On the Nickel
1980 film by Ralph Waite
On the Nickel is a 1980 feature film written, produced by, and starring Ralph Waite, as well as Donald Moffat. It features five original songs composed for the movie by Tom Waits.
The film presents the story of Sam (Donald Moffat), a recovering alcoholic, who feels dissatisfied with his life of sobriety and goes back in search of the good times he enjoyed with his old friends living on Los Angeles' skid row. (This includes a section of Fifth Street, which is sometimes called "the Nickel", after the five-cent coin.) Eventually finding his best friend, "C.G." (Waite), still living on the Nickel, the two men reminisce, and Sam gets a fresh look at the lifestyle he had once vigorously abandoned. The film is a multi-level odyssey through the slums of LA, as well as Sam's personal ruminations as he re-evaluates the nostalgia he had felt for the free and bohemian lifestyle of a street person.
The film also stars Hal Williams, Penelope Allen, and Jack Kehoe. The original soundtrack was written and performed by Tom Waits. With its offbeat, comedic depiction of life on the streets, the film has maintained a cult following since its initial release, although it passed out of general availability for 20 years and effectively became a "lost" movie. Despite this, occasional showings on American television have kept viewer interest high and have resulted in Mr. Waite's decision to collaborate with producer Thomas Wise, to re-edit and restore the feature for DVD and internet release in late 2009.
“On the Nickel” enters the record as 1980 film by Ralph Waite. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nickel, film and Ralph can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“On the Nickel” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Nickel, film and Ralph provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7091435. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “On the Nickel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.