The Time of My Life (9 page)

Our two thousand dollars was going fast. Between staying those nights at the Saharan, paying first and last month’s rent at our new place, and eating, we were just about broke. At night, I’d drive up to a spot on Mulholland Drive that had a beautiful panoramic view of Los Angeles. I’d sit there, looking out over the lights of Hollywood, and say, “I am going to conquer you.” It was like a ritual every night, a way to gear myself up for the fight ahead. If I was going to make it in Hollywood, I had to really believe I could do it.

Thirty years later, I feel the same way about beating cancer. If I’m going to do it, I have to believe I can do it. So every single day I say, “I am going to conquer you.” And every day, I believe it.

When Bob finally got back into town, he apologized for the mix-up and assured us he was taking me on as a client. He knew absolutely everybody in Hollywood, and right away, he started arranging interviews for me. I’d go to four or six a day,
one right after the other, then come home and hope the phone would ring. Having performed in a lead role on Broadway certainly helped open doors, but it didn’t guarantee that I’d get anything. But just at the moment our two thousand dollars had been whittled down to almost nothing, I got offered a role in a movie called
Skatetown, U.S.A.

In the late 1970s, especially in Southern California, roller disco was king. You’d see skaters everywhere, half of them toting giant boom boxes playing the latest Earth Wind & Fire or Jackson 5 songs. Walking in Venice Beach, you’d be swarmed by skaters in bright socks and short-shorts, twirling their way down the boardwalk. So when I read the script for
Skatetown, U.S.A.,
I knew that even if it wasn’t great art, it was at least part of a cultural phenomenon.

It also had a cast that included some of the hottest stars of the seventies: Scott Baio (Chachi from
Happy Days
), Maureen McCormick (Marcia from
The Brady Bunch
), Ron Palillo (Horshack from
Welcome Back, Kotter
), Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary Ingalls from
Little House on the Prairie
), and even the great comedians Flip Wilson and Ruth Buzzi. I was cast as Ace Johnson, the hot-shot, bad-boy skater in tight leather pants who battles the hero, Stan, played by Greg Bradford.

I had roller-skated competitively in my teens, but hadn’t done much since then. I was hell-bent on doing some amazing things on skates for this movie, so I had my dad send me my top-of-the-line figure skates from Houston and began practicing moves on any open paved area I could find. I spent hours honing moves, from camels to double Salchows. By the time we started filming, I was pumped—I wanted to bust Hollywood wide open with my first role.

Unfortunately, I almost busted my ass on my first stunt. I
was supposed to jump over a Fiat parked at the end of the Santa Monica pier, using a small ramp. I raced down the pier, going faster and faster, and when I hit that ramp I shot up into the air—a lot higher than I expected to. In the footage, you can see me yell “Charge!” as I take off, then the look on my face changes from determination to wide-eyed surprise. The camera cuts away before showing me landing, flat on my back, on the cement. I had the breath knocked out of me, but we did get it in one take.

My scenes at the roller rink with April Allen, where I could show off my dance training as well as skating, went more smoothly. April was a world-champion roller skater whom I’d skated with years earlier in Houston. We were friends from way back, so I couldn’t believe it when it turned out we’d be performing together in my first movie.

April was an amazing skater, and she and I heated up the set with a skate-dance scene that was powerful, sensual, and sexy. I also had a solo skate that led to the review that launched my career, when Kevin Thomas of the
Los Angeles Times
wrote, “Not since John Travolta took the disco floor in
Saturday Night Fever
—no, not since Valentino did his tango in
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
—has there been such a confident display of male sexuality as when a lithe newcomer to films named Patrick Swayze hits the rink … Swayze drew gasps [and] ought to be on [his] way in films.”

This was flattering, of course, but on another level it was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be a serious actor, not a dancer-turned-actor or hunk-of-the-week. Not long after
Skatetown
came out, Columbia offered me a multipicture deal to star in teen idol–type movies, but after talking about it with Lisa, I turned it down. We both knew that if I accepted, even though
the money would be fantastic and it would be guaranteed work, no one would ever take me seriously as an actor.

