pitched it to him he says look i'll read it tonight i'll call you at 12 noon so be around your phone yeah before cell phone right so i'm there at noon right at noon he calls and he said all right north dial 40 is a gold picture paramount
Guest:but you've got to take a paramount point of producer and paramount point of director and i said choices amongst that oh yeah five or six i said fine yeah my manager i said hello i mean north dallas 40s you go picture paramount you're fired called up my agent i said look north dallas 40s you go picture paramount you're fired and
Guest:that was that now so how'd that movie do oh real well right real well yeah yeah it became kind of a uh cult classic yeah and and a lot of people saw it yeah it made its money that's great yeah and frank was the right producer here's the story reason i chose frank yeah is because when frank was the head of paramount yeah he thought he only
Guest:Owned the studio.
Guest:When Charlie came in, they got in an argument.
Guest:Frank tried to throw Charlie out of the window, two-story window.
Guest:Charlie fired him.
Guest:That was that.
Guest:So I thought, Jesus, anybody that's going to run the football team or not be the coach but run the deal, it's got to be Frank.
Marc:That tough.
Guest:Yeah, that tenacity.
Marc:And he did.
Marc:He was the guy.
Guest:Oh, he was.
Marc:He was.
Marc:Wow, man, it seemed like it was a lot more exciting a business back then.
Guest:Oh, you know, it's still going on.
Marc:Oh, yeah, it's still crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it's still crazy.
Marc:But you were a football guy, am I right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, you grew up playing football?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to play until you couldn't play anymore.
Guest:And I just wasn't quite fast enough.
Marc:Right, you weren't a born football player.
Guest:Well, I was, but not an Iowa football player.
Guest:is that where that were you were tested oh in iowa yeah i grew up in iowa oh my god so we were wrestlers and we were football players and my father was six foot six yeah he played football at iowa state he even played uh pro ball in chicago really yeah because my mom
Guest:so that whole family they come from a professor side my grandfather kate was a professor your mom's side yeah yeah he he invented the hollow tile silo what is that well they couldn't get grain to store corn to store because they had holes in bricks yeah but they didn't have a big tile
Guest:that had been glazed that had a nine-inch space in between so that the water wouldn't get into the grain.
Guest:And these tiles, that's what did it.
Marc:The tiled silo.
Guest:Now, I always thought he invented the hollow tile.
Guest:He didn't.
Guest:There was some other guy from Illinois invented the hollow tile.
Guest:But then they referenced my grandfather as doing it with the local clay tile.
Guest:of iowa i was sits between the mississippi and the missouri yeah so it's black fertile land so like so your whole that was your childhood iowa iowa and my mother uh we used to have to go to iowa state college and what's your dad do well my dad he graduated from iowa state and then he was engineering for the highway department
Guest:And then my mother was over at Marshall Fields in Chicago.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Department store?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was going to be a buyer, and she was going out with Frank Capone.
Guest:My father heard about that.
Guest:He went over to Chicago and set it straight.
Guest:And that's when he played pro ball.
Marc:Was that Al Capone's brother?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Your mom was dating Frank Capone.
Marc:Yeah, Frank Capone.
Marc:She was on her way to being a mob mall.
Guest:No, Frank was totally straight, moral.
Guest:You know.
Guest:The good cabal.
Guest:The good cabal.
Guest:You know, just because of the name.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:Kane and Abelman, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, my dad, you know, they had dated all during college.
Guest:And, you know, he was in Iowa, she was in Chicago, and he just felt he wanted to nail the situation down.
Marc:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't be here.
Marc:Yeah, and what, you got siblings?
Guest:I got one sister.
Guest:One sister who was a little bit taller than me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Still faster, better athlete.
Yeah.
Guest:Would have gone to the Olympics.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But there was no women's liberation at the time.
Marc:What was her sport?
Marc:Swimming.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She cut water.
Guest:She didn't look like she tried, and she just moved through water.
Guest:I never saw her lose a race, ever.
Guest:And we went to all the swimming meets in the Midwest because Jack McGuire, a family friend, he was a red-headed Irishman, 6'5".
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when you got my dad and Jack together, and they had had a few
Guest:it was it was a it was a go you know it was pretty scary big giants you know uh jack was a head swimming coach he actually wanted me and nancy to stay in iowa and and he would swim you were a swimmer too yeah so your plan was to be an athlete
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was the plan.
Guest:I'm a real simple guy.
Guest:One plan all the way through.
Guest:If I don't get resistance, and I got a lot of resistance because of pranks.
Marc:Because of what?
Marc:Pranks.
Marc:Oh, you got in trouble?
Guest:Oh, a lot of it, starting with the midget Bud Wilkinson football camp in Minnesota.
Guest:Yeah, what happened?
Guest:Well, the second year, Chuck Freeman, who was from Westside, I was from the Benson, said, we're up there and we're a week early.
Guest:The Oklahoma kids haven't showed up.
Guest:See, it's primarily for Oklahoma, right?
Marc:Yeah, it's for the camp?
Guest:Yeah, Bud Wilkinson camp.
Guest:What can we do that isn't going to harm anybody, but it would be a good prank?
Guest:So we defecated in a bag, flattened it with rocks.
Guest:So it was maybe...
Guest:eighth of an inch thick and they we had chalets so the Oklahoma guys were in one chalet we were in another chalet the out-of-staters two from Nebraska two from Iowa two from Missouri two you know yeah and all the coaches were Oklahoma coaches right so we laid that down
Guest:on the spring then a canvas went over that then the mattress went over that since it was no way to tell no no way to see it yeah no way to see it so i forget about it we're a weekend and one of the oakies says to me we got a smell in our chalet
Guest:And we can't figure out what either a skunk is dying in the wall, something happens.
Guest:And I said, man, you should figure that out.
Guest:We are, we are.
Guest:This weekend, we're going to pull out all the beds and everything.
Guest:And they found this.
Guest:They found the shit bags?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they immediately charged me and Chuck with it.
Guest:But Chuck was a real cool guy.
Guest:He could just dismiss me.
Guest:No, no, no way.
Guest:And I'd say, no, no.
Guest:And one Oklahoma tackle was saying, man, I don't know whether they hit you now or fucking cry.
