by Jon Cryer
I am now, however, in the process of tracking down every single person who booed at that screening and figuring out a way to sign them all up for unwanted magazine subscriptions.
I guess the takeaway is, endings are mysteries.
As it turns out, Duckie’s legacy has decidedly benefited from his also-ran status, his right guy/wrong guy alchemy. I got a real taste of that in 2008, when Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody asked me to make an appearance at the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood for a screening of Pretty in Pink she was hosting as part of a Cody-curated film festival.
She asked me to do a preshowing interview, and in talking about the ending to the crowd, I diplomatically acknowledged that I could see how the original ending might have felt odd, since, I said, “You do invest in the cross-class relationship.”
“I did not invest in it,” Diablo interrupted with a mild vehemence, her fangirl defenses up. “I was, like, so against it in every way.”
This is something I’ve continued to hear over the years: that if you’re in the Duckie camp, a nerd-forever type with sympathies augmented by an inherent distaste and distrust for Blane and all he represents, you think of Pretty in Pink as ending bittersweetly, unhappily even, and in fact more realistic than John Hughes imagined it originally when he shunted Blane to the side as Andie and Duckie twirled their way into outsider Eden. I find it especially funny that even fans of the ending as it stands now don’t seem to think Andie and Blane make it past the first year of college as a couple. They do all seem to believe she and Duckie are friends for life, though.
I’m always touched by fans like Diablo, whose affection for Duckie lead them to believe an injustice was done upon this sidelined geek. It’s heartening to see this outspoken guy I played become a hero to young people who feel ostracized and put-upon, but who might find in themselves the capacity to boast anyway—however misplaced—and move forward. You don’t get in this business to avoid having some effect on people. “He’s your Duckie”—shorthand for “there’s the effeminate heterosexual dork who’s always been in love with you”—is even a pop-culture phrase now, known to arise in movies and TV shows. (Its first-known usage, as far as I know, was from John Hughes himself, who during filming pointed out a friend of Molly’s and whispered to me, “He’s her Duckie.”)
Molly added a rainbow-hued wrinkle to the Duckie legacy during a videotaped interview for Entertainment Weekly, which was reuniting various movie/TV-show casts for an issue. She, Annie Potts, and I were chattin’ away, and when I brought up the notion that Andie and Duckie stayed friends, Molly added, “And I’m sure that Duckie came out by now.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I went along, making a joke about how Duckie would be the one at the Gay Pride parade in suspenders with no shirt.
But then I thought about it some more. Did I somehow not pick up on a pretty big thing about this guy I played? I already knew that among the character’s champions are gay men and women who saw in Duckie a society-branded pariah who didn’t give a shit about what people thought, was comfortable in his own skin, and lived out loud. And for the closeted gay men who in their teens professed open “crushes” on close female friends as a defense mechanism against real feelings, there was probably a certain kinship attached to Duckie’s fruitless quest to win over Andie.
I’m honored by that legacy, too, but I have to say that I didn’t play Duckie as gay, and I never thought of him as gay. Because, just to set the record straight (ahem), Duckie was in love with Andie. As an into-girls, not-into-dudes nerd. You know how I know? Because I was that same vaguely effeminate, heterosexual dork who, growing up in a more societally rigid time, occasionally sent gaydar meters spinning out of control when he just wanted to win the heart of a girl who wouldn’t look twice at him. Saying Duckie was gay, frankly, is a kind of copout, too easy a sexuality tag in this label-busting era for gender roles, too easy an explanation for an outsider losing the girl, and suggests that nobody that flamboyant could possibly be straight. I respectfully differ on that one, Molly.
Duckie is straight, folks. So straight, in fact, that he did go to that Gay Pride parade in no shirt and suspenders, because he has gay friends he marches in solidarity with, and if we know Duckie, he doesn’t do anything by half measures. That’s something you see in all types of people. That’s why we love the guy. That’s why I’m proud of him.
As for Alan Harper marrying a man . . .
