This is a transcript of Nic's acceptance speech when he was given an Honorary Degree at California State University in Fulton,  California, May 25, 2001.   Personally I feel it's quite appropriate considering all the negativity that is always directed at Nic.  Maybe the negativity spurns him on to keep trying new thing even today, including making movies more 'internationally'.  Also....not his musings on Herzog!   Enjoy!


"Thank you. Thank you to Dr. Milton Gordon, Trustee Larry Gould, the California State University system and the California State University, Fullerton.  I am very proud to be an alum of Cal State Fullerton.

I was born on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California. From what I understand, I was considered an unusual child. My father thought I was from another planet something in the way I looked and also in the way I looked at the world. I remember thinking that I was different, too, and with every trip to the doctors office, I was shocked that they didnt discover my blood was in fact green and that I had 30 ribs too many with each X-ray.

When I was 4, I was having very colorful and powerful nightmares every night. Hieronymous Bosch-like characters would visit me and 50-foot tall, blonde women would grab me out of the bathroom. I was being chased by clowns and ventriloquist dummies all of which, of course, were in my overactive imagination, but I could make them very real for myself just by, just by thinking about them. I began to dread going to sleep at night. Around the time of my sixth birthday, I realized that I had to get the hell out of here, whatever here is. I was sitting on the living room floor watching TV and a show came on whose name I forget, but on it I saw two youths fall into the TV within the TV, and they were all excited about walking through this TV world. I knew then that I wanted to escape inside the TV as well. I think this is my first memory of wanting to be an actor.

What is interesting to me is that this blurry, half-formed almost subconscious notion of wanting to be on screen was coinciding with a time when my imagination was at its most fertile and beleaguered. I point this out because it illustrates so clearly the fuel needed for the creation of art. Art is imagination. Art is the need to express the imagination on screen, in sound, on canvas, anywhere.

What about artists survival?I began to grow up. Im now 12 and Im going to school on a bus. Everyday Im getting beat up by the older bully on the bus because he wants my hostess cupcake in my lunch bag. Im skinny and weak and I cant fight. I wake up in the morning and I decide to wear my older brothers cowboy boots. I put some tight jeans on, I wear a pair of black sunglasses and Im chewing my bubble gum with attitude. I slick back my hair and I get on the bus.Im not Nick, I tell the boy. Im his cousin, Roy Wilkinson, and if you steal his cupcake again Im going to have to come back here and kick your ass. From that day on the bully never bothered me again.

Well what is the point of this story but that I needed to become someone else to survive. I needed to act like some one else in order to believe I was strong. I needed to trick my mind. This was my first and best performance because I knew then that I could act and convince people I was what I told them. I could create characters. From that point on I became fascinated in playing characters all over the place. I was rarely ever just myself. Sometimes, I would star in small super 8 movies; my brother would direct and I would act in them.

Throughout this time, I was watching the million-dollar movie on TV and they would show fun films with Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be cool like that. It was the perfect fantasy for a skinny kid.I had a camera on me in my mind at all times. I had close-ups and pan-outs. My favorite was when I would be walking down the street and the camera would crane up until I became smaller and smaller in the street, like at the end of a movie. I was obsessed with being a film actor.

When I was 15, I discovered great acting. I walked into a revival theater, this was before video, and I watched the James Dean trilogy. I saw East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. All of them were great but it was East of Edenthat profoundly changed my life. Dean plays the misunderstood wild child to perfection. Nobody understands his mean nature, least of all him, but he wants to be loved so much by his father and yet he cant seem to earn it. Finally, in what is probably the most heart-wrenching scene I have ever watched on film, he tries to give the money he has saved growing string beans to his father for his birthday. The father played by Raymond Massey cant accept it. The depth of pain that Dean projects in that scene destroyed me. I was more moved by that than any other art form more than any painting or piece of music.

I knew then that that was exactly what I wanted to do. Express my pain and other feelings through acting and hopefully shed some light on someone elses life in the process. That is what art does. You can heal yourself through art. You can cleanse your psyche and soul and the result can, in turn, heal someone else because they can relate and feel that they are not alone. I believe fine art is not time-sensitive. It can heal people forever.

