Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(31)

Here’s the good news. After True West opened in New York, the cast and producers held an opening-night party down the block at Chumley’s, an old speakeasy turned into a hamburger joint. Malkovich was married to actress Glenne Headly at the time, and she and John were there, along with Moira and me. In classic New York tradition, the reviews came out on opening night. The New York Times was delivered to the restaurant; someone handed the paper to Wayne, and he stood up on a table and read it out loud:

[True West] is an exhilarating confluence of writing, acting, and staging. As performed by John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, two members of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company making their New York debuts, and as directed by Mr. Sinise, this is the true “True West.” The compass needle is unwavering . . .

The review was a rave. We went nuts. A single review from the Times can make or break a show. Early the next morning, the box office phone started ringing off the hook with people trying to get tickets. Other reviewers loved us too.

Here’s how forgiveness can work. When the programs for True West were printed, they didn’t mention Steppenwolf in any official capacity, because the ensemble back in Chicago didn’t want it. But the programs contained the bios of Malkovich and me, and pretty much all John and I had ever done were Steppenwolf shows. So the media picked this up, and the company started getting great publicity about these two actors from this little-known theater in Chicago who night after night were kicking butt at the downtown Cherry Lane. Steppenwolf started being mentioned all over the New York and national press, which of course was a positive thing for us back at home. As difficult as it all was getting there, the doors had been opened for our company in New York. Some of the fears and reservations held by many of the folks in the company started to melt away, and the board of directors and ensemble members of Steppenwolf began to soften their stance toward me. All would soon be forgiven.

John’s performance was especially getting a lot of attention, and his star began to rise during the run. He was doing media interviews and photo sessions for magazine covers. He had recently hired a manager and was meeting a lot of very famous people who were coming to see the show. This of course was all brand-new to us. Two guys from Chicago had come to New York as unknowns, and suddenly celebrities such as Jackie O, John F. Kennedy Jr., Robert Duvall, Bernardo Bertolucci, Susan Sarandon, and others were sitting in the front row and coming backstage afterward to meet us. I say “us,” but really it was mostly to meet John, who was so powerful in the show and getting press comparing him to Marlon Brando.

The week after we opened, John told me he’d been approached by William Morris talent agent Johnnie Planco and had signed with him. Planco was a very powerful agent back then, and he had wasted no time in signing John. I hoped this might happen to me as well, so I waited for the phone to ring. But after two or three months of running the show, no agents had approached me. I decided to go to the box office and ask which agents had come to see the show. I got the list and made phone calls to them myself. Although I’d heard from no one, they were happy to set up meetings, and after a while another agent at William Morris signed on to represent me. Perhaps it would lead to something, I thought, but nothing much changed immediately after.

John, on the other hand, was riding high. He was enjoying his newfound celebrity, and things were going great for him on that front. Many nights we would come into the theater to get ready for the show, and John would fill me in on who he’d had dinner with after the show the night before. It was always at a great New York restaurant with someone very well-known in our business. I would listen, nod my head, and then fill him in on what I’d done after the show, scoring over 100,000 on the Asteroids video game at the little Greek diner near my apartment. The gyros were wonderful there.

I was happy for my friend. He’s a great actor, and it was clear to me that he was going to launch into the movie business after we concluded our run of the show. And I couldn’t help wondering if a movie role might be in the cards for me also.

True West ended up running for almost two years, albeit recast with different actors after John and I finished our sixth-month run, as is often done. As soon as we finished we went into a television studio and shot the play for a PBS production on American Playhouse. The play continued at the Cherry Lane with other actors in the roles, among them Jim Belushi and Gary Cole, and then the brothers Randy and Dennis Quaid, both very well-known by then. I continued to direct each new cast, and Randy and Dennis liked their roles so much that later we took the show to Los Angeles, opening at the LA Stage Company. Then Daniel Stern and Tim Matheson played the roles back in New York. Toward the end of its New York run in 1984, Erik Estrada came in. Erik was very kind, always good-natured, and although his fame was already high from playing Ponch on CHiPs, he hadn’t done much theater. “Just show me what to do,” Erik said, the first time we met. So I worked with Erik to help him understand the role, and he did great. After nearly two years and 762 performances, True West closed, a very good run for an Off-Broadway show.

From the time True West opened in October 1982, everything ran nonstop. The morning after we finished shooting the PBS version, John was indeed off to film his first big movie, The Killing Fields, which was shot in Thailand. His film career was off to the races, and within a few years he would receive his first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Places in the Heart. As soon as I finished my specific involvement as an actor with the run of True West, I was back at Steppenwolf directing The Miss Firecracker Contest. Then the winter of 1984, I directed Tracers, and that spring we brought our production of Balm in Gilead to New York, running eight months Off Broadway, another big hit for us. Right after that, I directed a production of Orphans in the winter-spring of 1985, a play about two brothers who kidnap a stranger. It had a tremendous cast of company members Terry Kinney, Kevin Anderson, and John Mahoney. The actors were awesome, and wanting to push it over the edge in tone and style, I scored the play entirely with Pat Metheny music, cranked up loud. It got great reviews in Chicago, and that summer we moved the play to Off Broadway, where acclaim from the New York Times opened even more doors for us.