Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (17 page)

*   *   *

In 1983 Timothy Hutton is the only guy around our age who already has an Academy Award. He is the top dog—and for a good reason. But now I hear he has pulled out of what was to be his next movie,
The Hotel New Hampshire
, based on the best-selling book by John Irving. Irving’s last film adaptation,
The World According to Garp
, was a critical and box-office success, so
New Hampshire
has a big profile from the start. Now that Hutton is gone, everyone is scrambling to get the coveted lead role of John, the book’s narrator.

Like Coppola, the film’s director, Tony Richardson, is an Academy Award winner, as well as a revered leader of the new wave of English cinema. Tony’s film
The Charge of the Light Brigade
was one of the most important British films ever made, and with
Tom Jones
he won his Oscar for best director. He is a rebel (like his ex-wife, Vanessa Redgrave, who is the mother of his lovely daughters Natasha and Joely) and one of the more eccentric directors still valued within the growing commercialization of the studio system.

I hike up the long driveway to a large home with a breathtaking view over the Sunset Strip. A staffer lets me in the front door for my first meeting with my prospective director at his home high in the Hollywood Hills.

“Come in, come in. I’m in the living room,” a strange, wonderful voice calls out, the sort of voice you could never forget.

I follow the voice and as I round a corner and enter a two-story living room, a large parrot swoops through the air and attaches itself to my face. Blood erupts through its beak as I try to fight the thing off. It’s squawking and flapping, beating me in the head with its wings. I grab the bird by its neck and pry it off of me. It flies up into the rafters, where I see it gather with a number of other birds, all clearly let wild in the house.

I don’t think I’ll make a very good impression with blood running down my face and I don’t want Tony to know I almost broke the neck of one of his prized pets.

“Um, I’ll be right there!” I call as I scurry to the kitchen to clean off my wound. After a moment, I enter the den, where Tony is sitting, working on the script.

“Hello, Rob. What’s wrong with your face?” he asks as we shake hands.

“Bar fight,” I say, and he laughs.

We spend the next hour talking about the movie. He tells me he has cast Jodie Foster as the heroine, and the iconic sex symbol and current It girl European actress Nastassja Kinski as the troubled romantic interest who wears nothing but a bear suit in the movie (only John Irving could come up with this). Beau Bridges will play the patriarch. We talk about the challenges of portraying a character who will age a decade in the movie and about the themes the story deals with, many of them controversial, including incest and rape. Tony tells me that he wants to make a sweeping epic about an eccentric American family, and to pull it off he will need the right actor to anchor the movie.

I realize I am listening to an iconoclastic visionary trying to see his way clear to making a studio movie into a grand, yet accessible, art film. But he reminds me of Coppola and I’m honored to be in the running for a challenging role in a movie of such big themes.

“When do you think you’ll start reading actors for the part of John?” I ask.

“I won’t,” he says.

“Oh, really?” I reply, trying to hide my surprise. After the gauntlet of
The Outsiders
, it seems inconceivable to me that a director would have no auditions at all.

“There’s no need to,” he continues.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because I’ve found who I want,” he says, eyes twinkling mischievously. “It’s you.”

It was the first—and last—time a director had the vision and the guts to give me a role in the room. He didn’t consult with producers, agents, or the studio. He just did it. We started shooting in Montreal, Canada, three weeks later.

*   *   *

Sitting in the lobby of the Manor Le Moyne in Montreal, my latest home away from home, waiting to meet Jodie Foster, I’m really nervous. I’m a huge fan. (Forget the landmark
Taxi Driver
, how about
Bugsy Malone!
) I think she’s beautiful,
know
she’s smart (she has made headlines as the first star to take a break from Hollywood to conquer the Ivy League), and am unsure how to handle all of the controversy that surrounds her. Ever since John Hinckley shot President Reagan, trying to impress her, she has been under unrelenting scrutiny. Some asshole nobody kook looking to gain the spotlight violated her private life and in the process almost ruined it. At the time, I couldn’t possibly imagine what that must be like.

Jodie turns out to be the great joy of
The Hotel New Hampshire
. We connect immediately. We are both child actors in transitional phases of our lives and careers, share similar working styles (no drama, no nonsense), and have loving, smart, and very complicated mothers. Shooting the movie will be the beginning of a long friendship during which I will watch her grow into her potential, despite the adversity. Jodie Foster should be any actor’s role model. She is certainly mine. Many years later, my personal life would painfully and very publicly implode. Of all the many people I had known or worked with over the years, there was only one who took the time to write a note of support: Jodie.

The atmosphere on a movie is often dictated by its subject matter and, if the director has a strong vision, his personal worldview.
New Hampshire
was awash in familial deep-bonding and bed hopping that would make a Feydeau farce seem tame. The major underlying theme of the book is painful and sometimes complicated sexual awakening, and Tony Richardson created an atmosphere of exploratory, innocent permissiveness that resulted in something like a free-love commune. The backstage sexual energy would then be captured in our work on-screen. Coppola wanted to toughen his cast; Richardson wanted to break down conventional relationships.

