The Wonder and Horror of Genius.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 08, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010801np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Dean Olsher
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dean Olsher, NPR Cultural Correspondent, filling in for Terry Gross.

The new Paul Schrader film "Affliction" opens in many theaters around the country this month. "Affliction" is based on a novel by Russell Banks. It's the portrait of two sons of an abusive alcoholic father. Nick Nolte's performance as the older brother Wade has earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. And he won that category among the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle. Let's hear a clip from the film with Nolte and Willem Dafoe, who plays the younger brother Rolfe.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM FILM "AFFLICTION")

WILLEM DAFOE, ACTOR PORTRAYING ROLFE WHITEHOUSE: I've been thinking about that story you told me about Pop and chopping the firewood out there in the ice, and after. I don't want to disappoint you, but I don't think it happened.

NICK NOLTE, ACTOR PORTRAYING WADE WHITEHOUSE: You don't think I'd remember a thing like that?

DAFOE: It wasn't me. I wasn't there. I heard about it. When I heard about it, it was (unintelligible).

NOLTE: Oh, Jesus, we'll have to go digging in Vietnam to ask him.

DAFOE: And Alborne (ph) and mom brought you to the doctor and told him you fell from the hay loft.

NOLTE: I never heard that one.

DAFOE: No, I remember clearly because after I heard, I became real careful around Pop. I was a careful child and I became a careful adult. At least I was never afflicted by that man's violence.

NOLTE: That's what you think.

OLSHER: That's a scene from the film "Affliction." We'll hear from Nick Nolte later on this Friday archive edition of FRESH AIR. But first, a visit with the author of the book on which the film is based, Russell Banks.

Banks says in "Affliction" he tried to understand the consequences of having been beaten by his own father. The novels asks if it's possible to break the chain of male violence. Banks grew up in New Hampshire. His father was a plumber, his grandfather was a plumber, and in the early '60s he was a plumber too.

"Affliction" is narrated by Rolfe Whitehouse, who tells the story of how his brother Wade turned in to a man even more violent than his father. Terry Gross interviewed Russell Banks in 1989.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: My guests are Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks. Egoyan directed the film and wrote the screenplay. Egoyan also wrote and directed "Exotica." Russell Banks wrote the novel "The Sweet Hereafter" which the movie is based on. One of Banks' earlier novels, "Affliction," has been made into a not-yet-released film directed by Paul Schrader.

Russell Banks, Atom Egoyan -- welcome to FRESH AIR.

RUSSELL BANKS, AUTHOR, "THE SWEET HEREAFTER": Thank you.

ATOM EGOYAN, DIRECTOR, "THE SWEET HEREAFTER": Thank you.

GROSS: Russell Banks, I'd like to start with you. You said you came up with the idea of The Sweet Hereafter after reading about a school bus accident I believe in a small Texas town?

BANKS: That's right.

GROSS: What did you see in that article that gave you the idea for the larger themes in your book? Like, what did you make of this article?

BANKS: Well, it wasn't an article about an accident so much as about the aftermath of the accident. And I think that's what engaged me -- engaged my imagination from the start. I think it was the New York Times sent a reporter down to this small Mexican-American town in South Texas a year after the accident and talked to the surviving families.

And this -- the town had more or less come apart for various reasons, but one of the reasons was that they had gotten all entangled in litigation and so on, and had lost their sense of community. And I think that -- that attracted me more than any other aspect of it because school bus accidents are, in a sense, I guess, endemic. I mean, they're all over the country, if you think about how many thousands and thousands of school buses are going out every morning, inevitably there's going to be an accident.

So, it wasn't the accident as such. It was the aftermath.

GROSS: Atom Egoyan, why did you want to make The Sweet Hereafter into a movie? What did you see in it that fit your ideas as a filmmaker?

EGOYAN: Well, I -- I think first and foremost, I thought it was a great piece of drama. I think that this idea of what constitutes the truth and how far one goes in pursuing truth is told to us at so many different levels.

There's that sense of what is the truth of a community? What -- what keeps a community together? What are the shared values? What happens when something challenges that, provokes that, like this accident does? Who do you trust to put the truth back together?

In the role of the litigation lawyer, Mitchell Stephens coming into the town, going from household to household saying that he has the truth or he can find out the truth, and then this remarkable story of a young woman who survives the accident who has her own history and has her own truth that she has to find out, and who uses the structure of the litigation process to turn the whole case around.

And by so doing giving herself -- empowering herself with her own truth. And it was just a complex moral story, and I couldn't get it out of my head.

GROSS: Now, the novel actually starts with the story of the school bus accident.

EGOYAN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And Russell Banks, I'd like you to read a paragraph from that description. And in this chapter, the school bus driver -- who was driving at the time of the accident but survives -- is looking back on that moment when she skidded on the road.

And she's remembering that she saw something on the road -- she was some kind of blur that she really thought was a small animal, but she realizes now may have just been an optical illusion. But she decided to act as if it were a small animal just in case it was, and it was from turning the wheel and slamming on the brakes that she skidded off the road.

