There and Back Again (6 page)

This was one of those big Hollywood moments, the kind you see depicted in movies or books, and think,
What a cliché
. But the fact that the stories are rooted in truth is what makes them clichés. As we ate lunch and discussed my situation, I tried desperately to prove to them how sophisticated I was about the machinations of Hollywood, the art of filmmaking, and the evolution of an actor. They listened and nodded a lot, but in the end I pretty much left them in the position of saying,
We wish you had more power than you do, Sean. But we can't get that for you right now. So your only option is to do this movie or not do it. It's your call.

That wasn't quite true. CAA was the five-hundred-pound gorilla of the entertainment world, and if they had chosen to fight for me and my interests with a little more vigor, it might have made a difference. Looking back on it, however, I understand their reluctance. There is a pecking order in Hollywood, and I hadn't yet reached the level of influence that warranted the agency's devotion. That comes only with success on a grand scale. It has nothing to do with honor or integrity; it's simply business, and the business can be ugly.

After lunch, on the drive back to CAA, I thought hard about what I was going to do. I was angry, but trying not to let my emotions rule my intellect, because I knew that if I chose poorly, my career (and my family) would suffer. I remembered my father's stories about how he once got everything he could get out of a deal on a television show. He pissed off the head of a studio because the network wanted him and he had them over a barrel. So my dad, lovable Gomez Addams, beat them up and left them bloody. The result was a predictable degree of satisfaction for having gotten what he could, followed by the inevitable professional backlash. In the end, my father realized he had overplayed his hand. And it hurt him. So his admonition to me was, “Be careful.” Those words echoed in my ear as we pulled into the lot at CAA. Before the doors opened, I said, “Guys, I'll do it.” They asked me if I was sure, I assured them that I was, and I walked away figuring that at the very least I had bought myself a few more months at the power station.

There was just one problem. I had already arranged a meeting with Ricardo Mesterez, the head of Hollywood Pictures, the man who had figured out that the best way to get to me was to appeal to me as an artist and a filmmaker. Everything about my experience with
Encino Man,
thus far, had led me to question my involvement in the project, so I figured who better to help me through the crisis than the man who had secured my services. Ricardo graciously agreed to see me, but I realized almost instantly that there was nothing to be gained from the meeting. He asked me what was wrong, and I began stumbling over my words. Here was this well-educated corporate success story, and I couldn't articulate my problem for him. I told him I felt lost in the project, and that I wasn't happy. Calmly, pleasantly, Ricardo asked, “Well, what do you want to do about it?”

I'm impulsive and emotional by nature, but I realized then that the best thing to do was to give the matter some serious thought before saying another word. I had given my word to my manager and agent that I would perform in this movie without complaint, and yet here I was, getting ready to complain again. I asked myself,
Who am I, and how do I want to be perceived?
By whining to the studio every time something bothered me, I risked getting a reputation for being “difficult.” So I leaned forward in my chair and said, “You know what, Ricardo? I'm sorry I called this meeting. I'll go back to work now. I'll figure everything out on my own.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I think I just needed to see you and be reminded of my responsibilities. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

The first day I showed up on the set, Pauly was barking out orders, almost running the show, and the director was responding to him the way directors respond to a star. My situation was a little different. The idea that I had complete creative control over my character, as I'd been promised, was a joke. Not that I really wanted or expected that. I was trained to believe that the director is in charge. As a journeyman, working actor, I believe that you give the director what he or she wants. And you gauge your success by how happy the director is. That's how I was operating on the set of
Encino Man.
I didn't want to think about what I wanted for the character; it was too hard and required too much emotional investment on my part. I didn't view it as an important enough movie to warrant that kind of investment, so even if I had a chance to employ creative control over my character, I wasn't especially interested. Sometimes I'd express an idea, and Pauly would sort of run over me; then I'd apply a little emotional balm by calling my accountant and saying, “Did a check clear today?”

“Yeah.”

“How much was it for?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

I'd hang up the phone, walk up to the service truck, and say, “Can I have another burrito, please? Thanks. And can I get some chocolate bars, too?” Then I'd sit there and stuff my face.