One evening, after a long, emotional day of shooting, Nastassja Kinski stops me in the hotel lobby.

“Rob, how about you and me tonight? Dinner?” she says, fixing me with a laser stare, her massive eyes glowing. I’ve not really had much interaction with her even though the film is halfway complete, because in truth, I find her intimidating.
Time
magazine has just placed her on its cover as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.” I’m barely nineteen years old and have no experience with a woman of her beauty, sexuality, fame, and angst-filled charisma.

“Um, dinner? With me?” The minute I say it, I know I’ve revealed myself as the acting nerd from Dayton, Ohio, and not as a newly minted movie star. Nastassja gives me a look that says, Helloooo? Do I need to spell it out? and replies, “Yes.
Tonight
.”

“Oh, yeah! Sure! No problem. Sounds good,” I answer, trying to sound casual. She gives me a full-lipped, pouty smile and walks off.

Holy smokes! What just happened? Obviously, I know where my duty lies in this situation, but YIKES! This is the woman whose dark, erotic (and nude) performance in
Cat People
had me playing the cassette of the theme song over and over. Also, anyone who could wrap herself in a python (in her famous poster) has got to be a force to be reckoned with. This is going to be some evening.

And so began a wonderful, adventurous, and intense on-set relationship. We practically created our own world, working on an emotionally demanding and ambitious film all day, then retreating to each other at night. Clearly it also meant the end of my already hot-and-cold long-distance romance with Melissa. And although we would be in each other’s lives off and on for some time, it would never be the same.

The Hotel New Hampshire
remains among the most emotionally intense location experiences of my career, second only to
The Outsiders
. The film itself, however, was crushed at the box office by a little movie called
Splash
, starring my fairy princess, Daryl Hannah. Looking at
New Hampshire
today, I can’t imagine that any current studio would green-light it, in spite of the book’s best-seller status. It’s not a movie for a mass audience. Its quirky, provocative plot, which spins toward the two leads committing incest, would relegate it to low-budget, independent-movie status, at best. As for the finished product, it’s a heroically flawed movie, reaching for something great and sometimes coming very, very close. It attempts too much and also accomplishes much. I’m very proud of it. I wish more people had seen it.

CHAPTER
13

Back in L.A. after months of shooting on location in Montreal, I’m emotionally hungover. I gave my all in my performance, fell in love (literally) with my New Hampshire family, and now we’ve scattered back to our individual lives. It’s over. Just like that. I’m still only nineteen years old and the end of every movie feels like a breakup. I cover my malaise by looking for fun and adventure wherever I can find it, most often on nights out with the boys. Since
The Outsiders
, this has been a habit and now it’s accelerating.

With most of my friends away at college, I return to the sanctuary of the Sheens’ Gilligan’s Island–like pool. Emilio and I continue where we left off—hard-core workouts, tons of reading and auditioning, doing postproduction on the various movies we’ve wrapped, and trying always to improve our standing and our ability as young actors. By this time, both our little brothers have thrown their hats into the ring as well, so they aren’t busting our balls anymore. Tom Cruise is also around, and he and I are awaiting the release of
Class
and
Risky Business
, respectively. I’ve seen
Risky Business
and know that the first-time writer/director has created something original and very stylish. But I’m not sure anyone is prepared for how huge it would be or the velocity at which it would send Tom into orbit. I’m hoping that with
Class
I can have similar success.

Then I pick up a copy of
Newsweek
and read the review of
Class
. A quick glance at the table of contents sets the stage—“Film Preview:
Class
—A Vile Concoction, page 98.” The critique itself has the single best and most prominent use of the word “debacle” that I will ever read. I have to laugh, it is so brutal. I’m relieved that the reviewer left the actors fairly unscathed, and truth be told, the many competing chefs
had
created a concoction. It’s clear
Class
is not going to be my
Risky Business
.

Many people still buy into the idea that actors can control and plan their careers. This is, to put it plainly, bullshit. Sure, if you are a directing auteur like Spielberg or Cameron, you can control everything you do, but an actor? C’mon. Even the biggest star is at the mercy of the material offered to him. You hope and pray you have a good part, then you hope and pray the rest of the script is equally good, then you hit your knees and beg other people who you think are talented to join you, then you cross your fingers that they don’t hack it up, phone it in, or fall down on the job. After the movie is done, you say the rosary, read the Torah, and otherwise try to ward off the bad editors, meddling studios, terrible ad campaigns, horrible release dates, unforeseen snowstorms, and critics lying in wait. If you are lucky enough to successfully navigate all of these variables, then maybe, just maybe, you will be rewarded and the audience will show up and give you a hit. All any actor can really do is take the best material available at any given time, do good work, and hope for lightning to strike.