Russell Banks, would you pick it up from there?

BANKS: "For the rest of my life, I will remember that red/brown blur like a stain of dried blood standing against the road with a thin screen of blown snow suspended between it and me. The full weight of the vehicle and the 34 children in it bearing down on me like a wall of water. And I will remember the formal clarity of my mind, beyond thinking or choosing now, for I had made my choice as I wrenched the steering wheel to the right and slapped my foot against the brake pedal. And I wasn't the driver anymore. So I hunched my shoulders and ducked my head, as if the bus were a huge wave about to break over me.

"There was Bear Otto and the Lamston (ph) kids and the Walkers, the Hamiltons and the Prescotts, and the teenaged boys and girls from Bartlett Hill. And Risa and Wendell Walker's sad little boy Sean, and sweet Nicole Burnell, and all of the kids from the valley and the children from Wilmont Flats, and Billy Ansel's twins Jessica and Mason. The children of my town -- their wide-eyed faces and fragile bodies swirling and tumbling in a tangled mass as the bus went over and the sky tipped and veered away, and the ground lurched brutally forward."

GROSS: Now, Atom Egoyan, in the movie of The Sweet Hereafter, I want you to describe how you visually rendered that bus accident. There's no dialogue or voice-over in this scene, and it's -- it's actually a surprisingly quiet scene as the bus skids off the road. It's a pretty quiet skid, I guess in part because of the snow. Snow tends to make things quiet.

Describe how you decided to visually handle this?

EGOYAN: Well, it's funny. This whole notion of "depiction" is so crucial to me. There are couple of scenes in the film which depict catastrophe. And of course, the bus accident is one of them.

And for them to really have weight and bearing, it was important to ground them from the point of view of someone involved, and what they would have experienced. And very often in an accident scene in a film, what we see is an attempt by the filmmaker to reconstruct the violence of that moment through a series of cuts and through the montage to give you a sense of what that incident is about; how violent that incident is.

But what I was trying to create was what the experience of a parent watching this would have been. And of course in the book, Billy Ansel, the parent of two of the children on the bus, follows them every morning and waves at the kids, who are at the back. And he sees this happen. And to me, that was just almost unbearable -- what this man would have witnessed. And the helpless -- helplessness of what he saw or the helplessness of what he would have experienced as the bus went over.

So I shot it from his point of view. And what you see is the bus rolling across -- sliding across the frozen lake in the distance. And you see Billy in the foreground. And by showing it as something happening far away from him, you have a sense that he can't help and that he feels helpless.

And in that sense, the moment when it occurs -- you see the bus and it -- for a moment, it seems to have rested to a stop on the lake, and you think everything is OK. Then you hear the terrifying sound of the ice cracking, and the bus falling through. And then you see Billy running towards them, but knowing that it's far too late for him to do anything.

And that moment is then stored, because the tension of the scene is not broken by this barrage of angles and shots and explosive effects. The viewer has to hold it. And when it comes up later on, that this is what Billy saw, you can -- you can understand and feel what he would have experienced.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan. Atom Egoyan has just made the film adaptation of the Russell Banks' novel The Sweet Hereafter.

One of the kind of themes that holds together The Sweet Hereafter is the sense of after a tragic accident like this bus accident, there is the impulse to find a guilty party, punish them, and get some compensation for this terrible thing that happened. And this is what the lawyer who comes to town tells everybody he can do. He can -- he can find the guilty party. He can sue them. Everybody could get some money in damages.

But then the argue -- other argument is, well, some things are just an accident. There is no guilty party. This just happened and you -- you have to live with it. There's nothing you can do.

And I'm wondering -- this is a very compelling theme, I'm wondering how that theme resonates in each of your lives? If it connects to something particular in your lives? Russell Banks, can we start with you?

BANKS: Well, I suppose it does. I mean, the question of blame and causality is a central one in the book, as well as in the film. And it's certainly in my own personal life. I've been touched by that question -- more than touched by it -- occasionally driven by it; obsessed by it, maybe. Most specifically, and I should say this is the underlying inspiration for the novel -- I -- my youngest brother was killed in an accident, in a train accident, when he was 17. And -- and it was an inexplicable event. It was a mystery, finally.

And on two counts, I suppose, it had a deep impact on me. Well actually, it was 30 years ago now, but in one case -- one way it fixed in my mind and lasted those 30 years is -- is the way in which my mother responded to that. My mother's now in her 80s, and this event occurred over 30 years ago, but she still sees her life as bifurcated; as being in two parts -- before and after the accident. She never has recovered, really. Her time-line has never recovered.

So I saw that up close. I was a sibling and so it didn't have the same impact on me. And the other way I think it had a huge and lasting impact on me is -- is simply insofar as it forced me to live on with a mystery; and a mystery having to do with causality. And I think this is something that we, as Americans particularly, as extremely reluctant to do -- to live with a mystery; to live without an explanation.

GROSS: Was there ever a lawsuit in the case of your brother?

BANKS: Well, the opportunity for one was there, but no, there wasn't.

