So That Happened

by Jon Cryer

  My first day of shooting was at the record store Trax, where Annie Potts’s character, Iona, worked. The location was in what is now the vivacious, consumer-hopping Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, but what was then a depressed, little-trafficked retail strip down the street from the mall where they filmed Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

  The scenes with Annie and Molly that day were dialogue scenes, and they went well. I loved Annie and her nutty costumes. She had psycho hair and a rubber dress, and God help me, she was hot. Fun, warm, friendly, and hot. I was experiencing a distinct lack of confidence, though, because I was slightly overwhelmed by the situation, even after a few weeks of rehearsal. I also knew what was coming up on day two: Duckie’s record-store solo. I had been given the news during rehearsal that there was no way I could do Mick Jagger, because it was too expensive to get the rights to a Rolling Stones song. (This was before artists sold songs at the drop of a hat for use selling cars or toothpaste.)

  Howie’s idea was to do a song that suggested something about the relationship between Duckie and Andie. He asked if I liked Otis Redding, and I said, “Sure,” but all I really knew was “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” which I didn’t think sounded like a fun number to mime, or said something about our characters. But Howie gave me a tape of Redding’s version of “Try a Little Tenderness,” with its sweet, soulful escalation in tone and emotion, and my first impression was that it was a really long song, and would take up a lot of screen time. But Howie assured me they’d cut it down to a manageable length.

  That first day on set, Howie played me the edit, which was considerably shorter and cut out a whole chunk of the beginning. Then he introduced me to Kenny Ortega, a theater choreographer with a few movie credits at the time (Xanadu) who was going to teach me Duckie’s moves. Kenny was really friendly and open, and I was in heaven, because I was now with my people: theater folk! We’re puttin’ on a show!

  When shooting ended for the day, I headed over to the rehearsal studio, where Kenny met me with a casually inquisitive, “So, do you dance?”

  Flashing mental images of self-conscious boogieing at parties or clubs inspired a meek, “No, not really.”

  He said, “Well, let’s just try a few things and see how you move.”

  I took a stab at jolting my body into something resembling rhythmic swaying and shaking, and God bless him, if he was at all disappointed, he did not show it. He’d smile, laugh, and say, “Hey, you’re a mover! You’re a real mover!” I know it was his way of saying, “Hey, you can (sort of) dance!” but it made me believe we could put together something really fun. A professional choreographer isn’t going to insist a neophyte graduate instantly to Astaire-like levels of footwork. I realized he was taking in what I did naturally and thinking about how to translate that into a punchy little bit of personal expression.

  Kenny and I spent the next four to five hours coming up with the dance. We knew we didn’t want to just throw some random moves together. We wanted it to be theatrical, even tell a story almost, but most important, get the audience on the Duckman’s side. It should start small, with a slide and some up-close lip-syncing, then build to ever more ridiculous choreography of the white-kid-soul-posturing kind. At one point I slapped the ground, then stood back up, and Kenny said, “You know, you start to really like how this kid is dancing!” I was just in that zone of letting loose and trying anything, but he seemed to grasp even in rehearsal that there’s a point when your commitment to being a fool carries over into weird endearment.

  After a nervous day of shooting, the evening’s sense of invention and hard work made me cautiously optimistic. Mind you, I was still reeling a bit from having my rockabilly look nixed in favor of the hipster-explosion choice. But I was also smart enough at the time to understand that I was in the hands of people who knew what they were doing. We ended the night with two minutes of Grade A, vitamin-fortified, not-from-concentrate, organic Duckie Dale that I was now eager to showcase the next day.

  Even though my job description was film actor, I went in to work the following morning feeling like a theater actor ready to perform for an audience. I wanted everyone to see the dance, and I wanted a reaction. Because when you’re putting it all out there the way I was, the way Duckie was, you expect to end with feedback. You’re gasping for breath, frozen in your final pose, ready for applause, boos, dollar bills in your G-string, whatever. So I did the dance for Howie and producer Lauren Shuler, gave it my all, and at the end, there I was panting like I’d just finished a performance of Riverdance and . . . silence. Absolute silence. The crew isn’t applauding. The makeup people don’t seem to give a shit. Was anybody even paying attention?

