Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (14 page)

We shoot in a neighborhood park breathtakingly lit by Francis and Steve Burum. Masses of equipment surround the perimeter. Coppola wants it to be windy, so a Ritter fan with blades the size of a turboprop is standing by. I’m laughing and joking with Swayze and Howell, trying to quell the emotion I can already feel, just under the surface.

A technician cranks the giant Ritter fan and points it at the rows of towering elm trees. The blast is powerful enough to bend the branches. In the beautiful, eerie light it looks like a storm is brewing.

“Action, Rob!” Francis yells. Five cameras shooting different angles and sizes roll. The crew of fifty or so people watch quietly as I race into the park, chased by my two brothers. As I reach the baseball backstop, they tackle me in the pool of light created to play the scene. At the end of this very long take, I dry my eyes, feeling pretty good. Francis sends us back to go again. Once more, I’m tackled into the backstop. After another eight or nine takes, I’m starting to tire emotionally, but I know I’ve given 100 percent. I’m glad we had five cameras to capture every moment.

“Hey, buddy, good job,” says Swayze, giving me a long, hard hug.

“Thanks, man,” I say, punching him in the arm.

Francis comes ambling out of the darkness.

“Hey, how ya feel?” he asks, putting a big paw on my shoulder.

“Good. Um. Good. You?”

“I think it’s time to do your close-ups,” he says, full of encouragement.

I can feel my legs go to rubber and my pulse skyrocket.

“Um. None of the cameras were close-ups?” I ask, trying not to panic.

“Oh, no. They were all extremely wide. Now we’ll punch in and really get the emotion!” he says, walking off to set the shot.

Standing alone now, I know I’m in deep trouble. Through take after take I have poured my heart out, cried my eyes dry for the last hour. I have nothing left, and I’m terrified. I’ve wasted all my emotion on giant wide shots where you probably can’t even see my face. I feel like an idiot.

I don’t dare tell anyone. I begin to pace, to wind myself up to refill my tank. It will take them a while to reset the cameras; maybe that’ll be enough time for me to regroup.

Soon they’re ready. No need to run through the park and be tackled now. I throw myself to the ground on my own. The camera is two feet from my face. It’s not a good sign that as I begin my “breakdown” speech, all I can think about is that I’ve probably said these words over fifty times on camera, but this will be the only version that will matter. I try to wrestle myself back into the scene, but I can’t; I’m thinking one thing and one thing only: I can’t possibly duplicate what I did in the wide shots. And it turns out to be true. Where I wept before, there is nothing, no tears, and no real emotions. So I do what all actors do when they have nothing authentic left to offer: I begin to act.

I can feel everyone around me tighten up. It’s obvious that it’s not happening for me. The take ends.

“Let’s go again,” says Francis.

“I hate it when you two fight,” I say to my brothers (please, God, let me get this, let me let go, I need to cry again, this is for
everything
). Howell and Swayze are willing me to the finish line but I can’t get there. I’m actually more locked up than I was in the previous take.

“Okay. Let’s all take a ten-minute break,” offers Francis. The crew wanders off to smoke or get coffee.

“Hey, c’m’ere!” says Tommy Howell. “I wanna talk to you.”

We step off the set into the shadows to be alone.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

“I … I … I … can’t … I…”

“Fuck that, man. You
gotta
. You can
do
this! This is what it’s all about. Right now! You, me, and Swayze!”

I’m looking at my feet, getting lectured by a fifteen-year-old.

“I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know to save it for the close-up. Nobody told me,” I say lamely.

Tommy grabs me by my face, hard.

“Look at me,” he says, his eyes shining. “I love you. You’re my brother. We’re gonna get you ready.”

And then come the most loving, generous, wise moments I’ve ever shared with another actor. He starts a narrative, a hushed, hypnotic story of our life together as orphaned brothers. He tells me about our mother, how beautiful she was with her blonde hair, and about the day she nicknamed me Sodapop because I was always so happy. He asks me to remember Dad and how much we miss him—his strength, his laugh—and reminds me of the pony he surprised us with at Christmas. As he winds down, he pulls me close to him and whispers: “There’s no one else like you in this whole wide world, Sodapop Curtis. You’re my brother and I love you so much. You’re all we have left.”

“Come on, guys,” calls Francis. “We’ve got about twenty minutes before the sun’s up.”

“Don’t listen to that,” says Howell firmly. “You’re ready now. Go nail this fucker like you know you can.”

We walk back onto the set. I’m full now—full of the emotion I need, full of love and of unending gratitude for this amazing friend. His compassion and leadership will remain unmatched in my professional experience.

Francis rolls the camera. I do the scene. This time, there are tears. When it’s over, I hug my brothers as the sun breaks over the horizon.

