Stories I Only Tell My Friends

by Rob Lowe

  On the first day, we read through the script, get haircuts, and have wardrobe fittings. We cut off early, as Francis wants us up by 8:30 in the morning for a meeting at the house we will use as the main set.

  The next day we pile into vans and are driven into the terribly run-down, desolate neighborhood where 80 percent of the movie will be shot. When we arrive at the small, beat-up two-bedroom home that will be the Curtis brothers’ house, Francis stands in the weed-filled dirt yard, waiting.

  “Hi guys. Gather round,” he says in his relaxed, earnest, and brainy way. Sometimes Francis sounds a little like Kermit the Frog but with a deeper register.

  “I want us to meet like this on the spot where we will work, and to be together. I feel like we should do this every day. And now, I’d like us all to begin our day with a half hour of tai chi,” he says.

  I don’t know what tai chi is. I look around for a deliveryman. Maybe it’s some sort of Asian takeout—which would be great because I’m starving. But as I scan the horizon, I see it’s just us—Francis and his Greasers—standing around in the dirt. Francis begins swaying and gesticulating in slow motion, almost like he’s underwater.

  “Tai chi is the art of energy transformation,” he says. “It builds concentration, strength, and balance. It puts your body in harmony with its environment.” We all form a line and begin to follow his movements, and that’s when I recognize the motions as the ones Martin Sheen did in front of the mirror at the beginning of Apocalypse Now. As the exercises drag on, I think: Martin’s character was in Saigon; my character is in Tulsa. Why does a ’50s Greaser know or care about tai chi? But if the world’s greatest living director thinks we should stand on our heads to prepare, we should probably do it.

  Patrick Swayze arrives in time for the next day’s rehearsal. He walks into the gym as cool as you want, wearing tight jeans and a tattered, sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt revealing his massive, ripped arms. (This is his uniform, he never changes it, and if I looked like him, neither would I.)

  “Hi, I’m Buddy,” he says, squeezing my hand with such enthusiasm that it could snap like a twig.

  The guy is yoked. I mean he is literally made of iron. He’s very high-strung, amped, and ready to storm the battlements at the drop of a hat. He’s a Texan with a legitimate drawl, so he’s a great arbiter of “Okie” accents. Buddy is also a decade older than the rest of us, and married, so on that level he might as well be a Martian. But that, too, serves him well as the older brother Darrel, who is farther down life’s road.

  “Hey guys, I had a notion that you are all acrobats,” says Francis, entering the gym sipping an espresso. “In fact, I’d like you all to go down the hall for some training,” he adds, heading over to greet Swayze.

  “You bet, yaaaaawoooo!” hoots Swayze, clapping his hands and yelping like a wolf. I love his enthusiasm. He makes Tom Cruise look lobotomized.

  The seven Greasers file down the hall to a classroom that has been turned into a rudimentary tumbling area. There are parallel bars, rings, and a trampoline. The only thing missing are safety mats. Instead, someone has placed a bunch of two-by-two squares of Styrofoam on the floor.

  Swayze immediately takes charge.

  “I was a gymnast in high school,” he informs us. (His list of previous accomplishments will grow to include ballet dancer, bow-and-arrow specialist, motocross expert, horseman, guitar player, singer, songwriter, construction worker, carpenter, and artist, to name a few.)

  Along with a local guy from the University of Tulsa, he begins to teach us a standing back flip. I am one of those guys who love sports and the adrenaline rush of a physical challenge, but when it comes to flips, I’m a pussy. I don’t flip. I don’t even dive into a pool—straight cannonball for me. The thought of falling midflip onto the ground conjures up images of rolling around in a wheelchair like Raymond Burr in Ironside. No thanks. Cruise, not surprisingly, is all over it.

  “How about this!” he says, almost pulling it off without even being spotted. He wipes out, but tries it again immediately. Now Howell and Emilio have their blood up. They don’t want to be upstaged, so they begin digging in earnest. Splaat! One goes down. Thunk! Another hits the deck, making the sound of a side of beef hitting the pavement. Eventually some of the guys figure it out and then, mercifully, it’s time for our next assignment back in the rehearsal hall.

