LAist Interview: Dan Clark aka Nitro of the American Gladiators

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Dan Clark was a brutal force on the football field and in the Gladiator arena. In his book Gladiator: A True Story of 'Roids, Rage and Redemption, which he will be signing copies of tonight at Book Soup, the man better known to many as Nitro, gives a brutally honest account of his life and 20 year love affair with steroids.

The former Gladiator's story, which starts with him as a young boy searching for identity while being bounced between parents, relatives and regions of the world, will hit you harder and faster than any tennis ball Nitro ever shot out of the Assault cannon. Clark, a writer who has penned numerous screenplays, hooks the reader early on with the stories of his unimaginable childhood, including an account of his older brother Randy's death by electrocution which Clark saw with his own ten-year-old eyes. That day, Clark writes "made me who I am today."

Clark holds nothing back in the book which details his incredible journey to superstardom, as a chemically-enhanced larger-than-life figure in pop culture to his present day life which he describes in Gladiator's final chapter as "a father, a student, a teacher, a writer, and a fully conscious human being who can feel."

"I'm a deep motherfucker, not what you'd expect from a guy who used to wear spandex for a living," explains Clark who has been busy doing interviews to promote the book. "I just finished doing an interview with Billy Bush, and the guy kept asking me about my balls. When I was sitting down writing about Testicular atrophy, I didn't really think about how that would play out. I didn't have the foresight to envision a scenario where I would be asked a series of questions about my balls by Billy Bush."

After the jump, Clark answers to series of non-ball related questions.

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In the book you definitely lay it all out there. Was it hard for you to do that? Did you feel like it was necessary to not hold back?
Well first and foremost I wanted the book to be good. The reason why I say that is because I wanted to be given the opportunity to do a second book which has nothing to do with Gladiators, nothing to do with steroids. It's the story of my son, an important story to me, and a story that needs to be told to give people hope. In order to be able to tell that story I felt like I had to write something that wasn't just me throwing people under the bus for using steroids. I wanted to give readers something of value and I felt the more personal I can make the experience, the more universal and more valuable it would be. I think to truly understand the lure of the drug, you’d have to understand me the human being. That's what I did when I talk in the book about my struggle with finding my identity. I've been in the public eye for 22 years, so it's not unusual for me to feel like my life has been examined. There definitely was something cathartic about the book.

What are you hoping to get out of the book?
I just had this conversation with a friend. A phrase that comes up quite a bit in the book is "Big boys don't cry" and ironically I am receiving tons of messages on my MySpace from grown men who tell me that they were crying their eyes out from reading the book. I get a lot of people writing to me, thanking me for taking them on this emotional journey that is my life. What do I want people to take from it? I guess the easy answer is to say the book is a cautionary tale of what steroids can do to your life. I did a lot of things and they are all there in the book, I take full responsibility for my actions and I hope that someone who is contemplating using steroids reads the book and decides to stay away from the drug.

In the book you describe an encounter you had when you were 17 with a Joe character who tells you all about steroids, he was quite the salesman for the drug. Did you find yourself being like Joe, once you started using, with other guys?
In the beginning I thought that steroids were too good to be true. They were giving me things but eventually they started to take things away from me. They took away my ability to be a man. They started affecting my overall health. I was pissing blood. I was growing breasts. In the early part of my life, before steroids started taking things away I would say, yeah you should try them. This was early on though, when the drug was still new and we couldn't figure out what the ramifications were.

Was there ever a “wow” moment in regards to the popularity of American Gladiators?
That happened in the show's second season. The rule in LA is that you travel to power. You go and meet the guy who has more power, he doesn't come to meet you. That's just how it is. I remember one day during the second season a white Rolls Royce pulled up and out came my idol, Lyle Alzado. Here he was, the guy I looked up to, and he was driving to meet me. That's when I knew the show was big.

How did you get started in writing?
After Gladiators, Warner Bros was really interested in making me the next Segal or the next Van Damme. They were sending me scripts every day, while I am reading them I started to think 'I can do this. I want to do this.' I didn't even know how to type but I was telling people I was going to be a writer. That motivated me though. That doubt, the underdog is a role I enjoy. It reminds me, when I first came out to Hollywood I went on an audition with a buddy of mine and the guy at the casting office told me he wouldn't even take my picture. I asked why and he told me because I was mixed. I was half-white/half-Asian. He said they don't want someone who's mixed they want someone who is white or someone who is Asian. That's the kind of doubt that has motivated me. What also motivates me is that intense desire to communicate. If you talk to any of the creatives in this town; not the producers, not the suits but the creatives, the one thing that all have in common is the intense need to communicate. Screenwriting gives me that outlet. Writing this book was easy for me, much easier than writing a screenplay because this is me, this is my life.

One of my favorite moments growing up as a fan of American Gladiators was a little bit of a fight you and Gemini got into with a contestant named Billy Wirth. Billy is also a screenwriter. What do you think the odds are of the two guys who were competing in a heated battle of Powerball would end up being screenwriters?
I am really cool with Billy. He is a good guy. I know he had his own issues with stuff and he was able to overcome them. I don’t know what the odds of that are that we would go from the Gladiators to screenwriting. I mean we both are here in Hollywood, and we have that same intense desire to communicate. It's like when I did my first car show ever, and I've got a booth and next to me is Mario Lopez doing his first car show. He was Slater, he was 17. I was in my spandex in the booth and he is there next to me and sometime next week I'll be doing an interview with him on Extra. What a journey! Who would have ever thought that Slater and Nitro would be together again. The world is a funny place.

What is your relationship like with the other former Gladiators?
We've all gone on our own separate ways but there definitely is still a connection we have. We lived through it together. We were the first reality show. Gladiators changed the face of TV. The show has been on the air in 19 of the last 20 years, there was one year in there where we weren't on in syndication. It was a cultural phenomenon.

You've lived in LA for the last 20 years, what are some things you enjoy about the city?
I love Runyon Canyon. I love taking my dog there, there is no better place to take a hike with your dog. Katsuya in Studio City has the best sushi in town. The best dessert I've ever had is at Pizzeria Mozza. I love going to Freddie Roach's gym, Wild Card. Going there really gives me that sense of camaraderie that I had playing football and being on the Gladiators. In Freddie's gym you've got world champion boxers, with gardeners and lawyers and doctors and writers and everyone is equal. That's what I love about the place.

Meet Dan Clark tonight at Book Soup at 7pm. For fans outside of the Los Angeles-area, check out his Web site: www.dannitroclark.com. Dan's running a contest, the winner will get to fly out to LA and meet him and walk away with his tour jacket.