CHAPTER
12

The letdown that ensues when returning home after making a movie on location is something that all actors struggle with, particularly young ones. Fighting a stuntman, shooting a potential blockbuster, and living in your own hotel room is always going to trump doing chores, being back in your old bedroom, and answering to your parents. You’ve been on a high for weeks on end and now it’s back to “normal” life surrounded by people who can’t really relate to what you’ve just experienced. So while I still hang out with my girlfriend, Melissa, and my high school buddies, I’m spending more and more time down the block at the Sheens. Emilio and I are inseparable and in constant touch with Cruise and Tommy Howell. We all have a suspicion (and a hope) that we’ve just been a part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can’t, sort of like having a superpower that’s not come online, or being a president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but in a few months everything—we think—will change. It’s a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect and, as I do with any situation that makes me feel at all uneasy, I have found a way to deal with it.

“Pass me a beer,” I call to Emilio as we sit, going over a script. There are stacks on his desk and I recognize all of them. With
The Outsiders
in the can, the only others who share our suspicion that big things may lie ahead are a few key studio executives. They aren’t offering us movies, as the public, for the most part, has no idea who we are, but they want us to come in and read for major roles. At a minimum, my days of not getting the meetings I want are over.

Some of the Outsiders have already capitalized on the industry buzz. Francis immediately hired his favorites, Matt Dillon and Diane Lane, for his next movie,
Rumble Fish
. Tom Cruise is about to do a movie called
Risky Business
. I finished shooting
The Outsiders
and was starring with the great Gena Rowlands in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie,
Thursday’s Child
, within a week. In a measure of my small, but growing, status, CBS held the project until I was available to shoot it. (It would bring me my first Golden Globe nomination, for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television.) And now, as I sit sipping a Corona, Emilio and I are preparing to read for a cool romantic comedy called
Class
. We are both trying for the same part, a boarding-school virgin who mistakenly falls in love with his rich roommate’s mom.

As always, there is affectionate competition and industry chatter among our group. The consensus is that Cruise is taking a chance with
Risky Business
. The script is funny, but dark and weird; the director wrote it himself and has no experience.
Class
, on the other hand, clearly has a great shot at being huge. The director is coming off the critically acclaimed movie
The Great Santini
, with Robert Duvall. I work hard on my audition, awed to be traveling in the same creative circles as the Duvalls of the world.

In the Sheens’ backyard there is a professional batting cage. My brother Chad and Charlie play all the time, still hoping to become baseball players. They rib Emilio and me mercilessly about being “serious actors!” As Emilio and I help each other run lines and prepare, we can hear the thwack of the bat in the distance. They have no patience for our show-business shoptalk. But we both have big momentum and are pressing the advantage.

*   *   *

I’m led to a back area of the historic Beverly Hills Hotel. We wind through lush landscaping and fragrant gardens. I ask the girl taking me where we are going and she says simply, “The bungalows.”

I come to find that there are a number of private cottages, some quite large, hidden away from the more downmarket riffraff occupying the main hotel building.

“Welcome to Mr. De Laurentiis’s bungalow,” says the girl, with a heavy Italian accent. She leads me into a large living room, where a fire roars in spite of it being well over a hundred degrees outside. “Champagne?” she asks, and even though I rarely, if ever, turn down such an offer, I decline. After all, I’m here to interview for a movie.

Dino De Laurentiis single-handedly created the postwar film industry in his native Italy. Among the many movies he produced over the years were Fellini’s
La Strada
,
Three Days of the Condor
,
Serpico
, and
King Kong
. He is interested in me for the lead role in his latest epic, the long-awaited adaptation of Frank Herbert’s
Dune
. It is, by far, the most talked about movie of the year. It will also be the most expensive. Mr. De Laurentiis is building a brand-new studio from scratch just to shoot it.

After a good wait in the sweltering living room, I am called to a dark, paneled study, not unlike the one at the beginning of
The Godfather
. All that’s missing is a wedding outside. Mr. De Laurentiis sits at a desk, reading some sort of voluminous document, while a casting director throws me softball questions meant to show the great man my charisma and personality. A number of Italian businessmen watch and listen closely.

Figuring (correctly) that he might be interested in what fellow Italian Francis Ford Coppola has been up to on
The Outsiders
, I show him a cast photo I’ve brought along. I want him to see me “in character” as a sneak preview, as the film hasn’t been released yet.

For the first time since I entered the room, De Laurentiis looks up from his reading. He considers the group shot of the Greasers and raises a hand, stopping my conversation with the casting director midsentence.

They then begin an animated conversation in Italian and soon the business guys join in as well. Mr. De Laurentiis is getting very excited, looking at me almost for the first time, nodding to me as he also looks back at the photo. Soon everyone is nodding and looking at the eight-by-ten. Dino is excitedly tapping his finger on the picture and now, at last, a word I can understand: “Star! Star! Star!” he exclaims as he points at the cast photo. I lean over the desk and realize he is pointing at Matt Dillon.

In spite of the Italians’ enthusiasm for Matt, somehow I end up with the offer to star in
Dune
. This is the exact kind of film that takes an actor to the next level. Huge leading-man part, giant budget, international appeal, and a built-in fan base for a book people have been trying to shoot for years.

