RIDE ’EM, COWBOY!

It was a great way to start the film, shot out of a cannon into an unknown situation, needing to do things I had no idea how to do and wanting to not only survive but succeed. After all, that is exactly what City Slickers is about, and my character, Phil, is probably the least prepared of all the friends. The first scenes we shot took place in the middle of the movie, in the thick of the shitstorm, having completely lost control of the cows, who escape into the woods, and which we must somehow capture and drive back to the main herd. I was on TJ’s back, riding chaotically through a forest of trees, herding a hundred cows while a rain machine blasted a torrential downpour. Billy had an amazing horse named Beechnut who he could get to do all sorts of tricks—walking backwards, sideways, cross-stepping stuff. (They bonded so much that he kept Beechnut after the movie was over.) Bruno was also quite comfortable in the saddle. Mickey Gilbert was the stunt coordinator on the film. He had become a Hollywood legend when he doubled Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, jumping off the waterfall in the iconic scene of that movie. I had worked with Mickey on four films already—Honky Tonk Freeway, Blue Thunder, Milagro Beanfield War, and Coupe de Ville—and I loved and admired him. He knew I liked to play and have fun doing stunts, and I knew I could trust him with my life and he would never put me in danger by asking me to do something he didn’t think I could do. On the wide shots, and shots where we had to gallop, Troy Gilbert, one of Mickey’s sons, doubled for me, but I was doing a lot of the riding myself. They all knew I had no idea how to ride, but Troy would rehearse TJ for each particular shot so by the time I got on his back, I just had to hold on and let TJ do his thing.

Ron Underwood was the perfect director for the film. He had a great eye for real-feeling action that made room for the characters and the comedy to shine through. He is a kind and reasonable man, and maybe most importantly, collaborative. This was Billy’s vision from the beginning. He developed the script, wrote it with Lowell and Babaloo, executive produced the movie, starred in it, and was intimately involved in all aspects of the film, including hiring Ron. So Ron was very respectful of Billy’s input, but not to the point of being a pushover. He had a firm hand on the set and was very organized, leading the crew with great humor through mud and rain and cow shit to get every scene shot and every moment covered with no stress. Billy and he would talk after each take, maybe watch video playback, and make sure everyone was happy before we moved on to the next shot. We got through those first tough days with no problems—until the dailies came back.

It was a tradition at the time to screen dailies almost every night after the shoot. The cast and crew were invited to watch the footage so that everyone could see what had been shot and the director and crew could make adjustments. They served food and beer, and it was a great way to unwind together and enjoy new friends outside of work. So about three days into the shoot, we all gathered in the production office for the first day of dailies. Two astounding things happened.

The first is that it turns out that on film, I was a better horseback rider than either Billy or Bruno. And when I say better, I mean worse. My horseback riding was so bad that I was getting huge laughs. Billy and Bruno were riding like the semi-professionals that they had become—low in the saddle, reins loose in the hands, and commanding their horses. But I looked like a real city slicker, hanging on to the horn, sliding around the saddle, unbalanced, and bouncing up and down, investing my real ineptitude and fear into my character’s comic lines and actions. I looked ridiculously out of my element, and TJ had made me feel safe enough to find the comedy and the character. Billy was sitting up front, and when the reel ended, he had an epiphany. “Fucking Stern is getting all the laughs. We are supposed to not know how to ride, just like him. Bruno and I need to ride a lot worse because we look like we know what we’re doing.” The next day of shooting, the two of them tried to ride as badly as I did, but they couldn’t even come close. They bounced around and tried to look unbalanced, but they had gotten too good. It took them a few days of shooting to finally be able to be as convincingly bad at riding as I was. Next time you watch the film, see if you can spot it.

