Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (11 page)

“Um, sure. Uh, no problem,” I manage.

I quickly look over the scene. If I do well now as Randy, Francis might want me for that part, opening up Soda to one of the other finalists who have been on the periphery until now, like Tom Cruise. Maybe I should tank the reading, I think briefly, but knowing I’m incapable of it.

I finish playing the scene at full throttle. I’m praying I don’t get this part. No one wants to be a Soc in a movie about Greasers. It’s 110 degrees in this sweatbox of a studio as Tom Cruise is called to the floor. Now I have real issues; he’s giving
my
role a try. He begins Sodapop’s big breakdown scene at the end of the movie. I watch him and think, that’s it, I’m done. He’s clearly a force to be reckoned with, and is more focused and ambitious than I ever thought about being. (And that’s saying something.)

But then … Tom has stopped. Stopped the scene! Right in the middle of the monologue! A hush falls over the room.

“Um, I’m sorry. Um, I’m really sorry,” he says, looking directly at Francis. “This just isn’t working for me.”

Holy shit! Not working for
him
? I thought Francis Ford Coppola was the judge of what works and what doesn’t. There is a low murmur among the actors. Francis lets him try again. When he’s done, I know the Cruise missile threat has passed.

“Rob, give Soda a try, please,” Francis asks blithely. But I know that right now, right here, in this moment, a life-changing part is mine for the taking. What Francis is really asking is: Rob, do you
want
this part? I do the scene and crush it. The answer is yes. Yes, I do.

CHAPTER
10

A suspenseful two weeks later, it’s official. I’m offered the part of Sodapop Curtis, the romantic, sweet-natured, loving middle brother. Tommy Howell surprises no one by getting the lead role of Ponyboy, and Matt Dillon fulfills expectations by getting the role of the tough hood, Dallas. My instincts proved right about Ralph Macchio: he will play the tragic mascot, Johnny. The other roles remain uncast.

I’m elated. It doesn’t seem real. I’m going to make a
movie
. And in my first movie, I have one of the starring roles. My first director will be one of the greatest who ever lived. And not only did I survive one of the longest, most competitive casting searches in years, I was one of the first to be cast.

I celebrate with my family. I contact USC and tell them I won’t be enrolling. I start to think about what it will be like to be away from home, on my own for the first time, while we shoot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I also am anxious for my new brothers in arms, Emilio, Tom, and the others with whom I bonded over the last few months. They are all still hoping to get one of the remaining roles, but so far they have heard nothing.

I have no idea what to expect. My apprehension is probably similar to what any seventeen-year-old feels as he packs for freshman year at college. But in that case, you could ask your dad, “What do I need to know? What advice do you have?” and Dad tells you. But obviously I can’t do that, as no one in my family has any experience in this new world.

So I walk down to the Sheens’ house, looking for Martin. We crack open the vanilla Häagen-Dazs and I ask him every question I can think of. He is gracious and patient; I am vulnerable and a little scared, but excited. By the time we finish our ice cream I feel more prepared for what I might encounter. I thank him. At the door he stops me.

“One last thing…”

“Sure, Martin, what is it?”

“Don’t let Francis make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

I consider that last unsettling piece of advice as I jog back home, through the gathering fog, to pack. I am on the cusp of something and I feel a mixture of emotions: I’m proud, scared, cocky, insecure, anxious, and confident, all at once. And truth be told, after the long adrenaline-filled audition process, I’m also feeling a little let down. (I will later learn this is a hallmark of alcoholism; we call it the Peggy Lee Syndrome. You reach a goal you’ve been striving for, only to feel, “Is that all there is?”) If I’m gonna make a career of this, I will have to sort myself out.

My bare feet are hurting slightly as I trot down our driveway. Chad and Micah are playing horse and my mom is calling us all into the house for dinner. A wave of homesickness rises up, but I haven’t even packed a suitcase. Looking down, I notice a tiny cut with some blood on my right foot and I realize, I am going to have to build up my calluses.

*   *   *

There are giant praying hands outside my airplane as it descends into Tulsa, Oklahoma. The massive sculpture from Oral Roberts University seems to be sending a message. My future is at hand. It is unknowable. It is an adventure. I don’t know where it will lead, and I might as well pray!

