Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (20 page)

I think Demi and I wondered the same thing, and so after the meeting adjourned, we spent the next few weeks trying to figure it out ourselves. Between the
Youngblood
workouts in the daytime and hanging out with Demi in the evenings, I was burning the candle at both ends.

Whether Joel Schumacher cast me of his own volition or was forced to by the studio is open to debate (I think he was forced), but one way or another, I got the role I wanted in
St. Elmo’s Fire
a week before I left to shoot
Youngblood
. For the first time, I was starring in two movies back-to-back, and my agents were looking for a third. I could feel the expectations and the pressure build around me. Part of me loved it; part of me was scared. Within my family, I had also taken on a new role. With the money I’d made so far, I bought my family a house. A home owner at twenty—this was an irrevocable step into responsibility and adulthood. It also changed the balance of power in our family. As Cyndi Lauper was singing at the time, “Money changes everything,” whether you want to admit it or not.

The public attention had been getting progressively more out of hand and now was just unmanageable. It was not unusual to be mangled at an airport by Argentinean schoolgirls on holiday or followed on roads and highways by coeds, secretaries on lunch break, or moms from the carpool. Sometimes this adoration was nice and human, with a real connection and feedback, and it gave me a rush. Sometimes there was no interest in me as a person (let alone as an actor) whatsoever. It was as if people were on a big-game safari and had stumbled across a living Bigfoot and just wanted a hair sample and a smiling photo. These encounters left me feeling like I was living in a zoo, but I denied myself the realization that it bothered me. After all, who the hell was I to look askance at such good fortune?

One day I picked up a copy of
USA Today
. On the front page was one of their famous (and hilariously banal) pie charts that are meant to present a daily snapshot of America. On that day the title was “Who We Love.” According to the graph, 10 percent of America loved Simon Le Bon, 28 percent loved Tom Cruise, and 68 percent of America loved me. Now even I couldn’t deny it. I was The Next Big Thing.

I should have been elated. From as far back as the hours spent at the Dayton Playhouse, my driving goal was to have an acting career. I had worked hard, taken advantage of luck and opportunity when it came my way, and succeeded beyond anything I would have thought possible. But satisfaction often took a backseat to an unnameable sense of unease and low-grade melancholy. These feelings weren’t always there, and when they did bubble up, I was able to quiet them by throwing myself into work or play with a vengeance. But late at night, or anytime I was left alone with myself, doubt, fear, and unease would rock me oh so gently, subtly, and quietly, like a baby in a bassinet. Never enough to raise an alarm, yet always enough to remind me it was there. Someday I would need to get to the bottom of it. But not yet.

CHAPTER
14

Patrick Swayze and I reunite for
Youngblood
and I am once again enthralled by his mastery of anything physical. While I had to work hard to look good on my skates, he seemed to be a natural from the start. But by the first day of shooting, we both look like we’ve been skating forever.

The producers need to fill the large arena where we are shooting with a crowd, so they invite fans to come see us in the flesh. Swayze and I take bets on how many would show. I think maybe five hundred; he thinks more like a thousand. When two thousand people show up, some carrying handmade signs and all going crazy, we can’t believe it.

“Hey, little brother,” says Swayze, “looks like we’re hot shit!”

He skates out to a giant roar and cross-steps like Wayne Gretzky into the corners.

I skate out to an ovation and fall on my ass.

Swayze is a relentless spirit. He never sleeps, works out like an animal, and writes and records music on a portable studio he has set up in his hotel room. He has written a song for
Youngblood
called “She’s Like the Wind,” and he lobbies 24/7 to get it into the film. Everyone “yes’s” him to death, hoping he’ll forget about it and get back to acting. Eventually he
will
get the song into one of his movies—it will be a breakout smash for
Dirty Dancing
.

As the shoot grinds on, I am often in full hockey gear in my trailer with a saxophone around my neck. It’s not a good look, but lunchtime is the only moment I have free to prep for
St. Elmo’s Fire
, which will shoot as soon as I wrap.

By the time I’m done with eight weeks of fourteen-hour days on or around the ice, I swear I will never lace up a pair of skates again. And while it’s definitely been a rush to have fans surrounding my trailer and milling in the hotel lobby, I’m relieved to return to the other half of my life at home in Malibu, with my family.

The property I bought has a guesthouse for me that I have designed to my specifications. It’s about what you would expect from a twenty-year-old in 1984. Modern, stark, with lots of glass—picture a set from
Miami Vice
. Even though my family is living on the same one-acre lot, it’s the first place I can call my own. I barely have time to acclimate before I’m off to Washington, D.C.