EGOYAN: Which is interesting as well. I mean, we've talked about this, Russell. I mean, it's interesting how -- how if the opportunity was there, maybe it was just a different time in American society...

BANKS: That's true.

EGOYAN: ... to -- American culture, where there wasn't the same type of expectation that would be an immediate lawsuit filed. And I think that's one of the -- one of the most fascinating aspects of the book is that -- how in trying to convince one of the parents in particular to join him in this lawsuit, Mitchell Stephens, the lawyer, says, you know, it's not really for the money or to compensate you for the loss of your son, but it's to make sure that something like this will never happen again.

So not only is it -- this idea of fate and to what extent, you know, can something just happen, but also to make sure that something cannot just happen again; that did that -- by having -- by putting it through a legal process, you can thereby limit the potential for accidents to occur.

GROSS: Atom Egoyan, can I ask how these things connect to your life? In a direct way?

EGOYAN: Oh, I mean, it's difficult to respond after Russell's very direct personal response. I mean, to me I suppose there is an aspect of my background culturally which has to deal with this, and it's funny. It wasn't something I was aware of consciously when I did the adaptation of the book. But I think that as an Armenian, very much this idea of a catastrophe that befalls one's community, one's people, I mean, with the -- with the ideas of genocide of the Armenian people at the beginning of this century.

And this notion of what to do with that history. I mean, it hasn't really ever been acknowledged. It's something that sort of lurks and it's like why did it have to happen? What are the consequences? And how far do you go in pursuing truth? I mean, does one still try and look for answers at what, like now, 80 years after the fact? Or what am I saying -- 85 years after the fact? Do you try and get recognition from the people who perpetrated it?

I mean, all these issues are still very alive in my -- in my life. And it's funny, 'cause when we've shown the film, I mean there have been journalists who have seen the community as being a metaphor for Armenian culture.

But again, that wasn't something that was conscious as I was developing the project, but it's -- it may be one of the reasons why I find this such a moving story because I personally am of the conviction that -- that the responses that ultimately affect one's life are the ones that you arrive at individually; that a communal response is always secondary to what the individual is able to draw out of an incident.

OLSHER: We'll have more of Terry's interview with novelist Russell Banks in just a moment.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

OLSHER: Russell Banks is the author of "Affliction" which has just been made into a new film. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1989.

GROSS: There's a contrast in The Sweet Hereafter between the parents of the youngsters who were killed on the bus and the lawyer, who is also a parent. The children who were killed on the bus are, you know, they're young; they're helpless; they're totally innocent in the sense that all they were doing was sitting on this bus that happened to crash over the guard rail.

The lawyer, who is older than the parents of the children on the bus -- he has a daughter who's in her late teens or early 20s, but she is also lost to him. She's alive, but she's a drug addict and her only contact with him is to call him up and manipulate him to get more money for drugs. And before we talk about where this -- this part of the story comes from, I'd like you, Russell Banks, to read a couple of lines from the section in the novel The Sweet Hereafter in which the lawyer Stephens talks about this.

BANKS: "The people of Sam Dent (ph) are not unique. We've all lost our children. It's like all the children of America are dead to us. Just look at them, for God's sake: violent on the streets, comatose in the malls, narcotized in front of the TV. In my lifetime, something terrible happened that took our children away from us. I don't know if it was the Vietnam War or the sexual colonization of kids by industry or drugs or TV or divorce or what the hell it was. I don't know which are causes and which are effects."

"But the children are gone, that I know. So that trying to protect them is little more than an elaborate exercise in denial. Religious fanatics and super-patriots, they try to protect their kids by turning them into schizophrenics. Episcopalians and high church Jews gratefully abandon their kids to boarding schools, and divorce one another so they can laid with impunity. The middle class grabs what it can buy and passes it on like poisoned candy on Halloween.

"And meanwhile, the inner city blacks and poor whites in the boonies sell their souls with longing for what's killing everyone else's kids and wonder why their's are on crack."

"It's too late. They're gone. We're what's left."

GROSS: Atom Egoyan, I'd like you to talk about what you did with this paragraph and this idea in incorporating it into the screenplay.

EGOYAN: The real problem with this whole movie, this whole adaptation, was taking these first person narratives and finding opportunities where these characters could actually say this to somebody.

GROSS: Right.

EGOYAN: And in the book, they say it to the reader. They're talking to themselves and the book is very much structured like a series of four depositions, where the bus driver, the lawyer, the young survivor, and the father, Billy Ansel, speak their truths; tell their stories.

So in the passage we've just heard, Russell is able to -- to get right into Mitchell's psyche and to be able to have him express this tremendous sense of anger, rage, and disillusionment with his generation and the generation that he's raised.

Now, how to find some character in this town that Mitchell could say that to was practically impossible. There is a -- the character I invented in an airplane that Mitchell meets, who's the friend of -- or used to be the friend of his best daughter, who's now a drug addict. And he does -- he does speak to her quite candidly, but not that particular section. That particular section is reserved for a meeting that he has with Billy Ansel, who is the one father -- the one parent who will not be led to join Mitchell Stephens.

