Revenge of the Nerd

by Curtis Armstrong

  In the meantime, though, Tom kept busy. As an actor, he was disciplined and serious about his work and also about where he was going. When I think about it now, Tom may have been the first person I ever knew who possessed an absolute and voracious ambition. It wasn’t something he discussed in those terms. There was, though, an aura around this good-looking but otherwise unremarkable teenager that suggested that anyone who stood in his way, or underestimated him in any way, did so at his or her own peril.

  Tom wasn’t fucking around.

  Actually, I take that back. He was. With Rebecca inaccessible, he started cutting a wide swath through the local talent.

  Not that I noticed right away. He self-identified as a born-again Christian and the rumor was he had actually considered shepherding souls for a living. I could believe it. As I’ve mentioned, when away from the set, initially, Tom made straight arrows look like corkscrews. One evening I recall him giving me, a feminist ten years his senior, a stern lecture on why the Equal Rights Amendment was bad for America. (His basic argument? “Hey, my mom worked!”)

  Missing from my journal was the exact moment that Tom ripped off his beard and revealed himself to be a little less than the born-again Christian he made himself out to be. Or, at the very least, revealed a born-again Christian who was keeping his options open and then some.

  I would ask him at the end of the day if he would like to join us in the bar for a drink.

  “No,” I recall him saying, “got an early call tomorrow. Got to work out still, study my lines. And then I like to read the Bible a little before bed.”

  I laughed. He didn’t.

  “Ah,” I said, cutting off the laugh at the pass and nodding wisely. “A little bit of the Good Book before bedtime, eh?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just a little at night. Keeps me on the right track. You know?”

  But then returning late one night from some jollification, I found three or four young girls—late teens, I suspect—lined up in the hall outside of Tom’s room. I remember thinking, It’s late; Tom’s going to be really upset if these hot girls interfere with his Bible reading.

  So I asked them, with all the stern gravitas of my twenty-eight years, if there was something I could do to help them.

  They just stared at me and at that moment, Tom’s door opened and another girl came out, adjusting her hair and took off down the hall, while the first girl in line slipped into Tom’s room and the door closed.

  “Aha!” I said to the remaining girls. “Right! Carry on!” Tom, it appeared, had everything under control and didn’t need my assistance after all. This was a young man who knew something about time management, and understood how to successfully juggle Bible study and blowjobs. That’s a gift and one not given to everyone. I went to bed alone that night thinking it served me right for not being religious.

  I’ve said that Tom wasn’t a naïf, but he was nineteen and maybe a little gullible. An example is the Louis Armstrong story. The immortal jazz icon had died in 1971, having changed music forever a couple of times, and had been a personal musical hero of mine from an early age. Satchmo’s recordings were among the first I remember hearing being played in my home and when I went away to college, I took some of my parents’ Louis Armstrong records with me. I adored him. It actually had nothing to do with the fact that we shared a last name.

  But for some reason, around this time, when certain people—usually youngish white men—heard my last name, they would say, “Oh! Any relation to Louis?” It was a joke, apparently. They always found it funny and always delivered it with the same smug certainty that no one had ever thought to say it before.

  One night Tom, Bronson and Raphael and I were in the hotel bar when Tom said, “So, Armstrong. Any relation to Louis?”

  It was late, I was almost certainly drunk and here was the fucking joke again. So I said, “Yes, actually. I’m his grandson.”

  All three started to laugh, but I had said this with such seriousness they stopped. Still smiling uncertainly, Tom said, “Yeah, right.”

  “Dammit,” I said. “Look … never mind. Forget it.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Oh, look, seriously,” I said, “I should know better than to talk about it. Just forget I mentioned it!”

  “What?” Tom said. “What are you talking about?”

  I sighed. Deeply.

  “Okay,” I said, “but this is something you have to keep to yourself. I don’t like talking about it, okay? No one must know!!”

  “Okay, okay!” screamed Bronson. “Tell!!”

  I looked around and lowered my voice. They leaned forward.

  “A lot of people don’t know this,” I said, “but Louis’s son married a white woman. They had two children, my sister and me. And through some weird genetic anomaly, she wound up with all the black genes and I got all the white genes. No one ever believes it when I tell the story and I just wind up having to explain it over and over and it’s just really frustrating, so please, just keep this to yourselves. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Tom said, eyes twice their normal size. “I promise!” They all promised. Solemnly.

  A few days later, the cast was taken to the Playboy Jazz Festival in Chicago to see Ella Fitzgerald, who burned the place down, with the great Duke Ellington Orchestra. Afterward, Tom sidled up to me. “So are you going back?”

  “Going back where?”

  “Backstage,” he said. “Haven’t you met her before?”

  “Who, Ella Fitzgerald?” I said. “Of course not. How would I kn—”

  “Well, she worked with your grandfather,” he said, like I was some kind of idiot for not catching on.

  “Oh! Right!” I said, having forgotten all about the Armstrong story. “Well, you know, that was long before my time. And keep it down, okay? I don’t want to have to keep talking about the Louis Armstrong thing!”

