Stories I Only Tell My Friends

by Rob Lowe

  These kinds of struggles are what bond people in the business together. It’s why actors marry other actors and why sometimes they form cliques. Unless you have a personal experience or stake in the making of a movie, it’s hard to understand why someone’s going nuclear when his or her movie’s title is changed. So, I commiserate with Emilio, Howell, and Cruise. They, in turn, talk to additional pals they have worked with, like Sean Penn and Tim Hutton. We are one another’s support and sounding board. We aren’t looking to form some sort of “actors club” (Brat Pack, anyone?) or to be cool, we just want to be around people who are dealing with the same new, mysterious, frustrating issues.

  As the release date for The Outsiders grows imminent, a group of actors is flown up to screen the movie for the school in central California that petitioned Francis to make it. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t invited, but I figure that there probably wasn’t enough room on the plane Warner’s rented. Besides, I’m set to see it the following week.

  The next Tuesday, I’m standing in a tiny, claustrophobic hallway outside a screening room at Universal Studios. Only a few people are gathered in the hall. This is an extremely select, private advance screening. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited or more nervous. I see the cinematographer Steve Burum.

  “This movie’s gonna make a hundred million dollars,” he says to no one in particular, staring at his feet.

  I’m let into the screening room and settle into a midrow seat in the back. Even though there are maybe twenty other people in the theater, I want to be alone. It’s an old, run-down room, but as the lights go down and the first elements of sound come up, I know the equipment is state of the art. Stevie Wonder begins to sing “Stay Gold” and the Gone with the Wind–style credits begin. I see my name. It’s listed under the heading “The Greasers.” I read the list—Tommy, Patrick, Emil, Ralph, Matt, Tom—and I’m so proud of them. After the hair-raising auditions, the intense shoot, the extended delay of our big debuts, the point of the whole exercise is finally unspooling, with an opening credit sequence of amazing emotion and grandeur. In an instant you know there’s never been a movie for teens like this. Maybe Steve Burum is right. Maybe The Outsiders will live up to and surpass all expectations.

  The first scene begins.

  There must be a problem in the projection booth. Instead of opening with the first scene in the script, the movie has jumped almost ten scenes, to a big close-up of Matt Dillon getting ready to walk to the drive-in. I wait for the movie to stop and return to the beginning—the whole first fifteen minutes with the introductions to all the Greasers as we rescue Pony from the Socs (and I do my Starsky and Hutch move over their car), and the scene where Pony and I talk in bed about Mom and Dad and why we are orphans, and the other great scenes from the book that we had worked so hard on.

  Soon I realize this isn’t like my misadventure back at the Malibu Cinema. These movie reels are exactly as the filmmakers want them. This is the final version of The Outsiders.

  I feel like I might vomit. Most of the scenes of the Curtis brothers are just not in the movie. Is this a joke? Can this be happening? It’s like being invited to a big party in my honor that’s thrown by a favorite uncle, showing up in my best clothes, seeing all my friends inside, and the uncle appears to say, “What are you doing here? This is our party.” I am completely blindsided with humiliation.

  The movie continues. I don’t even have a close-up until almost the halfway mark. The character of Sodapop, so essential to S. E. Hinton’s book, has been so excised from the movie that the filmmakers are forced to loop a terrible exposition line on the back of a girl’s head in an attempt to explain who my character is, since all of his introduction is now gone. “Oh, your brother is Sodapop. He’s the dreamy one who works at the D.X., right?”

  I try to calm myself and enjoy the amazing scenes that weren’t cut out: the rumble; the beautiful scenes with Tommy and Ralph; Emilio’s ad-libbed laugh lines. But it’s hard. At least I will finish strong with my big breakdown scene in the park. After all the screen testing of that speech and the struggle to get it right when we shot it, it couldn’t be cut because it not only ends the movie, it sums up the entire relationship of the three central characters, the Curtis brothers.

