BREAKING AWAY, AKA MY FIRST PORNO

Now that I had an agent, I was getting an audition or two for movies, but hadn’t landed anything. When I got an audition for a new film called Bambino, I showed up to an office at the ICM agency without a script or even the scene I would be auditioning with, so I was filled with anxiety because it sounded like it was going to be a dreaded “cold reading.” I was taken into an office where a very handsome and dignified English gentleman was in the midst of an intense phone conversation. This was Peter Yates, the supremely accomplished director of classics like Bullitt, The Hot Rock, and Friends of eddie Coyle. I gestured that I could wait outside but he gestured back to have a seat, so I did. When the phone call ended, Peter sat down with me and explained the premise of the movie, that it would shoot in Indiana, and the role I was right for. I don’t remember saying much of anything, just quietly dreading the moment when he would hand me the audition material and I would embarrass myself by trying to read it out loud. But that never happened. Instead of giving me just a scene to read, he handed me the whole script and told me to come back at the end of the week and we would read it then. I left confused, relieved, and excited to have a chance to actually study the script before my audition.

The script was written by the remarkably gifted Steve Tesich and would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for the retitled Breaking Away. I had only read one or two screenplays at that point and had no idea the talent it took to write something so funny, true, meaningful, and relatable. I just knew that the story felt like me and my friends at the end of high school just a few years back, all of us having to break away from each other and our families to start our own lives. The part was a character named Cyril, who was terrible in school but a funny kid who just wants to hang out with his friends and play sports, and who felt completely like me. I had forgotten to ask which scenes I would be auditioning with, so I got familiar with the whole script to be ready for anything. I went back to the same office at the ICM agency at the time of my appointment but to my surprise, I was redirected to the conference room. The room was packed with people, a huge table in the middle, and chairs lining the walls. Everyone was mingling like it was a party, and there was an enormous buffet laid out against the windows, which overlooked all of Manhattan. I had my dog-eared script in my hand, mentally preparing myself to do my audition, only to be thrust into a fucking cocktail party. I had no idea what was going on and must have looked a little stunned. Peter quickly came over and welcomed me, explaining that we were going to all sit around the table and read the whole script. He pointed out the other actors around the room, the writer, and studio executives, and told me to help myself to the buffet. This was the best audition this starving actor had ever been to. I filled a plate with as much as I could load without being gross and found a seat at the conference table, and we read the script. The part of Cyril had some fantastic jokes and I got lots of laughs, and I nailed the emotional scenes as well because I had had the time to really learn the part. After it was over, everyone went back into party mode, thrilled at having just heard the future Oscar-winning script read out loud for the first time. I got nice handshakes from people and said hello to some of the actors, but mostly I was filling the pockets of my jacket with as much food as a could get. I mean it was free food and Laure and I were really down to our last nickels. Peter made his way over to me. “Daniel, you did great. Just terrific. I will see you in LA.” “Great. Thank you.” That was the whole conversation. I didn’t know what else there was to do or say so I probably stuffed some pickles in my socks and left.

Riding down the elevator, I was in shock from the whole experience, but those words kept ringing in my ears. “I’ll see you in LA.” What did that mean? There was a phone booth right at the corner of Columbus Circle and I called Laure immediately. I told her what had happened—the table read, the food, and those words, “I’ll see you in LA,” and she said, “I think you just got a movie,” which I had. Peter Yates had just changed my life forever. We had no money—like, none. Now I would be making eight thousand dollars, more money than I had ever dreamed of making. I would be in the union and have health insurance, unemployment insurance. I would fly in an airplane for the first time, and in First Class no less. I would be starting out my film career with a great part in an Academy Award-winning film, and I would find a mentor and a friendship with Peter that would last for the rest of my life.

I called my parents to tell them the amazing news. “Guess what? I just got cast in a movie! It’s called Bambino.”

Swear to God, this was my mother’s reaction: “Bambino? What is that, a porno?” I could take the rest of this book to dissect that comment, to try to understand why that would be her reaction. Was it the title that threw her? Was it the idea that only the lowest form of moviemakers would hire me? Did she think I was that much of a stud that I would be qualified for such work? She still has no justification for that knee-jerk reaction. Even when I finally explained to them that I was going to Hollywood to be in a 20th Century Fox film, they were skeptical, and not until the movie came out did they believe that any of what I said was true. I, too, had trouble dealing with such good fortune. I loved acting and I loved being able to make money for Laure and me but, in what would become a recurring theme throughout my life, it turned out I hated leaving home. Surprising, considering how fearless a traveler I was as a teenager, but then again, the home Laure and I had created together was the home I had always dreamed of, and it tore me up to leave. Stamped in my memory is the night before I left, crying like a baby on the sofa, and Laure hugging me and rubbing my back telling me everything was going be fine. I was scared to death of going on an airplane, of being away from her, of going to strange unknown places, and of acting in a real movie. But I did it. I got on the plane and spent a week in LA “prepping” for the film. The costumer loved how “natural” my own clothes looked—my old T-shirts and shorts and Chuck Taylors—and we went and bought replicas of my own stuff which she would distress to make them look as bad as mine. We were supposed to rehearse but never did. They gave me some cash for per diem but I didn’t know anyone in LA and needed to save every penny, so I just waited in my hotel room for a week until it was time to fly to Bloomington, Indiana, to start filming.