And in a final desperate plea, Mitchell says to this man who's lost both his kids in this accident, that he, too, has lost his daughter. But in a way, it's so audacious that Mitchell would try and use that as a lure, because what he's speaking about is something quite prosaic and quite -- you know, he can afford to -- he has the luxury of being able to -- to use language and to be able to use metaphor to -- and to use that to a man who has a very primal sense of loss and is trying to mourn something so directly is an affront. And it almost results in a violent, you know, physically violent moment between the two characters.

GROSS: Well let's hear your adaptation of the passage that we just heard Russell Banks read.

EGOYAN: Yeah, and this is taking place outside the hulk of the bus, so we have the father coming to the bus and just really using it as a shrine; looking at this -- this carcass which destroyed his two young kids. And then Mitchell Stevens, the lawyer, approaches him in the middle of the night and tells him this.

GROSS: And we'll hear as the lawyer, Ian Holm, who gives a fantastic performance in The Sweet Hereafter.

EGOYAN: Oh, I think it's a remarkable moment.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE SWEET HEREAFTER")

SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY

IAN HOLM, ACTOR, AS MITCHELL STEPHENS: Several people in the town have agreed to let me represent them in a negligence suit. Now, your case as an individual will be stronger if I'm allowed to represent you together as a group.

BRUCE GREENWOOD, ACTOR, AS BILLY ANSEL: Case?

HOLM: Walkers have agreed; the Ottos have agreed; the Nicole Burnell's parents. It's important that we initiate proceedings right away. Things get covered up. People lie. That's why we must begin our investigation quickly, before the evidence disappears. That's what I'm doing out here.

GREENWOOD: Listen, I know Risa and Wendell Walker. They wouldn't hire a god-damned lawyer. The Ottos? They wouldn't deal with you. We're not country bumpkins you can put the big city hustle on.

HOLM: You're angry, Mr. Ansel, and you owe it to yourself to feel that way. All I'm saying is: let me direct your rage.

SOUNDBITE OF CELLULAR TELEPHONE RINGING

It's my daughter. Or it may be the police to tell me they found her dead. She's a drug addict.

GREENWOOD: Why are you telling me this?

HOLM: Why am I telling you this, Mr. Ansel? I'm -- because we've all lost our children. They're dead to us. They're killing each other in the streets. They wander comatose at shopping malls.

SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS AND CAR DOOR CLOSING

Something terrible has happened that's taken our children away.

SOUNDBITE OF AUTOMOBILE ENGINE STARTING

It's too late. They're gone.

SOUNDBITE OF CELLULAR TELEPHONE RINGING

GROSS: The Sweet Hereafter isn't your first experience with film adaptation; with having one of your stories adapted into a film. Have all your experiences been as good as this?

BANKS: In one other case, a film was made this year -- it's just about to come out. Paul Schrader made a film of my novel "Affliction." And it was very similar in many ways, perhaps because both filmmakers, Schrader and Egoyan, are auteur-style-type filmmakers and they were both independently produced. And in both cases, I became friends with the director and involved in the actual production to some degree.

So there -- it was very friendly and easy and exciting to me. But in other cases, no -- it hasn't been quite that satisfying. I've had novels optioned off and on, and watched them fall through the cracks or end up in development purgatory at least, if not development hell.

GROSS: I understand you're writing a screenplay yourself now -- an adaptation of your novel "Continental Drift"?

BANKS: Right, yes. I'm -- I have written it. I'm now revising it and I'm working with a couple of people who are partners with me -- Willem Dafoe and Linda Reisman (ph), who produced Affliction for Paul Schrader and Eric Berg (ph) who co-produced that. So yeah, I'm involved in the filmmaking business now.

GROSS: Well, I wish you good luck, and I really want to thank you very much for talking with us.

BANKS: Well, thank you.

OLSHER: Russell Banks is the author of the novel "Affliction" which has been made in to a movie that's coming out in theaters now.

I'm Dean Olsher, and this is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: Russell Banks
High: Novelist Russell Banks. He's written a dozen or more novels including: "The Sweet Hereafter," "The Rule of the Bone," "Searching for Survivors," "The Book of Jamaica," and "Continental Drift." His novel "Affliction" has been made into a new film. It stars Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, and Nick Nolte.
Spec: Entertainment; Culture; Lifestyle; Movie Industry; Nick Nolte; Russell Banks

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Dean Olsher

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 08, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010802NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Nick Nolte
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: THIS IS FRESH AIR. I'm Dean Olsher.

Nick Nolte is starring in two films now that critics love. One is "Affliction." Nolte plays the character Wade, who lives with a legacy of his abusive alcoholic father. Here, Wade's daughter played by Bridget Tierney (ph) has just come back from trick or treating and starts a conversation about Halloween pranks.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM FILM "AFFLICTION")

BRIDGET TIERNEY, ACTRESS PORTRAYING YOUNG GIRL: Did you egg stuff when you were a kid?