After the release of
Class
, I begin a pattern that will take me through the rest of the decade, shooting two movies a year on location and trying to catch up on life (and my sleep!) in the few months in between. It’s a nomadic, transitory existence, punctuated by hotel rooms and brief, heated relationships. I have very little contact with anyone not involved in the world of filmmaking. My dream of a legitimate career in movies has been achieved, but there is no real sense of victory. I’m too busy trying to build on this momentum to take stock of what’s happened so far, or how I feel about it.

*   *   *

New York City is a magnet. I return again and again, using American Airlines Flight 21 like a luxurious shuttle. These were the days when you knew you would find someone interesting on the plane, when flying was fun and not something to be dreaded. With a hiatus between movies and a growing new circle of industry pals to see, I’m back in Gotham. I do have one small piece of business to attend to, and it will put me face-to-face with one of the more memorable icons of the twentieth century.

Andy Warhol wore a wig, right? The great man has passed and there is no longer need for discretion on this account, correct? Whether he did or he didn’t, to my unsophisticated eye at the time, the hair, the ’50s beatnik glasses, the black uniform, and the skin like tracing paper—they added up to an unforgettable impression. Surely there isn’t anyone reading this who can’t picture him clearly in their mind’s eye, the rare art-world superstar who himself would have a lasting personal image. I first meet Warhol in an unadorned, nondescript warehouse. In the ’80s, if it didn’t happen in a crappy warehouse, it wasn’t cool.

Andy has a camera team recording as he interviews me for his underground cable-access TV show, which is a mixture of Manhattan celebrity avant-garde art and unapologetic commercialism that only Warhol could create. Think
Wayne’s World
for people who smoke clove cigarettes. I am not a student of the contemporary art scene, but I am curious to see what a noted cultural genius like Andy Warhol will want to talk about.

“What’s it like to be famous?” Andy asks. His voice is actually even more striking than his look, if that’s possible—an odd mix of a sly, singsong whine and a sexed-up, ironic Liberace. All of his follow-up questions are in the same vein: queries on “celebrity,” the definition of “beauty,” and the world of “movie stars,” a term he loved. I do my best to sound like I know what I’m talking about, and soon it’s over.

On my way out he stops me. “I want you to meet Cornelia [Corneeeeeeelia],” he says. I know he is referring to Cornelia Guest, the eighteen-year-old blue-blood heiress, “debutante of the decade” and all-around Manhattan It girl. I’ve seen her picture in the papers and think she’s cute.

“Sure, that’d be nice.”

“We will pick you up and go to Diana’s concert tomorrow,” he says, referring to Diana Ross’s free concert in Central Park. We make a plan to meet.

Andy, Cornelia, Diana. It’s a very different crowd from my pals back on Point Dume. This is the fastest of the fast, intriguing and achieving and in the spotlight at the center of the contemporary cultural stage.

There are one hundred thousand people crammed into the meadow in Central Park. Dark, ominous clouds threaten on the horizon. Diana Ross insists on doing the show despite alerts for deadly lightning strikes. Before the dangerous weather and torrents of rain force her to stop, she will give what is today considered a historic performance. Sitting in the wings, Cornelia, Andy, and I know we are seeing something extraordinary.

As the giant storm breaks, the masses run for cover. One hundred thousand people trying to get out of the park on a good day would be pandemonium; with lightning crackling and thunder crashing, it is dangerous chaos.

The three of us navigate the panicked throngs, wading through ankle-deep mud, and hiding as gangs of hoods exploit the confusion to rip jewelry off the soaked, defenseless concertgoers.

We take shelter at Café Central, just off Central Park on the Upper West Side. Known as the launching point for any legit night on the town, at this midday hour it is deserted and we take a table at the window to watch the scene outside.

The bar is famous for its kamikaze, mixed until recently by Bruce Willis, who has just left his position running the best bar in Manhattan to try his hand at acting. Turns out, he is pretty good at that as well.

“Let’s play a game!” suggests Andy, with little-boy enthusiasm.

He clears the flatware on the paper tablecloth and grabs a bunch of crayons at the center of the table.

“I want everyone to draw their best version of a pussy,” he says mischievously. “Don’t let anyone look at it until we are all finished.”

If nothing else, I feel this exercise will provide a good source of conversation with Cornelia, who I’ve been trying to chat up, without gaining much traction. She grabs a crayon and starts drawing furiously, as does Andy. I cover my part of the tablecloth so they can’t watch and begin my artwork. I make a calculated call to go hyperrealistic. I begin to work on an almost gynecological rendition of a vagina, a subject I am having more and more experience with these days. The three of us work in concentrated silence. Soon we are all done.

