Stories I Only Tell My Friends

by Rob Lowe

  But first, we need a girl. A girl who can stop traffic and break your heart while she’s doing it. This is a love story of the simplest, and therefore highest, order. Naturally we see every actress imaginable for the part of the sexy, smart, and practical Debbie.

  I read with and then screen-test with all the actresses—Rebecca De Mornay, Mariel Hemingway, even my own on-again, off-again girlfriend, Melissa Gilbert. We see unknowns. We see them all.

  Finally, it comes down to Mariel Hemingway, hot off of working with the master Bob Fosse and the great Robert Towne, and an unknown redhead named Melissa Leo.

  I like them both. Mariel is awkward and sweet, with the vulnerability that made her so stunning in Woody Allen’s Manhattan still intact. She also towers over me, which I think is a cool and funny sight. Melissa Leo is totally different—wild and tough, she exudes an overt sexiness and a take-no-shit attitude. But I can’t get the studio to back her. She’s too much of an unknown and, in their eyes, not a traditional beauty. (So she would miss this opportunity to break out and would for years work steadily and under the radar. And today, some twenty-plus years later, she is finally being acclaimed for her great work in movies like Frozen River and The Fighter. As the saying goes, “Don’t leave before the miracle.”)

  The director, Ed Zwick, wants to cast my old pal Demi Moore. I am against it. I feel the idea has already been played out with the success of St. Elmo’s Fire. But Demi tests with me and when we watch the footage, it’s hard to argue with the chemistry. Demi will play Debbie and she will kill.

  Elizabeth Perkins gives the single best audition I have ever seen before or since. She will play Debbie’s smart-ass friend, Joan. Jim Belushi originated the role of Danny’s chauvinist, know-it-all best friend, Bernie, years before, back in Chicago. Although we read a multitude of “comedy” actors, including the notoriously hilarious David Caruso (I kid you not), Jim’s name had not been taken seriously. I think it was one of the producers who had been with Sexual Perversity since it was a play who insisted we meet Jim. So we did.

  And that was that. There was no one else on the planet to compare.

  In my opinion, Jim, Demi, and Elizabeth would never be better than they were in the newly named About Last Night. (The entertainment culture was still genteel enough then that the words “Sexual” and “Perversity” were banned in many publications.) Jim was the definitive comic embodiment of the male id run rampant, Elizabeth the brittle, yet empathetic, bitch on wheels for the ages, and Demi proved to be the best choice possible. Our personal history, and our mutual fondness for each other, were the basis for an honest and raw exploration of themes that we were both trying to understand. What is love? What is the value of sex? How do you find the courage for commitment? How do you know when it all comes together?

  The shoot was emotional, tough, but exhilarating. The flak-suit sequence at the beginning of the movie is classic Mamet, requiring verbal precision that had not been required of me before. I found I loved the challenge and that I had a facility for the timing and type of dialogue that values specificity of language. Years later I would recognize the same requirements when I read The West Wing. Ed Zwick proved just the right master of tone for a movie that still makes me laugh and moves me today. It is my best work of this period of my life and a film that still has the power to make you laugh, swoon, and cry. Today, About Last Night is considered a classic. I’d put it up against any “date night” movie ever made.

  It was around this time that I finally saw a movie about another romantic commitment-phobe, Shampoo, starring Warren Beatty. Between my journey playing Danny and seeing Warren isolated and devastated by his inability to recognize and embrace love, I began to question my own romantic relationships. Watching the ending of Shampoo was like being shown a possible preview of my own life. Without some major changes, I could be just like Warren’s character—drowning in fun and attention but devoid of love, alone on Christmas Eve.

  But in the meantime, there was too much action available to this twenty-one-year-old male, so in spite of a new, quiet voice telling me where it could all lead, I was nowhere near ready to listen. Crank up the music!

  * * *

  The one-two punch of St. Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night has put me in the sweet spot of industry success, fan appreciation, and press coverage. But I know I need to use these hits to raise myself to the next level. Tom Cruise has been doing this beautifully and shows no signs of stopping. He has gone from the youthful appeal of Risky Business and Top Gun to working with Martin Scorsese and Paul Newman. He has transitioned, truly, into adult-themed films, in which he can work for the rest of his life. So I read tons of scripts a week, and at the mercy of the material available, I try to find ways to manage the stress of waiting for the Next Right Script.