  “I know. Look, I did tell my parents. Hope that’s okay, but they’re huge fans of your grandfather…”

  * * *

  The first scene that we would be shooting was the opening poker game in the basement of Joel Goodson’s house, and that scene was rehearsed often, as I noted in the diary I kept at the time:

  June 31

  Today, our rehearsal consisted of sitting around a table, playing poker, smoking foul cigars and improvising into a cassette. I’m a little slow picking up the game but Bronson, bless him, hasn’t a clue. A lot of cards will have to be played in the next week in order to smooth it all out. One improv started heating up when Barry (Bronson) called Joel a “slut-fucker.” Tom got angry and said, evenly, that he didn’t fuck sluts. Bronson said he imagined actually that he, Tom, had fucked several. I thought it was funny, but Tom didn’t and it got very tense, with Bronson finally whining, “Joel, don’t do this to me!!”

  And then:

  Went out with Bronson for dinner, but he smoked a two-dollar cigar on the way to the diner and was very sick. Half the time we were there, he was outside, hanging over a newspaper box like a pair of discarded overalls. The other half was spent in the bathroom. His face was a pretty green and his hands were actually translucent.

  “So much for sensory work,” he said.

  Bronson and I became fast friends on the film, and it was a friendship that would last for years. We both loved books and music—though, strangely, he had never heard the Beatles. I mean he did not know their music at all. Named for the Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, to whom he was distantly related, he had been brought up to higher things than pop music, apparently, and had studied art history at Yale. He was elegant, flamboyant and screamingly funny. But he went through life without a single unexpressed thought, which got him into trouble more than once. He was a wit, though, in the eighteenth-century meaning of the term. I don’t like to think what that summer would’ve been like without him. We were both based in New York and both moved to Los Angeles around the same time. Eventually, we even took holidays together, once going to London and then driving al
l over Scotland together. We were a strange pair, in retrospect. I think people were kind of expecting us to open an antiques shop together.

  Meanwhile, the days of hanging out on the company dime were beginning to wear me ragged. We started doing further rehearsals with the first of our three directors of photography, Peter Sova, which helped, but I desperately wanted to get to work. My insecurity with the idea of working in films for the first time was affecting me. And trying to get a handle on our star wasn’t easy. Tom was truly something of a conundrum.

  July 1

  Tom’s an interesting character. Can’t really make him out. He would appear to be on the brink of a great career. But when it comes to doing things with him—socially or professionally—he’s not terribly reliable. Always late, very casual with other people’s time. But he was kept waiting the other day by Kevin (Anderson) and he threw a fit.

  He seems to be infected by the old star trip, too, at times. For example, a few days ago, he and Bronson had arranged to see a film in town. This entailed arranging for a driver, which Bronson did. The driver shows up, Bronson’s there but no Tom. So Bronson calls up to his room and wakes him up.

  “Let me,” says Tom, “just take a thirty second shower.”

  “But the driver’s waiting,” says Bronson.

  “That’s his job,” snaps Tom.

  He finally ambled down about twenty minutes later and said, “Let’s go to the bar.” No movie.

  But in spite of it all, it’s difficult not to like him. Though it’s early days, the rehearsing I’ve done with him has gone smoothly. No arrogance or selfishness there. Yet. We’ll see.

  In the meantime, I got a call from someone in the production office, wondering whether I was over twenty-one, for liquor-buying purposes, since some of our cast was underage. I assured her I was, indeed, twenty-eight; she thanked me and then said, “And so, you’re Louis Armstrong’s grandson, right?”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s gotten around, has it? Who told you?”

  “Raphael told me, but I thought he was pulling my leg.”

  “Well,” I said, seriously, “no. It’s the truth, but, honestly, I’m trying to keep it quiet, because people tend to ask embarrassing questions. You understand.”

  “Oh, I get it,” she said, earnestly. “I’ll keep your secret. He was really great, though.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Yes. He was a wonderful man. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it anymore.”

  I was beginning to realize how difficult it was to be related to really famous people. No one likes you for yourself, you know?

  July 2

  A long poker session today, followed by a blocking session with Paul and Peter Sova. We blocked the scene with Joel and Miles with the sex newspaper. Looks good, apparently. Sova was delighted, anyway. “Too bad it wasn’t in the can,” he told me. “It was wonderful.” This started me wondering again. Is it possible I’m actually going to be good in this film? Will people notice me? Will it lead to other things? I wonder. Still haven’t a clue what it’s all about …

  This evening’s poker game was something of a bust, as most of the principals got so loaded we kept forgetting the rules. It says something when I say I was the soberest of the lot, save Bronson who drank nothing but tonic water, bright boy. Tom alone demolished half a bottle of vodka and I did my usual half bot. of scotch.

  Once he let his hair down, Tom could be one of the lads.