Chapter 13
Fuck 1987
1987. Remember that year?
Aretha Franklin became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. About time! The Simpsons made their debut appearance, as little cartoon shorts nestled into The Tracey Ullman Show. Legendary! Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down that Berlin Wall. Historic! The Canadians introduced their one-dollar coin, nicknamed the loonie. Weird!
Oh, and Jon Cryer’s movie career imploded. Wait. What?
To those of you in the acting profession, one of the truest things I can tell you is that planning a career is foolhardy. Maybe Brad Pitt can say, “Bring me a half-animated, half–live action musical about the life of professional French farting performer Le Petomane for me to star in alongside my cat, to be directed by my accountant!” and be relatively certain it will get made and put in theaters, knowing that if it fails, he can make a superhero movie and be on top again.
For the rest of us, it’s a little trickier. There’s what we want to do, what we can do, what comes to us, what we get to try for, what we actually get, and what eventually gets made. Then that last, kind of important thing called what people think of it.
I was in an envious position after Pretty in Pink in that scripts were coming to me, people saw I was talented, and I had goodwill with decision makers. My name was able to get a movie made. It’s a form of being hot in Hollywood that can take you in one of two directions: Do more of what got you there in the first place, or do your own thing, because you’ve now got that power. In its crudest form, it’s the choice between pleasing audiences or pleasing yourself. The problem is when you choose pleasing yourself and assume that it runs in tandem with pleasing audiences. That’s called pleasuring yourself, and nobody wants to see that. Again, unless you’re Brad Pitt.
I never got the repeat John Hughes experience, as Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall did. I thought I was going to, though, when John’s script for Some Kind of Wonderful came my way, and Howie was slated to direct it. Howie and I got along like a house on fire—even though I’ve never understood that term—and the script was great.
As John envisioned originally, the story was more antic, more in the vein of Ferris Bueller than Pretty in Pink. A high school outcast takes a big leap and asks the most popular girl in school to the prom. To his surprise—and the rest of the school’s—she says yes, which leads everyone to tell him it could only possibly be a pity date. The nerd then finds out that she said yes to get back at a jerky boyfriend, whom she’s still seeing. His response is to take her on the Date to End All Dates, an epic romantic adventure that at one point included the Blue Angels aerobatic flying squadron. The whole thing was silly, sweet, and big, and I thought, Wait. What role could I possibly play? I joke.
Actually, the central nerd role was a different animal from Duckie. This guy had no outsize swagger or offbeat cool. He was a hundred percent geekazoid. That was fine. Paramount’s motion picture bigwig Ned Tanen was high on me. John Hughes was on board. Howie was directing. Let’s do this thing! They asked me to come in and read with Mary Stuart Masterson, and although I was sensing that Howie didn’t think I was completely right for the part, I kept my fingers crossed.
Then suddenly Howie was fired, and I was out of the picture. Now, I was aware that this kind of thing happened, but it seemed odd.
Well, it was. Here’s what happened, according to Howie, who filled me in years later. At the time, Howie was also itching to direct a hotly discussed script of John’s
called Oil and Vinegar, which was a stripped-down, guy-and-a-girl (guess who the girl was going to be) movie that took place entirely in a hotel room. It was an all-night talkathon à la The Breakfast Club, and to this day Howie says it was the best script of John’s he ever read. Though he was prepping Some Kind of Wonderful, he nevertheless got up the courage to tell John he wanted to direct Oil and Vinegar.
“Hmmm, okay, I’ll think about it,” John said.
The next day, Howie went to the studio to work on Some Kind of Wonderful and discovered a lock on his office door, and shortly after, he received word that he’d been taken off the movie. In a flash, John had simply turned against Howie. It seems John had wanted to direct Oil and Vinegar himself, and interpreted Howie’s vocalized interest as a huge betrayal. Now Howie was off Some Kind of Wonderful, and Martha Coolidge—who’d made the college comedy Real Genius—was hired. Martha didn’t like the script, though. Yes, you’d be surprised how often this happens: people campaigning hard for a job they don’t really want, getting it, then starting to fuck around with the project.