  Francis tells us that we will be shooting the entire movie on video, in front of a green screen in the gym, before we begin real, principal photography. Later he can use new Sony technology to put in any background he chooses. But before we shoot, he asks us to do a lengthy improvisational exercise that culminates with us attempting to go to sleep on camera. Now this I can do. When it comes to sleeping, I should be in the goddamn Olympics. “Very good job, Rob,” he says, and I’m thrilled.

  Diane Lane and the other Socs, led by the teen idol Leif Garrett, arrive to do the big drive-in sequence. The minute Diane enters the room, a competition for her attention commences. Matt Dillon clearly has the inside track and soon we all know that we have no chance. Francis appears to dote on Matt as well—he’s clearly grooming him to be the James Dean of the movie.

  For his part, Leif Garrett has embraced Francis’s attempt at class warfare. We all like Leif; he’s so jaded from his years as a teen cover boy that he’s hilarious, but he is determined to be superior to us, just like his character, Bob, would be. This, of course, leads to merciless ball busting.

  On the day all the Greasers pose for a photo shoot in full costume in the shitty gym, Leif comes to watch. The local kids have been running roughshod through the production offices for days, stealing anything they can get their hands on. (It really is a horribly poor part of Tulsa, and who can blame them.) We are all posed together under the flashing strobe as a production assistant finally goes off and drags a local ragamuffin away for pilfering the candy bars and other goodies that are laid out, just off the set.

  “Keep your goddamn hands off the food, it’s not for you, it’s for the actors,” the assistant yells.

  “Yeah, Leif, you hear that,” calls Macchio to Leif, who is standing at the snack table, “those are for the actors!” Garrett is mortified. A hush falls over the room until we all burst out laughing. I look over, cracking up at Ralph, who now looks a little scared. Flash! Snap! The camera captures the moment. That frame of film will become the poster for The Outsiders.

  That night we are divided into groups and sent out to spend the night with “real Greasers.” And when I say spend the night, I don’t mean go have a long dinner and hear some stories. We are meant to sleep at their houses! I’d always hated overnights with kids I didn’t know very well. So the thought of bunking with a Hells Angel that some production assistant found off the street has got me rattled. “Um, what are the odds they could be murderers?” I ask Tommy Howell.

  Francis has chosen Tom Cruise as my roommate for this adventure. He and I are delivered like two sacks of mail to a slightly tired-looking duplex way outside of town. Tom’s unrelenting enthusiasm for anything, however ridiculous, plus a few hours to calculate the mathematical improbability that these folks are axe murderers, has made me kind of intrigued about our experiment.

  We are greeted at the door by a middle-aged couple.

  “You boys must be the actors!” says the man, offering his hand. He is almost fully tattooed.

  “Yes, sir. I’m Tom Cruise.”

  “Hi. I’m Rob Lowe.”

  “Well, come on in, boys,” says the woman, who looks like any other midwestern housewife. Clearly, my darker fears are unfounded, as this couple could not be more welcoming. We share dinner in the tiny kitchen and swap stories about our lives as young actors in Hollywood with their stories of being Greasers in the mid-’50s in Tulsa. We talk late into the night until everyone tires.

  “Well, boys, I better tuck ya in for the night,” says the woman, leading us to a foldout bed that Tom and I will share.

  “Thanks so much, ma’am,” says
Cruise, who is always unrelentingly polite and formal with adults or anyone of authority.

  “See you in the morning,” I add.

  “You betcha!” she says, shutting out the light.

  Cruise and I lie there on the bumpy cot, saying nothing. Neither wants to disturb the other’s chance of actually falling asleep in this bizarre circumstance. I’m trying to assimilate all of the information, experiences, and lessons that are hitting me every day like crashing waves. I have made it to this point in life on instinct and hard work. But after a few days on The Outsiders I know I have so much to learn, and for once my mind won’t go to sleep. I know I’m hardly alone. Other than Matt Dillon and Diane Lane, all of us are just getting started in movies. But I’m competitive, and if anyone is going to come out of this most ready for the future, I want it to be me. Oddly enough, there is something comforting about knowing that my cot mate feels exactly the same way.

  “Cruise? Cruise? You awake?” I whisper.

  “Yeah, man,” he answers.