The second thing that happened at those first dailies was not as trivial. Bruno was playing a city slicker who was a wanna-be tough guy, complete with a Burt Reynolds-style mustache, and thought it would be good for his character to have a big wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. But while we were watching the dailies, it became apparent that he had so much tobacco in his mouth that it was difficult to understand his lines. Also, that much tobacco produces an enormous amount of tobacco juice and that juice needs spitting. He couldn’t complete any of his lines without interrupting himself with a cowboy spit-take, and it was distracting. When the lights came up, Billy and Ron pulled Bruno aside to talk to him about how he should cut way back on the chew, or maybe not use it at all, because it was really messing with the comedic rhythms of the scenes. Bruno got very defensive, saying they didn’t know what they were talking about, and that it was his character to create, not theirs. But they wanted to address it early, after we had all just seen what a distraction it was. Bruno really got his back up, voices were raised, and he ended up storming out of the room. And that was it. He decided that he and Billy were no longer friends, breaking a twenty-yearold best-friendship on the spot. As far as I know, he did not speak to Billy ever again. Not during the entire filming of the movie or in all the years afterward. It crushed Billy. I don’t think it affected the film at all, because they are both such professionals, but it was a wound on the psyche of the set and so unnecessary.

The upside for me was that it drew me and Billy close. We started going to dinner together after work. I could see how hurt and confused he was about this small comment taking down their entire friendship. We would have a lot of laughs and talk about the movie, but the conversation always went back to Bruno. He struggled between feeling guilty for having said anything, and feeling angry that Bruno would take it this far, especially after Billy wrote the role for him and went to bat to get him the part. I wanted to be the go-between, but I really didn’t know either of them very well yet. Bruno was nice to me, but I could see he didn’t want to fix his problem with Billy, so I stayed out of it, focusing instead on the marvelous part I was playing and the phenomenally talented people I was playing with. Billy crushed his part in every scene, Bruno was great and funny, the rest of the gang of city slickers were all perfect for their parts, and the scenes flowed so easily because the script was so well written. When Jack Palance came on the set, everyone had to up their game just a little bit more. His character dies halfway through the movie, so he was only on set for a few weeks, but it was so fun to act with a real live Western Movie Star, especially playing the sad and meek character I was portraying.

Every day was a new challenge and another great scene. Phil was a great role. He goes through an enormous change, with very emotional moments always punctuated by world-class jokes. My wife leaves me, I have a breakdown, I save Billy’s character from drowning, fight the bad guy, and get the girl in the end. The locations were where they had shot many old westerns and were stunning and peaceful. TJ was an awesome horse and I ended up doing things I never would have dreamed I could do. When Billy’s character gets swept down the river, I chased him on horseback along the riverbank, jumped off the horse, ran out into the river on a slippery log, and reached out and grabbed him heroically just before he went over a waterfall. In another scene, I rode TJ as we slid down a long muddy embankment, then crossed a rushing river with all the cows swimming around us in the deep and fast water. It was thrilling to do this scene, especially knowing there were safety people everywhere and trusting TJ completely. The horseback riding culminates with the three of us galloping across the open plains while singing the theme from Bonanza. These were amazing, eight-year-old Danny’s fantasy moments coming to life, moments I still cherish to this day.

Meanwhile, while I was having the adventure of a lifetime, Laure was in a living hell. All by herself, she had packed up our house, moved the three kids to Moss Beach, enrolled them in their new schools, unpacked all our stuff, and everything else that goes into a life-changing move to a brand-new town. I finally got three days off together, and I flew back to see everyone and our new house. When I arrived at the house, before I even got to give everyone a hug and a kiss, a very low-flying airplane buzzed right over my head. What the fuck? Now the kids were jumping on me, and Laure and I were hugging and kissing hello, and another plane came buzzing right overhead. What the double fuck? When I said to Laure, “Wow, does that happen often?” she looked very upset, and we decided to ignore it for the time being. There were so many planes buzzing our house that weekend that we had to ignore it, because the problem was so big that it would have overwhelmed the weekend. But the turd in the punchbowl was definitely there. We had only seen the house twice, both days so magical and beautifully misty. But that mist meant those were not good days to fly, so there were no planes taking off from the AIRPORT AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL THAT GAVE FLYING LESSONS ALL DAY LONG, WITH ITS TAKEOFF PATTERN RIGHT OVER OUR HOUSE, THAT NO ONE TOLD US ABOUT!!! The dream of moving the family to a quiet place in a small town was immediately shattered, and I was crushed. Every plane overhead was a reminder that I was an idiot to have bought this house so impulsively, that I was a terrible husband for leaving Laure to deal with it, and that when City Slickers was over, I would either have to try to sell this piece-of-shit house and move the family again, or I would have to have my ears removed and a possible lobotomy. We did decide that we were definitely not selling the house on Highridge Drive, because we might be moving back into it. I was so discombobulated that I could hardly focus on reconnecting with the kids and Laure. When it was time to go back to work, I was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but truthfully, it was also a relief.