Guest:I'd say, well, I wouldn't hit you.
Guest:You don't know.
Guest:and all that.
Guest:That night, I was laying in the bunk.
Guest:The lights were out.
Guest:They turned out the lights.
Guest:And an assistant coach came in with a flashlight.
Guest:He sat down by my bunk.
Guest:You know, we're kids.
Guest:And he said, Nolte, I know you did this.
Guest:You will never play football again for the rest of your life.
Guest:I'll make sure of that.
Guest:for that yeah left me in tears you know for that yeah and I think that followed me because we're in the 1950s yeah and you know it was a curse or he actually went he held on to that and spread the word yes exactly right I think that word just went on and on because my senior year of high school the coach holds a vote whether I should be on the team or not
Guest:Now, the players didn't want to vote.
Guest:So my father, I think, had a conversation with the coach.
Guest:And unbeknownst to me, I got up the next day to find out what was going.
Guest:My mom said, where are you going?
Guest:I said, I'm going to find out what this is all about.
Guest:She said, well, you can, but we're moving today.
Guest:I said, we're moving.
Guest:Where?
Guest:He said, Westside.
Guest:You'll be ineligible for two games, but you'll have the rest of the season.
Guest:And I said, well, do we have a house?
Guest:Yeah, we bought a house.
Marc:well we don't have the money to do that i know but we're getting out of here yeah so you can play ball so i can play ball oh that's some good parents yeah real good parents oh that's sweet and you did yeah and i did so when did you uh when did you decide to you came out here for college initially uh because i read that you know yeah i was reading bits and pieces of the book it's nicely written did you enjoy writing it yeah but you know that was a five-year process of writing that book five writers
Marc:oh yeah um that you worked with yeah that worked with yeah and they would get so far and and up far and finally denise hardy the ghostwriter she was able to really pin it down yeah start to get it it's good opening you know yeah you know when you're in like i because i had a situation when i come out here the first time i came in la
Marc:It was, like, in the late 80s, and I left because I got fucked up.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And, like, you know, like, I just, like, you come out here in 1962, and, like, I talked to one other cat who got fucked up, and his dad had to come get him, and that guy was James Taylor, and that was in New York.
Marc:Ah.
Marc:Because James got strung out, and the old man kind of took him, kind of take him back down south and get him cleaned up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's what happened to you.
Marc:You came out here.
Marc:You were where?
Marc:Right out here in Pasadena?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right out here in Pasadena, I had rented a room.
Guest:My folks, oddly enough, had a house in Hollywood.
Guest:Why's that?
Guest:Well, because when I... You know, these were really unique parents.
Guest:I think my dad was able to transfer to Hollywood because he was an engineer of large irrigation pumps, moving water.
Guest:What is not known about L.A.
Guest:is L.A.
Guest:is a swampland.
Guest:So Laurel Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, Benedict Canyon, those are rivers.
Guest:So it's all underground from Mulholland down.
Guest:Now, as an iron worker, I built those tunnels, but I didn't put it together that there's an underground city under there until 10 years later when I come back and I'm looking for a place to smoke some weed at...
Guest:at sunset and look over the valley in LA and just relax.
Guest:And I'd find this fenced-in culvert hole about five feet around heading downhill.
Guest:And I remembered that at a certain point going up Benedict Canyon, we reduced it down to the round culverts that we didn't have to put any iron in, so we were off the job.
Guest:and so we went down it that night uh but it was too scary yeah it was totally pitch black and you could hear like it sounded like waterfalls and stuff so rocky and i got out of that we went over to the house that i was staying in in uh off the hour and we built a cart yeah
Guest:to go down that tunnel.
Guest:So we put wheels on it, and we had it food packed and all that, and we hoisted over the chain link fence.
Guest:And we got it going down, but we didn't engineer it right.
Guest:It would go up the side and crash.
Guest:We slide for 100 feet.
Guest:Up the side, slide for 100 feet.
Guest:When it gets down to sunset, it opened into 40 feet wide, 40 feet tall, and 40 feet across of the road.
Guest:The only way you can get out is there's about, oh, at about your up to here, your neck.
Guest:There are side chutes that are nice and round.
Guest:You can shimmy up those, and then you're in a Beverly Hills gutter, which is four by eight feet.
Guest:And there's nothing in there because it's a water draining system.
Guest:And there was maybe an inch wide trickle of water going down.
Guest:Now when it rains, I'm sure they turn into rivers.
Guest:Because LA, Hollywood was highland.
Guest:Beverly Hills was a little bit high.
Guest:But any of the lowlands like LA base, that was wetlands.
Guest:That was all swampy.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Long time ago.
Guest:Long time ago.
Marc:So you were putting that stuff, so your dad knew about that stuff.
Guest:Well, yeah, he was out here talking to them about pumps because eventually what they did is those tunnels that run the water underground, they left one river open.
Guest:L.A.
Marc:River.
Marc:That comes out over here.
Guest:I know, and I watched it as we were coming in.
Guest:I forgot that that was there.
Guest:Because that's the way it is underground.
Guest:It's shaped like this.
Guest:Underground is flat.
Marc:So you were working the steelworking.
Marc:You were a steelworker building those things up?
Marc:Yeah, I was a steelworker.
Marc:When you first came out here?
Guest:When I first came out here, I played a season at...
Guest:pch jim nelson said the iron workers hiring we can get in on this they're still building the storm drains i didn't know what that meant were you getting the union we got in the union and iron workers union we worked all that summer he said look we'll make so much money we'll just draw unemployment for the rest of the year yeah yeah
Guest:hang out in barney's beanery yeah you know and maybe get ready to play football he said i don't know i'm not he said he wasn't gonna play so your dad when did your dad come out here well my my my parents lived here you know originally that for that first season right they lived here but then my dad was transferred to phoenix so i but i stayed on here because what happened is i played at pasadena yeah
Guest:I had already played at Eastern Arizona Junior College, so I was going to be in Ellsworth Junior College.
Guest:But the idea was to play maybe four or five years at Junior College Ball, different places around the country, because they didn't keep track.
Guest:So you could play college ball eight years, be 29, something like that.
Guest:That was the plan?
Guest:Fully mature, really, and then you'd know whether you're any good.