*   *   *

In the classic film
The Exorcist
the priest, now inhabited by the demon, throws himself down a long, foreboding stairway somewhere in Georgetown. After a long night of “research” for
St. Elmo’s Fire
(it’s about a bar after all), I find myself with Emilio and Judd Nelson at the top of these stairs, peering into the darkness below.

“This is pretty freaky,” I offer, as we try not to tumble to the bottom in our present condition. Judd breaks into a perfect Linda Blair and recites some of the movie’s more memorable lines involving hell, mothers, and fellatio.

We are a week into shooting and I’ve never had more fun in my life. Once again I’m working with Ally Sheedy and Emilio. Judd is new in my life and I discover that he is whip smart and hilarious. It’s my second movie with Andrew McCarthy. I adore the wildly talented Mare Winningham and envy Emilio’s on-screen romance with the stunning Andie MacDowell. Demi and I connect so well on-screen that I don’t mind when she jumps ship and switches to a more serious relationship with Emilio. It’s one big, fun, wild, talented bunch—a sort of “pack,” if you will.

I have a theory that sometimes an actor gets a character that they love so much that they can’t let go. They lose themselves in the exciting, or possibly frightening, challenges the role offers. Directors, producers, and even studio executives egg you on, thrilled that you are inhabiting the role so well. All your needs are catered to; your only responsibility is to deliver this character to the screen. You get swept up in the moment, and if the right part comes to you at the right time, you stop playing the role and start living it. It becomes your persona.

I sink my teeth into Billy Hicks, the lady-killing rockin’-and-rollin’ funmeister, and never look back. For so many years I was the nerd, the last picked for sports teams, the acting freak, the one who couldn’t get the girls’ attention. Now I have the part of the guy I could never be, no matter how hard I tried, and people love me in it. So I run with it. For a long time.

*   *   *

My return from shooting
St. Elmo’s Fire
is met with sad, tragic news. During the filming of a stunt for the TV show
Airwolf
, a helicopter has gone down. On board was my friend and stunt double, Reid Rondell. He would not survive. I mourn the loss of a friend and colleague and am reminded that although accidents are rare, filmmaking can be dangerous. This is also the week the space shuttle
Challenger
explodes. Along with the rest of the country, I grieve for the brave crew and their families. I am moved by President Reagan’s beautiful and soaring eulogy, which included the beautiful lines of poetry: “They … ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’” It is stunning oratory and I look up the White House speechwriter who crafted it. Her name is Peggy Noonan, and I make a note to follow her and the other West Wing speechwriters in the future.

Having spent the last six months starring in two movies back to back, I am ready to have some serious fun. A phone call from Emilio provides a perfect excuse.

For weeks, Emilio has been trailed by a reporter from
New York
magazine, who is doing a cover story on him as the youngest writer, director, and star to make a movie since Orson Welles (it’s true, you can look it up). He’s been swamped in postproduction, in editing rooms, and in marketing meetings on his movie
Wisdom
. (In hindsight, I could have used a little wisdom myself when I agreed to join him and the reporter for an off-the-record dinner). Emilio is worried that the reporter has only seen his serious, hardworking side and is eager to show him that he can have fun as well. He also wants to take him out for a night on the town as a thank-you for all the hours spent on the profile.

A spur-of-the-moment dinner party is put together at our favorite hangout, the Hard Rock Cafe. Our gang from
St. Elmo’s Fire
is invited and we are all still in some way living our characters’ relationships. Judd Nelson joins me, and a number of fun girls are invited, in case the writer is single. When we take our usual booth at the Hard Rock, the place is pretty chaotic. It’s full of buzzed kids our age, all looking to have a good time. Sexual possibilities are everywhere; there is food for days and more kamikazes than the emperor’s fleet at Midway. The reporter, a balding, skinny guy who made no real impression on anyone, eats and drinks with us like it’s his last night before the electric chair. Emilio, always generous, picks up the very large tab. The writer hugs us all good-bye and thanks us as he hops into his cab. Judd, Emilio, and I watch him go.

“Thanks, guys. I think that went really well,” says Emilio happily.

A few weeks later, the writer drops his story about Emilio as an auteur. Instead, he writes a sneak-attack, mean-spirited hatchet job about our dinner in his honor.
New York
magazine runs it on its cover with a studio photo from the soon-to-be-released
St. Elmo’s Fire
. The headline: “Hollywood’s Brat Pack.”