  “Me too,” I say, as we both stare at the ceiling, waiting for tomorrow and what will come next.

  * * *

  In keeping with the theme of toughening us up and having us interact with the genuine articles, the next morning finds us gathered to play some local tough guys in a game of tackle football—on cement.

  I huddle up the Greasers. I am in my element. Back in Ohio I spent countless days like these drawing out buttonhooks and go-routes with my gang of North Dayton toughs. Our opposition is really no different, although I’m a tad unsettled by my suspicion that some of them wouldn’t mind sending a Hollywood actor to the hospital.

  I look at Team Greaser. Clearly I’m going to have an issue with Dillon. He has the boom box playing Bowie and is wearing his ever-present motorcycle boots. He yawns and scratches his chest. I know a blocker when I see one.

  “Matt, play line,” I say.

  “Cool, man,” he replies, lighting a Marlboro.

  Macchio is tiny, so I have to hide him somewhere as well. Cruise and Emilio are fast as all hell and gung-ho, so they’ll be receivers. Swayze, of course, wants to play all positions and probably could.

  “Hey, Soda,” he says, calling me by my character’s name, “see that big dude with the goatee? I’m gonna knock his block off on the first play.”

  He’s got a look in his eye that I will come to know well, and I figure I better let him do what he wants.

  “Go for it, man.”

  Tommy Howell has been walking the parking lot, kicking away rocks, and otherwise just sort of checking out our playing field. Being the son of a longtime Hollywood stunt man, Tommy is evaluating the risk/reward equation of the matter at hand.

  “I think these guys want to hurt us,” he says.

  “Me too,” I answer.

  He looks at me like, How the hell did we end up in this situation?! We take our positions, hoping for the best.

  “Red rover! Red rover! Thirty-two. Thirty-two. Hut. Hut!” I bark, doing my best Terry Bradshaw.

  Cruise and Emil blow their guys out of their shoes (Estevez was a track god at Malibu Park and hasn’t lost a step), but the Tulsa Tough Guys have blitzed, disseminating my line of Dillon, Howell, and Macchio. Swayze, however, has totally shit-canned his man, who lies on the ground, wiggling like a fish.

  I’m forced to roll out. I look for my receivers but there are guys in my face. Someone hammers me from the blind side and I’m down, hard.

  The Greasers return to the huddle.

  “Man, that was fucked up,” says Dillon lazily.

  “Ya gotta listen to me. Listen to me! I’m telling ya, when I was growing up in Texas I played a guy who…” begins Swayze, with a vintage story of his youth and Pop Warner Football. I can’t follow the rest because I’m trying to clear my head.

  “Let’s just all go long,” interrupts Cruise, calling the play universally reserved for teams who are desperate.

  “Old Yeller! Old Yeller! Hut! Hut!”

  Everybody goes long. Everybody gets knocked silly. The Tulsa hoods try to hide their satisfaction at the beat-down.

  “Y’all almost had us on that one!” says the one in the Levi cutoff shorts.

  We attempt to regroup in the huddle.

  “Okay, I’m takin’ over here,” says Swayze, wild-eyed.

  “No. No, you’re not,” says fifteen-year-old Tommy Howell. His quiet tone and earnest demeanor have us all listening.

  “These guys are looking for a story to tell their girlfriends. ‘Honey, you shoulda seen it, we popped those Hollywood actors good!’ Well, that’s not going to happen on my watch. I’m done. I quit. ’Cause if I break a leg doing this, I’m out of this movie in two seconds and on the next flight home. And I’m not gonna lose this part over a stupid fucking exercise. It’s over. Francis can fire me if he wants to,” he says, walking away.

  We all look at each other. There is no denying his logic.

  “Hey guys, we forfeit. Congrats. Great game,” I say.

  If there is any dissent among the rest of Team Greaser, no one is saying anything. The Tulsa roughnecks look stunned as we clear out, but they, too, say nothing. As we pile into our van to drive away, I think I can make them out laughing at us. I’m sure they thought we were just a bunch of scared Hollywood pansies.

  * * *

  On the night before principal photography begins, Francis has one last task for us. He wants the three Curtis brothers to spend the night at the house we will be shooting in, and do a marathon improv session. He will observe with The Outsiders author, S. E. Hinton. Swayze, Howell, and I are petrified. It’s one thing to improv a scene or two, but to do hours of it? In front of the director and author!?