Marc:So that was the plan, was to just keep jumping to junior colleges to get your chops together for the ball, for the big game?
Marc:Yeah, never went to school.
Marc:So when you started working in the Iron Union, you didn't have any plans to be an actor?
Marc:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Marc:And you just wanted to hang out here.
Marc:Your parents had gone back to where, Arizona?
Guest:Yeah, Arizona.
Guest:And the plan was to do the iron work and then either go for another season of PCH, which I had to avoid them playing Phoenix.
Guest:So I wouldn't get on the bus.
Guest:Oh, so you wouldn't get caught?
Guest:Yeah, get caught.
Guest:Or find another junior college far enough away so they didn't enter.
Marc:So how does it... But you get caught up.
Marc:I mean, what year is that?
Marc:It's like 1962.
Marc:So it's not too crazy yet, right?
Marc:What, are you just drinking then?
Guest:Just drinking and taking a pill, which were probably singing all barbiturates.
Marc:So he's loopy.
Marc:Loopy, yeah.
Marc:What was this habit you had of slamming your head into things?
Guest:Well, you know, it's a way, it's the only way that I could find to say I was in a crisis, you know.
Guest:So...
Guest:Yeah, I was used to physical self-destruction.
Guest:Of yourself.
Guest:Yeah, because drinking wouldn't get to it.
Guest:If I was going to change, change comes from the inside.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not fun.
Guest:It's big.
Guest:And you're not going to do it.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I'll change.
Guest:No, that's not going to get it.
Guest:Change is real movement.
Guest:And that was happening to me, and I didn't know how to express it.
Guest:I mean, it meant that who I thought I was had to go away, had to crumble.
Marc:So this was happening towards like after, like in the book, I read that you had one of those horrible sort of situations where you get spotted and you get swept up and you think you're about to get your big break and you realize, no, I'm about to get in an awkward situation with a man in a bathrobe.
Marc:There were plenty of men with bathrobes back then too.
Marc:Oh yes, there were.
Marc:So was that like, because in the beginning of the book, you sort of lead up to that.
Marc:You're hanging out with the women.
Marc:You're going to Barney's.
Marc:You're drinking.
Marc:You're beating yourself up pretty bad.
Marc:But then you get sort of pulled in by this big agent.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you go over to his house.
Marc:Have dinner.
Marc:Have dinner, and you think this is it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then he comes out.
Guest:And he puts out his bathrobe.
Guest:And he said to me, walks over, and he says, I'm a little cuddle bunny.
Guest:And I just don't have an answer for that.
Guest:I don't think that's in the book, but that's what he said.
Marc:I'm a little cuddle bunny?
Guest:I'm a little cuddle bunny.
Yeah.
Guest:You knew you weren't in show business, huh?
Guest:I went to that front door and knew my home didn't.
Marc:And he was a real guy, right?
Guest:Oh, real guy.
Marc:Did you ever come in contact with him again later?
Guest:No, I never did because he was quite a bit older.
Guest:So, you know, I leave L.A.
Guest:and then that's 10 years.
Marc:10, 15 years.
Marc:But when you were talking about this change that was happening to you, how do you explain that?
Marc:So you're saying that everything that led you to where you were playing football, your whole plan for life, the simplicity of who you thought you were was starting to buckle.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So that becomes obvious, not to me, but to say Brian O'Byrne.
Guest:Your friend.
Guest:Yeah, up the hill, the acting teacher.
Guest:He sees that, he sees.
Marc:Were you taking acting lessons at the time?
Guest:Well, Tom Connelly was over here at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Guest:Chuck Freeman was over here at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Guest:And I was playing football at Pasadena.
Guest:So Connelly was from Wichita, Kansas.
Guest:And he was up for Peyton Place.
Guest:the younger brother Peyton.
Guest:He was a really neat guy.
Guest:And he said, why don't you come and see you play a minute?
Guest:I go to your games.
Guest:So I did.
Guest:I watched the play.
Guest:It was interesting.
Guest:I didn't think much about it.
Guest:He said,
Guest:listen I have to go I have a private teacher over in Hollywood Brian O'Byrne yeah do you want to go with me and see that and I said sure I'll go with you yeah so I went there and Brian lived up at the very top of Laurel Canyon this is before I was really living in Laurel and uh
Guest:Brian said, no, you can't be here unless you participate.
Guest:You'll have to read.
Guest:And I said, well, I don't know if I can read.
Guest:I haven't really read a book in years.
Guest:But he gave me a section to read.
Guest:And so after Tom had done his work, Brian, I went in and read.
Guest:I read this piece.
Guest:And he got...
Guest:really excited about it and said you don't know it but you're an actor and i said well how do i find out i don't know you'll have to find out so there were hints yeah there were hints but i did not determine yet to go that way right because i still was this thing you're working and doing i
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And playing football.
Guest:Playing football.
Guest:And just goofing with all these poets and musicians.
Marc:So that was sort of mind-blowing to you.
Guest:Oh, yeah, man.
Guest:You know, John Altoom, an Armenian painter.
Guest:They can't really talk, but he can.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it's informative because if you've ever seen Life Lessons, it's John painting, you know.
Marc:What, in the New York stories?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I love that one, man.
Guest:Yeah, it's a great one.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:You're working that.
Marc:There's a scene, there's that moment, man.
Marc:There's a moment where you're sitting at the table with that kid who just climbs out of bed with your chick.
Marc:And I just bodied him.
Marc:You bodied him and you say, what do you do?
Marc:He goes, I'm a graffiti artist.
Marc:And he said, I'm a painter.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I like hanging around with painters.
Guest:Sculptors too, but painters really... They're really physical people.
Guest:I'm dating a painter.
Guest:Yeah, it's physical.
Guest:Yeah, they get in it.
Guest:It's not... Oh, no, yeah.
Guest:You know, and so I knew...
Guest:See, when that was set up, Scorsese didn't pick me.
Guest:I think it was Jeffrey Katzenberg said, we're going to do this trilogy of three pieces.
Guest:And he said, you're actually Nick Nolte.
Guest:So Marty was fine with that.
Guest:But Marty, in the script that Richard Price wrote, he didn't want to make a choice of who was a painter.
Guest:There was de Kooning.