  “What did you think?” I said to Howie.

  More silence. And then . . . muttering. Howie muttered to Lauren. Lauren muttered to Howie. I’m still catching my breath, looking around like, What the . . . ?

  I tried again. “Howie, what did you think of it?”

  He turned to me as if suddenly remembering I was in the record store. “Oh, it was great, Jon. But now I have to shoot it.” I’m not kidding when I say he sounded actually regretful.

  If I needed any more proof that theater and film are different, this was it. Howie’s perspective as a director trying to stay on schedule was essentially, “Well, now I’m going to need camera setups here, here, and here. How the fuck am I going to shoot this in the half day I have allotted?” My perspective as a needy actor was, “I just gave you a balls-out final-dress-rehearsal performance, and you can’t at least say, ‘Great job!’ or clap or throw a piece of fruit?” I was really going to have to get acclimated to this filmmaking stuff.

  As it turned out, we needed the whole day to film “Try a Little Tenderness.” It was tiring having to do the dance over and over and over, from this angle and that angle. The record-store floor was such a mess that for me to slide properly they had to put a sheet of Lexan down, and I slid in socks. Everyone was supportive, which felt great, and by the end I was beat. Filming the dance did put us behind—there was no time to shoot dialogue scenes scheduled for the second half of the day—and Howie had to fight to get on schedule for the rest of the shoot. Mind you, this was only our second day. But Howie also knew that he had a potentially great scene on his hands, something people would talk about, and which set a tone for the movie and the dynamic between Andie and Duckie.

  Howie and I were also not above assessing Duckie’s level of devotion toward Andie in slightly cruder terms. During rehearsal Howie came up with what he called the Boner-meter as a way of letting me know how much to dial up or dial down Duckie’s attraction to Andie at any given moment. When Duckie was over the moon—say, in that record store—that was a ten, a raging hard-on. But as soon as Andrew’s Blane shows up, that took the Boner-meter down to a limp and flaccid three. Wince all you want—I’m sure Stanislavsky would have approved.

  One of the fun parts of Pretty in Pink was getting to improvise. From early on, Howie would do one take as written; then he’d say “Jon, come up with something.” The “Blane? His name is Blane?! That’s not a name; it’s a major appliance” joke was an ad lib of mine, and the scene in the girls’ bathroom was me riffing on an observation I’d made once in junior high school when I stayed after class. I sneaked into the girls’ room out of sheer curiosity, since nobody was around, and marveled at how much nicer it was than the boys’. And yes, I did think the tampon machine was a candy dispenser. Howie really encouraged the improvising, and he did so with James Spader, too, who I believe came up with sleazy Steff’s great line, “The girl was, is, and will always be nada.”

  Where Molly and Andrew were tough nuts to crack socially, Jimmy was approachable, and we hung out a lot. I’d go to his trailer and we’d talk about life, the business, and all manner of stuff. We talked about how much we enjoyed having input into our characters. He certainly had a grasp of his particular niche. I remember him telling me in his Thu
rston Howell–on-mescaline drawl, “I think I pretty much have a lock on these teenage asshole characters.” That certainly proved true. He was so good at it, in fact, that Howie didn’t originally want him, figuring him to be an asshole in real life. James could be odd, for sure, but he was always friendly to me.

  Our only real scene together was the fight, and I recall he and I were adamant that it not look like a movie fight. We wanted it to look like a real high school scrap, in which it’s generally sloppy and nobody lands good punches—just flailing grabs and yanks—and you fall at weird times, and sometimes you’re just wrestling. We worked on it hard, and our goal was to have this formless set-to with no clear winner before the teacher breaks it up. Of course, what was funny about eventually shooting it was that Jimmy was in such better shape than I was that it was clear he was really trying not to hurt me. So I will always be grateful a) that we got to film it the way we wanted, and b) that I didn’t get punched in the face. I remember at the end, when Jimmy ad-libbed a snarling spit onto the school grounds, it was so badass I thought, “Wow, he’s just the shit.”

