Love Life (2 page)

In this particular era in SoCal, characters and oddballs weren’t limited to the medical profession. Local values and customs also made for a great education in human nature.

Among my age group growing up in Malibu, no one was more hated than anyone hailing from the San Fernando Valley. “Valleys,” then a pejorative on par with the horrific use of the N-word, was thrown around to describe people who had the audacity to live over the hills in the suburban sprawl of Van Nuys, Encino, Sherman Oaks and Calabasas. Much more traditional, conservative, and working-class than most anyone living on the coast, these kids had to battle for a claim to enjoy Malibu’s beaches and surf spots.

The great irony was that the Valley kids, also known as “Kooks,” were every bit as good and often better than the locals were at surfing.
Fights would break out on the sand and in the water with equal frequency. I once saw a guy strangling another with his surfboard leash; another time I watched an
Outsiders
-like rumble in the parking lot at Zuma Beach. It looked like a California version of Hitler’s Aryan Nation, dressed in board shorts or wetsuits, beating the snot out of each other. This would come in handy later, when I shot a giant teen fracas in my first movie.

When I was old enough to get my learner’s permit and began to explore the dangerous and dreaded Kanan Road, which led to the Valley, I found that it wasn’t as bad a place as I was led to believe.

I discovered that the blast furnace of San Fernando produced its own landlocked answer to Malibu’s would-be stars. At the beach, the hot band to watch was the Surf Punks. In the Valley, the Runaways were trailblazing the path for all-girl bands to come. In auditions around town, I was often coming up on the losing end of Ventura Boulevard phenom Rad Daly. Already a staple of
16 Magazine
and
Tiger Beat
, Rad was the guy you had to beat for every middling sitcom pilot. (At that early point in my career, most of the projects I could land a meeting on were middling at best.) Soon, fellow second-generation performers like Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa would become as well-known as the Sheen and Penn brothers.

Kids in the Valley had their own vernacular—absolutely no one in Southern California spoke as they did—and when Moon Zappa documented it perfectly in the song “Valley Girl,” the entire country co-opted “Grody,” “Like, I’m so
sure
!” and the evergreen classic “Gag me with a spoon.” Valley girl–speak’s cultural importance can (unfortunately) not be overstated. Overnight, perfectly well-educated and articulate kids adopted a faux-bimbo lilt and hair-flopping attitude.

Coming, as it did, at the very moment popular entertainment
culture was beginning its now-total contempt for anything learned or adult, the song “Valley Girl” was the seedling riding the airwaves from which many of today’s verbal tics sprung. Linguists now have a term for this dumbed-down singsong lilt: “uptalk.” The next time your teenage kid says the word “like” twice in a five-word sentence, you’ll know whom to thank.

If Malibu was a bastion of laissez-faire, self-centered, malignant disregard, the San Fernando Valley was a different ecosystem entirely. Families still had some semblance of the traditional Protestant values left over from their dust bowl, post–World War II kin who had settled the place. Or think of it this way: In the decade from 1976 to 1986 Tom Joad’s kids were the parents in the Valley. In Malibu, it was Hunter S. Thompson.

But there were plenty of lessons of a different sort to be learned from the kids of Ventura Boulevard.

In my peer group from Malibu, although some families were very successful in show business, it would be a few years before the young generation took the baton. Not so in the Valley, and so I got that valuable shot in the arm that any young dreamer needs; I took comfort in seeing that I was not alone. I ran into (and sometimes up against) Moosie Drier of
Oh, God!
and
The Bob Newhart Show
fame. And Kim Richards, the go-to cute little blond girl from all the Disney movies. There was Jennifer McAllister, a talented actress who was doing movies like
Sybil
and who appeared to be the next Jodie Foster, who was also in the mix, already an institution from movies like
Taxi Driver
and
Bugsy Malone
.

The royal family of the Valley was, without question, the Van Pattens. The patriarch, Dick Van Patten, was the star of
Eight Is Enough
, one of the biggest shows on TV, and had an army of great-looking sons and cousins who were always competing at a high level in sports and entertainment.

As you can see below, in the late 1970s there was another version of Camelot, just off Ventura Boulevard.

Kennedys vs. Van Pattens

To a scrub like me, this seemed like an impenetrable show business/sports/girl-chasing dynasty. I seem to recall losing a role or
two to one of the clan in the early days, possibly the role of “Salami” in
The White Shadow
, which went to Timothy Van Patten. And a few years later, as I got my act together in terms of girls, I would diligently court a gal only to see her drive by in Vince Van Patten’s convertible. You can never truly understand the power that a little fame, achievement and good looks can have until you see it up close, and it was very clear to me what side I wanted to be on.

Eventually, I ended up spending a fair amount of time at Patten Place, the large group of apartments Dick owned on Riverside Avenue in the heart of the Valley. It was an early version of what the Oakwood Apartments are today: a safe, clean harbor for struggling actors and the odd, dubious hanger-on. After he beat me out for the part of “the new kid” on
Eight Is Enough
late in its run, Ralph Macchio and I became close on my first movie,
The Outsiders
. Ralph lived in Patten Place, next door to “the Nike Man,” a
Tiger Beat
talent scout who seemed to have an endless free supply of the latest Nike wear and who gave it away to any handsome teenage boy he ran across. He also had an obsession with the talk show host John Davidson, whose shows he watched repeatedly on an early-era Betamax.

The Nike man was one of the first people I encountered who made their living around the edges of show business but who weren’t actually
in
show business. It may have been the first and certainly not the last time I saw that not everyone got into show business from artistic passion.