Guest:There was Schnabel.
Guest:that were great.
Guest:I went around to all those studios and looked at it.
Guest:When I went to Schnabel's, it's kind of a joke, I tell.
Guest:Schnabel had a big sculpting thing outside.
Guest:And as you came in, if you bumped into it,
Guest:it went yeah and then you'd walk into his big studio and on ladders on a 20 foot by 20 foot painting yeah were three students that were painting in red yeah and i said would the master say think red today he said yeah that's what he said
Guest:you know now they're just laying the background on you know but I you know and then I went up to his accounting department right in that studio and so I made fun of that but Snob was a great painter I truly respect him but he thought he thought I wasn't giving him his due and I do give him his due he's a great painter he
Marc:Yeah, he had his moment and then he kind of evolved out of it.
Guest:Yeah, because he jumped into film.
Marc:Yeah, and I hear a lot of the plates are falling off of those canvases.
Marc:That's what I heard.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the tuning was interesting, too.
Marc:He had an easel.
Marc:He's older, old school, abstract.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He had his painting on an easel.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm sitting there, and he says, what do you think?
Guest:I said, well, it looks great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, he hits a button.
Guest:It turns one degree.
Guest:What do you think now?
Guest:That was interesting.
Guest:It's another button.
Guest:Flips entirely over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, this is the way I like it.
Marc:Upside down.
Guest:So, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So those are the guys you went to study.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Who did the painting for the film itself?
Marc:Chuck Connolly.
Guest:It was one of his.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a bridge, but people are falling off the bridge.
Guest:It's really, life is really.
Marc:It's a huge canvas.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I really like that.
Marc:I can barely remember the other two films.
Marc:It was Woody Allen and a Coppola one, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That one that you did with Scorsese really stood out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was the first time you worked with him?
Marc:The first time I worked with him.
Guest:And I think it's some of Marty's best work.
Guest:He won't recognize it because...
Marc:of the reviews that they just lambasted tried to compare the film yeah and so america will never ever again do a trilogy like that yeah it was a weird thing i remember i was excited about it but i thought that i thought that francis's was kind of trite yeah and silly and woody's was like ridiculous yeah and that that like it seemed like the one that really did something and yeah
Marc:It was yours.
Marc:It was Roseanne, our cat in there, right?
Guest:Yeah, and the guy is using hers.
Guest:I would look at Scorsese and I'd look at Coppola.
Guest:They all had pretty young women assistants.
Guest:They're not doing anything with them, but they think about it.
Guest:It's inspiration.
Guest:It's energy.
Guest:That's what the painter's got.
Guest:She's trapped.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there's that scene where you're working, and then you see her painting because she's a painter, and it's just so small and sad.
Marc:I thought it was pretty deep, man.
Marc:I thought it was pretty deep.
Marc:So going back, so you hit the wall here, and your dad comes and gets you because you're losing your mind, and your buddy calls your dad and says he's losing his mind.
Marc:And that wasn't drug-related?
Guest:That was just a... Oh, there was... Everything was related.
Guest:I mean, there was drugs, there was...
Guest:booze there was behavior there was staying up all night there was yeah excitement you just unbridled i'm totally out there so you come and it's not the the 360s yet yeah you know right yeah you you were you're getting you're ahead of the curve yeah i'm ahead of the curve and i'm not anywhere near in the ballpark you know
Guest:so you go back to Arizona I go back to Arizona and luckily I got parents that don't say oh this is a troubling thing yeah young man to be but this is what happens to young guys they gotta go through some kind of
Guest:break.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:You don't know.
Guest:I did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Psychotic break.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Michael Moriarty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He broke.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And his parents sent him to electric shock treatment.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The actor?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Michael tells me that story.
Guest:He's told that story.
Guest:So I don't.
Marc:From Bang the Drum Slowly?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Brilliant actor.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, Michael was at the Guthrie when I was at the Old Long Theater.
Marc:The Guthrie in Minneapolis?
Guest:Yeah, in Minneapolis.
Guest:And the Old Long Theater was a stock equity company.
Guest:We'd do Two Dozen Red Roses and Girl in My Soup and that kind of stuff.
Guest:The Guthrie was doing Shakespeare and all that stuff.
Guest:You had Mo Yerdy, Ron Glass was there, who was a black actor.
Guest:Sure, he did comedy.
Guest:He was on Barney, Barney, Barney Miller.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Ron still had street dialect going on.
Guest:So the Shakespeare, Molyardy decided that Shakespeare should be delivered slowly.
Guest:So it was something like there...
Guest:Out there, thy own self not recognized.
Guest:oh yeah man i know which time it was similar rhythms right it was funny yeah sometimes very affecting but you know it was it was crazy oh that's wild it was crazy so you so you go you you went back to phoenix and your parents were like they they weren't thrilled but they're gonna support you anyways yeah they're gonna give me a room
Guest:my grandma down here who's my mom calls charmingly vague she's demented yeah you know charmingly vague yeah yeah she's heading to the memorial unit every morning to open the memorial and have state college for the students yeah but she's in peonies you know she doesn't know her husband's dead yeah uh but she's
Guest:She's pleasant.
Marc:She's living at the house with you?
Guest:Yeah, living at the house because my mother was in a battle with her sister, Harriet, who was nine years older and was a professor at the University of Oregon.
Guest:And so when my mother called her and said, our mother is in bad shape,
Guest:Harriet said, put her in a home.
Guest:My mother said, oh, you selfish son of a... And they fought all their life.
Guest:I mean, it was ridiculous.
Marc:So you're there with your parents and your grandmother who's losing it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And were you getting into trouble?
Guest:No, the best advice I had was I got to put myself in a room and face everything that's going to come at me.
Guest:Because it was obvious I was running from everything.
Guest:Fear was a big thing.
Guest:Fear used to, generalized fear would come under the door as smoke.
Guest:And then as it would come on me, it would start to end up.
Guest:My heart would be going buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh.
Guest:And the anxiety would come.
Guest:And then I'd have to shut it off.
Marc:With booze or something.
Guest:It took me a while before I could let it.
Guest:Go ahead and felt me.
Guest:And when it did, there was nothing there.
Guest:It was just fear went through.
Marc:So you got through it, just your brain.
