by Martin Sheen
My father thought she was smart, levelheaded, and classy but kept up the pressure for me to try family life with Carey and Taylor. “This is your son,” he would say. “This is the woman who loves you. You’ve got to raise your son together.”
Selfishly, I wanted to be a movie star more than I wanted to be a father, and as a result I was a better movie star than I was a father at that time. But I don’t want to have any place for regret in my heart. I made mistakes in my twenties, a lot of them—who hasn’t?—but each one helped shape who I am today, and today I have an extraordinarily close and loving relationship with both of my children. Still, I had to achieve that as a part-time father who was working nearly all the time, and that wasn’t always easy.
The Breakfast Club was released in February 1985 to positive reviews from the media and a huge reception from teenagers nationwide. The film grossed more than $5 million on its opening weekend and more than $35 million in its first three months, an enormous margin for a film that had cost only $1 million to make.
Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film for creating fictional teenagers who seemed plausible to real teenagers. That’s exactly what John achieved. By reaching so far beneath the superficial stereotypes of his five characters—the jock, the brain, the hood, the prom queen, and the outcast—he stepped into the realm of archetypes where viewers could identify with children struggling to become adults in a complex world and recognize the mask each character wore as a form of self-protection.
The Breakfast Club was my first commercially successful film and my performance as Andrew established me as one of a group of up-and-coming actors. Every twenty years in Hollywood a new cycle of young talent emerges, and I was fortunate to be part of that mid-1980s group. In addition to acting, I’d also decided to write and direct and in June of 1985, just before the release of St. Elmo’s Fire, New York Magazine sent a journalist to Los Angeles to profile me as an emerging young actor-filmmaker.
At least that was the original plan.
Most of my film roles to that point had been ensemble work—The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, and the upcoming St. Elmo’s Fire—and I didn’t feel right about an article focusing exclusively on me and denying the others the spotlight we’d shared on screen. The films we’d made had succeeded because they were a sum of all their parts. They didn’t live or die by a single actor’s work. Also, I didn’t want any of the others to think I saw myself as different from them or better in any way, because that wasn’t true. So I called up the other cast members from St. Elmo’s Fire to see who was in town and who wanted to go out for an evening when the journalist came to L.A. Judd and Rob both agreed to join us.
The journalist met us at the Hard Rock Cafe, a loud, boisterous restaurant in Hollywood. Afterward we went out to a couple of clubs. Then the journalist spent a few more days traveling around L.A. with me and meeting several other young actors in my circle of friends.
Whatever the journalist observed or thought he observed that week then went through the mysterious alchemy that only journalists with their own agendas can explain. The result was a June 10, 1985, issue of New York Magazine with a photo of Rob, Judd, and me on the cover and the title “Hollywood’s Brat Pack.” Even worse than the condescending term was how the writer described me as the group’s “unofficial president,” which had no truth to it whatsoever. He also dubbed me the group’s “unofficial treasurer” when he misconstrued me picking up the bill that night—which I did because I’d invited the others to join us—as evidence that I regularly paid everyone’s way.
I could have lived with those jabs, and even with the way some of the other actors turned on me anyway because of the article’s focus and tone, but what stung me most was how the writer lumped eleven male actors together as entitled, attention-seeking, womanizing playboys and painted us all with the same broad strokes. This might have been true for some of the actors, but it wasn’t true for me. I was the only one in the group with a child to support, and while some of the others may have been out sleeping with royalty or doing lines of coke I was at home writing scripts. Yet somehow I was associated with all that and it was a bummer, to put it bluntly, because it wasn’t who I was. I’d already done all of that stuff in the Philippines when I was fourteen. By twenty-three, I felt long past it.
The New York article coined a phrase that would stick to those eleven actors to this day. Privately, it ended an era for our formerly tight-knit group. The camaraderie and support we’d enjoyed on the sets of The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, and St. Elmo’s Fire became tarnished after we were slapped with the derogatory label. We started feeling uncomfortable around one another, carefully measuring what we said or did out of fear that it would be misinterpreted or misreported. Even after the name “Brat Packer” had lost its negative connotation and become just a shorthand method for describing any successful actor under the age of thirty in the 1980s, the sense of healthy competition and collaboration between the original ensemble members was gone.
The year 1985 was the most prolific of my acting career thus far, with The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and That Was Then, This Is Now all released between February and November. But at home, my personal life had become increasingly difficult. My parents now had two grandchildren, whom they adored, and I know it was hard for my father to see me keeping Carey and, by extension Taylor, at arm’s length. My relationship with Demi was off and on, and my father pleaded with me to give Carey another chance. Family meant everything to him, and as my father he wanted me to be involved in raising my own son.