NICK NOLTE, ACTOR PORTRAYING WADE WHITEHOUSE: No. Well, sort of, but nothing really mean. Me and my pals. Me and my brothers. It was kind of funny then.

TIERNEY: But it's not funny now.

NOLTE: No. No. No. It's not funny now. I'm a cop. I've got to listen to the complaints people make. I'm not a kid anymore. You change.

TIERNEY: I bet you did a lot of bad stuff when you were a kid.

NOLTE: What are you talking about?

TIERNEY: I don't know. I just think you used to be bad.

NOLTE: No. I didn't use to be bad. No sir.

OLSHER: Nolte's also starring in "The Thin Red Line," directed by Terence Malick. It's a World War II film which takes place on Guadalcanal. Nolte plays battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Tall.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM FILM "THE THIN RED LINE")

NICK NOLTE, ACTOR PORTRAYING LIEUTENANT COLONEL GORDON TALL: The Japanese position can be broken right now. All we have to do is keep going and we'll have this hill. We'll have this hill by sundown. You see the spirit in these men? Do you see the new spirit. Why don't you want to take advantage of that before something happens to zap their strength?

Damn, this battalion relieved in a defeat or even to have it reinforced from troops from a reserve regiment if we were stalled before reaching the top. That's just a hell of a lot more than I could stand. I've waited all my life for this. I've worked, slaved, even untold buckets of (expletive) to have this opportunity, and I don't intend to give it up now.

You don't know what it feels like to be passed over. I mean, you're young. You're just out of the Academy. You know, you've got your war. In 15 years this is my first war. Some day, you'll understand.

OLSHER: Nick Nolte talked with Terry Gross a year ago when his film "Afterglow" was in theaters.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Nick Nolte, welcome to FRESH AIR. The film critic David Tomasson (ph) has a little profile of you in his encyclopedia of film. I don't know if you've read it or not, but he says: "Nolte is a subject for rejoicing and great hope, for we face the rest of this century with at least one actor capable of playing large, mature, but deeply troubled men."

What do you think of that description?

LAUGHTER

NOLTE: I think that's just all right.

GROSS: What about the "large, mature, but deeply troubled men?" Do you think of that as the kind of role that you often play?

NOLTE: No, I don't. I just think that's the way the world is, so I assume the world is much like myself. I mean, if you look at the world, it's violent. It's -- and it always has been, for thousands of years. This seems to be the nature of mankind, violence is a biological imperative for some reason.

So I, in my work, am going after what I see in the world. And I'm trying to translate that because I have this terrible urge and need to do this, not for any other reason than to do this or otherwise I just don't think that -- I just don't respond healthily in the other way to society.

When I grew up in the '50s, I grew up in a rough time; for me, I consider it a rough time. It was a time when I, as a little child, looked up and saw large adults competing very heavily with one another in a kind of violent way.

It was a time of great secrecy, great conformity. If you didn't conform, you were in terrible trouble with the authorities; and very strict rules. And on top of that, we always had to climb under our desk because we were going to be obliterated any second into ashes.

So, you had one or two choices as a child in that kind of a world: either conform to it and get as invisible as possible, or rebel. And I just -- that's why -- you know, have been enraged all my life.

GROSS: Well, you said that, you know, you act because -- how did you put it?

NOLTE: It's a -- it's a psychological -- or biological imperative -- or certainly...

GROSS: Yeah.

NOLTE: ... a psychological one. I mean...

GROSS: But it's interesting, 'cause you didn't start doing it until fairly late in life for an actor. I think you weren't even on the stage 'til your early 20s.

NOLTE: That's right.

GROSS: Your first really big role came when you were about 35 on "Rich Man, Poor Man."

NOLTE: Right.

GROSS: What got you on the stage in the first place? You'd been better known for football. You had a football college scholarship.

NOLTE: Yes, but the football thing, if you really study the situation -- I became a football player when I did "North Dallas Forty." And that's the odd part of it. I'd played a football player in a movie, and then from then -- then on I became this great football player. I was a very minor athlete, in truth.

But where -- you know, I was quite frankly wandering around this country in the early '60s, late '50s; from Mexico to all around, hanging out in universities for short periods of times, searching. And psychologically very screwed up.

GROSS: Searching -- searching for what?

NOLTE: Well, searching for someplace to be comfortable...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

NOLTE: ... in a world that was just a very uncomfortable place, you know. Vietnam hadn't happened yet. Really, it was still under the '50s guise of everybody fit in conformity. I must say that my whole personality and psyche and everything became extremely peaceful during the '60s, because I was no longer one of the minority. I became the majority, as we revolted and rebelled against Vietnam and all of that kind of thing. And we stopped going into the classes and a lot of things changed.

But I saw a play that was specifically about situations -- it was "Death of a Salesman" -- and situations that I was going through. So I saw this and I said: "Jesus, you know, this is something that I can be involved in. I can read it. I can watch it. And you can also become part of it."

So I got up on stage and it was that horrible experience, that absolute horror, your worst nightmare, to be on stage. But at the same time, there was an underneath feeling that this was home. You were home.