  On-screen, Matt Dillon is dying after ad-libbing the line “You’ll never take me alive.” (I remember shooting this scene, watching Matt bleeding to death on the street. It was a cold night and Matt was sent to his trailer. As I did my close-up I was looking at a sandbag lying on the ground.) I sit up in my seat. Tommy and I really went to the well together on this one; I can’t wait to see it pay off. Matt’s death scene ends. They cut away. Here comes the biggest sequence of my career … but instead, the end credits roll. The movie is over. The sequence is gone. The climax of the book is out as though it never existed.

  The lights come up. I’m dazed. My entire story line was cut from The Outsiders, easily ten scenes and twenty minutes of screen time. Now I know why I wasn’t invited to the screening at the school. I try to look unaffected and gather my composure as I blink in the light of the emptying screening room. Later I sit in my car and wonder: Why didn’t anyone tell me? I drive home in a fog. All I can think is that I must have been terrible in those scenes, and no one wanted to say anything so they just took them out.

  In my driveway, I sit in my car for a long while, trying to figure it all out.

  My disillusionment and disappointment are so complete that I know then and there that I will never truly get over it. And I won’t—at least not until I find myself in another small screening room, this time in Australia, almost twenty-five years later.

  * * *

  The Outsiders opened on March 25, 1983. I went with Tommy Howell and stood in the back of the massive Mann Theatre in Westwood Village near UCLA. This was the prime movie theater in all of L.A., maybe the world. It was packed; there were even people sitting in the aisles—illegally. That the movie bore no resemblance to the book made no difference to the masses of girls who screamed from the first frame of the film to the last. There may not have been much (if any) of my acting left, but the filmmakers made certain to keep the scene where I came out of the shower, barely concealing myself with a towel.

  As the movie ended, people noticed Tommy and me and a mob rushed us. Security guards were called in as we were pinned into a corner. It was even more intense outside in the street. There was a line of people around the block for the next showing and they, too, had heard we were in the theater and pounced on us as we tried to run to our car. Girls grabbed our clothes and screamed as they pulled at our hair. We dove into Tommy’s truck, driving away in a frenzy.

  It was official. We were young movie stars.

  The Outsiders didn’t make a hundred million dollars. It did something even more spectacular. It launched all of us into the zeitgeist. Almost immediately, each of us was rewarded with a big film role. The Outsiders was not just the first great teen ensemble, but it also created a group of male stars who would dominate the next generation of movies.

  * * *

  In 1983 Timothy Hutton is the only guy around our age who already has an Academy Award. He is the top dog—and for a good reason. But now I hear he has pulled out of what was to be his next movie, The Hotel New Hampshire, based on the best-selling book by John Irving. Irving’s last film adaptation, The World According to Garp, was a critical and box-office success, so New Hampshire has a big profile from the start. Now that Hutton is gone, everyone is scrambling to get the coveted lead role of John, the book’s narrator.

  Like Coppola, the film’s director, Tony Richardson, is an Academy Award winner, as well as a revered leader of the new wave of English cinema. Tony’s film The Charge of the Light Brigade was one of the most important British films ever made, and with Tom Jones he won his Oscar for best director. He is a rebel (like his ex-wife, Vanessa Redgrave, who is the mother of his lovely daughters Natasha and Joely) and one of the more eccentric directors still valued within the gr
owing commercialization of the studio system.

  I hike up the long driveway to a large home with a breathtaking view over the Sunset Strip. A staffer lets me in the front door for my first meeting with my prospective director at his home high in the Hollywood Hills.

  “Come in, come in. I’m in the living room,” a strange, wonderful voice calls out, the sort of voice you could never forget.

  I follow the voice and as I round a corner and enter a two-story living room, a large parrot swoops through the air and attaches itself to my face. Blood erupts through its beak as I try to fight the thing off. It’s squawking and flapping, beating me in the head with its wings. I grab the bird by its neck and pry it off of me. It flies up into the rafters, where I see it gather with a number of other birds, all clearly let wild in the house.

  I don’t think I’ll make a very good impression with blood running down my face and I don’t want Tony to know I almost broke the neck of one of his prized pets.