Guest:And went by.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So if you're running from your own fears, you won't...
Guest:feel them you only feel them up to a point yeah then you got no expression for fear because the expression of fear is aggression yeah so you got to find a way to aggressively be proper running into cars it's not primer i couldn't hit other people because it just don't do that i i don't do that i could do it in football
Marc:So you mean this is when you hit yourself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's why football worked for you.
Guest:Yeah, that's why football worked for me.
Guest:I used to cry when I played games.
Guest:There was a kid from Omaha when I went back 50th high school reunion.
Guest:He from Boys Town.
Guest:He had married somebody from Westside and he said, I remember you in midget football.
Guest:I played a cross from you.
Guest:You were crying all the time.
Guest:I thought, geez, this cat.
Guest:Maybe his dad died or his mother died.
Guest:Why were you crying all the time?
Guest:I said, I cried because I was so passionate to get my hands on the fucking guy that had the ball.
Guest:I wanted to rip him apart and smash him into the...
Guest:and that's why i'd cry he looked at me like are you nuts man but that's the kind of passion i sure and now so you're able to channel that a little bit yeah so what so where did you end up what would you get busted for uh selling uh seven counts of selling counterfeit government documents what were the documents draft cards
Marc:So you're selling draft cards to get guys out of the war.
Marc:Well, really, I'm selling draft cards.
Guest:A birth registration card, draft card, and a driver's license.
Marc:And this is what, 65?
Guest:It's early 60s.
Guest:There isn't a problem with this.
Guest:until vietnam starts to heat up and it's before i don't know anything about the war yeah my mom uh i went up on the state charges and they kind of held those until they saw what the federal court was doing so you were just doing it for money i was doing it for money yeah doing it for money i didn't know anything about the war or anything but the
Guest:Federals, they kept it going for maybe a year and a half, two years, and my mother got spooked.
Guest:So all of a sudden, I'm in a car, and we go to Uncle Cole's farm in Redfield, Iowa, and she's running away.
Guest:And Cole, who always carries a half pint, says, Dot,
Guest:You can't run away from this.
Guest:Where are you guys going to run?
Guest:And I didn't know what she was doing.
Guest:It was Cole that said, she's trying to run away from trouble, and you're the trouble.
Guest:So we went back and faced the music.
Guest:I pled NOLA contender, you know.
Guest:I did it, but I didn't really know what I was doing.
Guest:And he said, that'll be $75,000 fine and 45 years in jail.
Guest:And then he said, I'll suspend that and put you under the Youth Correction Act.
Guest:You'll be in probation for the duration of the Vietnam War.
Guest:Yay.
Guest:I didn't show it.
Guest:And he said, and then this will be off your record.
Guest:It will not be a felony anymore.
Guest:Nobody will be able to read it.
Guest:And what I found out was it never goes away.
Guest:There's just a page on top of your record that says, do not read past things.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they pick it up, read it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So first year I'm here and get hot as an actor, you know.
Guest:i'm doing television shows and all that getting ready to do rich man poor man and uh the inquirer says we know you're a felon and we're gonna ruin your career unless you give us an interview once a week the inquirer yeah yeah so my manager calls and goes
Guest:Oh, my God, you ruined it.
Guest:You didn't tell me you were a felon.
Guest:Well, I'm not a felon.
Guest:I said, I'll talk to you later.
Guest:Then my agent calls, you're a felon.
Guest:Oh, my God, this is really a problem.
Guest:How do we do it?
Guest:You're going to have to do these interviews.
Guest:I said, let me talk to you later.
Guest:I said, Jesus Christ, it's not a big deal.
Guest:It's not really there.
Guest:I just got to go out there and speak it.
Guest:So I knew Rona Barrett.
Guest:I'd talked to her a few times.
Guest:She had a television show.
Guest:I called her and I said, Rona, I got to come on your show.
Guest:I got something to say.
Guest:It's really big news.
Guest:And I got to do it soon.
Guest:She said, well, you can come on this weekend.
Guest:And I said, well, this is Monday, what?
Guest:Wednesday.
Guest:Come here Wednesday.
Guest:Be here 10 o'clock.
Marc:On the Rona Barrett Hollywood Gossip Show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:So I went on Rona's show, and she said, Nick, you called me and said you wanted to come?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:What I've got to tell you, Rona, is I made some mistakes when I was younger.
Guest:I sold counterfeit government documents, draft cards, and driver's license and birth registration cards.
Guest:It didn't have anything to do with the war.
Guest:They gave me a $75,000 fine and 45 years in jail, suspended it, and put me under the Youth Correction Act.
Guest:And she said, well, then are you a felon?
Guest:I said, no, I'm under the Youth Correction Act.
Guest:She said, oh, well, what do you think about marijuana?
Guest:I said, the plant?
Guest:Well, you know, the plant grows in Iowa.
Guest:There's fields and fields of it.
Guest:They use the strings for manila rope.
Guest:Oh, the Navy uses that.
Guest:That's how we have rope.
Guest:She didn't have an answer for all that and I danced and diddled off her show.
Guest:Did it help?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There was no liability anymore.
Marc:choir project yeah that's good so then that was at the beginning of your career so you know so like outside of that so you go back and you do this regional theater for a decade yeah and do you train do you train as an actor other than just doing the theater i sit in that room for a year brian loaded me up with stanislavski
Guest:with every acting book you can imagine this is your room in in arizona in arizona your brain brian's the guy from here yeah he's the coach in hollywood brian what's his last name oh burn okay he he he left hollywood maybe 30 years ago and he died up in san francisco he he acted and all that but he coached many many
Marc:Yeah, so you're confronting fear in a room in Arizona and he's sending you books.
Guest:I'm reading all the foundation of acting, you know, and I'm finding this stuff wide open to me because the only thing that's working with me is imagination, emotions, and I have to face them.
Guest:I have to feel them.
Guest:Where did they come from?
Guest:How do you evoke them?
Guest:Can you get to fear?
Guest:Can you get to sadness?
Guest:Can you get to pain?
Guest:Can you get to this?
Guest:And so I'm learning where it all originates and what's real, what's not.
Guest:That process and then when I finally
Guest:The day I got out of that bed and I walked down to the Phoenix Little Theater, I ran into a director named Kit Carson.