That’s when I finally met the rest of the cast—Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, and Jackie Earle Haley—my new best friends. They had all been in some movies already, but Jackie was the only actor I knew of, from his standout role in Bad news Bears. We hung out at the motel getting to know each other for a few days before shooting and fell into an easy friendship, one that has lasted our whole lives since then. The first scene we filmed was a fight scene in a bowling alley, us against the college jocks, which ends when I throw a bowling ball through a plate glass window, and I got my first chance to watch stunt people in action. Holy shit! It looked like what I had fantasized as a kid, people throwing themselves onto tables that would break away, smashing bottles over each other’s heads, punching, being punched, smashing shit. And then when the take was done, they set up and did it again, with the prop department bringing out more shit to break. Like a newborn colt, I was taking my first steps in my new world of being on movie sets, learning the rhythm of a shooting day. The army of trucks, the walkie-talkies, the jargon, and the strict line of command gave a militaristic order that made you feel shit was getting done. I got reprimanded for trying to help carry camera equipment and again when I tried to move one of the chairs for the actors. The movies are not an “everyone pitch in and help” type of job. Everyone has very specific responsibilities and needs to be in control of their domain so they are prepared to jump on a very fast-moving train. They don’t need me to suddenly be moving their shit around. My job is to be prepared to perform the scene after everyone else sets the table.

My part of the fight scene didn’t shoot until the second half of the day, so I had a little time to get my legs under me and try to get past the imposter-syndrome feelings that we all feel at the beginning of a big, new undertaking. But just as I was beginning to convince myself I was no longer “Danny Stern from Bethesda” but, instead, “Daniel Stern, Movie Actor,” reality came calling. Two very familiar faces suddenly came into view, riding bicycles and calling my name. I was confused at first because Breaking Away had a lot of bicycles in it and it could have been people who worked on the movie. But it wasn’t. It was two of my best friends from Bethesda, KC and Tim, guys who I hung out with in high school literally every day but who I hadn’t seen since I left for New York. They had always loved taking long bike trips together and were spending their summer vacation from college riding across the country. They had called my parents and found out what I was doing and decided to put it on their itinerary. So fucking strange that it timed out for them to land at this very moment, just before my very first shot on my very first day of my very first movie. I was caught completely off guard and didn’t know the rules, whether they could come on the set or eat the snacks, and so we just stood right there for about twenty minutes. I felt awkward and guilty that I was not up for an impromptu hangout with my old best friends. My new, pretend best friends were all playing pretend fight on a movie set and that was where I wanted to be. They didn’t really seem to want anything more than to just say hi, and it was a crazy feeling to watch them ride off, literally watching my old life fade away and my new life begin. Even though it threw me at the time, I love that it happened. God works in mysterious ways sometimes, but this lesson had the subtlety of a sledgehammer—your past informs your present, so learn to understand it as a source of knowledge and strength. When it was my turn, I picked up my fake bowling ball, fought off those college jocks like a champ, and when the time came, put the bowling ball right through the sugar-glass window on my first take, getting a nice round of applause from the crew. Cherry popped.

Since it was my first movie, I had no idea what an extraordinary filmmaking experience I was having. The Oscar-winning script was as solid as a rock, the perfect blend of comedy, action, heart, and romance. Peter’s gentle directing style got incredible performances from all the actors, including an Oscar-winning one for the super-talented Barbara Barrie. The quarry where we shot our swimming-hole scenes was a natural wonder, and the town of Bloomington felt like Bethesda. Laure came for a week to celebrate my twenty-first birthday and became fast friends with everyone. Jackie was a celebrity wherever he went and was so humble and kind to his fans. Quaid was already being a movie star, buying a mint-condition 1954 Chevy from a local and practicing his preening. His girlfriend was there the whole time and the two of them had a severe case of PDA, to the point of ridiculousness. He convinced me to open the accordion wall between our tiny dressing rooms to make one slightly bigger room, but I was forced out of the room on more than one occasion when they would start making out, with the three of us sitting on the one couch we shared, actually laying up against me. (I need to shower just remembering it.) And Dennis Christopher was working his ass off, as he was in almost all the scenes, and training on his bicycle in his down time. I got more comfortable in front of the camera, although when I see it now, I can see how Peter used my shyness and the awkwardness of my inexperience to create a very sympathetic character, which was maybe his plan from the first time I walked into that initial meeting at ICM.

