The Time of My Life (11 page)

We lived these roles, staying in character almost all the time. We became like a gang ourselves, hanging out together, smoking cigarettes, going out for drinks, and just generally running wild. Those were crazy days on Hollywood lots, with drugs, alcohol, and testosterone fueling everything—though the Greasers’ drug of choice was beer. And Francis ratcheted things up a notch with his style of directing, which was aimed at bringing out the most realistic emotions possible.

Francis was all about instinct and the pursuit of perfection. He was one of the most demanding directors I’ve ever worked with, and he stopped at nothing to get the performance he wanted. He’d talk to you and draw you out, finding your deepest, darkest secrets. Then, on set, he’d announce them over a loudspeaker for everyone to hear. This had the effect he wanted—my blood would pound when I’d hear his voice over that speaker—but it’s a brutal way to bring out an emotional performance.

Francis and I also clashed after I asked him about camera angles for a couple of scenes. I was curious about the art of filmmaking, and here I was working with the master—I figured it was as good a time as any to ask questions and learn how it was done. But when I asked him about why he chose to shoot in certain ways, he misunderstood why.

“Ah, everyone knows that all dancers are interested in is looking at themselves in the mirror,” he said to me.

This was a real insult, and it was all the worse coming from a legendary director. I didn’t care about how my face looked onscreen—I wanted to be the best actor I could. And if he
didn’t believe that was so, why had he cast me? Francis’s comment really pissed me off, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, except show him how hard I would work in my performance. Which is probably what he was angling for in the first place.

With all that said, I loved Francis and would have worked with him on anything. He brought out performances we never thought possible. Anything went on that set—it was as if he’d given us all permission to create these amazing characters and live in their skin. The climax of it all was the final “rumble” between the Greasers and Socs, where we didn’t just act out a massive gang fight. We really
had
a gang fight, with fists flying and blood running and guys pounding on each other.

Francis brought in a bunch of local kids, and on a day when the rain came pouring down, he put us all together in a giant muddy lot to battle it out. He whipped us up, telling us to make it as realistic and violent as possible, and when he set us loose, everyone went crazy. Guys were beating on each other, punching and kicking and wrestling in the mud. In the middle of it, one guy came charging at me with a wild look in his eyes. He was coming to lay me out, and the only way I could keep from getting hurt myself was to hurt him. I punched him hard in the face and knocked him unconscious.

There was actually some choreography planned for the rumble, with each of us fighting specific people, but by the end everybody was just whaling on everybody else. But the really interesting thing was that all of us Greasers stuck together, watching each other’s backs like this was a real gang fight. Our survival instincts kicked in, and we fought with a kind of primal animal fury. It was a brilliant, reckless piece of filmmaking, and by the end of it we felt as bonded as any real gang.

Tom Cruise had the smallest role of any of us, but he worked harder than anyone. Even then, at age twenty and with very few credits to his name, he was as driven as anyone I’d ever seen. For the scene in the movie where the Greasers are heading out to the rumble, Tom’s character does a backflip off a car in excitement. I taught Tom that move, and in fact Lisa and I taught most of the other Greasers a few gymnastics moves to use in the rumble. I was the big brother in the movie, and I felt like one on the set, too.

I also taught Emilio, Tommy, Ralph, and Rob how to hop freight trains. Growing up, I used to hop freight trains to Galveston so I could go surfing at the beach there. There’s an art to it: You have to pick a spot where the train will slow down, such as a freight yard or residential area, and then time your jump so you sail into the open door rather than under the train. We spent a lot of time together, shooting pool and just hanging out, most often in character.

I had a blast working with all the guys, and I particularly bonded with Tommy Howell. We’d met on the set of
Urban Cowboy
, where his dad was a stuntman, and we had a shared love of the cowboy life. Tommy was a true cowboy—he loved horses and had even been a junior rodeo champion, and he and I remained close after
The Outsiders.
In fact, over the next year and a half, we would act in two more films together:
Grandview, U.S.A.
and
Red Dawn.

