{"id":142526,"date":"2019-01-01T08:45:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T13:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=142526"},"modified":"2019-01-01T19:13:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T00:13:19","slug":"the-vulnerability-of-nick-nolte-going-deep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=142526","title":{"rendered":"The Vulnerability of Nick Nolte: Going Deep"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAt a party scene early on in North Dallas Forty<\/i>, 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<\/i>), 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.<\/p>\n

Dennis Hopper told a great story about directing Colors<\/em>, 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<\/em> 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<\/i>, 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.<\/p>\n

And that’s what happens with Nolte in this moment in North Dallas Forty<\/i> 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<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

In my essay about Something Wild<\/em> for Criterion<\/a> I wrote of Ralph Meeker that “Very few actors are even capable<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n

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<\/i>.) <\/p>\n

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). <\/p>\n

Nolte can go deeper than most because the well he draws on is deeper already. <\/p>\n

He’s not afraid to let us see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142526"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142548,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142526\/revisions\/142548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}