  Pretty in Pink also marked an early movie appearance of Andrew Dice Clay in his “Diceman” persona, playing the club bouncer who won’t let Duckie in. (Another scene we got to ad-lib.) Music was a good way to get Molly talking, and one night she, her friend Moon Zappa, and I went to see the Rave-Ups, with Andrew Dice Clay opening for them at the Palomino in North Hollywood. This was before Dice was a phenomenon, when he could still count on shocking a crowd into laughter by opening with the Little Miss Muffet/“What’s in the bowl, bitch?” joke, then segue into various ribald variations on the fate of poor Mother Goose characters.

  And yet, that night he bombed in a way I’d never seen a comedian experience, and haven’t seen since. I know what was in that bowl, Miss Muffet: a man drenched in sweat, and not just because of his climate-inappropriate leather jacket. Dice was an odd character—nice, but odd. With him it always felt like a performance. It was hard to get to know the person underneath the leather-jacketed bluster. But hey, he kept at it to the tune of sold-out Madison Square Garden shows only a few years later, a level of commitment to an act I respected on a certain level.

  I didn’t do a lot of after-work socializing, usually because I was simply too tired, but also because for me, trying to get into the club of the moment often involved a humiliating amount of begging, cajoling, waiting, and bribery, and then would, more often than not, end with a dispiriting cab ride home.

  On occasion Molly’s friend Angie would attempt to coax me out to the latest trendy Hollywood spot. One evening it was a club called the Boss, which in 1985 could mean only one thing: a nightspot devoted to the music of Bruce Springsteen. As I stood outside waiting to get in, I began making small talk to a beautiful brunette—sweet!—and as we chatted, I could swear I knew her from somewhere. It was really bugging me, and then it hit me, and then it left my mouth: “Hey, you’re the girl from that tampon commercial!”

  She was. I was technically right. She had starred in a Tampax ad that was all over television. But when you consider the other thing she was known for—the girl who’s chosen by Bruce Springsteen to dance with him onstage in his “Dancing in the Dark” video—you could say I picked the exact wrong thing by which to recognize a hot actress named Courteney Cox when you’re hitting it off with her outside of a Bruce Springsteen–themed club. She never spoke to me the rest of the night. I knew there was a reason I didn’t go to clubs.

  Fortunately, back at work (where, let’s face it, I was not as apt to embarrass myself), Harry Dean Stanton hadn’t done any tampon commercials to cloud my sense of his illustrious career. Stanton, who played Andie’s father, was like a worn but comfy piece of used furniture. I thought he was supercool because he’d been in Alien, and was looking forward to working with him. But as grizzled and genial as he was, it was also quite clear he enjoyed his cannabis. When we were ready to shoot our scene, I remember the first assistant director going to his trailer.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Harry?” Waiting.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Harry?” Waiting.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Harry?”

  At this point, the crackle of walkie-talkie communication filled the air, mostly distorted, but I could hear, “Door’s not opening.”

  More knocks. “Harry? Mr. Stanton?” Then the first AD just opened the door, and it was like something you’d see in a cartoon: A curling waft of distinctively odored smoke emerged. A couple of guys walked in, and a minute later walked out with Harry Dean Stanton. He was so laid-back for our scene it was hard for us to generate any comedic tension. Howie kept trying to coax some energy out of Harry, but nothing was working, take after take after take. Then Howie got up close to the veteran actor and started talking some kind of gibberish to him, and finally Harry started perking up, and we got the scene.

  I only found out recently over lunch with Howie what got Harry motivated.

  “Harry only responded to basketball metaphors,” Howie told me. “So I had to tell him, ‘Look, we’re not trying to slow the tempo and play our own game here. We’re on a fast break; it’s time to shoot and score!’”

  Wow, whatever works, right?