GROSS: As a younger man, you were convicted of a felony, of selling counterfeit draft cards. What -- what were you selling them for? What -- was this so underaged drinkers could drink? I mean, what was the point of the counterfeit draft cards?

NOLTE: The point of the counterfeit draft cards was to undermine the American government, basically -- undermine the war effort. Started out just so that we could undermine the law against drinking alcohol, when everybody else got to. And then, it slowly progressed into undermining the American government.

It basically -- the crux of the matter and where it became the big difficulty was that it was a political act. That's what they classified it as.

GROSS: You were given a suspended sentence, but you were fined $75,000. Did you have to pay the fine?

NOLTE: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

GROSS: That was suspended too?

NOLTE: They put me on -- the sentence was $75,000 fine, 45 years in jail; seven counts...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

NOLTE: ... of counterfeit government documents; suspended that and gave me under Youth Correction Act, which means that after my probation period, it's supposedly to be wiped off my record. But the National Enquirer found out about it and tried to blackmail me on it. And I called Rona Barrett and said: "well, can I come in and confess on your show?" And she said: "Sure." And I came in and confessed and then they stopped blackmailing me on it.

GROSS: What was the impact of the confession?

NOLTE: That goes for secrecy of government issue.

GROSS: Right.

NOLTE: You know.

GROSS: What was the impact of the confession?

NOLTE: The impact of the confession was that Rona had no idea what I was going to confess to, and I just threw it out there to the -- over the national television. And so, the "Enquirer" backed off. They had no story.

But Rona then asked me about drugs in America and how bad marijuana was. And I went on to defend that there was nothing wrong with a marijuana plant in itself. It's us that the problem lies. And she's -- was against the plant itself. And so I caught her off-guard and she wanted to re-shoot it and I refused to. So, she never liked me after that.

So then I kept appearing in her magazine with little quotes underneath: "And what is Nick on today?"

LAUGHTER

GROSS: What -- well, you did have drug and alcohol problems for a while. Did that have a bad impact on your ability to act?

NOLTE: No, I -- it never carried over into my work, at least not that I think of. But I'm sure it impacted everything. I mean, yeah, I indulged -- I drank the bottom out of the bottle. I drank down to the worm. And eventually, it didn't work for me anymore. As I said, I'm a very uncomfortable person in the world. And so, drugs and alcohol worked for me a while, to make me comfortable. Then after a while, it didn't work and it started to actually kill me.

GROSS: As we were talking about, you know, you started acting, you know, comparatively late. One of the things you're known for in the acting world, I understand, is doing whatever you need to do to get into character. The example that's always used is, like, for "Beverly Hills" -- for "Down and Out in Beverly Hills." You actually lived in a skid row for a while; didn't bathe or brush your teeth for a while while you were playing a homeless guy.

Do you think that part of the reason why you take that kind of approach to get into a role is because you didn't, like, start training, you know, for a stage career when you were 17 or something like that? Did you feel like, like you had to had to really throw yourself into it once you started?

NOLTE: No. There again, you gotta draw a distinction between what acting is. You know, my idea of acting...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

NOLTE: ... which is my idea because it is my life, is that it's some kind of internal rhythm that I have to do. It's something I need to do. I need to go down on skid row and live like a man on the street, as well as I can, 'cause I need to understand that. I don't -- I'm not doing it to make a million dollars and I'm not doing it to get a lot of fame. I'm doing it because this provides me the opportunity to go down on the street.

And it's not so much to get into the role, but acting is behavior to me. It's not putting on a good show, you know. It's not "applaud me." It's -- it's something I need to do. It's part of -- it's my life, you know.

GROSS: So what did you do on skid row when you were researching the role?

NOLTE: Oh, I walked around and I sat down with a guy named Al, and he asked me if I had a cigarette and we were drinking wine. And I gave him a cigarette and he grabbed me and gave me a big hug, and he started bawling. And he said: "I'm sorry, Pete, I'm so God damned sorry. I'm just sorry. I'm sorry." And I said: "It's all right. It's all right." And I patted him on the back. Tremendous pain; tremendous -- the streets are not about homelessness. It's about hopelessness, you know?

GROSS: If you're playing a homeless person, you have the option of, you know, living on the street for a while. But say you're doing a role like "Afterglow" where you're playing a carpenter and contractor who is very popular with single women and unhappily married women because they can flirt with him and sometimes even make it with him. And his own marriage -- he loves his wife, but his marriage is -- they're kind of estranged in their own way.

It's a kind of complicated character study. It's a character study that's both a -- you know, a comedy and a drama. There's no, like, kind of skid row. There's no, like, extreme to go to as part of the research for a movie like that. Do you know what I mean? So what do you do to get into a character who's a guy? Who's a kind of real guy?

NOLTE: Well, I hung out with carpenters. I hung out with, you know, guys that did this kind of stuff. Just a little bit -- I mean, I wanted to get the physicality right.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

NOLTE: I wanted to be able to handle a hammer. I wanted to know how to do it.