When
The Outsiders
came out, the posters and promotional materials showed all the Greasers posing in denim and leather, looking tough with our hair slicked back. We all got a lot of attention from the film, including the inevitable
Teen Beat
and
Tiger Beat
magazine photo spreads for girls. Tom Cruise didn’t want to do those photo shoots, since he was self-conscious
about his teeth and thought he wasn’t good-looking enough. But he got roped into it just like the rest of us, and before long, he became the biggest movie star of all.

One thing I’ve always loved about being an actor is getting the chance to travel all over the world for work. In the course of our careers, Lisa and I have been fortunate enough to travel to places as far-flung as India, Namibia, Hong Kong, Russia, and South Africa, as well as beautiful locations all across the United States. It was just after
The Outsiders
that we got to travel to our first exotic location—Thailand—for the 1984 film
Uncommon Valor
. I traded in the first-class airplane ticket the studio bought me for two economy seats, so Lisa could join me in Bangkok.

Starring Gene Hackman and Robert Stack,
Uncommon Valor
was about a group of Vietnam veterans who return to Southeast Asia to rescue a buddy who’d been taken prisoner in the war. I was excited to be working with Gene Hackman, who was already a huge star thanks to his roles in movies as diverse as
The Conversation, The Poseidon Adventure, The French Connection, Bonnie and Clyde
—and the list went on. Getting this role was another step in the right direction, continuing the momentum that was starting to build in my career.

It was a big break to be cast with Gene, and he took me under his wing on the set. He was unfailingly professional and very generous with his time and insight. He also taught me a very big lesson about acting, telling me, “You’re not here for yourself. You’re only here to serve.” This fed right into everything I’d studied in Buddhism—that it’s only through learning to serve that you can become a master. Gene devoted
himself to his movies—even if it took twenty takes for the other actor to get it right, Gene would be right there, delivering his lines with the same energy and dedication. Every single time. It was mesmerizing to watch him work.

Meanwhile, my role called for as much fighting as acting. I played a cocky young Special Forces soldier who’s brought in to train the Vietnam vets. On the set, I was taught by ex– Special Forces guys, learning hand-to-hand combat techniques from the best in the world. In addition to traveling, that’s another of the things I love best about my job—getting the chance to learn new skills from the top experts in each field. I’ve been lucky enough to study martial arts, kick-boxing, surfing, skydiving, and many other skills on movie sets. It’s been like having my own personal training to become Doc Savage, my childhood hero.

For one scene in
Uncommon Valor
, I fought a character played by Randall “Tex” Cobb—a former boxer turned actor who’d gone fifteen rounds with heavyweight champion Larry Holmes just a year earlier. Tex’s character in the movie, Sailor, was crazy—but no crazier than Tex himself. He was a classic barroom-brawler type, a huge man with a fleshy nose that lay flat against his face, supposedly because he’d had the cartilage removed so he could take more punches. The beating Tex had taken in his fight with Holmes had been so severe, Howard Cosell had retired from calling boxing matches in protest that the fight wasn’t stopped sooner.

When Tex and I went at it in the river for our big fight scene, he was really hitting me—pounding and pounding my upper body in an exhausting series of takes. The man was a professional boxer, and the blows he landed were solid. I didn’t want to look like a wimp, but I finally had to speak up.

“Tex,” I said, “I know you’re supposed to kick my ass in this scene, but you’ve got to back off a little bit here.”

“What’s the matter, Little Buddy?” he spat back. “You can’t take it? Is it too much for you?” I liked Tex, but the sneer on his face as he taunted me was too much. And when he started pounding on me again, finally knocking me down hard in the river, I lost it.

Tex had punched me hard enough to spin me around and put me on my hands and knees in the river. I got up slowly, and without looking at him I took a hitch step backward, went one running step, and hit him square in the face—harder than I’d ever hit anyone in my life. The blow rocked his head back, and when it came forward again I saw that he had a big old smile on his face. And then he laughed.

“Is that all you’ve got, Little Buddy?” Tex said, chuckling. I just stared at him in disbelief. I’d hit him with all my strength, and he hadn’t even felt the blow.