Guest:And I told him my story and what I was doing.
Guest:And he said, well, you just got to start doing
Guest:important plays you can start by being in hasty heart and i said okay what role would i play play digger here's the screen here's the play and so that started it out and he's directing you he directed it i did eight plays in that playhouse and then kit said you gotta go to summer stock now so i applied different places and i applied at the little theater the rockies and they hired me as
Guest:juvenile lead and paid me.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was probably around 23, 24 now.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you kind of paid your dues that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you see, I didn't pay dues.
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So because of your state, the rebuilding of your mind and the opening of your mind, you're able to just completely lock into all this shit.
Marc:All of it.
Marc:It's your thing.
Marc:All of it.
Marc:You feel it.
Guest:The other guy was made up.
Guest:So I see that process.
Guest:How do you make up a personality that...
Guest:Made up by who?
Guest:By you, by society?
Guest:By me, by society, by all the persons.
Marc:Expectations.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And getting a yes or a hurrah or a recognition or whatever it is.
Guest:Yeah, we're structured in that way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if we buy into it.
Guest:you become that sure you know sure so you got out i i saw it how how you build it yeah and you know and then and then you come back here and you you you know after being away 10 years and you land some tv well here's the thing yeah i come back here in a william inch play in sees me do the last pad over in phoenix as sally goldwater had financed yeah and it's being done by a director named keith anderson who was a quaker
Guest:He was a child prodigy, and he went to the University of Chicago at 16.
Guest:He gets married at 17, and the mother-in-law and the wife kick him out.
Guest:He can't handle it.
Guest:He stabs the mother-in-law 47 times.
Guest:He just stabbed her in the same hole.
Guest:She doesn't die.
Guest:He's in the Illinois penitentiary when his family had been pacifists since World War I, World War II, every war.
Guest:And I know the Quaker family.
Guest:He finally gets out of prison.
Guest:In prison, he gets the rights to the William Hinge play.
Guest:He calls me and said, will you put this play together with me?
Guest:And I said, yeah, I'll meet you in Phoenix.
Guest:I'll come, I'll rap here and I'll come down in Phoenix.
Marc:And this production that you did led to what?
Guest:It led to Bill Hinge being so excited about it.
Guest:He said, I want this play to go to LA.
Guest:I will find you guys a theater to put it in.
Guest:I will not ever go back to New York.
Guest:And so Billings Play opened at this Contempo furniture store in Westwood, which was right across from UCLA.
Guest:It is now the Westwood Playhouse.
Guest:I couldn't get a job in there if I tried, but we opened it in there.
Guest:And it was just a furniture store in front, and it had a theater in the back, an old proscenium.
Guest:But this play we did was in the round, and I had learned a trick.
Guest:I had learned it from a kid, but I could do this.
Guest:The play opened with this kid whining and moaning and, you know, in pain.
Guest:And I would take a can of vegetable soup and I'd swallow it about three, four minutes before we opened.
Guest:And I would hold it in the upper stomach
Guest:And I could do maybe two, three minutes before I projectile threw up in the toilet.
Guest:And that shit went everywhere.
Guest:And that horrified the audience.
Guest:And they got into it as a real deal.
Marc:Good trick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So after that, did people see you and then they start booking you on TV or what?
Marc:All right, yeah.
Guest:That play ran for a year.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:A year in the furniture store.
Marc:Yeah, in the furniture store.
Marc:1970, what year?
Marc:I'm not sure.
Guest:You don't know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I'll have to look.
Guest:Doesn't matter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So during that time, you know, Elizabeth Taylor came down.
Guest:You know, it was just huge people.
Guest:Casting directors came down.
Guest:All that kind of stuff.
Guest:Brian O'Byrne brought the manager down.
Guest:There was a buzz.
Guest:Real big buzz.
Guest:Did Marlon come see you?
Guest:No, Marlon never saw it.
Guest:Marlon didn't see movies.
Marc:He didn't do anything?
Marc:No.
Marc:Did you ever meet him?
Guest:oh yeah yeah yeah the last 10 years of his life sean introduced me after thin red line did yeah yeah pen was having dinner with marlon now woody and i pulled a prank on sean on thin red line sean harrelson yeah yeah yeah so sean called me when we were back here and said marlon wants to meet you i'm having dinner with him
Guest:And it's going to be up in Beverly Hills, up Beverly Glen Boulevard.
Guest:So I was driving in with my English assistant, Matt Trowmans, who's really a smart guy.
Guest:And I said, Matt, I got a feeling this is Sean's got me right in the spot where he could really pull a big one.
Guest:I don't want to go.
Guest:You thought he was fucking with you?
Guest:Yeah, I thought he was going to.
Guest:Yeah, because Sean was upset about what Woody and I did.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:Well, I got down on thin red line about halfway through.
Guest:Woody calls me.
Guest:He said, Nick, I know you don't know me well, but...
Guest:You're the only one that can do this because you haven't been here and Sean totally trusts you and he didn't see me talk to you tonight.
Guest:So I'm calling him by phone.
Guest:I need you to help me get Sean in a certain position so I can pull this gag.
Guest:And I said, well, do you have any idea what it is?
Guest:And I said, not yet.
Guest:And I said, I don't want to hurt him.
Guest:He said, no, no, no, we won't hurt him.
Guest:We won't hurt him.
Guest:So he said, but just tell Sean you want to meet him Saturday night, say, 7 o'clock, because you got something to talk about with him.
Guest:And just, you know, don't say anything, just say you got to meet with him.
Guest:And I did the next day.
Guest:I called Sean.
Guest:I said, hey, I got something to talk with you, but I can't right now because I got all wardrobe and all that.
Guest:How about Saturday about 7 o'clock, you know, it's our day off.
Guest:He said, yeah, yeah, I'll meet you.
Guest:I'll come over in that main town and be in the bar, you know, and we'll talk.
Guest:And he said, good, good.
Guest:Sean's father was dying of cancer.
Guest:He thought maybe it was some health problem.
Guest:I don't know what he thought.
Guest:But anyway, so Woody calls me about 6, and he said, why don't you head down now?
Guest:Because we're going to call him early.