When the filming ended and we got back to New York, Peter continued to mentor and support me. He invited me to the editing room to learn how the film was really put together, where I got to watch him experiment with different pacing, different performances, different music, and all of the post-production elements that a director uses to tell exactly the story they want to tell. He and his wife, Virginia, had Laure and me over for dinner at their apartment in the famed Dakota building often, and we fell in love with their kids, Toby and Miranda. They were the definition of a classy English family and loved Laure’s sophistication (she had spent her teenage years in Spain and Manila when her father served there in the Foreign Service). And we got to meet all of their amazing friends from England—Michael Caine, Peter O’Toole, Jacqueline Bisset, and Roger Moore.

Peter also introduced me to his agent at ICM, the legendary Sam Cohn. Sam was not only Peter’s agent but also represented Woody Allen, Meryl Streep, Robert Altman, Nora Ephron, Bob Fosse, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Miller, Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, and the list goes on. So when he asked me if I would like to be a client at ICM, with him overseeing my career, I jumped at the chance. I felt bad to leave Mary Sames, but she understood, considering Sam’s status as the biggest agent in the business, and we stayed good friends. Obviously, Sam had too many important clients to really pay attention to my career, but he became a dear friend to both Laure and me when we started spending time with him and the Yateses. He was an avid tennis player with a membership at the very fancy West Side Tennis Club in Queens, and he took me to play once or twice a week. The other old men there were various Captains of Industry and even though I was a total novice at tennis, I was a six-foot-four-inch, athletic, twenty-one-year-old kid, and we kicked ass in doubles matches. Then we would all have lunch in the beautiful Club Room and head back to the city. Sam was a very eccentric man. He loved to eat paper. Not only did he have a box of Kleenex next to his desk to munch on, but on more than one occasion, he would tear off pieces of a script or a contract that was on his desk and his assistants would have to make new copies to sign.

It took a year for Breaking Away to hit the theaters, and in the meantime, I was anxious to work more. Laure and I had barely escaped financial disaster when I got started getting paid for Breaking Away, with only days to spare, and my only “career plan” was to try to make more money now that I had my Screen Actors Guild card. Strangely, I had started off my film career by landing a leading role, so it was a bit of a step backwards to take a bunch of one-scene parts, but they each paid a few hundred bucks and there was no way I could say no. Luckily, each one not only paid the rent but also gave me a chance to work with the caliber of directors that Sam was encouraging me to work with.

I did a one-line part in Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over—a scene with Burt Reynolds—and I got four hundred dollars, which Laure and I used to buy our first television. I had a horrible day shooting a one-scene role in a cool-at-the-time movie called A Small Circle of Friends. I played a kid going for his induction into the draft of the Vietnam War, who tries to appear mentally unqualified by tying a ribbon around his dick when he is going through his physical, and the whole day was spent hiding my junk, pressing myself into the locker just like I did in junior high school gym class. I brought home another four hundred dollars and a bit of PTSD. I got a small part in a film with Jill Clayburgh called It’s My Turn, where I played a brilliant college math student. The director wanted me to do some “character research” and had me take the train to Princeton and sit in on some very heavy-duty math classes. It sounded good in theory, and it felt cool to be introduced to all those brilliant students as an actor doing his homework for his big new film, but the truth was I couldn’t understand anything and could barely stay awake. I came away from that job with eight hundred dollars and the knowledge that I am not the kind of actor who knows how to do any real homework or research on a character.

