I'm Not Dead... Yet! (11 page)

For the last shot of the film, at the ice arena, I told the producers I would sign autographs for whomever came and donated their time to be in the crowd. They told me it could be up to 8,000 girls. I said fine, print 8,000 8x10 pictures and get me a lot of Sharpies. But first we had to shoot the scene. There were police and hired security, and the girls were screaming and breaking through the barriers. The producers were afraid for my safety. I said, “Take the police and the guards away.”

“Are you kidding? They’ll tear you apart.”

“No, they won’t. I think the barriers, the guards and the police are
causing
—no, allowing them to behave this way. Trust me.”

The screaming stopped when I came out of my trailer alone and quietly said, “Thank you all for helping us with the movie. If you want a signed picture, I’ll stay as long as it takes when we’re done today to personally sign any and all pictures that you want. But right now, I need to go to work. Thank you.”

Respect. Decency. The crowd was immediately well-behaved, went to their seats, and Lynn Holly Johnson (a U.S. National figure skating medalist) and I shot the ‘We forgot about the flowers’ scene.

After filming, I stayed until 2 a.m.—when the last young woman had her autograph. My hip was killing me, we were doing ‘spring’ scenes in the bitter cold (so we would wear next to nothing), and my heart never allowed me to forget that it wasn’t happy. It fluttered throughout that movie.

Valuable Life Lesson:
I’m not a skater. And: treat people with respect and they’ll treat you with respect.

Walk Proud
was scripted by Evan Hunter,
the writer of the classic film
The Blackboard Jungle
. There was a huge uproar from the Chicano community and the liberal left—which I thought I was a part of, not a target of—over my casting as a young Chicano Gang member.

I thought, ‘We’re actors. The job of an actor is to become someone he’s not. Why is everyone so pissed?’ Well, because I was a white guy putting in brown contact lenses, taking a part away from a Chicano actor.

I would never take that part today, but at the time, my agent, the studio and the producers kept telling me almost every other role in the film was being played by Chicanos and “Gang” (the film’s original title) would not be made unless I agreed to star. So I was a bit ...confused.

My fellow actors, Pepe Serna, Domingo Ambriz, and Trinidad Silva, treated me as a brother. We’d sit for hours going over dialogue.
Pepe took me under his wing and made sure I was using the best accent possible.

The producers hired real L.A. gang members as advisors, but that only made the rival gangs more angry. On our first night-shoot in Venice, we were on a dinner break when I heard popping sounds. Still standing holding my dinner tray I wondered why everyone, including the security guards and cops, were hiding under the tables. Later we found out one of our gang contacts was shot and killed.

I learned two things quickly on
Walk Proud
: real gunfire doesn’t sound anything like the stuff we see in movies, and don’t be stupid—hit the deck and hide like everyone else with every drive-by shooting or old car backfiring.

One of the honey-wagon drivers (honey-wagons are the long trucks with dressing rooms attached) had been asking me to sign a lot of head shots. He said he wanted to give the fans my photo, and it seemed to make everyone very happy.
I was furious when I found out he was bartering for blow-jobs from underage girls using my autographed picture as bait. I told the cops. The guy was arrested.

When the movie previewed the scores were very good for the film, but not so good for the musical score. The producers liked the two songs I had written with lyricist Jerry Segal for the film, and asked if I would like to score the entire picture. I had written temp scores for films in the past, so I jumped at the opportunity. The catch was: it had to be finished in one week. I’d have to work 24/7 until I could walk onto the scoring stage with an orchestra and deliver a full score. It was a great learning experience.

Because of violence at the opening of
The Warriors
, another gang-related film, the release date was held up.
Walk Proud
finally opened—to a favorable review in
The New York Times
—but all in all, except for my friendships, this film was a disappointment.

Valuable Life Lesson:
Duck, stupid.

(As Karla so aptly states: “Man is stupid.”)

Why? What’s wrong with us?

Okay—me.

I was 20 years old and in remarkable physical shape…

...except I couldn’t breathe.

This contradiction would make the paradox finally come to a ‘deadly’ moment on the film
Die Laughing
.

Jon Peters put this film together
with a charm that negated every story I had ever heard about him. His first film had been the blockbuster remake of
A Star Is Born
, and he was well on his way to becoming a notorious studio mogul.