  In the meantime, I make a small, independent movie that will be one of the first films to premiere at Robert Redford’s fledgling film festival, Sundance. I play a developmentally challenged, and eventually suicidal, white-trash Texan. Square Dance also stars the great Jason Robards and Jane Alexander, but the film’s calling card is the lead-role debut of Winona Ryder. My poor, confused Rory is unaware that his love for Noni’s Gemma is doomed from the start. I am playing completely against my It-guy persona and will eventually receive some of the best reviews of my career and a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor.

  I also use my downtime to travel to Massachusetts to do Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival. I will play Tuzenbach, the tragic lover, in a cast that includes theater heavyweights like Daniel Davis, Kate Burton, Roberta Maxwell, Stephen Collins, Amy Irving, and an actor who has always intrigued me, Christopher Walken.

  The heat is unrelenting. It’s 102 degrees inside of Chris Walken’s black Cadillac. For some reason there is no air-conditioning. He also likes the windows rolled up. We are cruising the small town of Williamstown, looking for a place to eat and maybe drink.

  It is the end of the first day’s rehearsal. I’ve thrown myself into this high-powered production to hone my stage chops. I don’t want to be one of the many movie stars who can’t hack it when it matters the most. It’s important to know you can make it all happen live, every night, without multiple takes and good editors propping you up. I’ve sort of forced myself onto Chris, knowing that with his level of talent, mystery, and, let’s face it, weirdness, if I didn’t befriend him stat, I might get too freaked out to ever do it.

  So we bake in his Caddy.

  “I saw. Your name. It’s good. It was on a list. Of the cast. I’m … glad it was you. I wasn’t sure. If it was true,” says Chris, scanning the street.

  “I don’t. Drink anymore. I would eat a donut,” he says, spying a coffee shop and pulling over.

  We are quite a sight getting out of this giant hearse among the summer tourists on the main drag. Within seconds people are milling around us and we have to abort our plans. People pound on the Caddy as we drive off.

  “Girls were screaming. Zoweeeee!” he says, and giggles like a kid.

  Chris and I become unlikely buddies during our Three Sisters run. He is unexpectedly sweet, with an odd yet vaguely self-aware sense of humor. He is also brilliantly unpredictable on-stage, which makes him one of the most riveting actors in contemporary theater.

  One night, in front of a full house, he walks to the apron of the stage, turns his back on the audience, and plays an entire speech directly to me in a voice so conversational that old ladies start yelling from the back row.

  Another time, our director, the esteemed Nikos Psacharopoulos, asks Chris to stop directing his dialogue to the audience, and not to look into the seats during important scenes. But Chris is having none of Nikos’s requests.

  “Why wouldn’t I look at them? I know they are there. They know I’m here. It would be rude to ignore them!”

  Getting nowhere, Nikos moves on to a complicated and boring lecture on the severity of the angle of the “raked” stage we are using. He go
es on at length about sight lines and safety issues and the angle of the slope. Finally, Chris has had enough. “Oh. And don’t bring your bowling ball onstage. It will roll into the front row!” he says, cackling like a maniac.

  I love and admire Chris, who is not who most people think him to be. From him I learn the value of avoiding conventional interpretations of material whenever possible and to be funny whenever possible—even if some people don’t get it.

  That the Oscar winner for The Deer Hunter is also a comic genius will take our pigeonholing industry almost three decades to figure out. I knew it in one ride in a Cadillac.

  I once saw Chris appear with Diane Ladd in a reading of the sappy warhorse Love Letters. A more unlikely bit of casting I can’t imagine and Chris did not disappoint. Backstage I asked him how much rehearsal time was required.

  “None.”

  “What? What do you mean ‘none’? You never rehearsed this play?” I ask, incredulous.

  “They’re letters. I wouldn’t know what’s in them,” he said, picking his teeth distractedly.

  Genius.