I was still a total unknown, waiting for Breaking Away to come out, but Sam Cohn got me an interview with Woody Allen for his new movie Stardust Memories. I idolized him (and still do). As a teenager, I must have seen Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, and Play It Again, Sam ten times each, hitchhiking to Georgetown just about every weekend to the art house theaters. David Rosenthal and I even saw him do his stand-up act at Shady Grove (Jim Croce opened for him) and we laughed for weeks about him “being breastfed by falsies.” So the fact that I was meeting him was almost beyond comprehension. The casting agent led me into a darkened office where Woody was sitting in a high-back chair, barely visible in the shadows. He was extremely uncomfortable, mumbled in vague terms about the movie for maybe a minute or two, and then the casting agent led me out. Of course, I was over the moon when I heard I got the job, but the problem was I had no idea what the part was or what the movie was about. I was very anxious because I wanted to do my best for my idol and had no idea how to prepare. They told me Woody was very secretive about his films so just to be patient about getting a script. The night before I was to shoot, there was a knock on our apartment door and an envelope slid under it. Sure enough, it was from the production. But there was no script, only one page—the scene I would be shooting with Woody the next day. I was to play a young actor who was trying to give his resume to a famous film director (played by Woody). I practiced all night, trying to think of good ways to do the scene. In the morning, I brought in my real resume and some pictures from plays I had been in, including Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Woody let me improvise and loved the Tevye reference. It was like living a dream, to be doing a scene with my biggest idol, and I was on cloud nine. Later that week, I got word that Woody liked me and wanted me to come back and do a second day of shooting. The night before I was to do my second scene, I stared at the apartment door like a dog waiting for the mailman, waiting for the knock and my scene to be slid under the door. Nothing. Morning came, and I went to the set. I got into my costume and had coffee, still not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. I finally got called to the set and Woody greeted me warmly. I thanked him for inviting me back and told him I had not received my page, so I wasn’t sure what the scene was, and he apologized. He opened his own, personal script and turned to the scene but instead of giving me the whole page, he tore out just the one line he wanted me to say at the bottom of the page. I still value that scrap of paper more than two of my children.

My other idol growing up was Paul Simon. I love every song he has ever written and know every one by heart. I taught myself to play the guitar from his epic songbook, and felt my life was basically his songs come to life. “The Only Living Boy in New York,” “Duncan,” “The Boxer,” and “Homeward Bound” were coming of age stories that hit me as hard as Holden Caulfield did in Catcher in the Rye. Paul was making a movie called One-Trick Pony that he wrote about his life as a musician. Sam Cohn represented the director and amazingly, I got cast again with no audition. The part was to play a Hare Krishna zealot who hassles Paul Simon at the airport, which was a big thing at the time. I really wanted to nail the part, even getting the official prayer book, Bhagavad Gita, to try to do some “character research,” although once again I failed miserably in that regard because the book was incomprehensible. The Hare Krishna all had shaved heads with little ponytails in the back, so even though it was a small part, I thought doing a character that looked so different would show some “range” in characters I could play. I flew to Cleveland to shoot the scene. The scene took place at night in the airport and so when my plane landed, I was already on the set, and they took me directly to the makeup trailer. I was disappointed to find out that I would not be having a shaved head with the little ponytail in the back. The director had decided my character was a Hare Krishna who was trying to not look like a Hare Krishna, so he was covering his shaved head with a bad wig. I ended up looking ridiculous, my head covered with a bald cap topped with a black polyester wig, but there was no time to fix it because I was immediately escorted to Paul Simon’s Winnebago. Paul met me with such warmth, and I was so beside myself to be sitting there with him that nothing else mattered. His brother Eddie, another great musician, was hanging out in there too that night, and I spent the next twelve hours going back and forth from Paul’s trailer to the set, doing the scene and then hanging out with Paul and Eddie. Paul treated me like a friend and made me so comfortable that it wasn’t until we wrapped at dawn, said our goodbyes, and I took off my costume that it dawned on me how ridiculous I had looked the entire night in front of someone I looked up to so much. I got back on the earliest flight out of Cleveland and was back home, with two thousand dollars and a dream realized, having never left the airport. Years later, Laure and I were walking up Columbus Avenue when a limousine stopped right in front of us and Paul jumped out. He gave me a big hug, told Laure what a great actor I was and how much fun we had had, told me how much Eddie liked me and that he hoped we could do it again sometime, and then he got back in the limo and drove away. It made me feel so good not only that he recognized me without the stupid wig-overbald-cap look but that he actually took the time to stop the car and tell me all of that. His talent is only surpassed by his menschiness.

By this point, Laure had wisely decided to stop pursuing her acting career and shift her focus to become a chef, at which she was immediately brilliant and successful. And finally, after a year of waiting, Breaking Away opened in the theaters and was a hit with the critics and audiences. It was only playing at a couple of theaters in New York, and I remember Laure and I standing across the street from one of them, watching in disbelief as audiences lined up around the block to see it. I was in a hit movie right out of the gate, soon to be Oscar-nominated. If I was just starting out now and got a great part like Cyril in Breaking Away, my agents would probably help me to map out a “career,” hire a publicist, and choose my next projects carefully to build my brand. But at the time, none of that entered my mind. I’d had a good start, but really my only career goal at this point was to have one.