  While we had been brought into town a week early for rehearsals, the “rehearsals” themselves would’ve appeared to most people just like five young guys hanging out together during the last summer before going off to college. Which was, of course, just what our characters were doing in the film. Tom, Bronson, Raphael, Kevin and I looked the part as we were shuttled around the tony suburbs of Chicago’s North Side to cafés, bars, bowling alleys and the mall. We spent, according to my journal, an amazing amount of the time at the mall. The record store was a regular stop, but a lot of time was spent just doing nothing. Sitting around on benches looking at women consumed the better part of several summer afternoons. This was something that I, at twenty-eight, and the others some eight or ten years younger, would never have thought of doing but Paul Brickman insisted upon it, and a better way for us to get to know one another would be hard to imagine.

  Then as now, Bronson Pinchot enjoyed his own unique view of how to waste time, and the first time we were left on our own at the mall, he proposed an ugly shoe contest. Tom started laughing in spite of himself.

  “Barry,” he said, in keeping with his policy of only using character names, “what?!”

  “An ugly shoe contest,” yelled Bronson, who could be heard from blocks away when in a state of heightened excitement, which he usually was. “You’ve never done an ugly shoe contest?! It’s so FUN!! So, what we do is,” he said, suddenly switching gears and speaking in a serious, normal tone of voice, “we split up and find shoe departments. We find the ugliest pair of shoes there and then we SMUGGLE one of the shoes out of the store and bring it back here. Then we vote on the ugliest shoe, based on applause, and the winner collects the pot!”

  I swear to God there was not even a discussion as to whether this was a good idea or not. No question of what would happen if we were caught shoplifting and had to call the production office to come and bail us out. Anyway, Bronson assured us, we weren’t really stealing since part of the game was returning the shoes after the contest. Everyone put a quarter—25 cents—into the pot, which I held as Bronson had determined that I, as the oldest, should judge. He counted off and the four of them ran off in different directions in search of shoe departments. That’s right, Tom Cruise, future embodiment of the male action film ideal, was on the afternoon of June 30, 1982, in some Buster Brown shoe store in a suburban shopping mall looking for what he determined was the ugliest pair of shoes he had ever seen, and he was doing it for a dollar.

  And he lost. Raphael Sbarge, with his really sublime gold, red and clear plastic entry, took home four shiny quarters.

  Coincidentally, during the same summer we were shooting in Chicago, Sean Penn was also in town filming Bad Boys. Tom and Sean knew each other from the film Taps and had bonded closely during filming. Around the time principle photography began on Risky Business, Sean dropped in to say hello and basically never left.

  Sean seemed to spend any time he wasn’t needed on his set hanging around ours with Tom. Sean had already acquired the reputation of a volatile, unpredictable man, one who submerged himself deeply into the characters he was playing. Bad Boys was no different. When shooting Fast Times at Ridgemont High the year before, people had talked about how totally Sean lived the role of the genial, sweet-natured Spicoli. In Bad Boys, Sean was being … well, a bad boy. In addition to occasional explosions of temper and general “difficult” behavior, he told me he had a picture taken of himself dangling from a twenty-story hotel room balcony, which he then sent to the bond company insuring the picture. He thought it was funny. He was also widely rumored at the time to be engaged to Bruce Springsteen’s sister, which only added to his glamour.

  Tom admired him enormously. He admitted to me that he was intimidated by Sean’s talent and even then, in 1982, believed him to be the greatest actor of his generation—which became a pretty widely held view as the years went by.

  But even the two movie stars in the making had their own idol to worship. Both Tom and Sean sincerely revered Timothy Hutton, the star of Taps. According to them, it was Hutton who inspired and guided them both as actors and men. By their account, Hutton ruled that set. There was no question of who the star was: it was Hutton, and this was a movie that costarred George C. Scott. I was privy to countless reminiscences about working with Hutton, hearing endless stories as they quoted him or reflected on what Tim would think of this or that. They were shocked when I admitted I was unfamiliar with his work. I wasn’t really; I was just tired of talking about him all the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed in changing th
e subject. Instead, I just caused these two men—future Oscar nominees and arguably two of the most influential actors of our time—to believe there was something actually wrong with me. They weren’t angry. Just very, very disappointed.

  Sean would hang out on set with Tom and actually appears in the movie in an “uncredited cameo,” driving Joel’s Porsche out of the garage. Why this was done escapes me. Sean probably just wanted to drive the Porsche. And Sean tended to do what Sean wanted.

  I spent a fair amount of time in Tom’s room and was always struck by how neat and well kept it was. Whether this was usual for Tom or whether he was doing it as a Method thing (because Joel Goodson’s room was probably really tidy), I wasn’t sure. But going into the room just a couple of days after Sean’s arrival was a revelation. It looked like someone had blown up a convention of rising young eighties actors. There were clothes literally covering the entire floor. By which I mean there was no carpet visible—just clothes. There was a heady scent to the place, too. A rich musk of dirty laundry, cigarette smoke, alcohol and young white male. The curtains were drawn against the light no matter what time it was. The two of them, like as not, would either still be in bed or lounging in underwear. It looked like a Calvin Klein ad. My regular suggestion that they should be playing outside on a beautiful day like this was usually not dignified with a response.

  * * *

  Over the course of filming, I became something of an awkward-older-brother type that seemed to routinely overstay his welcome (regardless of how short the visit). One day I was having lunch with Sean and Rebecca, and Sean asked me what sort of music I listened to.