  CHAPTER 15

  Artistically pumped from these last two projects, I settled into a dizzying late summer. About Last Night was still rolling at the box office and my romantic-leading-man status was in full flower. I was pulled in seventeen different directions from all areas of my life, everyone wanting something. Oftentimes it was great. “Do you want to go backstage and meet Bruce Springsteen?” “Do you want to host MTV’s live New Year’s Eve?” “Will you visit the kids of Children’s Hospital?” But a lot of the time it was people who I didn’t have any connection to, wanting something for nothing, looking to hitch a ride. The audacity and chutzpah was, and continues to be, shocking.

  For instance, my grandfather and grandmother were major presences in my life, whom I loved deeply. When Grandma died, I was back in Ohio at her bedside, holding her hand. Eventually, I was done crying and they began to prepare her to be taken away. Reaching over my grandma’s body, a nurse handed me a pen and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but could I have your autograph?”

  This kind of thing happened all the time. And here’s the problem. I was (and still am) aware of the good fortune that hard work has brought me. I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I also genuinely like people. I want to get to know them in a real way. I am bummed out at the concept that someone just wants a scribble from you, when it’s clear they’ve never seen your work, they just know you’re “famous.”

  I began to feel a counterintuitive, melancholy loneliness and even low-grade anger at these moments. I didn’t like the way it made me feel when a passing car full of teenage girls screeched to a halt, emptying the crazed occupants, who bull-rushed me, pointing, screaming, and laughing. Years later, someone will call this phenomenon “objectification.” Then, I didn’t really know that I was being treated like an object. I did, however, begin to treat some people the way they treated me.

  * * *

  Apparently, the drinking water in California is very, very bad. Additionally, known carcinogens are being routinely put into the water table, our food supply, you name it. And when you really think about it, there’s only one place to turn in such circumstances. Stars! Lots and lots of stars!

  It’s Jane Fonda calling to ask me to join her on a campaign to pass Prop 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. The producers of Footloose want to put together a USO-style, celebrity-filled bus tour to barnstorm around the state, talking about cancer and water. Clearly, this will have more impact than my Kool-Aid stand for McGovern. I tell Jane to count me in.

  The bus is set to leave at 7:00 a.m., an hour I simply don’t see unless I’m being paid. The night before, I am at frenemy Michael J. Fox’s house for the kickoff party, this being our attempt to settle a fairly friendly but simmering rivalry. A few months before, I was ringside at the Marvin Hagler–John “the Beast” Mugabi match and had a run-in with Michael, whom I had never met.

  “Hey, Lowe.”

  “Oh, hi. Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah. Um, where the hell was my invitation?”

  “Your invitation? Invitation to what?”

  “To join the Brat Pack. I guess it was just lost in the mail.”

  I looked at him closely, to see if he was kidding.

  “Ah, well, fuck it. I got my own thing goin’ now anyway. The Snack Pack!” he said, turning back to the fight, with a twinkle in his eye.

  Eventually we spent the postfight debating whose movie themes were better: “Man in Motion” vs. “The Power of Love.” We were both big fans of beverages and so we started buying each other drinks and talking crazy, good-natured, competitive smack.

  “Hey, Teen Wolf, what time is it?” I asked.

  “Screw off! You’ve made seven movies. My last one [Back to the Future] made more than all of yours combined!”

  And on and on.

  At one point, we were seriously contemplating our chances of sucker punching Sugar Ray Leonard, who seemed small to us. Thankfully, even we knew that it would be suicide and that Ray is one of the nicest guys ever. “Can you imagine if we did it, though?” Fox said, and we both fell about the room, laughing like idiots.

  The party at Mike’s house is much the same, with tremendous ball busting on both sides and an acknowledged mutual affection. Around 4:30 a.m., I can take no more of Mike’s beloved dog’s attention, so in spite of a free, live living-room performance by Tom Petty’s lead guitarist, Mike Campbell, I beg off to bed. I stumble to an out-of-the-way guest room and am unconscious in seconds. Even the commotion of a large object leaping onto the bed doesn’t stir me; I figure I’ll let Mike’s dog sleep where he wants. Soon the room is absolutely freezing and I’m glad to have the warmth to snuggle with. Mr. Michael J. Fox may be making a fortune in movies, but I can tell you what he’s not spending money on: his heating bill!