I'd use food to anesthetize myself. I didn't want to be there. I had sold out, and I felt bad about it. I felt bad about myself. I remember my agents visiting the set at a warehouse where we were filming out in Valencia one day, and we sat down for lunch, and I had a big plate of food in front of me, but I couldn't eat. Not a bite.

“Sean, you're not eating anything, man. What's the problem?” somebody said.

“I'm not hungry.”

Well, that made no sense, since eating was what I did best. Day and night. Eat, eat, eat. At that moment though, I couldn't eat, because these were the guys who got me to sell out. I blamed them, not myself, so when I was with them, I lost my appetite. At least when I'd sold out to Marc Rocco on
Where the Day Takes You
, I could say,
Okay, this is the price of compromise and screwing with my integrity. I'm going to recognize the righteousness of the decision that guy made and create value because it's a damn good movie.
But not now. Now I was in a movie I didn't respect, making obscene amounts of money (five times what a teacher makes, and teachers do infinitely more important work)—and it just felt wrong. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm as greedy as the next guy. I want to be compensated for my work, and generally I feel as though I'm entitled to whatever I can earn. However, the degree to which I feel entitled to that earning power ebbs and flows with the quality of the work being done. In other words, it's a lot easier to feel like you've earned the money when you're proud of the work, and I wasn't proud of this. I also resented that the power brokers on the other side of the table had played better chess than I had. In that sense, I was merely a poor loser.

Nevertheless, I remained committed to the work and tried to do the best job I could do. I actually got injured while filming a scene that called for my character to run and jump on a wheelbarrow, and then catch a bowl over his shoulder while diving headfirst. I was still a young kid and I'd been pretty fit my whole life, so I didn't think the stunt would be a problem. But this was the first time I'd let myself get out of shape, and even become borderline fat, so it wasn't as easy as I had imagined. We shot five or six takes, and on what would prove to be the last one, I fell and cut my head open, just above my eye. But it was nothing too serious, and the next day I was back at work, where a crash helmet was waiting with my name on it. A little joke from the studio.

So I was “earning” my salary. And yet I was just out of my depth. Pauly had his thing going, and that's what excited the studio the most. That and the presence of Brendan Fraser, an Adonis—he looked like Marlon Brando on his best day—who had quickly established that he could be effective as a comedic or dramatic actor. Just as, even now, he can bounce between Oscar-caliber fare like
Gods and Monsters
and harmless trifle like
George of the Jungle
or
The Mummy,
Brendan could shift gears from important work to disposable work, and he could do it with an elegance that I found admirable. He could do a thoughtful movie like
School Ties
—and then do this thing. All without missing a beat or wallowing in self-doubt. I could see that Brendan was different. This was a guy who was creating power at the studio, and to some extent I was awed by his ability to do so. I thought I was supposed to be doing that, too, but instead I felt trapped in this role, between these two other actors who clearly were the focus of the movie and the studio's attention. The thing that made me right for the role—a certain quiet intensity, an everyman quality—was precisely what made me dissatisfied with it. I looked at Brendan and thought,
I'm not going to be that guy, the leading man.
And I looked at Pauly and thought,
I'm not gonna be that guy, either, the … well, whatever Pauly is.

I was just an honest kind of actor. Not long ago, my father told me, “Try not to use your authenticity in service of a subpar script.” That was the first time he ever articulated it to me. In hindsight, I think that was the source of my discontent, the reason I was fat and unhappy.

Try not to use your authenticity in service of a subpar script.

A simple little gem of advice. Unfortunately, like so many actors, I've not always had the wisdom to heed it.

CHAPTER THREE

During one of my first visits to Indiana, while spending time with Christine's family, her Grandma Schroeder offered a thoughtful notion: “You know, Sean, you really ought to make a movie around here. Sam Elliott did
Prancer
in the next town over! We'd get to see you kids more often.”

I couldn't help but smile.

“That would be wonderful, Grandma. But it doesn't really work that way. You sort of have to go where the jobs are.”

She nodded. “Okay—but I still think you should make one here.”

