But Enough About Me: A Memoir

by Burt Reynolds

  “No, I don’t. You’ll have to find a way to say it as written. It’s what you were hired for.”

  That’s when John Lyons grabbed my arm before I could punch Paul in the face. I’m glad he stepped in and thanked him for it later. I took a day off and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to win the argument, so I went back and said the line.

  I have to admit that it wasn’t easy working with such a young director. After hundreds of TV shows and dozens of feature films, I wasn’t crazy about being told to turn left at the couch by a guy who’s younger than some sandwiches I’ve had. On the other hand, it was refreshing to find a young filmmaker with a sense of the history of our business. Paul knows every camera angle in every picture John Ford ever made. The first shot in Boogie Nights is one of the longest in movie history . . . on purpose.

  “Have you timed this?” I asked him. “It’s longer than Citizen Kane!”

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “it’s three seconds longer.”

  Paul’s knowledge of old Hollywood came out all the time, and he could be just a little pompous with it. I learned not to get into arguments with him about classic films, even though I fancy myself a movie buff. I don’t want to say he was opinionated, but if Bogdanovich had a son, it would be him. By the same token, we weren’t likely to discuss yesterday’s football game, because as far as I could tell, he wasn’t interested in sports.

  I think Paul treated me differently from the rest of the cast, I guess because of the age difference, and as we went along I was less and less thrilled about going to work every day. But he pulled me through the picture. I wouldn’t have wanted him to know that, but I guess he will now. In some ways he’s very talented. Most of his pictures are good. He just isn’t my kind of director.

  Some people have said that the characters in Boogie Nights are pathetic. Not on moral grounds, but because they’re just clueless, and I think that’s true. As actors, we were floating around trying to figure out what we were doing there because, I think, the characters themselves are lost souls. Which makes the performances of my fellow cast members all the more remarkable. I’d never met a lot of them and never heard of a few, but I was astonished by their talent. I felt comfortable with them from the first reading, when Mark Wahlberg sat down next to me and said, “How are ya, Dad?”

  I like Mark. At one point he was having a tough time, which made him do strange things. He got very Methody and was walking around the set with a fake erection all the time. I stopped him and said, “What the hell are you doing? You’re a good actor. Just act.” I think he was wounded because we had that father-son relationship. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but at the same time I didn’t want to see him go that route because I like him so much. Mark is a talented guy who doesn’t need gimmicks. I’m glad he’s proven what he can do in a bunch of films since Boogie Nights.

  Julianne Moore is wonderful in everything she does. Off-camera she’s exactly like she seems: Bambi’s mother. Sweet. Dear. Just lovely. People ask me about the relationship between Jack and Julianne’s character, Amber Waves. I think he’s in love with her, as much as he can love anybody. But he’s selfish. He fakes it a lot.

  I think one of the key scenes in the movie is when Philip Baker Hall (Floyd Gondolli) and Jack have a showdown in Jack’s office about whether to switch from film to video. Floyd wants to go to video because it’s more profitable. Jack wants to stick with film because, in a funny way, he’s a purist. I got away from the script but Paul kept it, I think because I was basically quoting something I’d heard him say. I went for it as strongly as I could and Philip stayed right there with me. He’s a fine actor and I enjoyed working with him.

  Philip Seymour Hoffman is shattering in the role of a young gay man who’s struggling to come to terms with himself. Philip was a magnificent actor and his early death was a tragic loss.

  And, just like in the film, Heather Graham, as Rollergirl, wore the roller skates the whole time: at lunch, in her trailer . . . all the time. But no bra. I was more enthralled with the skates. She’d come to the set with half her clothes off. I don’t think I’m a prude, but I didn’t find it sexy.

  Ricky Jay, who plays Jack’s cameraman, remembered something that happened in the scene where Dirk Diggler and Jack Horner almost come to blows. Dirk has hit bottom with his cocaine addiction, and Jack gets angry and refuses to film him in his strung-out condition.

  Jack: “You’re high and you need to sleep it off. You’ve been up for two days.”

  Dirk: “You’re not the boss of me!”

  Jack: “Nevertheless . . .”

  When we shot the scene, Ricky had to fight back a smile every time I said, “Nevertheless.” We must have done ten takes before he could manage to keep a straight face. He later explained that when he was a boy he went to a football game and the announcer introduced “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “Ladies and gentlemen, to sing our national anthem, Miss Helen Forrest.”

  At that moment some goon in the stands yelled, “Helen Forrest sucks cock!”

  Without missing a beat the announcer said, “Nevertheless . . .”

  I liked Ricky. He’s a master sleight-of-hand artist. You stand two feet away and you can’t catch a thing. And he’s written some wonderful books about the great magicians.

  I was proud of everybody’s performance, but I almost went to the mat with Thomas Jane, who plays Dirk’s friend Todd Parker. On the first day of rehearsal he was getting physical with people. When he put his martial arts moves on me I said, “Don’t make the mistake of pushing me, because I push back.”

  He looked at me and laughed. “I think you’re getting a little touchy,” he said.

  “Fuck you!” I quipped, and walked away.