What did we do before we had therapists? We listened to the piano player. We read great novels like Dostoyevskys Brothers Karamazov and related to the situations the characters went through. Art can also just simply make you reflective or even happy for a few seconds listening to an Elvis or Beatles song or Stavinsky on the radio.

As artists, we keep the people of the world in a collective consciousness. We define ourselves on a relationship to the time we live in through art. So how does one stay an artist? How do you protect your instrument? Elia Kazan once said that talent never dies, it can be discouraged, but it never dies. Ive often thought that as actors we are the instrument and when we fail, as we must, we will be criticized. It will be very painful because you cant hide. You cant say: My guitar was out of tune. You have to take the stone squarely on the chin and you have to ask yourself if you can handle it. How badly do you want it? How hungry are you to be an artist and bare your soul to a world who may hate you for it. Are you willing to be publicly humiliated in the hopes that your peers may understand your art or simply just that you understand it?

I think its important that we all define success to ourselves as we embark on our life in art and any reason is valid.Do you want to become an artist because you want to be rich? Well then, make your choices based on that. Play it somewhat safely, dont piss too many people off and select work that will appeal to a lot of people. Do you want to be an artist because you want to be famous? Well that you can do a lot of different ways. You can become very famous, very quickly by eating a ****roach in a movie. Do you want to be an artist because you want to meet girls and have them tear your clothes off? Make your choices based on that. Do you want to be an artist because you want to change the world in some way, any way at all? They are all good reasons but perhaps the best reason is because you cant help it, because it is inconceivable to you to do anything else, because without it you cant survive because you could go crazy or broke or have no meaning in your life.

Ive always believed in treating my mind and body right getting enough rest and exercise and fueling my imagination with the artistic achievements of others. But I also believe its important to take chances in life. I believe the universe does away with that which sits on a fence; it destroys it because it has to make room for others. I dont ever want to sit idle in fear, I want to love and lose, if thats the way it has to be. I want to drive fast and eat and make love to remind me that I dont need to fear death. I want experience. People often ask me why I work so much. I have to act. I cant survive if I dont. I cant help it. If I dont express myself, I start to get depressed.

Im convinced that if I didnt act I would have tried to be a fisherman and failing that I would have gone into a criminal life. Thats how bad I needed it. And sometimes a criminal mind is whats needed to be good at it. Sometimes I would tell myself: Dont be afraid to break the law with your art, nothing is definite, nothing is impossible. I will fail from time to time, but I might succeed in developing something new. Form and structure are important to learn but having learned it, break it, challenge it, change it. Never trap yourself in one style. I would never get comfortable. And to protect my instrument, I would submerge myself in books and music and painting and borrow from it.I heard Lou Reed sing a song completely out of tune and the bad sound hooked me. I realized that the out of tune singing was his style intentionally and I liked it so I copied it when I did Peggy Sue Got Married. I acted out of tune intentionally. Artists style, abstract style, natural style, surreal, documentary, cubist, romantic comedy, action why limit my voice to just one. And there is art synthesis. You can express the experience of a painting when youre acting or a novel when you are singing. My reviews for Peggy Sue Got Married were some of the worst in my career. But at the time I remember thinking I wouldnt be happy unless I got bad reviews.

Well, why is that? I remember I was interested in Edvard Munch and I loved his paintings. I loved The Scream. I read that his work was hated initially because it broke form from what was popular at the time. I wanted to break form too. I wanted to affect people. I didnt just want to be liked. I believed to be despised in art at times is more visceral than to be liked. You are truly affecting people deeply then and they wont bull**** about it. And who knows, perhaps what was once despicable matures into something beautiful with time.

What is beautiful anyway? According to Carlotti, the definition of beauty is a summation of the parts working together in such a way that nothing needs to be added, taken away or altered. I say dont be afraid to be beautiful in your ugliness. I think purity is more important than anything else. But again for me it all comes down to need.

In the words of Werner Herzog, if you want to be a film director but you dont have the money then steal the camera and steal the film. Its got to be that important to you. Youve got to need it that much. As artists we have a different license than other people. We have the license to go straight up the devils ass, smile at him and survive.

What youve learned here at school is important, and you have achieved a remarkable honor today. But experience is your teacher now; vicarious living is over.

Dont be afraid to go out there and live and record and then vomit it back out on all of us. Thank you." Nicolas Cage.