I love Christine's family. It may sound trite, but there is a peacefulness to the rural Midwest that I find very calming, soothing. Celebrity doesn't seem to mean as much; certainly it isn't the coin of the realm the way it is in Hollywood. Still, I never expected to spend time in Indiana for reasons that were anything other than personal. So imagine my surprise when less than two months after Christine and I were married, I was asked to read a script for a movie titled
Rudy,
set at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

Now, I was a West Coast kid, so I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about Notre Dame, aside from its fight song “Cheer, cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame…” and the fact that Johnny O'Keefe, who lived down the street from me when I was growing up, used to watch college football every Saturday and liked Notre Dame a lot. But to me, college football was UCLA, not because I went to many Bruins games (I didn't), but mainly because from my house I could always hear the school's marching band practicing. We lived that close to the campus. (Not only that, but my aunt and uncle were professors at UCLA in the department of education, and every year we'd get Christmas presents from the college bookstore.)

Reading the script, however, was a revelation. It was like I was reading my own life.

Everything about Rudy's mentality matched the way I looked at the world. Of course, Rudy's story and my story were vastly different, but in terms of his ethos, it felt like I was reading about an alternate version of myself. In Little League, for example, I spent a lot of time on the bench, waiting, begging to get in the game. Even though my parents were famous and made very good money, their attitudes and values created in me a sense of connection to working-class people. That may sound condescending or convenient, but if you think that, well, you don't know me. When my mom got remarried, it was to a soldier. Sure, he was a sergeant, first class, but he was “real people.” When my dad remarried, he was fortunate to find a woman who exuded a kind of nobility and an understanding of all people. I've always admired the working people I've met; everyone's work—from the garbageman to the rocket scientist—seems valid and honorable to me. So my mind and spirit were primed to read Angelo Pizzo's brilliant screenplay about Daniel “Rudy” Reuttiger.

Rudy was a working-class kid who talked his way into Notre Dame, an elite private college, and eventually onto the school's storied football team, even though he was neither a great student nor a great athlete. Rudy was an underdog, and I found it easy to identify with him.

The movie would be directed by David Anspaugh. He and Angelo Pizzo were the same writing/directing team that had done such an impressive job of capturing small-town life in Indiana in the 1950s with the beautiful basketball film,
Hoosiers
. Like
Hoosiers, Rudy
was a fact-based, almost achingly earnest story; in lesser hands, both stories might have fallen victim to hackneyed clichés and stereotypes. But
Hoosiers
remains one of the best sports movies ever made, a nearly perfect tale of David rising up to defeat Goliath, told on a simple, heartfelt, human scale. Reading the script for
Rudy
, I knew it had the potential to be every inch the movie that
Hoosiers
is, not least because it was being made by Angelo and David. With every page I liked it more and more—it was just screamingly obvious that this would be a really good movie—and I became so excited that my fingers kept slipping off the pages.
Rudy
, I knew, was exactly the right prescription for the malaise that had set in while I was making
Encino Man
. I would be the star, the lead, the hero. And I knew I could do it.

I was so relieved that this wasn't an ensemble film. Rudy was the title character, the role a tour de force for any actor lucky enough to land the job. I was determined to be that actor, to not let anything, including petty squabbles over compensation, stand in the way. After meeting with the director, I got the sense that he liked me and that the creative people behind the project—as well as the titular character himself, Daniel Reuttiger—thought I was perfect for the part. The head of production, on the other hand, wanted Chris O'Donnell. This was no small obstacle. Like me, Chris, who I've come to know pretty well and admire a lot, was a young actor (we were both in our early twenties) whose stock in trade was an earnest, boy-next-door quality. And like me, Chris was on the smallish side—physically correct for the part of Rudy. Unlike me, Chris had just seen his career take flight. In the previous year Chris had costarred alongside Brendan Fraser in
School Ties
and Al Pacino in
Scent of a Woman
. The latter performance had earned him a Golden Globe nomination. It's fair to say that Chris was the hotter actor by far. Knowing that I was the preferred candidate of the writers and director, and that the role was mine to lose, I waded carefully into the waters of negotiation.