Guest:And he said, listen, I'm down here at the police station.
Guest:You know where it is?
Guest:I said, is it the White House at the end of the street just in that park there?
Guest:Yeah, it's just a little three-bedroom house.
Guest:That's the police station.
Guest:They're all three policemen.
Guest:Come on down.
Guest:right away because you were in a wreck and around well come on down i'll tell you all right so i got down there two of the policemen were in uniform the third one was in a t-shirt with tattoos he looked like a australian you know yeah yeah wild guy he said all right here's what happened you were in a wreck with this guy in the roundy round and uh
Guest:And since you're a foreigner, they're going to have to do a blood test on you, see if you're drinking.
Guest:But they have a warrant for this guy's arrest.
Guest:They're glad they got him.
Guest:So he'll be in handcuffs.
Guest:And then when Sean comes down, he has to identify you that, yeah, you're American working on the film.
Guest:all that and then the doctor will come and it'll be a fake but all that but somewhere in there this guy will have to go to the bathroom and the other officer will walk down with him and you and Sean will be sitting here now I don't know do I leave the gun in and I said Woody if you don't do the gun Sean's not gonna react
Guest:You know, a gun makes Sean react.
Guest:What are you going to do with the gun?
Guest:Well, they're going to shoot it.
Guest:So Woody turns to him and says, okay, the blanks are in.
Guest:So when you go down to the bathroom, when he goes down to the bathroom, there'll be a commotion, you know, and then... This is like a theatrical production.
Guest:Boom, boom, boom.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the other cop will run down there and maybe boom, and then we'll see what Sean does.
Yeah.
Guest:and knowing sean he's gonna run right down there too yeah you know he's gonna get in it that sean gets in it yeah so i said he said he got it and i said yeah yeah okay and in the in their office they had ripped out the room so there was a picnic table a desk the back door two big windows on the side yeah okay so i called sean
Guest:Hey, Sean, I was heading downtown.
Guest:I was going to have a few drinks, and then he talked to you, but I got a wreck in the round and round.
Guest:I'm down here at the police station, and they need somebody to vouch that I am who I am in here.
Guest:yeah I know where did I'll be right there it's literally two minutes away yeah and so now the cops got nervous yeah they got hacked yeah and they got nervous and it takes on an ambiance of a real police station right fears running around the room yeah and there's not not what he goes out the back door they go down the one goes down the hall and
Guest:He's talking to Sean all the way up, you know, in the Australian accent.
Guest:He sits across from me.
Guest:The cop stands over us, and he's talking.
Guest:In the meantime, this guy says, I'm going to piss, you know, just off the table.
Guest:The other cop walks down there, and the cop is explaining, we don't like to do this stuff, because, you know, we know, obviously, we got the right guy, and he's sober.
Guest:And he turned away and looked down the hallway, and Sean said, were you drinking?
Guest:no no cop turns back and we hear boom bang crash from down the cop looks and we hear boom one bang the cop goes rushing down that hallway boom boom two more john said what the fuck's going on i go
Guest:I don't know and he gets up and he heads right down that hallway and there's one more boom went off I think and the next thing I know I'm starting to crack so I went up against the corner of the wall
Guest:The cops come in and go spread eagle on the floor.
Guest:Sean goes spread eagle on the floor and here's the crazy man with a gun coming in.
Guest:I'm getting the fuck out of here.
Guest:I'm getting the fuck out of here.
Guest:I'm getting out of here.
Guest:You kid, you're gonna drive me out of here.
Guest:And the cop says the keys are on the desk, keys are on the desk.
Guest:So Sean gets up and he says, hey, just don't shoot.
Guest:There's no reason to shoot anybody.
Guest:Just don't shoot anybody, okay?
Guest:I'll drive you wherever you want to go.
Guest:Come on, let's get out of here.
Guest:He locks that door.
Guest:He opens the door.
Guest:Woody stands there with the camera.
Guest:Shoots the shot.
Guest:It was light.
Guest:Sean goes.
Guest:You know, and Woody's going, I am king.
Guest:I am king.
Guest:And the cops are going, oh, shit.
Guest:I said, I need a beer.
Guest:And they said, yeah, I lost two.
Guest:We went to the bar and drank that night.
Marc:And you thought he was setting you up on the Marlin meeting.
Guest:Oh, yeah, because see, it didn't end there.
Guest:I just started the war.
Guest:Two days later, I get a call from Sissy Spacek, because Sissy Jack Fisk is her husband.
Guest:He's the art director.
Guest:And she said, Nick?
Guest:Nick, we have a spoiled sport.
Guest:Is there anything you can do?
Guest:And I said, no, sissy, there's nothing I can do.
Guest:Because Sean was threatening to tell customs that Woody travels with weed.
Guest:and sharon said if we had been in la or any other place i would have had my gun with me and somebody would have been dead and i said well that's the most elaborate thing i've ever seen or participated but did but did you go eat to have dinner with marlon
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, in the final end.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't figure out what the gang could be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you just went.
Guest:I just went.
Guest:And it was okay.
Guest:And Marlon was talking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he didn't allow anybody to interrupt.
Guest:He had three salads because he was on a diet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, he just kept ordering lettuce.
Guest:Was it good?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:Great talk.
Guest:And then I went outside for a smoke and he came out and said something like...
Guest:He said, you guys, you got to quit that.
Guest:You're going to die.
Guest:And he said, you and Harry Dean, he stopped that.
Guest:He said, I want to ask you, how did you do Q&A?
Guest:That's my favorite film.
Guest:Huh?
Guest:did you do that?
Guest:I liked everybody in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But how did you play that guy?
Guest:And I said, oh, come on, you know.
Guest:He said, no, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, he wanted to know.
Guest:I said, well, there's...
Guest:I put on six inch lifts.
Guest:I tilted them forward.
Guest:So if I leaned backwards, I would fall over.
Guest:So I had to lean forward.
Guest:So every time I was in somebody's face and they were looking up and I was looking down and I grew my mustache so you couldn't see where the words were coming from.
Guest:You could just feel the breath coming out.
Guest:And I just made him a rogue, you know.
Guest:I made him one of those cops you don't ever want to see.
Guest:And he just wanted to know every little thing.
Marc:That's wild.