He thought I was being stubborn. I thought he didn’t understand the complexities of my relationship with Carey. Still, I did want to raise Taylor. So partly to appease my father and partly because I knew it was the right thing for Taylor, I put my tie on and committed to trying one more time. In the spring of 1985, between the releases of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire I parted ways with Demi and bought a condo in Malibu to share with Carey and Taylor.
It was a halfhearted attempt at best, disastrous at worst. Carey and I wanted different things and our desires rarely overlapped. And then she became pregnant, again unplanned, at a time when it was evident to both of us that I was more focused on my career than on being a parent and that our relationship as partners would never work.
Twenty-three years old, on the brink of acting success, and soon to be a father of two: This was never how I’d imagined my life unfolding, yet it was practically a mirror image of what had happened to my dad. At twenty-three he had two sons and was appearing in The Subject Was Roses on Broadway, his breakthrough theater role. I had to wonder: Does a father pass down more through his DNA than just hair and eye color? Does he pass down memory? Does he pass down patterns of behavior? Or was it just some strange coincidence that my father and I both became fathers and actors simultaneously, and so young?
With the release of St. Elmo’s Fire in June 1985 and its immediate commercial success, the acting careers of all seven of its stars were firmly established. For the first time I now had the freedom to pick my own projects rather than waiting and hoping for one to pick me. I decided to take a role in a film called Maximum Overdrive, for no other reason than the author Stephen King was directing and I thought it would be cool to work with Stephen King. The movie was billed as an action/horror/science-fiction/adventure film, which offers an idea of both its ambition and its silliness. Loosely based on the Stephen King short story “Trucks,” Maximum Overdrive featured machines that come to life and go on murderous rampages across North Carolina. A carving knife cuts a waitress of its own volition, a soda machine shoots cans into a customer’s stomach, cars drive themselves into crowded buildings. All this, set to a soundtrack by the heavy metal band AC/DC.
“Why did you do that film?” my mother asked when she saw it.
“I wanted to work with Stephen King,” I explained.
“You couldn’t just help him paint his house?”
When I shared her comment with Stephen lat
er, he laughed out loud. “Oh my God! You could have!” he said.
We both might have been better off. The film was absolutely trashed by critics and Stephen chose never to direct again. Still, I meet fans of Maximum Overdrive even now who ask, “When are you making part two?” Which only goes to show, there’s something out there for everyone.
By the end of 1985 I’d finished the screenplay for Wisdom, a film about two lovers on the run. Demi and I were back together and had recently gotten engaged, and Wisdom was meant to be a vehicle for us to act in together. One day I got a phone call from my agent Mike Menchel at Creative Artists Agency, known as CAA.
“David Begelman read your script. He’s put a deal together and they want to meet with you tomorrow,” he said.
I knew David Begelman mainly as the former head of Columbia Pictures who’d been busted for forging the actor Cliff Robertson’s signature on a check. Now he and his partner Michael Nathanson were running a production company called Gladden Entertainment that distributed its films through Twentieth Century Fox. When we met they were both friendly and enthusiastic about Wisdom’s script. Begelman particularly liked the main character, John Wisdom, a recent college graduate with a past felony conviction that prevents him from finding a job.
“I love the idea that this guy doesn’t get a break,” Begelman said. “He made one mistake in his life, and he can’t shake it.” Maybe he’s feeling a personal connection to this character, I thought.
“We want you to direct,” Begelman continued. “But it’s a five-million-dollar budget and we’re not comfortable with handing you that amount of money as a first-time director unless you have an executive producer on set.”
“You mean like a babysitter?” I asked.
“You can call it a babysitter if you want, but it’s more of an insurance policy for us. Will you consider meeting with a few guys?”
“Okay,” I said. “How about you put a list together, and I’ll put a list together, and we’ll compare?”
On their list was Robert Wise, who had edited Citizen Kane in 1941 and gone on to win Best Director Oscars for West Side Story and The Sound of Music in the 1960s. On my list was Taylor Hackford, who’d directed An Officer and a Gentleman. On their list was Burt Reynolds, who was Burt Reynolds. On my list was James L. Brooks, who’d just won three Oscars for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture for Terms of Endearment with Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, and Shirley MacLaine.
If my father had been directing by that point, would I have put his name on the list or gone to him for advice? Maybe. But this was professional territory in which, for the first time, my father couldn’t advise me. As long as we were both acting he was the experienced elder I could turn to for guidance, but as a first-time director I would have to reach beyond our relationship to find the mentoring I needed. It would be another five years before my dad would sit in a director’s chair for a feature film and by then he would be coming to me for advice.
I met with each of the directors in very different settings. Early on I realized I was auditioning them instead of auditioning for them, which was at first a disconcerting turn of events. At barely twenty-four I knew I was swimming in the deep end with this list, so to speak, but at the same time, I felt I was staying afloat. I’d written the script for Wisdom and I felt able to convey my vision for the film.