According to the reporter, what he observed during our dinner wasn’t the exuberant camaraderie of peers or a celebratory thank-you for him, but the obnoxious exploits of a “pack” of interchangeable, pampered, spoiled, vacuous, attention-seeking actors who were long on ambition and fame but short on talent or humanity. As he drank our booze, ate our food, and chatted up the girls at the table, he gave us no indication that he held us in such condescending, low regard.

The “Brat Pack” article was an instant classic. In one cover story, an entire generation of actors, many of whom weren’t even present, were branded with an image conjured up to sell magazines. Some of these actors would never escape this perception or the moniker. The story primed the pump of an inevitable media backlash against the industry’s growing obsession with youth. Other reporters duly took their cues from the story, and overnight every profile had whiffs of the article’s passive-aggressive vitriol. So, when
St. Elmo’s Fire
opened shortly thereafter, the critics were ready to hate it. And they did.

But audiences don’t care about
New York
magazine and most don’t read reviews.
St. Elmo’s Fire
opened to big box office and was the must-see date-night movie of the summer. Its soundtrack was inescapable for weeks, went to number one on the charts, and became a romantic classic that people are “married and buried to” to this day.

The film captured an idealized yet believable world where friends were everything and you faced an uncertain adult life together. The character of Billy Hicks stood out in a cast of compelling characters, and the poster of me with my saxophone sold out its run and could be found in bedrooms and dorm rooms around the world. When I went to a Halloween party and saw guys dressed as me from
St. Elmo’s Fire
, I knew that the movie had hit the zeitgeist bull’s-eye.

My instinct on which part to play proved correct. Billy was just the right mix of sex, trouble, humor, and empathy to be the role that I’m asked about and identified with more than any other (with the exception of Sam Seaborn on
The West Wing
). The lovable rake became a large part of my persona and I embraced it, on all levels. Having spent quite enough time sitting in the nerd area of the quad, I was ready for this seismic change.

And the “Brat Pack”? Although the term spent at least a decade as a vague pejorative in the press, interestingly, a lot of the public saw it as something cool. To them it was just their version of the Rat Pack: a group of people whose movies they dug and who seemed to have fun making them. Nothing more, nothing less. Of the many great attributes fans have, my personal favorite is their ability to see through salesmanship, cynicism, and bullshit.

But for the actors
in
the Brat Pack, this new scrutiny, the minimizing and condescending lumping together of very different talents and personalities, took a toll. It was the end of the carefree, innocent nights on the town together, and the end of a number of friendships. Some never got over their resentment and some never had the chance to work their way to being identified with other, perhaps more iconic, projects and roles.

And while the writer acted like a scumbag, he did coin a great phrase. And so today, I own it. I’m proud to have been a leader of the “Pack.” Twenty-five years after the summer of
St. Elmo’s Fire
, there are rereleases, TV specials, and anniversary articles. It’s always an honor to be part of something that stands the test of time.

And to the writer, if you are still around somewhere and read this and want to apologize, I am open to sitting down to dinner. But this time, you can pay.

*   *   *

From the time I was a young kid, politics were exciting to me. Back in Dayton, Ohio, in the years when I was being shuttled to play practice in my stepdad’s VW, I would listen to him bitch about Richard Nixon and follow the Watergate hearings he was listening to on the radio. I punched in numbers at the phone bank to roll calls for Senator Howard Metzenbaum and sold Kool-Aid for McGovern, whom I snuck under a barricade to meet. It was in the waning hours of the ’72 campaign, at a large rally on the courthouse steps. I slid up through his security detail and tugged on his raincoat.

“I hope you win,” I said.

“Me too,” said McGovern.

Now, years later, the Hollywood political machine has taken note of my expanding public profile. My early acting heroes had almost always been activists (Newman, Beatty, Redford), and so when the call comes to join Jane Fonda for a “coffee and a discussion at her home,” I am excited to go. Not only am I predisposed to take an interest, but also Hollywood activism seems like an esteemed tradition.

I park on a busy residential street in Santa Monica, looking for Jane Fonda’s address. I’m surprised she doesn’t live in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, hidden away behind big gates like the other stars. But then again, there is no one quite like her. She starred in some of my favorite movies.
The Electric Horseman
,
The China Syndrome
, and
9 to 5
on their own would today be considered an entire career of achievement. But this wouldn’t include her debut,
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,
or her Oscar turn in
The Morning After
. She has an important production company. She is suddenly making millions of dollars with her workout tapes. Before anyone in Hollywood was entrepreneurial or smart enough to think of “branding” themselves, there was Jane in her leg warmers.