“Okay, show yours, Cornelia,” orders Andy, and she presents a fairly demure-looking pussy of the Patrick Nagel school. I go next, unveiling my hypergyno masterwork. With a flourish and a cackle, Andy Warhol reveals his sketch. It’s a rudimentary stick figure version of a cat.

“Now
that’s
a pussy!” he says.

Later we all sign our names below our work at Andy’s instruction, because “that’s what artists do.”

Youthful pride and a desire to seem cool prevented me from taking Andy’s drawing as we left. This glamorous world was new to me and I didn’t want anyone to know how unsure I felt in it. Only now do I see how often this held me back, kept me from making real connections and, more specifically, a signed original Warhol!

Years later, after Andy’s death,
The Warhol Diaries
was published. I was happy to see that our day together had made its way into his amazing journal of an extraordinary life.

*   *   *

In the fall of 1983 I arrive in London to shoot a movie called
Oxford Blues
. It’s the first script to come my way that will give me the true lead, complete with first billing—a big step in a young actor’s career. The film deals with a cocky American who has a crush on a European princess and schemes to meet her. I suggest we try to get Princess Stephanie of Monaco for the role. It would require little acting on her part, or mine either, since she’s a real princess and I have a crush on her from afar. Inquiries are made. There is no response.

The shoot is entirely on location in Oxford, England. I’ve never been to Europe, and I have a horrible time with jet lag in the first few weeks. On a weekend trip to London, the city is paralyzed when an IRA bomb detonates in front of Harrods department store at the start of the Christmas shopping season, killing a number of innocent shoppers. I’m getting to see the world from beyond the traditional American perspective, and some of the things I’m seeing are troubling. But some are thrilling.

I become close with the young producer of the film, an Englishman named Cassian Elwes. One weekend he invites me to his family’s country estate, Runnymede House. Jet lag once again has me awake at sunrise, so I’m killing time by walking in his enormous backyard, or “garden,” as he calls it. I come upon a giant elm tree and underneath it is a massive rock, about the size of a dining room table. It’s covered with leaves, but my eye catches something beneath the debris. I clear away the dirt, leaves, and cobwebs to reveal a metal plaque, its lettering worn by time and weather. I climb up onto the rock to read it. It says, “On this site the Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215.” My on-set love affair in England was not with a costar, but with the country itself—the history at your fingertips, the traditions that are still embraced and revered, and the cleverness of her people. I was smitten and still am.

With
Oxford Blues
complete, I fly to New York City to do publicity for the opening of
The Hotel New Hampshire
. For the press tour of
Class
a few months earlier, Andrew McCarthy and I did a sort of two-man bus-and-truck tour of the country, appearing on local morning news and talk shows, staying in giant suites, and getting to know various locals somewhat intimately. It was an adventure in room service and benign debauchery. Believe me, after you do your tenth morning show where they want you to cook an omelet while asking you what Jacqueline Bisset is like, you’re looking to blow off some steam. (This publicity road show is so gruelingly banal that for the movie the studio released before
Class
, all the actors refused to do it. The studio was forced to send a
parrot
that appeared in the movie instead.)

But this trip to New York holds more promise. I land at JFK and get into a limousine for the ride to the hotel (this being back in the day when actors didn’t insist on street-cred SUVs or enviro-cred Priuses). Then I’m off to meet Jodie Foster and her roommate at Yale, Jon Hutman (later to be the production designer on
The West Wing
), and their group of friends. We are to rendezvous at a new underground club called Area.

There is an absolute mob standing in the bitter cold outside a nondescript metal door to a ramshackle building in an obscure location in downtown Manhattan. Although I still have a decent share of my privacy intact, most people under the age of twenty-five, particularly girls, know who I am, so there is a commotion as the bouncers help me navigate inside to find my friends. I haven’t been to many clubs (I’m still two years away from drinking age), so I feel the kind of exuberant, giddy excitement of possibility that the occasion calls for. As I enter the club and pass the live performance art of a fully naked woman sleeping, I am unaware that this place, at this moment, is the living embodiment of the innocent excess of the ’80s. Every era has its high-water mark—that one irreproducible moment so full of promise that people can spend their entire lives trying to recapture it. For the go-go 1980s big-city club scene, it all crystallized on this night in a Manhattan warehouse. Soon enough, we would learn that cocaine was bad for us and so was conspicuous consumption. We would hear of a new disease called AIDS. But these game changers were unimaginable this night and the club is filled with a level of energy and abandon that might never be seen again. Depeche Mode is blasting as bodies move. The new young voices in literature, Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis, icons like Andy Warhol, important actors like Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson all hold court, and music stars like the Go-Gos drop by to flirt and mingle. Sitting with the lovely and hilarious Jodie, I am exactly where I want to be, surrounded by this incredible group of creative talent at the top of their game.