I’m flying alone. Tom and Emilio were offered parts at the last minute and are driving out in Emilio’s pickup. Tom is playing my best friend, Steve, and Emil, Two-Bit Matthews, another of the Curtis brothers’ circle of friends. The Sheen family’s complicated history with Francis runs so deep that before he accepted the role, Emil literally put the script under his mattress and “slept on it” before finally saying yes.

The plane comes in for a bumpy landing on an early spring afternoon in the beginning of March 1982. It’s two weeks before my eighteenth birthday.

The Tulsa Excelsior sits smack in the middle of downtown. This will be my home for the next ten weeks. At the front desk I’m handed a new shooting script, crew list, an envelope with a wad of cash, per diem, and a key to room 625. “You are right next door to Tommy Howell and across the hall from Mr. Macchio. Welcome to Tulsa,” says the man behind the counter.

I look up and recognize Diane Lane coming through the revolving door of the lobby. At only sixteen, she already seems like a legend. She has starred with Laurence Olivier and been on the cover of
Time
magazine. Oh, and she may be the prettiest girl on the planet. She will play Cherry Valance, the queen Soc. Too shy to introduce myself, I watch as she breezes by with her chaperone. With all the teen testosterone on this movie, she’ll need one!

I head up to my room, which is very plain and very simple—a desk, a small refrigerator, and two twin beds. But to me, it’s the greatest setup I’ve ever seen. It’s like my own first apartment—and in fact, it is. I’m out of the house, away from my parents, living on my own, and because I’ll be eighteen in a week or so, for the first time, I have no guardian. This new sense of freedom is powerful enough to knock me to my knees, right here in room 625.

“Hey, man, is that you?”

I recognize Tommy Howell’s voice as he unlatches the door between our adjoining rooms.

“We did it,” I yelp, as we hug in celebration.

“Man, I am so glad you got Soda,” he says.

“Thanks, man. Who’s with you? Do you have a guardian?” I ask Tommy.

“No, it’s just me!”

I’m a little taken aback. Tommy is just fifteen, but I ask no questions.

“Put your shit down, let’s go eat,” he says.

I throw my suitcase in the corner and we head for the elevator. It stops on the fifth floor.

“Hey, guys!” says Darren Dalton, a tall kid who got the part I was praying I wouldn’t get, Randy the Soc.

“Why aren’t you on our floor?” I ask.

“Dude, our floor is Socs
only
. We have these amazing suites, free room service, gym privileges—it’s so cool!”

“Yeah, Francis wants us segregated,” Tommy informs me. “He’s given them more per diem, better rooms, and these embossed leather script binders.”

“Aah, I see, he’s trying to create a class system on the set, trying to make us Greasers jealous,” I say.

“Well, it ain’t working,” cackles Tommy. “If anybody’s jealous, it’s them about us, since the Greasers are the fuckin’ stars of the movie!”

Tommy and I laugh and high-five, busting Darren’s balls. On
The Outsiders
, ball busting will become a fine art.

Coming back from dinner, we come upon an amazing spectacle. There must be fifty girls around our age congregating around the Excelsior lobby. I remember the body language and the low-level hysteria from being mobbed in Riverside and I recognize them at once as fans. But of whom?

At that moment, Matt Dillon saunters past and the girls sway en masse like willows in a spring breeze.

“Um, hey. What’s shakin’?” asks Matt in his patented, laconic cool-guy fashion. It’s a little hard to hear him, as he’s carrying a gigantic boom box that’s playing an obscure song by T. Rex.

None of us really know Matt well; we are the L.A. group after all, and he is the embodiment of the “New York actor.” He is already well established as a fledgling matinee idol and, more important, has Tulsa wired from starring in the movie
Tex
, which he shot there six months ago. He knows the rub on all the levels. We had crossed paths at the New York auditions but now we make our introductions in earnest. Matt is funny, wry, and has a sort of jaded charisma that none of us possesses. As we talk, the girls twitter and whisper in the background.

“Aaah, man, I’m
tired
. See ya at rehearsals,” he says, hoisting his boom box to his shoulders. He crosses to the elevators and passes the gaggle of fans. Then something remarkable happens. He stops dead in his tracks and whispers to a pretty brunette. She listens for a beat, then turns to the four girls she’s standing with and whispers something to them. Matt fiddles with the volume on the boom box. The girls caucus together for a total of four seconds till the brunette leaves her friends behind and joins Matt for a walk to the elevators. He puts his free arm around her. At the last second, just before they enter the elevator, she turns back to look at her friends. Her expression is one I’ve never seen before. It’s like she has a thought balloon over her head that reads: “Holy shit! How lucky am I?!” Matt yawns, and the elevator doors close. The entire transaction takes less than forty-five seconds. So
that’s
how it is, I think, and take note. Matt Fuckin’ Dillon. My hero.