  Back in our van, we huddle together, working out a framework. We decide that we should cook a dinner, figuring it will eat up a lot of the clock and give us something to talk about as well. Problematically, neither Tommy nor I can boil an egg, but as usual, Swayze has experience in the field.

  “I’ll cook us a steak. You two make a salad,” he says.

  Later that afternoon we gather at the house. Francis and S. E. Hinton sit on the couch in the living room, saying nothing, just observing. S.E. (or Susie, as she is called) has become our den mother. She is a firecracker—smart, sarcastic, and a real guy’s gal. All the Greasers love her. And we should. She created us. Now she watches her Curtis brothers cooking in the tiny, run-down kitchen. (This improv will later be incorporated into the film as Ponyboy makes a breakfast of chocolate cake.) Tommy, Swayze, and I laugh, bicker, and banter like the brothers. Francis seems pleased. As the evening wears on and we run out of inspiration, Swayze bails us out again by pulling out his six-string. The three of us break our 1950s timeline to sing Springsteen songs until late into the night. Eventually Francis has seen enough.

  “Okay, guys. That’s all for now. If you would rather sleep at the hotel, maybe that’s best.”

  Relief washes over us. We pile into the van and head back to the comparative luxury of the Tulsa Excelsior. On the ride, Francis tells stories about shooting Apocalypse Now and Patton. I’m hoping to hear more, to hear about The Godfather and Pacino or what’s going on with One from the Heart or any of the other extraordinary chapters of his great life, but we’ve arrived at the hotel.

  “Break a leg tomorrow, boys,” Francis says. “See you on the set.”

  Some actors take acting classes. Some go to schools of drama like Yale and Juilliard. Not me. I learned on the job. And my most influential teacher was Coppola. His lengthy, sometimes bizarre rehearsal process for The Outsiders was my most memorable course. I learned more about preparing a character (how he walks, talks, dresses, eats, sleeps) in those two weeks than I probably would have in two years elsewhere. It also happened at the perfect time—the end of my senior year of high school. Just as any kid about to go to college begins to think seriously about how he wants to earn a living, I was learning the tools of my trade—and being paid to do it.

  There were days
when I would’ve liked to have faced lower expectations and less pressure than learning at this particular level demanded. It’s much easier to expose yourself, to take chances, and to allow yourself to fall on your face when you are not being groomed for a Warner Bros. spring release. Crashing and burning in an elite private acting class would have been a very different experience, and part of me envied those who were schooled in that fashion. But that was not my path. Having a movie or two to “warm up” in small roles while I got my feet wet might have had an advantage or two, but let’s face it, it’s good to be a lead. But as I sat in the makeup chair before our first shot on our first day of shooting, I was completely unprepared for the intensity of what was to come.

  Like all the Greasers, I have chosen a “uniform” for my character, one that will be different from the seven others and easily identifiable in the many group shots the movie will require. (This is an important lesson when working in ensemble casts. Be unique. Be noticed. But never do it in a way that is showy or attempts to pull focus in a dishonest way.) I’m in my black work boots (they are heavy, and will make my walk slow and plodding) and white T-shirt with an open flannel shirt over it. My collar is up. My hair is slicked back.

  I am in awe of Emilio’s bold choice for his “look.” He will wear a Mickey Mouse T-shirt throughout the movie. Francis likes it so much that not only does he pay Disney exorbitant rights so Emil can wear the character on his shirt, he writes a scene where we all watch Mickey on TV. That’s how you make a mark. Make a strong choice for your character, and if it works, you never know where it will lead. (And indeed, Emilio’s relentless ad-libbing and ideas took a peripheral character and made him a focal point.)

  My first shot in the movie has all of us together in the dirty yard where we practiced tai chi. Ponyboy has been beaten up by the rich kids and we rush to the alley to save him. As the Socs’ car pulls out, I elect to do a diving spin move over the hood that I remember from the credit sequence of Starsky and Hutch. I calculate that Francis has rarely, if ever, watched TV, so he won’t notice my blatant lift from my childhood heroes. I’m right.