The Valley also had a monopoly on actors who were tremendous and tough athletes. In Malibu, the only sports you could expect anyone to participate in were surfing and volleyball. My tastes were more traditional and if I wanted a vigorous game of hoops or football, I would have much better luck on the other side of the hill.

The godfather of show business athletics in the Valley was the king of television, auteur Garry Marshall. He hosted a notoriously elite,
every-weekend basketball tournament at his Tarzana home. As the creator of
Happy Days
,
Laverne and Shirley
and
Mork and Mindy
, he had a very deep bench to draw from. I was thrilled to be included once or twice, with mixed results. Believe me, there is nothing more demoralizing than being dunked over by Lenny and Squiggy or the Fonz.

But Garry was also a great early supporter of my acting career. After many auditions for his series, in early 1980, he cast me in a pilot for his next big TV show,
Mean Jeans
. Unfortunately, the title was the only thing funny about this sitcom set in a hip designer jeans shop. When the Pointer Sisters agreed to sing the title song, I thought I was going to be in a hit. I was wrong. The show never made it to air, sparing the nation the experience of me as a teenage, woman-crazy tailor named Tucker Toomey.

Garry Marshall’s benevolence extended far and wide. With his empire, he was able to give first breaks to many, including a pretty blond Valley girl from Taft high who dreamed of being a makeup artist but had no experience. Garry gave her her first job. Many years later I met this now-top-makeup-artist on
Bad Influence
and married her. Garry was the first person invited to my wedding with Sheryl.

The Valley is rimmed on its southern side by the storied Mulholland Drive. High atop the hills, it snakes its way through hairpin turns, romantic lookouts and breathtaking vistas of city lights. But more importantly to me, it was the address of the biggest icons of my youth: Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty. They were everything I aspired to be: authentic artists, titans of their time, while being time
less
and known for a wild streak that made them cool and a little dangerous. When Nicholson’s
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
came out, I saw it twelve times. I then went back once more, smuggling in a tape recorder, so I could listen to it whenever I wanted. When Magic Johnson came to the Lakers in 1979, I sat in
the nosebleeds to see him and saw Jack sitting courtside. “How cool,” I thought. A few years later, when I had some success of my own, I bought Lakers floor seats, directly across from Jack.

When
Heaven Can Wait
came out, I took the bus into Westwood to see it opening weekend at the Mann National Theater, the same theater that would eventually premiere my first movie,
The Outsiders
. Warren Beatty’s costar was Dyan Cannon, whose daughter, Jennifer, I would very briefly date. Even as a teenager, being a young actor on the LA dating scene would eventually put you in a direct or indirect competition with the master Hollywood ladies’ man.

Warren’s reach and domination was so profound, even Jack Nicholson called him “the Pro.” He lived in a notoriously cool pad on a shaded turn of Mulholland that always reminded me of the secret entrance the Batmobile used on
Batman
. And, like the caped crusader, Warren owned the night and pretty much anything else he wanted. By the time I was getting a foothold with my first starring roles, he was the embodiment of what a former matinee idol could achieve: from pretty to profound, with his brainy, socially significant
Reds
dominating the Oscars that year.

I had been dating a young, successful actress whom Warren had befriended. To her credit, whenever she was invited “up to Warren’s,” she would ask me to join. In my stupidity, I always said no. Even a day with my hero couldn’t get me into the sweatbox of the Valley when all my pals were hitting the beach in Malibu.

But one night I made an exception.

I hopped into my girlfriend’s two-seater and began to climb to the top of the Hollywood Hills. Mulholland Drive, named after William Mulholland, the visionary engineer who figured out how to bring in the water that built modern LA, led me past Jack Nicholson’s house and I instantly thought of his masterpiece
Chinatown
, about the intrigue of getting the water that built modern LA. Soon we arrived at
a set of chic, modern gates. Inside, the driveway rose even higher to the top of the most scenic spot of the Valley’s southern rim. We parked in the motor court of a sleek, contemporary, white one-story home. “Understated glamour” would be the best description of its style.

Warren met us at the door. I had never met him in person but had spoken to him a few times when he would call my girlfriend. He was always charming and welcoming. At one point he gave me the lowdown on my soon-to-be leading lady in the movie
Class
, Jacqueline Bisset. (“She’s a champ,” he said.)

“Oh, hey, come on in,” he said, welcoming us into an almost totally empty living room. “I, uh, I’m so sorry it’s so bare. I’ve had a couple of years away at work and haven’t really furnished much.”

I knew he was referring to the legendary and famously long shooting of
Reds
and I noted his unassuming understatement. Scanning the room, I did notice one furnishing: his Oscar for Best Director for
Reds
sitting on the otherwise empty mantel.

Oscars are everything you would imagine them to be. To see a real one in the flesh, for an actor, is to see the crown jewels. It’s the most recognized and coveted totem in the world. (An Amazon aboriginal would know an Academy Award on sight but not a Nobel Prize.) They are both easy to hold and extraordinarily heavy. Warren’s Oscar was glinting and new, unlike the first one I had seen a few years earlier on a debauched late-night rendezvous with an actress who had won years earlier. Sitting on her TV in a tiny apartment in the flats of Hollywood, hers was worn and corroded, with specs of green in its creases.

Watching Warren pad around his house, I was struck with the thought that he looked exactly like Warren Beatty. If you have ever met a star in the flesh, you know it goes one of two ways: They look so good they’re almost like impersonators of themselves, or you think, “Oy! What happened to them?”