Rehearsals begin the next morning in an abandoned elementary school. The classrooms are used as the film crew’s production offices, the auditorium/gymnasium as our rehearsal space. I’ve never rehearsed anything but a play, and there is no real rehearsal in television. Since we are playing two of the three brothers at the center of the film, Tommy Howell and I are already beginning to connect in a way that will hopefully pay off emotionally later when we need it in our performances. We stand in a corner of the musty, dirty gym with Tom and Emilio, who pulled an all-nighter driving from Point Dume.

“Who is playing Darrel?” asks Cruise, who had auditioned for the part of the eldest Curtis brother.

“We still don’t know,” says Howell. It’s been a bit of a soap opera, the search for this last actor in
The Outsiders
puzzle.

“I heard they offered it to Mickey Rourke but he turned it down,” Emilio says.

“I heard he turned down
all
the parts,” says Ralph Macchio.

Someone proffers up a tidbit that Fred Roos has pulled the casting rabbit out of the hat by finding an actor who never auditioned with us in L.A., a much older guy who did a movie where he danced around on roller skates.

“What’s this guy’s name?” I ask.

“Patrick Swayze,” says Emilio.

Minus the mysterious Mr. Swayze, who will arrive later, the entire cast begins what will end up being over two full weeks of rehearsals. Only years later will I learn that this lengthy, luxurious preparation was due to the movie’s funding collapsing. While behind the scenes the future of
The Outsiders
hung in the balance, we blithely submitted to Francis’s unique methods of preparation.

On the first day, we read through the script, get haircuts, and have wardrobe fittings. We cut off early, as Francis wants us up by 8:30 in the morning for a meeting at the house we will use as the main set.

The next day we pile into vans and are driven into the terribly run-down, desolate neighborhood where 80 percent of the movie will be shot. When we arrive at the small, beat-up two-bedroom home that will be the Curtis brothers’ house, Francis stands in the weed-filled dirt yard, waiting.

“Hi guys. Gather round,” he says in his relaxed, earnest, and brainy way. Sometimes Francis sounds a little like Kermit the Frog but with a deeper register.

“I want us to meet like this on the spot where we will work, and to be together. I feel like we should do this every day. And now, I’d like us all to begin our day with a half hour of tai chi,” he says.

I don’t know what tai chi is. I look around for a deliveryman. Maybe it’s some sort of Asian takeout—which would be great because I’m starving. But as I scan the horizon, I see it’s just us—Francis and his Greasers—standing around in the dirt. Francis begins swaying and gesticulating in slow motion, almost like he’s underwater.

“Tai chi is the art of energy transformation,” he says. “It builds concentration, strength, and balance. It puts your body in harmony with its environment.” We all form a line and begin to follow his movements, and that’s when I recognize the motions as the ones Martin Sheen did in front of the mirror at the beginning of
Apocalypse Now
. As the exercises drag on, I think: Martin’s character was in Saigon; my character is in Tulsa. Why does a ’50s Greaser know or care about tai chi? But if the world’s greatest living director thinks we should stand on our heads to prepare, we should probably do it.

Patrick Swayze arrives in time for the next day’s rehearsal. He walks into the gym as cool as you want, wearing tight jeans and a tattered, sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt revealing his massive, ripped arms. (This is his uniform, he never changes it, and if I looked like him, neither would I.)

“Hi, I’m Buddy,” he says, squeezing my hand with such enthusiasm that it could snap like a twig.

The guy is
yoked
. I mean he is literally made of iron. He’s very high-strung, amped, and ready to storm the battlements at the drop of a hat. He’s a Texan with a legitimate drawl, so he’s a great arbiter of “Okie” accents. Buddy is also a decade older than the rest of us, and married, so on that level he might as well be a Martian. But that, too, serves him well as the older brother Darrel, who is farther down life’s road.

“Hey guys, I had a notion that you are all acrobats,” says Francis, entering the gym sipping an espresso. “In fact, I’d like you all to go down the hall for some training,” he adds, heading over to greet Swayze.

“You bet, yaaaaawoooo!” hoots Swayze, clapping his hands and yelping like a wolf. I love his enthusiasm. He makes Tom Cruise look lobotomized.