It was as if nothing could hurt Tex. As a result, he seemed to think nothing could hurt anyone else, either. One time, he was carrying an AK-47 loaded with blanks, but instead of handling it according to the set’s safety rules, he aimed it right at my crotch and pulled the trigger. As he laughed maniacally, a burst of fire and smoke shot out, frying my pants and damn near turning me into a eunuch.

But as crazy as Tex was, he and I ended up becoming good buddies. Nobody else would share a dressing room with him because he was too much of a wild man, so I did for a while, until his partying ways got to be too much for me, too, and I pitched a tent for myself nearby. Tex loved Bangkok’s red-light district, Patpong, and spent plenty of nights there—as did many of the other guys in the cast and crew, some of whom
later had to be treated for gonorrhea. But only one guy decided to stay behind after we wrapped filming: Tex. He cashed in his plane ticket home, and the last we saw him, he was heading back to Patpong. We did eventually see him a couple more times over the years, but whenever I’d ask how he finally made it out of Thailand, he’d just say, “Little Buddy, you don’t want to know.”

Uncommon Valor
was a good movie, for what it was. But I still wanted to find roles that would stretch me more as an actor. In
The Renegades, The Outsiders
, and
Uncommon Valor
, I played tough young guys who knew how to fight. The characters were different in many ways, but only in degree. And I was getting tired of playing characters younger than myself—I easily looked five or ten years younger than I was, so that’s how I was always cast.

But after
Uncommon Valor,
I was cast in
Grandview, U.S.A.
for the role of Ernie “Slam” Webster, a Demolition Derby driver in a love triangle. Slam Webster had something of the wild child in him, too, but he was more mature than my other characters, making this the first time I was cast as a more mature man, rather than a young man. Tommy Howell was cast as Tim Pearson, my rival for the hand of Michelle “Mike” Cody, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Lisa worked on the film, too, choreographing a dream dance sequence—the first time she and I worked together on a movie. I was especially happy she was there because the town where we were shooting—Pontiac, Illinois—had only about ten thousand people, so there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do. In fact, Pontiac’s main claim to fame was its prison, which employed or incarcerated most of the people in town. Just about the only half-interesting place to go was the Courtyard Hotel,
where the Teamsters and other movie crew stayed. We called it the Gorilla Villa.

Apart from getting drinks at Gorilla Villa there wasn’t much to keep us occupied in Pontiac, so
Grandview
marked the beginning of what became a tradition for me: playing elaborate pranks on the set. I may have been cast in my first “adult” role, but off camera I was playing pranks like a big kid. And I didn’t endear myself to the director, Randal Kleiser, with one I played on him.

One night, Lisa, Tommy Howell, and I had been invited over to the house where Randal was staying during the shoot. After we left, we got the bright idea of going back to sneak in, as we thought there might be something interesting going on with Jamie Lee Curtis. I can’t even remember what we thought might be happening, but we were bored and probably tipsy, so we headed back over to Randal’s place.

Lisa stayed in the car while Tommy and I found an open door and snuck upstairs. Jamie Lee wasn’t there, but we did overhear Randal in a, shall we say, private moment with someone else—so we turned around and hightailed it back out. Randal must have heard us and realized who it was, because the next day on set he was pretty cool to me. Lisa was embarrassed, and although Randal didn’t hold it against her, he did later make reference to the fact that she’d driven the “getaway car.”

But that prank paled in comparison to the ones pulled on my next movie,
Red Dawn
. In fact, everything on
Red Dawn
was epic in scale: the hard-core training, the controversial plot, the insanely rigorous shoot, and the antagonism between myself and a certain young actress—one who would later dance with me in the movie that shot us both to stardom.

You can call me the General,”
Red Dawn
director John Milius announced. “Swayze, you are my Lieutenant of the Art, and I’ll direct these little fuckers through you.” With those words, Milius put me in charge of the cast of
Red Dawn
— Tommy Howell, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, and others—for the grueling shoot in the mountains of New Mexico.