Remember the days when Nick Nolte was constantly trippin’ balls in a veritable k-hole and lookin’ like he’d spent the day with Ol’ Dirty Bastard at a luau sodomizing senior citizens and engaging in drug decathlons that would make a Hunter S. Thompson road-trip blush?
(How he wasn’t hanging out with Gary Busey during that period is beyond us, but god, that woulda made the BEST reality show ever!)
Well, that’s kind of (but not exactly) the subject of the new documentary “Nick Nolte: No Exit,” which is screening to buyers at Cannes. The subject seems to be more about Nolte himself and all his candid opinions and strange exploits. The L.A. Times says the odd Nolte-on-Nolte doc “is an almost existential documentary, part self-celebratory profile, part surreal question-and-answer session,” and notes, while many friends are in the film talking about the star (people like Ben Stiller and Jacqueline Bisset) it mostly “focuses on Nolte asking himself (and usually answering) his own questions.”
Sounds like some sort of Jean-Paul Sartre-like self-interrogation.
Other highlights include:
In discussing his infamous Hawaiian-shirt clad 2002 arrest for driving under the influence, Nolte steers his remarks about that highly public transgression toward his less well-known 1961 case for selling fake draft cards.
The “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (literally) star also drops this laugh-out-loud pearl about the poetic war movie, “The Thin Red Line.”
Director Terrence Malick “was more interested in insects than actors” during the making of the film.
“I knew that I wanted to make a documentary that was not traditional,” the ‘No Exit’ filmmaker Tom Thurman – who also directed the doc about Hunter S. Thompson, “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride,” which Nolte narrated – told the Time. “And if there is anybody on the planet who would roll with someone wanting to do something less traditional, this is my guy.”
Does anyone remember the old fake Nick Nolte blog where some dude would blog as if he were Nick Nolte and basically recap days spent fishing food out of garbage cans and losing his pants? GOD, that was GENIUS. Our personal hope is someone gave him a book deal and that guy is stinking rich, because lord he used to provide us with the BEST laughs. Kudos, whoever you are, dear stranger. And, here he is, but it looks like he’s been neutered a little bit by posing as Nolte. Surely he must have gotten many a cease-and-desist back in the day.