  John Lyons came to my trailer and said, “I know you don’t like the guy, but can you please come back and finish the scene?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can finish it, but you’re right: I don’t like the guy.”

  —

  THOUGH I’VE SEEN parts of Boogie Nights, I’ve never sat down and watched the whole thing. I asked family members not to see it and they didn’t. A few of the jocks I know gave me grief about it, but it was all in fun. I think.

  The picture got rave reviews and my performance was recognized with just about every award you could win, and people were predicting I’d win an Oscar. I sat next to Charley Durning at the ceremony. Best Supporting Actor is always the first award.

  Just before the show went on the air, Charley said, “You wanna change seats with me so you can be on the outside?”

  “No, what are you talking about?” I said.

  “You’re gonna get it tonight.”

  “Maybe. But who should I thank?” I was so excited my mind was empty.

  “Thank me!” Charley said.

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll thank you.”

  I changed seats with Charley so I was on the end of the row, all set to dash onto the stage to accept the golden statuette, when Mira Sorvino announced: “And the Oscar goes to . . . Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting.”

  I once said that I’d rather have a Heisman Trophy than an Oscar.

  I lied.

  As Robin ran toward the stage, for some inexplicable reason I saluted him. He claimed I flipped him the bird.

  Then I had to sit there for the next two hours with people patting me on the back and saying, “You should have won!” But Charley saved me. He grabbed my arm and said, “I made it through World War II. What the hell’s this thing?”

  That night I locked myself in my hotel room and shut off the phone to concentrate on feeling sorry for myself. Jon Voight called to commiserate, but per my instructions, the switchboard wouldn’t put him through. Jon being Jon, he came to the hotel, borrowed a waiter’s uniform, and carried a room service tray into the room. I was in bed with my face in a book
and didn’t notice him . . . until he threw himself on the bed and kissed me square on the mouth. It shocked me out of my funk and we spent the rest of the night laughing. Jon can always make me laugh.

  Jocks

  During my freshman year at Florida State, a teammate named Mercury Paskalakis told me he was going home to Tarpon Springs for the dive for the cross.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “A Greek Orthodox priest blesses the cross and throws it into Spring Bayou and about fifty guys dive for it,” he said. “If you get the cross, you have good luck for a year.”

  “Can I go?” I said.

  “Well, we’ll have to tell them you’re Greek,” he said. “You can be my cousin, Buddy Paskalakis.”

  I mussed up my hair (I had enough of my own then to do that) so it looked curly and I did my best Robert Wagner imitation.

  According to the rules we could dive as soon as the cross hit the water, but I figured if you did that you’d go past it, so I waited two seconds and then dove. I was underwater and saw it floating down. I grabbed it at the same time as another guy, but I was able to wrestle it away from him. Everybody congratulated me except the priest, who looked at me sideways. I think he suspected I wasn’t Greek, but he didn’t say anything. A few years later, when I began studying acting, I realized that Buddy Paskalakis had been my first role.

  —

  MAKING THE LONGEST YARD was a lot of fun. It was a treat to work with a bunch of guys who’d played pro ball: We had Sonny Sixkiller, a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma who’d played in the WFL, and Joe Kapp, the former Minnesota Vikings quarterback. I loved Joe. You could hit him with a board and he’d just smile. He was great fun to be around and great fun to go out with if you didn’t mind getting in trouble. Dino Washington was good, too. Big fullback for the Atlanta Falcons. Flashy. Terrific receiver. He made me look good when I threw passes that were by no means catchable . . . and he caught them.

  Then there was Hall of Famer Ray Nitschke of the Green Bay Packers. Ray tried to make me cry. He hit me hard on every play. He liked to tackle me, take my head off, and run with it into the end zone. It didn’t matter whether I had the ball or not. One time he tackled me on the way to my trailer. And you know that little round hole in the helmet that you’re supposed to hear out of? I was looking out of it.

  I said, “Ray, this isn’t the Super Bowl.”

  “It is to me,” he said.

  I had a scene with Ray where I drop-kick the ball. Nobody had drop-kicked since Red Grange, so in the script he runs up and says, “What the hell is that?”

  My line was “It was a dropkick, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  The first time we rehearsed the scene Ray said, “Don’t call me that.”

  Ray took offense even though we were in character.

  I went to Bob Aldrich and said, “Bob, I’ve got a situation here. I call Nitschke stupid in the scene, and I can’t call him that because he doesn’t like it.”

  “Don’t say it in rehearsal,” Bob said, “but say it in the take and then run.”

  That’s exactly what I did. Ray chased me for twenty minutes.

  —

  THE THING YOU LEARN about Westerns: If the wrangler asks, “Do you ride, son?” you say, “No, sir. I’ve never been on a horse in my life,” because if you say, “Like the wind,” he goes, “Bring Fireball out.”

  The thing you have to learn when you play football in the movies is that you do not say, “I played college ball.”

  That’s because there’s a big difference between being a good athlete in high school or college and making it as a pro.