  “Um, I’ll be right there!” I call as I scurry to the kitchen to clean off my wound. After a moment, I enter the den, where Tony is sitting, working on the script.

  “Hello, Rob. What’s wrong with your face?” he asks as we shake hands.

  “Bar fight,” I say, and he laughs.

  We spend the next hour talking about the movie. He tells me he has cast Jodie Foster as the heroine, and the iconic sex symbol and current It girl European actress Nastassja Kinski as the troubled romantic interest who wears nothing but a bear suit in the movie (only John Irving could come up with this). Beau Bridges will play the patriarch. We talk about the challenges of portraying a character who will age a decade in the movie and about the themes the story deals with, many of them controversial, including incest and rape. Tony tells me that he wants to make a sweeping epic about an eccentric American family, and to pull it off he will need the right actor to anchor the movie.

  I realize I am listening to an iconoclastic visionary trying to see his way clear to making a studio movie into a grand, yet accessible, art film. But he reminds me of Coppola and I’m honored to be in the running for a challenging role in a movie of such big themes.

  “When do you think you’ll start reading actors for the part of John?” I ask.

  “I won’t,” he says.

  “Oh, really?” I reply, trying to hide my surprise. After the gauntlet of The Outsiders, it seems inconceivable to me that a director would have no auditions at all.

  “There’s no need to,” he continues.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because I’ve found who I want,” he says, eyes twinkling mischievously. “It’s you.”

  It was the first—and last—time a director had the vision and the guts to give me a role in the room. He didn’t consult with producers, agents, or the studio. He just did it. We started shooting in Montreal, Canada, three weeks later.

  * * *

  Sitting in the lobby of the Manor Le Moyne in Montreal, my latest home away from home, waiting to meet Jodie Foster, I’m really nervous. I’m a huge fan. (Forget the landmark Taxi Driver, how about Bugsy Malone! ) I think she’s beautiful, know she’s smart (she has made headlines as the first star to take a break from Hollywood to conquer the Ivy League), and am unsure how to handle all of the controversy that surrounds her. Ever since John Hinckley shot President Reagan, trying to impress her, she has been under unrelenting scrutiny. Some asshole nobody kook looking to gain the spotlight violated her private life and in the process almost ruined it. At the time, I couldn’t possibly imagine what that must be like.

  Jodie turns out to be the great joy of The Hotel New Hampshire. We connect immediately. We are both child actors in transitional phases of our lives and careers, share similar working styles (no drama, no nonsense), and have loving, smart, and very complicated mothers. Shooting the movie will be the beginning of a long friendship during which I will watch her grow into her potential, despite the adversity. Jodie Foster should be any actor’s role model. She is certainly mine. Many years later, my personal life would painfully and very publicly implode. Of all the many people I had known or worked with over the years, there was only one who took the time to write a note of support: Jodie.

  The atmosphere on a movie is often dictated by its subject matter and, if the director has a strong vision, his personal worldview. New Hampshire was awash in familial deep-bonding and bed hopping that would make a Feydeau farce seem tame. The major underlying theme of the book is painful and sometimes complicated sexual awakening, and Tony Richardson created an atmosphere of exploratory, innocent permissiveness that resulted in something like a free-love commune. The backstage sexual energy would then be captured in our work on-screen. Coppola wanted to toughen his cast; Richardson wanted to break down conventional relationships.

  One evening, after a long, emotional day of shooting, Nastassja Kinski stops me in the hotel lobby.

  “Rob, how about you and me tonight? Dinner?” she says, fixing me with a laser stare, her massive eyes glowing. I’ve not really had much interaction with her even though the film is halfway complete, because in truth, I find her intimidating. Time magazine has just placed her on its cover as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.” I’m barely nineteen years old and have no experience with a woman of her beauty, sexuality, fame, and angst-filled charisma.