GROSS: Wanted to look right under the sink.

LAUGHTER

NOLTE: Yeah, I wanted to build a wall. I wanted to know how to build a wall.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

NOLTE: The physicality of Lucky was a different thing. I had to build him out of what kind of physical activity he does, you know, you know. So I wanted to do that, and then, you know, you draw from what the stories told from your own life; you know, your relationships and things of that -- and since I know nobody, absolutely nobody in this world, that has a perfect relationship, I had a wealth of material to draw upon.

OLSHER: Nick Nolte spoke with Terry Gross a year ago. He's currently starring in two films, "The Thin Red Line" and "Affliction."

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: Nick Nolte
High: Actor Nick Nolte. He's currently starring in "Affliction" and "The Thin Red Line." Nolte got his breakthrough in the television miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man" in 1976. His films include "48 Hours," Down and Out in Beverly Hills," "Prince of Tides," and "Afterglow."
Spec: Entertainment; Movie Industry; Culture; Lifestyle; Nick Nolte

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Nick Nolte

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 08, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010803NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Kevin Whitehead
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:45

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: Pianist Tommy Flanagan comes from Detroit where he began playing in jazz clubs before moving to New York in 1956. Before long he had appeared on classic LP's like the Sonny Rollins album "Saxophone Collosus" and John Coltrane's "Giant Steps." And he'd begun his long, off and on, gig as Ella Fitzgerald's accompanist; a job he finally gave up in 1978.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says Flanagan is rightly regarded as one of the most lyrical pianists in jazz, and that a new live recording is an accurate portrait of the artist.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PIANIST TOMMY FLANAGAN PERFORMING)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD, JAZZ CRITIC: Is anyone still burying time capsules -- those boxes of artifacts meant to give future generations a glimpse of our time? If so, and they want to show what a typical set in a New York jazz club is like, they might include Tommy Flanagan's CD "Sunset and the Mockingbird."

It was recorded at the Village Vanguard on Flanagan's 67th birthday last year. It's not spectacular, but this recital is solid as teak. It's jazz by the rule book. An uptempo number, a slow ballad, a Latin tune, long solos capped by fast exchanges between the soloist and the drummer. And deft quotes from old tunes, sometimes so sly only the hippest listeners spot them. It's typical in a good way.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PIANIST TOMMY FLANAGAN PERFORMING)

WHITEHEAD: That's what the wisdom of experience sounds like. The sound of 50 years on the job. Tommy Flanagan plays too much piano to be a minimalist, but he always sounds like he's pared his lines back to only the notes that need playing.

He knows when to invent and when to let a melody's own power take over. This is "Sunset and the Mockingbird," one of Duke Ellington's compositions inspired by bird calls.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PIANIST TOMMY FLANAGAN PERFORMING "SUNSET AND THE MOCKINGBIRD")

WHITEHEAD: When Tommy Flanagan was coming up jazz was a young man's game because of its physical demands and because each generation reinvented the music, rolling over grandpa in the process. In the 1980s, Wynton Marsalis and friends proposed a jazz with no future except one found in its glorious past.

Those players soon dominated the marketplace and the press, and yet by looking to the past the young lions necessarily, and even willingly, ceded leadership of jazz to older musicians. Musicians who'd invented what the youngers wanted to emulate.

You could say that for Tommy Flanagan jazz is living music, while for generations of players behind him it's classical music. A fixed historical style to be reverently interpreted. But what the new mainstream lacks in original solo voices, it makes up for with excellent service oriented rhythm players like Flanagan's bassist Peter Washington. He teams up here with the great fortyish drummer Louis Nash.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PIANIST TOMMY FLANAGAN PERFORMING, FEATURING BASSIST PETER WASHINGTON AND DRUMMER LOUIS NASH)

WHITEHEAD: Something else nice about the CD, it really sounds like they're in the Village Vanguard. The low ceiling in that hallowed basement gives the drums a peculiar dry sound that really comes across here. The only thing missing is someone talking loud at the next table.

I hope by the time Tommy Flanagan turns 67 he realized he'd finally done something he may have thought impossible: he'd become so respected in his own right, he was no longer known just as Ella Fitzgerald's old piano player. So, Happy Birthday, Mr. Flanagan. You deserve every good thing you get.

OLSHER: Kevin Whitehead is the author of the book "New Dutch Swing." He reviewed "Sunset and the Mockingbird" by pianist Tommy Flanagan.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: Kevin Whitehead
High: Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews "Sunset and the Mockingbird: The Birthday Concert" by pianist Tommy Flanagan.
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Culture; Lifestyle; Tommy Flanagan; Kevin Whitehead

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Something else nice about the CD, it really sounds like they're in the Village Vanguard. The low ceiling in that hallowed basement gives the drums a peculiar dry sound that really comes across here. The only thing missing is someone talking loud at the next table.

I hope by the time Tommy Flanagan turns 67 he realized he'd finally done something he may have thought impossible: he'd become so respected in his own right, he was no longer known just as Ella Fitzgerald's old piano player. So, Happy Birthday, Mr. Flanagan. You deserve every good thing you get.

