At a party scene early on in North Dallas Forty, the 1979 film adaptation of wide receiver Peter Gent’s raunchy cynical novel about pro football (side note: Nancy Dowd worked on the script in an uncredited capacity, the woman who wrote Slap Shot), Nick Nolte’s Phil Elliott – a busted-up wide receiver with the North Dallas Bulls, has a conversation with a fellow player, who then walks away to join the orgy going on in the next room. Once Nolte is alone, he blanks out: his social self empties out of him. Although it’s subtle, you can see it happen. Once he’s blanked out, it’s like a bottom drops out within him, and something else starts to rise. Worry. Or maybe a vague sense of unease. Again, it’s subtle. To sum up: he’s left alone, he goes deep into himself, and then … he goes even deeper. None of this would be visible in a theatre. This is the epitome of acting for the camera. It’s a sliiiight adjustment in the eyes.
Dennis Hopper told a great story about directing Colors, and there was a scene where Robert Duvall had to be going through a wad of cash and he was supposed to be pissed. During the scene, Hopper, standing right there, 2 feet away from Duvall, couldn’t see a reaction in Duvall’s face. It looked like Duvall was just flipping through the cash casually, like it was a normal everyday moment. Hopper wanted to feel Duvall’s anger. Why wasn’t Duvall doing it? (I love that Hopper, in his capacity as a director, had to discover something he already knew as an actor.) Hopper thought: Duvall is the greatest actor ever, and he’s being so blase in what’s supposed to be a tense scene. Then Hopper went and watched the dailies. And there was the whole performance, it was all there, in a small tightening of Duvall’s lips, a tiny sliver of steel in Duvall’s eyes. The moment was imperceptible to Hopper standing 2 feet away, but it was picked up by the camera. And the moment was even better, probably, than the more cliched display of anger Hopper had been expecting.
And that’s what happens with Nolte in this moment in North Dallas Forty where he is suddenly left alone. His social self vanishes, he flat-lines, and then something else – hard to say what it is exactly – takes its place. Nolte isn’t doing any of this to “show” us something. Honestly, it barely appears to be a “choice”. Nolte’s unconcsious, his instincts, his emotional availability, at the wheel. The unnameable thing in Nolte’s eyes IS the character. THAT – right there in his eyes – IS who this guy is. He shows us. Throughout the whole movie Phil Elliott, creaky with injuries, in constant pain, pops pills, filled with resentment of the heavy-handed treatment he gets at the hands of the owner, hops around from bed to bed, lifting weights with cigarette dangling, a spectacle of ruination. And yet he can play ball. He loves the game. But there … that vague sense of something which floods his eyes, so subtle you couldn’t see it from 2 feet away … IS the character, his underlying mood and state of mind.
This kind of moment is why I went through such a serious Nick Nolte phase in high school (and afterwards, of course, but I studied him for an intense couple of months). This was when I started keeping my eyes peeled for really good acting, and tried to analyze it. He was one of the guys I tried to study. I was serious about acting. It was a craft. This was my apprenticeship. Whatever it was Nolte brought to the table was rather difficult to describe: it’s subtle, but so eloquent.
In my essay about Something Wild for Criterion I wrote of Ralph Meeker that “Very few actors are even capable of going as deep as Meeker does here.” The same is true of Nolte. And it’s not about big displays, or temper tantrums, the kinds of things critics usually praise actors for because it’s obvious.
It’s not just that other actors are not courageous enough to go where Nolte goes, or inventive enough, although who knows, maybe some of that is true. It’s that some people have more depth than others, or, maybe it’s more accurate to say that their depths are not hidden from them in the way they are hidden from most people. (Most people walk around having no idea how deep their pain really goes, and they do whatever they can do to NOT feel whatever it is they are feeling. Half of the time acting classes are taken up with actors getting relaxed enough to actually feel their pain, dig into that well inside of them, be brave enough to feel.)
We’re all special, we all have things to offer, blah blah, but a movie camera will show you without a shadow of a doubt that some people just flat out have more to draw on than other people do. You can learn to become more fluid, more open, more relaxed as an actor. But Nolte is on another level. All you can do is watch and learn and allow yourself to be inspired. He has always been slightly uncanny in his vulnerability (his vulnerability is one of his defining characteristics, and that paired with his bulk, his size, his undeniable manliness creates a killer combo).
Nolte can go deeper than most because the well he draws on is deeper already.
He’s not afraid to let us see it.