  “Um, dinner? With me?” The minute I say it, I know I’ve revealed myself as the acting nerd from Dayton, Ohio, and not as a newly minted movie star. Nastassja gives me a look that says, Helloooo? Do I need to spell it out? and replies, “Yes. Tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah! Sure! No problem. Sounds good,” I answer, trying to sound casual. She gives me a full-lipped, pouty smile and walks off.

  Holy smokes! What just happened? Obviously, I know where my duty lies in this situation, but YIKES! This is the woman whose dark, erotic (and nude) performance in Cat People had me playing the cassette of the theme song over and over. Also, anyone who could wrap herself in a python (in her famous poster) has got to be a force to be reckoned with. This is going to be some evening.

  And so began a wonderful, adventurous, and intense on-set relationship. We practically created our own world, working on an emotionally demanding and ambitious film all day, then retreating to each other at night. Clearly it also meant the end of my already hot-and-cold long-distance romance with Melissa. And although we would be in each other’s lives off and on for some time, it would never be the same.

  The Hotel New Hampshire remains among the most emotionally intense location experiences of my career, second only to The Outsiders. The film itself, however, was crushed at the box office by a little movie called Splash, starring my fairy princess, Daryl Hannah. Looking at New Hampshire today, I can’t imagine that any current studio would green-light it, in spite of the book’s best-seller status. It’s not a movie for a mass audience. Its quirky, provocative plot, which spins toward the two leads committing incest, would relegate it to low-budget, independent-movie status, at best. As for the finished product, it’s a heroically flawed movie, reaching for something great and sometimes coming very, very close. It attempts too much and also accomplishes much. I’m very proud of it. I wish more people had seen it.

  CHAPTER 13

  Back in L.A. after months of shooting on location in Montreal, I’m emotionally hungover. I gave my all in my performance, fell in love (literally) with my New Hampshire family, and now we’ve scattered back to our individual lives. It’s over. Just like that. I’m still only nineteen years old and the end of every movie feels like a breakup. I cover my malaise by looking for fun and adventure wherever I can find it, most often on nights out with the boys. Since The Outsiders, this has been a habit and now it’s accelerating.

  With most of my friends away at college, I return to the sanctuary of the Sheens’ Gilligan’s Island–like pool. Emilio and I continue where we left off—hard-core workouts, tons of reading and auditioning, doing postproduction on the various movies we’ve wrapped, and trying always t
o improve our standing and our ability as young actors. By this time, both our little brothers have thrown their hats into the ring as well, so they aren’t busting our balls anymore. Tom Cruise is also around, and he and I are awaiting the release of Class and Risky Business, respectively. I’ve seen Risky Business and know that the first-time writer/director has created something original and very stylish. But I’m not sure anyone is prepared for how huge it would be or the velocity at which it would send Tom into orbit. I’m hoping that with Class I can have similar success.

  Then I pick up a copy of Newsweek and read the review of Class. A quick glance at the table of contents sets the stage—“Film Preview: Class—A Vile Concoction, page 98.” The critique itself has the single best and most prominent use of the word “debacle” that I will ever read. I have to laugh, it is so brutal. I’m relieved that the reviewer left the actors fairly unscathed, and truth be told, the many competing chefs had created a concoction. It’s clear Class is not going to be my Risky Business.

  Many people still buy into the idea that actors can control and plan their careers. This is, to put it plainly, bullshit. Sure, if you are a directing auteur like Spielberg or Cameron, you can control everything you do, but an actor? C’mon. Even the biggest star is at the mercy of the material offered to him. You hope and pray you have a good part, then you hope and pray the rest of the script is equally good, then you hit your knees and beg other people who you think are talented to join you, then you cross your fingers that they don’t hack it up, phone it in, or fall down on the job. After the movie is done, you say the rosary, read the Torah, and otherwise try to ward off the bad editors, meddling studios, terrible ad campaigns, horrible release dates, unforeseen snowstorms, and critics lying in wait. If you are lucky enough to successfully navigate all of these variables, then maybe, just maybe, you will be rewarded and the audience will show up and give you a hit. All any actor can really do is take the best material available at any given time, do good work, and hope for lightning to strike.