James Brooks and I sat for a few hours at his office at Sony Pictures, where we talked about story, character, themes—the elements that Brooks handles so well in all his films. Burt Reynolds and I already knew each other from the months I’d spent doing Mister Roberts at his dinner theater in 1980. He invited me to his house in Los Angeles for dinner, where we sat down with his girlfriend (later his wife) Loni Anderson at one end of an elegant dinner table that must have been thirty feet long for a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce. This was long before anyone asked if guests had any dietary restrictions, and I was a strict vegetarian, but after a moment of inner debate I decided to break from my principles for one night and eat meat rather than risk coming across as difficult while interviewing one of my father’s friends for a job.
After dinner, Burt led me into his private screening room and gave me a gift: a book on the films of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. He was very supportive about my decision to direct, but he wasn’t interested in functioning as an executive producer for the film.
“You don’t need anyone with you on set,” he said.
Next I sat with Taylor Hackford at the swimming pool on his estate. He’d just finished directing Against All Odds with Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward and was dating the actress Helen Mirren, who would later become his wife. He was also encouraging and knowledgeable, but when we shook hands good-bye I think we both knew we wouldn’t see each other again for a while.
The last director I met with was Robert Wise, who’d by then directed thirty-nine films in his career, including one of my longtime science-fiction favorites, The Andromeda Strain. He was serving as the current president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and had by far the most experience of anyone on our lists.
From the start, Wise was different from the other directors I’d just met. He didn’t want to speak about the script. Instead, Wise talked about the technical aspects of filming and impressed upon me the importance of going into a project prepared.
“The movie will live or die by your prep,” he explained, “especially if you’re doing three jobs at once.” By this he meant if I was going to be the writer, the director, and the male lead I had to do as much of the pre-production work as possible before we started to film, to minimize the amount of work I’d be responsible for on set.
With a full head of gray hair, oversized black glasses, and an easy, friendly smile Wise looked and acted the part of experienced mentor. He was already in his seventies when we met but he was very strong and energetic, and something about mentoring a first-time director must have appealed to him.
“I’m excited to be on this journey with you if you want me,” he said before we parted, and then reminded me again, “but if you don’t prep properly you’re going to be shooting yourself in the foot.”
All the directors I met had encouraged me, but Wise was the one who seemed to take me most seriously as a director. His advice had already been valuable and helped me feel, as a first-time filmmaker, that I had the skill to direct a film.
After I left Wise’s house I called David Begelman. “Even if Robert Wise doesn’t come and do the film, just meeting him has given me an extra boost,” I said. “But if you guys are willing to write the check I’d love to have him on board.”
So Robert Wise joined us on Wisdom. Early on, he told me that the film’s editor is a director’s best friend and that I needed to choose one wisely. Michael Kahn, who edited Steven Spielberg’s films and coincidentally also edited Rage, the 1972 film my father had done with George C. Scott in Arizona, had a small hole in his schedule and joined us when he heard that Robert Wise was on board. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor at that point in my career.
For the film’s score, I’d set my sights on Danny Elfman, the lead singer and songwriter of the band Oingo Boingo. Even before Wise signed on to help I stood outside the back door of the Hollywood Palladium after an Oingo Boingo concert with a copy of the script in my hand.
“Mr. Elfman, someday I’m going to direct. I’d like for you to do the score for this script,” I said.
“I’ve never done a movie score,” he said.
“I know you haven’t. But I’d really like you to do this one.”
By the time I approached him again, he’d already scored Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure for director Tim Burton, who’d had the same idea. We were fortunate to get Elfman before he became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after film composers. He later went on to score Men in Black, Good Will Hunting, and most of Tim Burton’s films, including Alice in Wonderland.
Rounding out our crew for Wisdom was production designer Dennis Gassner, w
ho lent a unique style to the look of the film and later went on to do Field of Dreams, Barton Fink, and Bugsy; director of photography Adam Greenberg, who had recently shot The Terminator; and producer Bernard Williams, who had worked with the director Stanley Kubrick on Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. It was an extraordinary brain trust for a first-time director.
Too bad I didn’t listen to them more.
When I look back now at the production of Wisdom, I see a very young writer/director who had the aesthetic sensibility to pull off some good shots but didn’t yet have strong storytelling skills. I would think, This crane shot would look cool or This transition into the next scene would be bitchin’ as opposed to This makes sense and This is good storytelling. At twenty-three I was one of the youngest Hollywood directors ever to write, direct, and star in my own film, and I was too inexperienced and too ambitious to slow down, admit what I didn’t know, and ask for help. I’d had such a bad experience with my first script, That Was Then, This Is Now, that I was hell-bent on not letting a project get away from me again. On that film, the producers actually came into my apartment, commandeered my computer, and rewrote the script. I’d let it happen because they were writing the checks, but once it was out of my hands the film became somebody else’s vision, and the movie suffered for it.