As I had just arrived in Hollywood, it was definitely hard to turn down a multipicture deal. But Bob LeMond gave me a piece of advice that made it easier. “The only power you have in this business,” he told me, “is the power to say ‘no.’ More careers have been screwed up by ‘yes’ than anything else.” I took Bob’s advice to heart and said no to Columbia, and turned my attention to finding better roles.

But to my frustration, the one role I really wanted that year was one I couldn’t have: Bud Davis in
Urban Cowboy,
which was filming in Houston at the same time I was shooting
Skatetown, U.S.A.

Bud Davis was a Texas cowboy who loved to dance—a role that had my name all over it. But John Travolta was flying high with his successes in
Saturday Night Fever
and
Grease,
and the part was his for the taking. It tore me up to think of what I could have done with that character, and how it would have launched my career. It was also frustrating because my mother was the choreographer for
Urban Cowboy,
and she had hired Lisa to work with her. So Lisa was working down in Houston on the movie I’d wanted, while I was in LA alone finishing up
Skatetown, U.S.A.

As soon as we wrapped, I flew down to Houston to join Lisa. One night we ended up hanging out with John and teaching him a few steps, which frustrated me even more. Country dancing was in my DNA, and as much as I liked John, I hated giving someone else tips on how to play a role I was born for. But really, what I hated was that he was so good at it. John was an absolute natural—he was like a sponge who just picked everything up. He’s also a generous and kind-hearted person,
and both Lisa and I liked him right away. We became good friends on that movie and have been friends ever since.

After I turned down the Columbia deal, I kept auditioning for other, better roles. I got my first TV role in the made-forTV movie
The Comeback Kid,
starring John Ritter and Susan Dey. It aired in the spring of 1980, and though I was proud of my work, I still wanted more—bigger, better roles. I got my wish after
The Comeback Kid,
when I won a part on
M*A*S*H.

M*A*S*H
was a long-running, incredibly popular show— but that wasn’t what got me so excited about working on it. It was the fact that
M*A*S*H
was very well respected in the industry, with talented actors like Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, Harry Morgan, and Mike Farrell. Winning a part on
M*A*S*H
meant that the producers believed you could hold your own among the cast. Playing Private Gary Sturgis was my first great role in Hollywood, and oddly enough, it had a plot twist involving cancer.

Most of my scenes took place with Alan Alda, who played Dr. Hawkeye Pierce. My character, Private Sturgis, has hurt his arm in combat. He gets sent to the
M*A*S*H
unit at the same time as his buddy, who’s more severely injured and needs a blood transfusion. Sturgis desperately wants to give blood to his buddy, knowing they share the same blood type. But Hawkeye tests Sturgis’s blood and discovers he has leukemia. When Hawkeye tells him, Sturgis breaks down—he had no idea he was ill.

Playing Sturgis was an amazing experience for me. Everyone on the set was incredibly professional, and it was a dream to act opposite Alan Alda in my scenes. I just followed his lead, and the emotion poured out of me. Using the process I’d learned in my acting classes, I was able to tap deep wells of
anger and bitterness at how unfair the diagnosis was for this young kid. It was an emotional experience, and I felt very proud of the work when I saw the finished episode.

But through those first two years in LA, parts like that were few and far between. I kept holding out for good roles, but as a result, I wasn’t working as much as I wanted to. In the meantime, Lisa and I acted together in a play,
The Brick and the Rose,
at the Attic Theatre on Santa Monica Boulevard. We both got good reviews, with the
LA Weekly
writing that “Dennis Visca and Lisa Niemi stand out in a superb supporting cast that slides in and out of 45 roles … and Patrick Swayze, a gifted L.A. newcomer, brings more to the starring role than I would have thought possible. Bravo!”

Doing plays doesn’t pay the bills, though, so Lisa and I started up our woodworking business again on the side. We built stage sets for
I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can,
starring Jill Clay-burgh, Dianne Wiest, and Geraldine Page. We also did some work for Jaclyn Smith, whom I knew well from Houston. Jackie had been a student at my mom’s studio in the seventies, but now she was a Hollywood star thanks to her starring role on
Charlie’s Angels
. Yet she never acted like a big star—she was always welcoming and warm to Lisa and me, and supported us however she could, even making an appearance at the premiere of
Skatetown, U.S.A.