  A few years after The Longest Yard, I made another football picture called Semi-Tough (1977) with Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh, directed by Michael Ritchie. On the first day I was getting five hundred pounds of tape and Kristofferson, who’s a terrific actor and a hell of a guy, was getting taped up next to me and he said, “I think we can run against them. We’re in the best shape of any forty-year-old actors in the world.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I said. “Do you know who’s out there on that field? Too Tall Jones, Hollywood Henderson, and the whole Dallas Cowboys defense, and they love to play a game called Kill the Actor.”

  “Nah,” Kris said, “I think we can take ’em.”

  We went out and Too Tall came up to me and said, “You were great in The Longest Yard.”

  “Thank you, Too Tall,” I said.

  “You played at Florida State, right?” he said.

  “No!” I said. “It was all bullshit! I was a drama major . . .”

  That’s when I heard Kris say, “I played at Pomona College.”

  I tried to get his attention to tell him to shut up, but he kept going.

  “Went both ways. Wanted to play pro ball. Got a Rhodes Scholarship instead.”

  The first play was a sweep with me carrying the ball. When we broke the huddle, I looked up and there were nine guys on the line who had started in the Super Bowl. The center snapped the ball, the quarterback handed it off to me . . . and they all hit Kris!

  They carried him off with two broken ribs. As he went by on the stretcher, I thought, Rhodes Scholar! We had to double him from then on. As it turned out, I had to practice every day and he didn’t, so maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.

  —

  I WENT TO WIMBLEDON with Johnny Carson one year to watch Chris Evert in the semifinals. Afterward we all went out to dinner and everybody recognized Chris, but not Johnny. They didn’t carry The Tonight Show in England. They’d tried it, but it didn’t go over. Johnny claimed that he liked to travel because he wasn’t recognized outside the United States, but I wasn’t so sure. I think he was hurt that the show wasn’t big over there.

  A few months later I was at “21” and Chris was across the room with a girlfriend. The waiter came over and handed me a note from her: “You’re staying at my hotel. Would you call me?” I sent back a note: “I didn’t know you owned the hotel. But I shall call you tonight.” I did and we started to go out and we had wonderful times together.

  I played tennis with her once. I hadn’t played growing up, but I was fast. I could make up for mistakes and run balls down. Everybody would laugh because I’d take the scenic route to the ball, but I could get it back over the net, and after two games with Chris I was doing okay.

  “I feel pretty good. I got three points,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “in that case I’ll play you right-handed now.”

  I was furious. “How dare you do that to me?” I said.

  “I thought you’d think it was fun,” she said.

  “It wasn’t fun at all. I want you to play right-handed and I want you to play the best you can.”

  So she played right-handed, and I didn’t win a point.

  —

  AT JUST UNDER SIX FEET and barely two hundred pounds, Rocky Marciano wasn’t big for a heavyweight, but he was one of the greatest fighters who ever lived. He retired undefeated in 1956 with a perfect 49-0 record, including forty-three knockouts. I think he could have whipped every one of the heavyweights around today.

  When I was fifteen, I met Rocky through an oilman in Palm Beach and we hit it off. He was great to talk to and a wonderful guy. I have no idea why he took an interest in me, but he did. Maybe it was because I was guileless. He started to talk about boxing and I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know much about boxing, Rock, because I’m a football nut.”

  “That’s okay, kid,” he said. “Football’s good. I’m sorry I never got to play it.”

  He got me into the Golden Gloves amateur boxing competition when I was sixteen. I’d read about it in the Miami papers and wanted to give it a try. He became my unofficial trainer. Before my first bout he said, “You box right-handed and you lead with your right, so he won’t expect you to have a left. But you’ve
got a great left hook, so just pepper ’im with your right and then bring that left out of nowhere. I guarantee you’ll put ’im to sleep.”

  And that’s exactly what happened! I had two more fights and scored two more knockouts with my phantom left. Then I quit. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got my ass whipped.

  I asked Rocky and he said, “Yeah, kid, this would be a good time to retire.”

  Rocky lived in South Florida, and when I was older, we’d meet for a drink at Villa’s restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. I went to the fights with him a couple of times and it was like going with Muhammad Ali. Everybody wanted to be around him.

  Rocky had a high voice and short arms. I used to call him “alligator arms” . . . but not to his face. One night we were standing at the bar, and after I’d had a few vodka tonics, he didn’t look so tough. I thought, His arms are so short . . . he’s got that high voice . . . I could give him one shot and be champion of the world.

  He narrowed his eyes and gave me a look that said, “Don’t try it.”

  “How’d you know what I was thinking?” I said.

  “I always know,” he said.

  Over the years I got to know Rocky’s family, and I was happy to attend his daughter’s confirmation party. We stayed friends until his death in 1969. He crashed in a small plane piloted by a guy who didn’t know what he was doing. Rocky was only forty-five.

  —

  WHILE WE WERE SHOOTING Hawk in New York, there were so many fight scenes, we ran out of stuntmen, so they brought in a hairdresser they said was a great fighter. It turned out to be boxing champion Emile Griffith.

  I’m not going to resolve the eternal debate over which sport has the best athletes, but I’ll cast my vote for boxing. It takes the most stamina and endurance. If you don’t believe it, try slugging a heavy bag for three minutes, take a minute off, and then repeat that sequence nine times and imagine someone punching you while you’re doing it.