‘Nowhere Man’ - this season’s coolest hit

By Mark Schwed

"As the star of the season’s coolest new cult phenom, Bruce Greenwood is finally getting somewhere, man"

"So I get into my car, sick, freaked with fatigue, and drag myself to the bank machine. I put the card in and it goes Tchoop! Spit! Whirr! But no money." He walks into the bank and pleads for assistance. But when the bank officer runs not one, but all of his cards through the machine inside, nothing happens. "My entire wallet has been demagnetized," says Greenwood. "I am the Nowhere Man."

Fans of the show can relate. It was in the first episode that Greenwood’s character, photojournalist Tom Veil, had his identity stripped from him in the time it takes to, well, use a rest room. His wife doesn’t recognize him, the key to his house doesn’t work, and, yes, his ATM cards are useless. It’s a conspiracy, and everyone is in on it – his mom, the cops, little girls on bikes, even his dog. People are chasing him, but he doesn’t know why, except that it has something to do with Hidden Agenda, a picture of an execution he took a year earlier that’s missing from his studio.

A cruel joke? Insane paranoia? No, just the most surprising new drama of the season, a cult hit even though it’s up against ABC powerhouse NFL Monday Night Football. Veil and viewers have been sucked in by this ever-expanding conspiracy, one that involves vast numbers of government and law-enforcement officials, the military, teachers, students, and on and on. Not since Dr. Richard Kimble hunted for the one-armed man on The Fugitive 30 years ago have we felt so clueless. And not since Scully and Mulder started investigating the X-Files have we felt so paranoid.

Remember Greenwood’s bank cards? Turns out they had been demagnetized when he was x-rayed for pneumonia a couple of days earlier. But he just can’t kick the feeling that something weird is going on. "Paranoia is pervading my life," says Greenwood, who launches into a story about being awakened in the middle of the night by strange noises. "I’m lying on my back looking at the ceiling, and I go, ‘Oh my God! What’s out there?’ I finally get up, and I’m naked, completely defenseless to whatever goblin or maniac is in the room. And here I am, this naked guy, creeping and crouching across the room, getting ready to do battle with some crazy guy. And of course it was the shower certain blowing in the wind. This show is spooking me a little bit. I can’t get away from it."

Neither can viewers, who apparently have no problem believing the government could be behind such a chilling conspiracy to erase a man’s identity. Greenwood says people constantly stop him on the street to tell him how real the show seems. "I tell them, ‘No, it’s, like, away out there.’ But they cut me off. ‘No! This stuff is really happening!"

The Internet, that new playground for plugged-in computer users, is all a buzz about Nowhere Man. "The conspiracies are driving me crazy. I love it," says one fan. Another asks, "Is there anyone on the planet not involved in this conspiracy?" Series creator Larry Hertzog, who has regular on-line chats with fans, says, "I could get as weird as I wanted, and the audience still seems to say, ‘You betcha.’"

Hertzog stresses, however, that those who tune in each week solely to pick up clues may be disappointed. "Trying to do 24 clues a year would be ridiculous," he says. Instead, he believes Veil’s experiences each week are enough to sustain viewer interest. As an example, he points to The Fugitive, which wrapped up a four-year chase in just two episodes. UPN Entertainment president Mike Sullivan, who gave the go-ahead to Nowhere Man, thinks viewers are connecting with "Veil’s strength, his spirit, the embattled humanity of this guy."

Maybe so. But Greenwood’s rugged good looks an boyish charm certainly haven’t hurt. The son of a geophysicist, Greenwood has been on the move for most of his life—from Quebec, Switzerland, and Vancouver to Washington, D.C., and Princeton, New Jersey. His teenage dream of becoming a professional skier ended at 16 when he blew out his knee. It wasn’t until he saw Brad Dourif’s performance as the stuttering Bill Bibbit in 1975’s "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" that he chose acting. "That did it," he says.

Since moving to Los Angeles with his wife, Susan, Greenwood has worked in everything from TV-movies, miniseries, dramas, and sitcoms to features such as "Wild Orchid" and the recent Cannes Film Festival International Critics’ Prize winner "Exotica." He’s best known, however, for playing the manipulative Dr. Seth Graffin on St. Elsewhere and the sociopathic Pierce Lawton on Knots Landing.

Before those High-Profile gigs, times where a bit tough. "I had never made more than $6000 a year," Greenwood says. Which may explain why he and his friend Norm Foote concocted a scheme in the early ‘80’s to manufacture and marked inflatable hats shaped like Vancouver’s football stadium. "We were sitting around one afternoon, and we thought, what if we made a hat that looks like the dome?" So they did, creating a model that whistles and rises "like a huge loaf of bread." He had to sweet-talk his wife out of a $10,000 savings bond to finance the deal. "We drove around in Norm’s VW screaming out the window, ‘We’re gonna be rich!’"

Norm still has 800 of those hats in his basement, fortunately, Greenwood got his first big acting job within weeks of accepting delivery of the hats and was able to pay back his wife. "Twice a year, Norm says he’s gonna throw those hats away, but I won’t let him," Greenwood says.

With Nowhere Man, there is a distinct possibility that Greenwood will really hit the jackpot. But he’s not buying it. "I used to be a little more enthusiastic about long shots. Now I’m a little older, a little wiser, and I realize that this job on Nowhere Man is as much of a long shot as those hats. I don’t scream out of windows anymore."

But he is curious. He asked his publicist how her more famous clients handled instant fame and fortune. "Did they flip out?" he wanted to know. He figures he’ll handle it OK. "Hey, I saw bits of fame on Knots landing and St. Elsewhere." And the lesson? "It comes an goes like a supersonic jet. You hear it coming. It sounds incredible. But the minute it’s really loud, it’s gone."

Like the rest of us, Greenwood doesn’t have a clue to what is going on in Nowhere Man. The only thing he knows is creator Hertzog. "There is an answer" to the mystery, says Hertzog. "But I won’t tell him. And I won't tell you." Many viewers haven been adamant, he adds, about how they do not want the story to end. "There are lots of requests saying, ‘Whatever you do, please, no aliens.’"