Meanwhile, my parents had left Houston, too. After working on
Urban Cowboy,
my mom decided she wanted to choreograph more Hollywood movies, so she and my dad pulled up their Texas roots and moved to Simi Valley, just north of Los Angeles. I was happy to have my parents nearby, even though our busy schedules kept us from seeing each other all that often.

But even having my parents just up the road didn’t help when, during our second year in LA, Lisa and I suddenly found ourselves in an unexpected situation: dead broke, without even enough money to eat.

Lisa and I had been working pretty steadily on carpentry jobs, but the pay was minimal compared to the hours we put in. The rest of our time was taken up with auditions, acting classes, and other nonincome activities. Somehow, we must have lost track of our income and expenses, because one day around Christmas, Lisa checked our account and discovered we had about three dollars left. We were still expecting a little bit of money for a job we’d just finished—but that was already earmarked for rent and bills.

All of a sudden, we realized there was no money to go home to Texas to visit Lisa’s family for Christmas, no money for presents, no money even for food to eat.

“How the hell did this happen?” Lisa asked. She did a quick update of our bank statements and checkbook—something we should have done months before. Our monthly expenses stood at about twelve hundred dollars, which was a huge sum compared to what we’d been spending in New York.

After a year or so of living in the Hollywood Hills, we had moved into an apartment in West Hollywood, on La Jolla Avenue. The saving grace of our new apartment was the orange tree in the backyard, which ended up feeding us for the difficult weeks we spent trying to pull our financial life together. We managed to scrape together enough coins to buy a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, and that, with the oranges, was what we ate.

Although my parents were in Simi Valley, I was too proud to ask them for money or food—I didn’t even want them to know we were in such dire straits. Lisa did tell her mom what was going on, but her family was strapped at the time, too, and couldn’t send anything to tide us over. The couple of times when friends invited us over for dinner, we didn’t let on how hungry we were—we just tried to act as if everything was normal. But we were completely demoralized, and once again found ourselves wondering, had we made a big mistake leaving New York? We had never been this desperate there.

There’s a difference between simply being broke, and being broke while not knowing where your next paycheck will come from. After working our butts off for two years in Hollywood, we didn’t have any new work on the horizon. We started looking around at what we could sell to get enough money for food, which just about killed whatever sliver of optimism we might have had left. There’s a kind of despair that sets in when you feel that you’ve failed in reaching your biggest goal. And that’s what Lisa and I felt like. I thought of those nights I’d sat out on Mulholland Drive, vowing to conquer Hollywood, and bitterness rose in my throat.

We had done some carpentry work for an older man named Mr. Green, so in a last-ditch effort to make some quick money, we called him and threw ourselves on his mercy. “Do you have anything that needs doing?” I asked him. “Anything at all?” And Mr. Green, sensing the desperation in my voice, came up with a laundry list of small tasks for us. The biggest was building a doghouse for his two German shepherds, a task Lisa and I jumped on as soon as I hung up the phone.

But just as in a Hollywood movie, real life in Hollywood can change in an instant. In the midst of our despair, as we toiled
away on the doghouse for the few dollars that would tide us over, I got a call about a new TV show I’d auditioned for a few weeks earlier. It was called
The Renegades
—and I was being offered a leading role!

Just like that, I soared from the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria. Getting a role on a TV series was a huge leap for a struggling young actor, bringing with it the promise of job stability and a really good paycheck for the foreseeable future. I couldn’t believe my luck. And I couldn’t wait to tell Lisa.

But first, I made a stop at a place I’d wanted to go for the past two years—an auto dealership selling DeLoreans. These were the gull-winged cars designed by John DeLorean, who made only nine thousand of them before shutting down production in 1982. In the early 1980s, the DeLorean was the emblem of style and slick automotive design, and I’d wanted one ever since the prototype came out in the mid-1970s. With my new job, and if I could manage to talk them down in price, the car would finally be within my means. So I went straight to the dealership, and then called Lisa.