Marc:That must have felt good, though.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:He's asking you how you put that pool roll together?
Guest:And, you know, I didn't know he...
Guest:knew might work you know sure well obviously he did what was the most challenging one that you had to do for you i can really if you look at the whole arc of them they're all challenging you know i make them as complex as i can get them yeah that's that's how you do it you're like you put these guys together from the ground up yeah yeah
Guest:That's the fun.
Guest:That's the great part.
Marc:I love Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
Marc:That was a great, fun movie.
Guest:That was Paul Mazursky.
Guest:Paul Mazursky wanted Jack Nicholson.
Guest:I knew he wanted Jack, but Jack wasn't going to do it, so he came out to see me.
Guest:He took one.
Guest:He's kind of that sardonic Jewish thing.
Guest:He took one look, and he said, well, I've seen it.
Guest:Okay, bye.
Guest:And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:Wait, wait.
Guest:Don't you want to read?
Guest:He said, read what?
Guest:I said, the script?
Guest:The whole script?
Guest:Yeah, let's read.
Guest:Okay, okay, you want to read?
Guest:Two and a half hours later, we read the whole down and out, not a single laugh between us.
Guest:And he gets up and he goes, Jesus, all right, I'm out of here, I'm out of here.
Guest:And I said, no, you know, you got the role, you got the role.
Guest:But I didn't want him to leave when I did that wrong.
Marc:I love Tropic Thunder.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:You like doing comedy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know what that was?
Guest:Ben had sent me another piece.
Guest:It was dark comedy.
Guest:He really wanted to do it.
Guest:But the studio didn't want to do it.
Guest:And he said, you know, we have another piece called Tropic Thunder.
Guest:But...
Guest:I don't have much faith in it because I don't know if we satirized Vietnam yet.
Guest:I'll send you that script and we'll have a reading of it.
Guest:So I said, okay.
Guest:And he said, it won't be with any of the studio heads.
Guest:The only person that was in the cast, Steve Coogan, he read.
Guest:Steve Coogan.
Guest:Keanu Reeves read Ben's role.
Guest:And...
Guest:Not Cancerbury.
Marc:Geffen, David Geffen.
Marc:Geffen, yeah.
Guest:Geffen was sitting right there.
Guest:And when Geffen went to that sitting, that word traveled.
Guest:All of a sudden, every executive was down there to sit at that table read.
Guest:And they just saw the opportunity of that.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I think it's a brilliant movie.
Guest:Oh, well, Ben just, he loaded it.
Guest:He loaded it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And unfortunately, the guy I was working with, brilliant actor.
Guest:Danny?
Guest:Danny.
Guest:Danny was right.
Guest:So funny.
Guest:Danny had been here eight years.
Guest:He was just about to pack to go back.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:back south you know yeah and here here's danny he's got a lot of energy i didn't know he was that powerful yeah and i got a lot of energy so we just he would say to me the next day do you think we were funny i said i don't know you know it's like he's funny man yeah he's intense he's really great
Marc:Oh, I wanted to ask you about Affliction.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's heavy shit, man.
Marc:I mean, that guy, I can't, like, you know, did you have to pull out some Iowa in that thing?
Guest:Well, you know what I had to do?
Marc:Schrader's intense, dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Paul called me, and he said, I've got Affliction, and I'll send you the script.
Guest:And I read the script, and off the script I said, Paul, we've got to do this.
Guest:He said, well, I'll get it financed, and then we'll do it.
Guest:So I just kind of dragged along.
Guest:And then one day I picked up the book, Affliction, and I read the foreword.
Guest:And in the foreword, Russell Banks talks about how many generations upon generations of generations
Guest:eons of time, men have sit with their sons and not teach them how to love.
Guest:That's the affliction.
Guest:That's what it is.
Guest:And their only recourse is violence then.
Guest:They do not know how to love.
Guest:So it was a process of not being able to love and the character
Guest:You kind of like the guy, but he always made that mistake with his daughter, his ex-wife, or his girlfriend, until he can't take it anymore.
Guest:And when the old man goes, and Jimmy Coburn,
Guest:I sent it to Paul Newman.
Guest:Newman said an interesting thing.
Guest:He said, I don't think my audience will accept me in this role.
Guest:And I had to think about that for a while.
Guest:I mean, Paul was absolutely right about that.
Guest:Not that he didn't...
Marc:The verdict was about as far out as they could go with Paul.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:That movie.
Marc:Like, you know, a down and out drunk lawyer.
Marc:He's not going to go any further than that.
Guest:No, he didn't want to go further.
Guest:And he really didn't think they would accept.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Couldn't sell it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he didn't want to go there.
Guest:He had a son.
Guest:He lost his son.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Coburn just like... Oh, Jimmy nailed it.
Guest:And not only that, he made up for all the time that he had gone through.
Guest:Terrible crisis of arthritis.
Guest:And he would lay in bed and he could not move his hands.
Guest:I don't know who the actor was, but it was a friend of Jimmy's.
Guest:Said, Jimmy, you got to do something.
Guest:I'm going to do it.
Guest:He massaged his hands with oil until he got them straight and straightened out.
Guest:And then Jimmy used MSM.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:So he was able to function.
Guest:But before that, he was in a bed.
Marc:That's a heavy movie.
Marc:Well, I guess people can read more stories in the book.
Marc:I feel like we can just keep going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because we didn't even talk about The Prince of Tides or 48 Hours.
Marc:But hey, we love those movies.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:We love you, man.
Marc:That was great talking to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:It was fun to do it.
Marc:Real fun.
Marc:All right, that was exciting, wasn't it?
Marc:We traveled.
Marc:We did some traveling.
Marc:Me and Nolte did some traveling.
Marc:That was our 900th episode.
Marc:Thank you for staying with us.
Marc:Thank you for being here.
Marc:Thank you for being a regular listener.
Marc:Welcome if you're new.
Marc:We're going to keep going.
Marc:We're going to keep going.
Marc:And I'm going to play the one guitar I have left in this garage through the one amp I have in here.
Marc:Oh, and by the way, the Cat Ranch goes on the market this Sunday.
Marc:Yeah, that's happening.
Marc:Okay, guitar.
Guest:.
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Marc:Boomer lives!