It was right about this time that my little movie, Home Alone, hit the theaters. Until this point in my career, I had never given one thought to the Box Office Numbers. Never. The only thing I ever paid attention to was critical response and if it was running in the theaters. Breaking Away and Diner were critics’ darlings and they played for a couple of months in a few theaters in each city. Milagro Beanfield War was loved by the critics but stopped playing in the theaters pretty quickly. Blue Thunder had a good run and others had been ignored. But there was a whole other Hollywood game going on that I knew nothing about called, “Who Is Number One at the Box Office This Week?” I have since learned that this is the only Hollywood game that matters, because it means that your movie is making the most money of everyone’s movies. That’s the reason the studios make movies: to make money. Billy of course knew how important it was when he came into the makeup trailer one day with his Hollywood Reporter trade paper and told me that Home Alone had opened at Number One. I had no idea of the significance, but it was certainly good news. The next week we were Number One again, and Billy was impressed that such a little movie could stay at Number One for two weeks in a row. This went on every week for the rest of filming, because Home Alone went on to be the longest running Number One movie in history, staying in that slot for twelve straight weeks. Each week, Billy was more and more incredulous, trying to make me understand that this was a very big deal, but I had no idea of any way to take advantage of it as an opportunity for advancement. I was just proud of the movie, and the thought of audiences laughing at all of the silly stuff I had done made me smile. All I knew was that I was working on a great film and hoping I could get another good job after this one ended, and maybe Home Alone would help.

We finished the shooting in LA, where I had some great scenes to do. There was a comically humiliating scene of my wife and I losing our shit and getting divorced in a big party scene, ending with me spending the night in a child’s bed at Billy’s house, sharing the room with his son, played by a sweet and funny kid named Jake Gyllenhaal in his first movie ever. (I like to think I made a huge impression on him and kind of taught him everything he knows about acting in that one little scene. You’re welcome, Jake.) But the craziest scene we did was recreating the traditional Running of the Bulls in Pamplona on the back lot of Universal Studios, the opening scene of the movie. We had been talking to Ron Underwood for weeks about how he was planning on shooting this sequence. He had been such a stickler for realistic action with everything else so far, so we were a bit concerned about how he would give it that same realistic feeling without us having to actually run down the street with real bulls chasing us. He assured us it would be done safely. They were building a series of low fences along the authentic-looking Pamplona street. The bulls would be running on one side of the fence, and we would be running on the other, but with the right camera angles and lenses, it would look like we were running right with them. The day we got to the set for that scene, the first thing we noticed was that there were no fences.

“Where are the fences?” we asked Ron.

“Oh, yeah. We tried some camera tests with them, but it didn’t work, so we took them down.”

“Oh, well what is the new plan?”

“The new plan is that you guys are really going to run with the bulls. But we are going to have a couple of stunt guys running right behind you so that if any of the bulls go crazy, they can try to stop them before they get to you.”

“The stunt guys are going to stop the bulls? How will they do that?”

“You know, like rodeo clowns. They distract them or something. Now, let’s get out there and give it a try.”

I can see why they saved this scene to shoot last, because it was one of the most dangerous and crazy things I have ever done. When they said, “Action,” Billy, Bruno, and I took off running with all of the extras and stuntmen. Then the wranglers released about fifty or a hundred wild bulls, who chased us down the street! When the shot ended, we ducked into a doorway or found someplace “safe” to hide until the bulls ran past us. Then the cowboys would herd the bulls back to the starting place so we could do it again. After several takes, the bulls were onto the game and stopped running so hard. You would think that would make it safer, but no. Instead, the wranglers started firing off shotguns to spook the bulls and get them to run even harder. Absolutely crazy. On one take, Billy got tripped up and fell down on the sidewalk. I was able to scoop him up and drag us both into a doorway. We were both kind of shaken up, and it was the only time I felt they were pushing us into unsafe territory. But having survived it, I am so glad it happened that way. I mean, I actually got to run with the bulls in Pamplona!

The movie wrapped, and I finally got to go home to Moss Beach. It would be good to have time to get to know my new house, my new town, and finally get to focus on my beautiful wife and magnificent children. And those fucking planes.