It’s been a while since I saw North Dallas Forty, though I remember a number of scenes pretty well. Like one where the winning play is shown to the assembled players after the game, and the coach asks the players what just happened, and one of them says something like “We just won” and the coach proceeds to scream at them for bad execution? (Do I have that right?) On the winning play. Another scene where a player says he worries about tearing a ligament, because they don’t heal. I never understood how painful the game is until I saw this movie, which is so harsh and truthful. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember this moment with Nolte, but I’d love to see it again. It reminds me of what John Barrymore taught Mary Astor about movie acting: “Think! The camera is a mind-reader.” On screen you can tell whether the actor is thinking, or just doing.
Farran – hello there! It’s like 2008 all over again!
I love that Barrymore quote. It really is true. Some of my favorite moments are these quiet moments of thought.
You have a good memory for the movie! Caden had mentioned it to me and I thought I had never seen it – within 5 minutes I realized I had, way back when I was a junior in high school.
I like how brutal the film is about the game itself, the sheer punishment these guys go through. My God. Their bodies are all just RUINED.
And this was many years before the truth about CRT became known. I am going to take the liberty of posting this LINK, because it’s super-good, and it isn’t mine! It is an ex-pro-football player (now English professor!) writing about the movie.
https://deadspin.com/5847792/the-impact-and-the-darkness-the-lasting-effect-of-peter-gents-north-dallas-forty
(SPOILER) I had forgotten about the brutal tackle in the clip but man did I remember it once I read this essay. Also, just before, when they break the guy’s leg. Man, I really need to see this movie again…
Farran – I was thinking the same thing in re: ND40s prescience – or at least its honesty – about the brutality of the game and how ruined these guys’ bodies are. and all the drugs, too – In the final confrontation when he’s put on suspension for smoking weed, he makes the point that every day in the locker room they’re giving him HARD drugs.
Compared to the other two movies you mentioned on Twitter – Semi Tough and Longest Yard – ND40 is practically an expose! Longest Yard sees football as bonding/heroic/etc. And Burt Reynolds’ gorgeous thighs. Semi Tough is less about football than it is about romance and self-help groups. hahahaha!!
Thank you for the Deadspin article – I will totally read.
// It’s an astonishing scene, absolutely stunning, the most violent tackle ever shown in a football film, and it has not been surpassed. //
So true. I literally gasped.
CTE, not CTR! Oops. OK, and one more, this from the WaPo in 1979 about how the real Cowboys reacted to the movie. Don Meredith is hilarious. Sharing because now I am down a rabbit hole: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1979/09/16/everyone-is-asking-whos-who-among-the-forty-or-will-the-real-dallas-bulls-please-stand-up/f072af4e-be64-448b-bf4f-b01ebdea831f/?utm_term=.56f97c188679
Okay this is filled with so many hilarious moments I don’t even know where to start.
// Pugh, a defensive tackle who retired after the 1978 season, has not seen the movie. He read only part of the book because, he said, “it was boring and I couldn’t finish it.” //
// Andrie, a retired defensive end living in Waco, Tex., has not read the book or seen the movie. “People keep asking me which one was I?” Andrie said. “I’m nobody, I don’t believe.”
Andrie swiftly switched the subject to something he felt he knew more about. “Can I ask you a personal question?” he said.”Do you like sex?” //
hahahaha
// “Here’s the difficult situation that we’re put in with this type of book,” he said. “It’s supposed to be fiction so we can’t complain because fiction is fiction. It’s not a documentary. However, because of the locale and because of the author, people automatically assume it is an honest portrayal of what football is about.”
What people do not “take into consideration,” Schramm said, “is that the person who wrote it might be a sick man.” //
I’m dying.
There are days when your writing just hits me. Today made me think of how far Ethan Hawke has come. Was never a huge Nick Nolte fan, but attention will be paid.
Happy New Year, Sheila, may it be a better year for all of us. Please.
Melissa – Nick Nolte has always been a fave, so I have been having fun delving into his powerful career. His role in WARRIOR. Ugh, it breaks my heart.
and Ethan Hawke had a great year (I love him). I loved First Reformed – but he was also great this year in JULIET NAKED, playing a completely different kind of role.
JULIET NAKED was a wonderful film. I actually saw it in the theater. All the actors kind of surprised me. Thanks for reminding me.
I love Rose Byrne so much! and I loved the scene in the hospital room in London, where all his wives and girlfriends and pissed-off kids gather and everyone talks at once.