  As for Molly, the smallness of her acting choices took some getting used to. I kept wondering, Is this even registering on film? I was over here making these big gestures, and she was just being real. I’d ask Howie about how our scenes looked, and he’d say, “Dailies look great!” I’d scratch my head, because it seemed to me that there wasn’t a perceptible difference between how she acted off-camera and on-camera. But that was because ultimately she wasn’t playing somebody that different from herself. She was a brave poor girl, and that was about it. I was in a different boat: playing someone I wished I’d been in high school, so I bit into Duckie’s swagger and chewed with vigor.

  Molly was impressively self-assured for someone only seventeen years old. She knew what she wanted when it came to the movie, and she knew what she didn’t like. She was also at home making people aware of it, most famously the man who put her on the map, John Hughes, since after Pretty in Pink she didn’t make another movie with him. He’d wanted her for his reverse Pretty in Pink follow-up, Some Kind of Wonderful, but Molly was ready to move on from his brand of high school movie, and said no. It’s often said that this was the reason John Hughes quit writing about teenagers altogether: that if his muse was out, so was he. The record certainly reflects some kind of conscious break John made with the subject of adolescence—after Some Kind of Wonderful in 1987, it was all John Candy and precocious moppets, save for the little-seen Career Opportunities.

  John was not a regular presence during the shooting of Pretty in Pink. He saw me do the record-store dance, and he’d be there for the occasional scene, but he was mostly occupied with the movies he was directing. Weird Science was released while we were shooting, and all I’d heard was how great Anthony Michael Hall was. Going to the Weird Science premiere, I remember the fleeting feeling that I was part of a cool group of young actors. I met Anthony, but didn’t get a chance to really hang out with him. It was quick and cordial, not like two Hughesean nerds sizing each other up—he wouldn’t have been threatened by me anyway, since he’d turned down the role of Duckie before I ever got involved. (It seems Anthony, like Molly, was ready to break free as well.)

  Then, toward the end of shooting, John began getting all excited about directing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with that look-alike dude who keeps following me around. Joking aside, I was secretly thrilled that for once I was in on something ahead of Matthew Broderick. I got to John Hughes first! Then again, there was also this nagging little feeling that our dad had moved on to be with his new family. It was suddenly, “Hey, (don’t you) forget about us! We’re still here, holding down the fort! Okay, okay, we get it. Ice cream sometime? A little catch, maybe? Will we see you over the holidays?”

  But John wasn’t totall
y gone for good on Pretty in Pink, as was soon to be apparent.

  Chapter 11

  My Breakfast Club Fist Moment

  Beginnings are easy.

  See how I did that? I began the chapter with a statement about beginnings. This book has layers! Being an author is a cinch! In your face, Herman Melville!

  Endings, however, are a pain in the ass. And they are kind of important to a good movie.

  Think about it. If a movie doesn’t begin well, it has plenty of time to recover. Even if a movie sags halfway through, it can rally in plenty of time to leave everyone satisfied.

  But if your ending doesn’t work, you’ve just left a theater full of moviegoers feeling cheated. It’s the last part of your movie, but the thing front and center on the audience’s mind as they’re walking out. If they liked it all except the ending, then chances are they’re going to say they didn’t like any of it.

  Take The Godfather, and that final shot of the door literally and metaphorically shutting and visually wiping Diane Keaton’s worried face from the screen, a truly profound and portentous ending suggesting the depth of Michael Corleone’s corruption. What if after that, you added a scene in which Al Pacino opens it back up again and says, “Sorry. This thing just closes by itself—come on in, Kay, and tell us if you think the family should get into retail.” Then you’ve just ruined The Godfather.

  If Bruce Willis bails on those pretty shitty odds in the final act of Die Hard and quietly leaves the building for a late-night spa treatment in Koreatown, Die Hard is ruined.

  If Rocky wins the fight in Rocky, is it still really, truly Rocky?

  I’m not saying Pretty in Pink is in league with those classics, but it had an ending problem, it turned out.