I'm Not Dead... Yet! (10 page)

From that day on, it was nothing but work… along with a slight hope that Glynnis might get back together with me again. But this was the definitive ‘No.’ I took it like a man. I cried.

I was rehearsing the pre-Broadway musical
King of Hearts
when I got a call from my friend, Burt Reynolds, asking me to do a bit part in his film,
The End
.

I asked Burt, who was also directing, if I could come up with a few bits for my character, Father Dave—one of them being that the young priest is so enthralled hearing Burt’s sins in the confessional that he takes off his collar and starts playing with it, nervously, making clicking sounds with the plastic against his teeth. It worked, and Burt allowed me to ‘do my thing.’ A great guy, a wonderful friend and a very good director.

I went back east to the production of
King of Hearts
only to be informed that the director (Tony Award winner A.J. Antoon), and the playwright (Steve Tesich, who would win an Academy Award for
Breaking Away
) had been fired. They were the reason I was there in the first place, and they were my
friends
. So I followed suit, walked into the producer’s office, and resigned. Joe Kipness was furious with me; he said he would ruin my career and actually threatened my life. I resigned anyway. Then he trashed me in the press, saying I’d been fired.

Because I was very shy in person
(even a bit backwards) I often seemed antisocial without wanting to be. I just didn’t know how to interact with people unless I was working. But now that my career in films was taking off, the talk shows wanted me—and somehow (maybe because it was ‘work’) I had no problem with
that
human interaction. In my own way, I could be a pretty funny raconteur.

My first big show on national television was an interview with Barbara Walters on
The Today Show
. I did the local talk shows and was a regular on
Good Morning America
,
The Today Show
and
CBS This Morning
with every new film release. I even sang an original song from a film on
American Bandstand
hosted by Dick Clark.

If I were counting how many appearances I made on certain shows,
The Merv Griffin Show
would be in the double digits. The same for
The Mike Douglas Show,
including co-hosting for a week, and Regis with many different co-hosts over the years. And of course the pinnacle of late-night talk,
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
.

I had begun to do solo concerts on both coasts—in L.A. at the Troubador and the Roxy, and in New York at Reno Sweeney’s.
So when I appeared on talk shows to promote my latest movie, I was asked to perform. On most of these shows I would sing songs I wrote with Jerry Segal, my father.

When Burt Reynolds was hosting
The Tonight Show
(Johnny Carson and NBC loved it when Burt guest-hosted), he called to ask if I would be one of his guests and bring my guitar and sing “Mr. Weinstein’s Barber Shop.” Burt surprised me when we were on the air, by telling America about my ability to do sit-ups—into the thousands.

When we were working on
Lucky Lady
I looked skinny and frail in my wardrobe, not like the gym rat I actually was. Burt knew the amount of a sit-ups I could do without stopping and got a great idea: he would bet the stuntmen, and finally Gene Hackman, I could do more sit-ups than the best stuntman on the film. (That part was easy) But he kept getting more and more mischievous by placing bets saying, “I’ll bet he can do… 1,000 sit-ups without stopping,” and the dollar amount would go up. Then he would add, “Well, I’ll bet you he can do 2,000 sit-ups without stopping.” And the dollars began to skyrocket. He got the betting up to 3,500 sit-ups and the money on the table was probably close to 10 grand.

I did the sit-ups (somewhere in the 2,000’s Gene Hackman realized he’d been scammed), Burt made a ton of money, and we were a ‘team.’ Kind of like being carnival hucksters.

That evening on
The Tonight Show
, Burt not only told the story, he told America and the studio audience that I could still do as many as he had ever seen without stopping. I was on the spot: national television and didn’t want to disappoint my buddy, so I got on the floor and began doing sit-ups. The
Tonight Show
audience was amazed as they counted with each sit-up. When Burt threw the show to commercial I thought I could stop, but he wanted the gag to
continue,
so when they came back from commercial, I was
still
doing sit-ups and the audience was
still
counting.

Finally Burt stopped me and said, “Okay Robby—now go and sing my favorite song.

I walked over to the band area (thinking: ‘Don’t pass out’) and picked up my guitar to sing “Mr. Weinstein’s Barber Shop.” As the song began, I couldn’t catch my breath, and my abs were wildly spazing out. I somehow managed to sing—giving maybe my best performance of the song.

Valuable Life Lesson:
Focus. Old fashioned focus. I had learned from so many remarkable pros (Burt being one) how to perform through pain and exhaustion.

Payback time.
Director Donald Wrye called saying he wanted to make
Ice Castles,
a film about a beautiful ice skater who has an accident and goes blind, but continues to compete—and no one knows she’s blind.

I laughed and said, “You’re kidding, right?” Silence…

He wanted me to play the love interest and there was no way I could say ‘no’ to my friend. It was one of the most absurd stories I had ever heard, yet it hit home to a generation of young girls—so I guess Donald Wrye and the studio knew what they were doing.

Never having skated before, I had to prep to be convincing in the hockey scenes. I worked with terrific taskmaster Barbara Williams, speed skating coach for the Stanley Cup New York Islanders.

The Islanders took to me as brethren—they liked the way I’d get up from a ‘hit’ and was ready to fight back. I just got up off the ice and took a run at the guy who knocked me down. No finesse here, but I learned enough to pull it off.

It was tough physically. I injured my hip filming a scene on the ice. At the hospital the doctor took X-rays and told me my hip was broken, and then asked when I had broken my other hip, as it had been fractured as well and had healed poorly. “Oh...um, well… can I go?”

Filming in the dead of winter in Minnesota, the only time to get the chill out of my body was at night, but now I had to sleep with bags of ice taped around my fractured hip to keep the swelling down so I could fit into my wardrobe. More and more ice.

To get my mind off the agony of the pain, I turned on the local 10 o’clock news and saw a scene of chaos and young women screaming, “I touched him! I touched him!” I thought, ‘Cool. I wonder who’s in town?’ Then they showed a picture of me. ‘Me? No way. Me? They’re
crying.’
In my entire career I had no manager, no publicity firm, no assistants, no entourage. I was a solitary journeyman actor doing a job I loved. I never realized I was... affecting people. If I was affecting people, then a responsibility came with that ambiguous power.