Martha oversaw a massive rewrite, transforming it from a comedy about a nerd’s grand gesture to a kind of somber Pretty in Pink love-triangle redo. She then brought in Eric Stoltz—not really anyone’s idea of a nerd—and Lea Thompson, both opposite Masterson in the role of the pining best friend called Drummer Girl. Well, the tone change was now too much, so they fired Martha and brought back Howie, only now he was stuck with Eric and Lea, because they’d signed for the movie. (“Stuck” being a relative term regarding Lea, since she and Howie fell in love on the set and got married.) With Howie too grateful to be back in John’s good graces to rock the boat anymore, he kept Some Kind of Wonderful in its now-serious state, and that’s the movie that wound up on-screen.
We could play “what might have been” and say, Okay, if Howie hadn’t piped up about Oil and Vinegar, unleashing a paranoid malfeasance in John Hughes, I could very well have starred in a broader, funnier Some Kind of Wonderful.
But I took it in stride, and at any rate, hearing about the firing and hiring and firing and hiring (even if I didn’t know then what it was about) had me skittish about being part of that clusterfuck. Also, I was getting plenty of offers after Pretty in Pink, and the scripts were pouring in. The idea was, Strike while the iron’s hot, and show the world what Jon Cryer can do when not slobbering all over Molly Ringwald.
Another impetus to line up projects quickly was the fact that I knew I had one surefire dud opening: the aforementioned Home Front—now renamed Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, in a desperately lame attempt to echo Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and with the replacement director (because the first one was canned) taking his name off the finished movie, soon to boast that hallmark of disowned cinema, the pseudonymous, I-don’t-want-anyone-to-know-I-made-this-piece-of-shit credit “Directed by Alan Smithee.” Alan Smithee was the Directors Guild–sanctioned name that could go on a movie if a director successfully argued that his creative control wasn’t represented on-screen. Yes, directors get to change their identities in the name of art and integrity.
The movie still says, “Starring Jon Cryer,” though, so tough shit, actors!
* * *
I made three movies in a row after Pretty in Pink that I really thought would constitute that well-rounded meal of cinematic entertainment guaranteed to satisfy both my artistic needs and an imagined moviegoer merrily exiting a movie of mine, saying, “Is there anything Jon Cryer can’t do?” One of those movies was going to be a dark indie that would show my edgy side and please critics, the second movie was going to be a big, effects-laden summer blockbuster hit that would please the masses, and the third was going to return me to the high school comedy setting that would please the fans who loved me as Duckie. Because, you know, I give back, too.
Instead, I made one movie that no one saw, then a second movie that no one saw, and then a third movie that no one saw. I wish I’d made Saw. People saw Saw. They didn’t see what I made. Which wasn’t Made, incidentally. That was a Jon Favreau movie. One that I’m pretty sure no one saw, either.
I calculated my career right out of Hollywood, almost. You can, too! Just follow these three easy steps.
In the 1980s, the movies had a flickering love affair with the punk scene, thanks to talked-about releases like Sid and Nancy and Suburbia, and documentaries like The Decline of Western Civilization. Ballsy, dark little films were getting made right and left, it seemed, and I wanted to be a part of one, because I admired their scrappy attitude. What drew me to this script called Dudes was that it not only had a strange, unpredictable story combining punks and cowboys, but it was going to be directed by critical darling Penelope Spheeris, who’d made both Suburbia and Decline. I loved how she just got shit done outside the Hollywood system. Her movies got made, and she directed what she wanted. You don’t get many opportunities to work with people like that, who don’t take no for an answer.
Plus, I’d get to hold a gun. My character, a New York punk named Grant, is on a road trip with two friends—played by Dan Roebuck and Flea (yes, that Flea. There are not two Fleas)—when Flea’s character is killed by a motorcycle gang in the desert. The other two become cowboys to avenge the death of their friend. So in essence, I got to be an armed punk in Western duds on a mission of vengeance in canyon country. How many times would I get to do that?