OLSHER: Kevin Whitehead is the author of the book "New Dutch Swing." He reviewed "Sunset and the Mockingbird" by pianist Tommy Flanagan.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 08, 1999
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010804NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: John Powers
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

DEAN OLSHER, HOST: The new movie, "Hilary and Jackie" is not about first lady's. It's the story of the complicated relationship between Hilary du Pre and her sister Jacqueline, the English cellist who died of multiple sclerosis when she was 42.

Rachel Griffiths plays Hilary and Emily Watson stars as Jackie. Film critic John Powers has this review.

JOHN POWERS, FILM CRITIC: The wonder of genius is that it knows no limitations. The horror is that you have to live with it. The abyss between these two lies at the heart of a fascinating new film, "Hilary and Jackie." The story of the two du Pre sisters.

It begins during their '50s girlhood in London when Hils (ph), as she's known, appears to be the gifted of the two. But she's too pliant for greatness, and is soon left in the dust by Jackie; a flamboyant prodigy who jets around the world bathed in adulation and enters a glitzy marriage to the dashing Argentine pianist Daniel Barenboim.

Of course, genius shares a border with madness, and fame quickly transforms Jacs (ph), as she's known, into a monster of selfishness and self destruction. Meanwhile, Hilary settles into an ordinary happy life with a hearty conductor named Kiffer Finzi, played a little too heartily by David Morrissey, who gives her the love and security that she needs.

From the moment Jackie meets Kiffer, she begins to envy Hilary's happiness. And their relationship turns prickly. Sometimes, even cruel.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SCENE FROM FILM "HILARY AND JACKIE")

EMILY WATSON, ACTRESS PORTRAYING CELLIST JACQUELINE DU PRE: You can't just leave me.

RACHEL GRIFFITHS, ACTRESS PORTRAYING FLUTIST HILARY DU PRE: I'm not leaving you. You're not here any more. You never will be again.

WATSON: You (unintelligible).

GRIFFITHS: Oh, don't be silly.

WATSON: I can do what I want.

GRIFFITHS: You don't know anything apart from the cello. I don't anything apart from the flute. We'll have babies, Jacs. Kiffer laughs at me.

WATSON: Then why are you marrying him?

GRIFFITHS: Because he makes me feel special.

WATSON: Well, that's a big squeeze because the truth is you're not special.

POWERS: It's scenes like this one, when Jackie's at her most vicious, that have scandalized many classical music fans especially in Britain. They feel that the movie, based on Hilary and her brother's memoir, "A Genius in the Family," uses the words of resentful siblings to trash the memory of a British icon.

And it's true that the movie shows the dark side of Jackie, a creature of bottomless self absorption. She expects everyone to do her bidding and demands constant proofs of love. As part of this yearning, she even guilt trips Hilary into letting her sleep with Kiffer.

Yet "Hilary and Jackie" is not a hatchet job, but an attempt to explore the deep, tricky relationship between two sisters. A relationship whose complications even they don't fully grasp. Far from simply debunking Jackie, director Anand Tucker uses his restless style to make us aware of the subjectivity of human truth.

His idea is underscored by a bold storytelling gambit. Just at the moment we really start hating Jackie for her hysterical egomania, the movie suddenly pivots. It flashes back to events we've previously witnessed from Hilary's point of view, including that conversation about being special. A conversation that Jackie experienced in a radically different way.

Viewed through Jackie's own eyes, her unforgivable behavior starts to make sense. We understand why she covets Hilary's homely existence. Success has left this naive young prodigy empty, uprooted and slashing-her-wrists-lonely. Her brilliant career has become her Calvary. The cello her cross.

On the face of it, "Hilary and Jackie" may sound a bit like "Shine," another biographical film about a stricken musician. But this new movie is far smarter and more emotionally gripping. Because it cuts so close to the bone, Hilary and Jackie's story winds up being extraordinarily moving especially in its use of Elger's (ph) starkly majestic "Concerto for Cello in E Minor."

Yet the movie's real power comes from its stars. As she showed in "Breaking the Waves," Emily Watson has no peer at playing women possessed by demons. Whether she's grinning with mad girl glee orgasmically fingering her cello or issuing orders with a minor deities sense of entitlement, her Jackie is constantly throwing herself off psychic cliffs and hoping Hilary will catch her.

Watson's bravura is matched by Rachel Griffiths' touching restraint as Hilary. A down to earth woman torn between resenting her troublesome sister and doing what she can to save her. Griffiths' beautifully modulated performance turns Hilary's decent normalcy into a form of heroism. She's not a genius. Her talent is knowing how to love another person, even when that person is a royal pain.

OLSHER: John Powers is the film critic for "Vogue."

I'm Dean Olsher.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Dean Olsher, Washington, DC
Guest: John Powers
High: Film critic John Powers reviews "Hilary and Jackie."
Spec: Entertainment; Movie Industry; Culture; Lifestyle; John Powers

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1999 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: John Powers
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.