But there are two problems: There is no finished script and Dino is demanding a commitment for three sequels.

It’s hard to imagine now, as you look at films today, but there was a time when no self-respecting actor would
dream
of making a sequel. It was gauche, it was so shamelessly commercial, that it simply
wasn’t done.
(And don’t give me the
Godfather II
example. That was an anomaly.) You didn’t see
Heaven Can Wait 2
or
An Officer and a Gentleman: Boot Camp
,
Tootsie Too,
or
Four Days of the Condor
!

Eventually the stigma would be scrubbed away by corporate pressure, bottom-line-minded studio presidents, producers needing to keep the lights on, and stars tired of turning down cash while waiting for artistic parts that never come. But as I discuss the offer for
Dune
and its three sequels on the phone with my agents, it is a real issue. I table this discussion and turn to the problem of the nonexistent shooting script. While not uncommon, it’s never a great sign.

My agents tell me that I can approve it before I show up for work. I won’t have
official
approval, but “they’ll work with me.” Again, not a great sign, but I’m inclined to roll the dice. The upside on a movie like this is just too big.

“I just want to circle back to the sequel commitment clause,” says one of my agents. “You will be committing to potentially doing all three
Dune
movies at their option.”

“I’ve only read the first two books,” I say. “Anyone read the third?”

“I have,” says one of the agents.

“What do I do in it?” I ask.

“You become a sandworm.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You become a sandworm. A big one. About three hundred feet long.”

“I … I … I’m a
worm
in the second sequel?” I ask.

“Not all of you, just your head,” says my agent evenly.

“It’s a long, wormlike body, I do think it calls for three hundred feet, but it is only your head that would be seen, on top of the body. A worm-head, for lack of a better description.”

There is a long silence.

“Not a huge commitment when you really think about it,” adds another agent helpfully.

“Um, guys, I’m gonna have to get back to you,” I say, hanging up.

As I will do for years whenever it’s crunch time and I need to make a tough call, I take a long walk to think. I agonize over the decision. But I just can’t get the image of my face on a giant tapeworm out of my head. I know the Italians are the world’s masters of style, but I doubt even they could pull this off. I pass.

Dune
ends up being an embarrassing debacle for all concerned. In spite of all the money and hype pumped into the movie, it died a horrible death. Had I done it, though, I guess I wouldn’t have had to worry about the sequels.

*   *   *

At home, my relationship with my family is in a strange, transitional phase. I’m earning a living and supporting myself but still living with the family. I’m changing by the day, growing more independent, branching out, and leading a life that includes them less and less. Steve has now turned part of our house into an office, where he sees his psychiatric patients on the weekends. There’s nothing like being told to “be quiet” as an odd lot of troubled adults file through your home to make a teen boy want to flee. Mom is more reclusive than ever and when she is out from behind her closed bedroom door, she is likely to be fighting with Steve. It’s an uncomfortable, sad, tense vibe, palpable enough to affect me, but not enough to prevent me from doing what I do best in these situations, which is to tune out. I love my mother but I have no idea what she needs and don’t have the tools to find out.

I still go for my summer visits to see my family in Ohio. Chad and I sleep until noon, wander downtown to have lunch with Dad in his twenty-fifth-floor corner office, and spend the rest of the day playing endless rounds of tennis and draining every bottle of Little Kings Cream Ale we can find. My father remains the most vigorous, vivacious, tough, and charismatic man in my life. Our grueling matches on the dark clay of the Hollinger Tennis Club are fueled by love, pride, and competitive rivalry. I learn of sportsmanship (and sometimes lack thereof ), focus, and intensity. My dad is a former teaching pro and I rarely get more than a game or two off of him. In fact, I will not beat him until I am forty years old. At the time, he had recently survived lymphoma, and I was happy to show him no mercy. Neither of us would have it any other way.

But there are many other lessons that teenage boys need to learn. And most of these can’t be taught over pizza at midnight or on the tennis court. I only know this now because I see it with my own teen sons. They don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it’s hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most. Especially boys. In spite of our separation, I took those valuable lessons from Dad and also the ones that I could from my increasingly checked-out mom. But I was facing bigger stakes by the day in work, and in every area of my young adult life. And as I had done so many times before, I looked inward and formulated my own ethos as best I could. Like with so much in my life, I was making it up as I went along.

*   *   *

Paul Newman is wearing his Chiefs hockey jersey from
Slap Shot
as he ushers me into his office. If I had to choose the ultimate person to work with (and emulate in every way), it would be this man with the famous lavender eyes now sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“Have a seat, kid,” he says, as if he’s talking to the Sundance Kid. I sit on the floor with him and we begin my audition for the movie he is directing called
Harry & Son
. I try to push away any thought about the possibility of being Newman’s kid on-screen.
That
would be beyond belief. But other than meeting my lifelong idol, the rest is uneventful. I get the impression I’m not what he’s looking for (eventually he will cast Robby Benson) and we say our good-byes.