Maybe what I should have asked myself is, Am I the right person to do that? In all honesty, I knew I was wrong for Dudes, but the part of me that loves a challenge said, You can make this work.
What happened, though, was that who I was didn’t turn into Grant. Grant began changing to reflect who I was. As we started shooting, little bits of the anxious nerd that I am would seep out of my pores during the scenes. It would be in my every reaction, line reading, and movement, even though he wasn’t written that way. Penelope ostensibly had a choice to make: Steer me to how Grant was on the page, or accept what she was getting. She decided to go with what I was involuntarily bringing, so she made the part more comedic. But it changed the movie from a cool, dark thriller to something goofier.
We filmed in Cottonwood, Arizona, which was a bleak town surrounded by gorgeous scenery. A local radio station falsely announced that Tom Cruise was in town shooting a movie, so we’d get crowds wherever we filmed, and with only me being of roughly the same size and complexion as the Top Gun star, I’d get plenty of strange looks, of the “Wow, he looks very, very different off-screen” variety.
The magical power that movies held over people became readily apparent during this shoot, when I got a knock on my hotel room door one night and opened it to find a woman with a child of about one or two.
“Are y’all with the movie?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re working on the movie. I’m not Tom Cruise, though.”
This didn’t seem to matter to her. “Well, things are really hard in town,” she said. “Would you take me with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me a job, and I’ll stay with the movie and leave town.”
Not quite sure what to say or do, I think I mumbled something about how we weren’t a circus, and that we were already crewed up and I couldn’t help her. The desperation in her certainly threw me off. It was as though the otherworldly allure of the film industry that had offered me mere artistic fulfillment was to her the last, best, and only hope for a life for both her and her child. It was a sobering thought.
We also filmed in Los Angeles. One location shoot in particular drove home to me just how much of an impostor I was in the role of a punk. We were at a downtown LA club to film a concert scene with the Vandals, a band whose music I knew somewhat, but whose fan base I didn’t exactly consort with. This was a mosh-pit scene, however, with costar Dan Roebuck and me in the middle, and Penelope decided to forgo the risk of clueless poseur extras by populating the crowd with all her punk friends, hard
-core types with piercings and Mohawks who were huge, sweaty, and drunk.
The Vandals fire up “Urban Struggle,” with its “born to be a cowboy” lyrics and Ennio Morricone–inspired guitar intro, and I know we’re all supposed to get our mosh on, but I don’t know how this starts, of course. So I just begin pushing this guy, and he looks at me like a fly alighted on his shoulder. Then the meat of the music kicks in, and suddenly fists are flying, and Dan and I are getting hit repeatedly, which I try to laugh off, but which in reality sends me into sheer terror.
“Cut! Cut! Cut!” we hear from Penelope, and everybody stops.
Thank God. Everybody’s fixing their Mohawks, and Dan and I are ready to nurse our wounds when Penelope yells out, “It doesn’t look real! You guys have to really do this!”
Excuse me?! What could “really do this” possibly mean? Are they going to hand out weaponry?
Everyone started up again, and this time people were being hoisted on top of one another. Furious feet had been added to flying fists, and Dan and I were just getting hammered. I was trying to look like I enjoyed this, because my character would, but I have to say, Penelope’s fear about poseur extras was unfounded. What she had was a poseur star!
That mosh pit was like a tumble dryer of human beings. None of these guys and girls were jerks, by the way. They were nice people, kids from the San Fernando Valley or wherever, for whom fun was . . . this. And that day, boy, did they get into it. Our cinematographer was the great Robert Richardson, Oliver Stone’s guy, who had just come off filming Platoon for Stone. For the mosh-pit scene, Penelope had set him up with a shoulder-mounted camera and one focus puller behind him, and when Penelope yelled, “Action!” Bob and the focus puller were essentially shoved into the crowd. Over and over. At one point, Bob was out of breath after she yelled, “Cut!” and he said, “Okay, I just did Platoon, but that? That was worse.”