  “What the hell is going on?” asks Mike’s assistant at first light, rousing me from my cozy confines. I’m still feeling the effects from last night and I try to open my eyes.

  “Oh, sorry. I let the dog sleep with me.”

  She stares at me with a look that distinctly says, Oh, now I’ve heard everything.

  I look next to me to discover Mike is in the bed, not the dog. I leap out of bed.

  “Jesus Christ!” I say with a start.

  “Shuuuut up. Tiiirred,” says Mike, just like my teenage sons do today. “Get out of my bed,” he adds.

  I decide it’s not worth trying to explain and stagger out to the kitchen. Please, Lord, let Marty McFly at least have some coffee in this crazy house.

  Eventually Mike and I pile into a rented Greyhound bus for the two-day road trip. Our itinerary has us stopping for big rallies in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, the farms of Salinas Valley, Berkeley, and finally a giant gathering at the historic Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where Jefferson Starship will perform.

  On the bus, I see many familiar faces. Obviously, Jane and Tom are there, along with Whoopi Goldberg, Morgan Fairchild, Ed Begley Jr., Daphne Zuniga, Peter Fonda, Stephen Stills, Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, and others.

  There’s lots of political shoptalk and everyone is raring to spread the message of voting for the initiative, which the ag industry and chemical companies are spending heavily to combat. In fact, they are outspending us by many millions. But we have the one thing they don’t: the power of celebrity.

  Ensconced in the back of the hot, stuffy bus, Mike and I are like geckos in a terrarium. Still very much playing the bad boy from St. Elmo’s Fire, I open the emergency hatch on the roof for some fresh air and a better view. Soon Mike and I are sticking our heads out like a pair of Labradors as the bus flies up Highway 101.

  “Do you hear that?” I scream at Mike over the howling wind in my face.

  “Whaaat?”

  “I hear a siren!” I say, and sure enough, highway patrol is screaming up behind us.

  “Oh shit! I think he’s after us!” yells Mike.


  We both duck back inside and close the hatch.

  There is a commotion in the aisles, as it becomes clear that we are indeed being pulled over. This ought to be good. Knowing full well that I could still probably explode a Breathalyzer, I’m glad I’m not driving.

  The driver pulls the Greyhound bus to the shoulder. The cop asks him to step outside. If this becomes a strip-search situation, I’m quite sure there are some folks on the bus who will have an issue. Peter Fonda shakes his head.

  “Wow, man. Busted by the heat before we even get started.”

  “Maybe he’s been paid by Dow Chemical to stop us,” someone adds.

  Now the driver comes back on board.

  “The officer wants everyone off the bus.”

  This is quickly becoming the kind of situation that generates headlines you don’t want.

  “I’ll go first,” says Jane, exiting.

  “I got your back, sister,” says Whoopi, right behind her.

  And so we all disembark, piling out one after another after another like a celebrity clown car. By the time Michael J. Fox and I file past the cop, he is in a starstruck daze, looking at us all lined up on the side of the highway in the middle of central California farmlands.

  “Whoa. Wh … what are you guys doing here?” he asks.

  Jane takes charge, telling him our mission and giving the poor man both barrels of her A-list movie-star charm.

  “I see,” says the cop, flummoxed. “I pulled you over because you were speeding and I saw people trying to escape via the roof.”

  “That was me, Officer. I was actually trying to close the broken hatch with Mr. Michael J. Fox here,” I say, gesturing to Mike, who is trying to be invisible.

  Now the guy really loses it.

  “I just saw Back to the Future!” he gushes.

  Mike elbows me. “I’m sure St. Elmo’s Fire was sold out,” he says under his breath.

  Soon we are all posing for photos with our new friend from the California Highway Patrol.

  “My sergeant will never believe this!” he says as he gets a good-bye hug from Whoopi Goldberg. “You all slow down now. And good luck on Prop 65. You got my vote.”