“Freud’s ultimate impulse, the reason why he did all his creative work, was to get laid –– which is ultimately a highly creative act.”

That’s a quote from Nick Nolte, pulled from Nick Nolte: No Exit, Tom Thurman’s experimental, quasi-existential documentary on the actor, his inner life, and his somewhat incredible journey from one dubious achievement to another: first PEOPLE Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, then, just ten years later, star of the most mockable celebrity mug shot in recent history. (It’s the latter achievement that seems to give Nolte greater pleasure––the mug shot is prominently displayed in a laugh-out-loud bizarre flash intro on his official website.)

The nature of the quote––its balance between absurdity and plausibility, its revision of history through the lens of impulse––makes it seem like it just as well could have been housed by Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, the other film I saw on my last day of screenings in Cannes. In addition to sharing an interest in the relationship between excess and art, both films offer us stories presented through the eyes of older men of some notoriety, offering dispatches from a space on the dividing line between mainstream celebrity culture and a tangetial space––dirtier, less stable, less a sub-culture than an afterworld.

…Read more