Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(41)
Of course, I couldn’t have known that just over the horizon was an amazing opportunity, one that would open a new world for me—and not only in acting.
Incidentally, after completing Of Mice and Men, I haven’t directed a movie since.
CHAPTER 8
Big Movie Years
In 1993, my agents called with an offer to play the lead role in a big ABC miniseries titled The Stand, based on Stephen King’s epic postapocalyptic novel. I jumped at the chance. Stephen had originally wanted to turn his novel into a movie, but his book was so long, with so many characters, that in the end a four-day television miniseries (eight hours total) proved the best way forward. The miniseries format ruled the networks then.
The project would involve a huge, one-hundred-day shoot—twenty-five days per two-hour episode (to put that in perspective, years later when we did CSI: NY, we shot each one-hour episode in eight days). Shooting for The Stand would be like shooting four back-to-back movies. Dozens of actors would be involved, many well-known, including Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Ed Harris, Kathy Bates, and even basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It felt great to get offered something this big right after Of Mice and Men.
We shot the miniseries mostly in Utah. Stephen King was on the set from time to time, and even played a small part in the movie. I didn’t get to know him well, but anytime we talked, he was very encouraging. Laura San Giacomo played a role in the movie. I remembered uneasily how I’d cut her part completely out of Miles from Home, but it was good to see her again, and she held no hard feelings.
Molly Ringwald was very sweet and we worked well together. Several of her well-known John Hughes movies were made in Chicago, so we often talked about my home city. In 1993, email was just beginning to become popular, and Molly introduced me to it. Every day, Molly emailed her father, who was blind, and his computer would read back her words to him. This fascinated me.
Rob Lowe and I share a birthdate—March 17, St. Patrick’s Day—so during the shoot we celebrated our birthdays together at a restaurant in Salt Lake City. Rob is hilarious. He did many dead-ringer impersonations, including a perfect nervous-looking Christopher Walken. Rob had worked with Chris onstage, and he told me how Chris would constantly look out at the audience while he delivered his lines, instead of looking at the other actors. When Rob asked him why he did that, Chris replied (and here Rob delivered his best impersonation complete with head bobs), “Well, they know I’m here. And I know they’re there. I think it would be rude to ignore them.” It was hysterical.
The Stand cost more than $28 million to produce, and it was well promoted, received good reviews, and ended up winning a few Emmy Awards. I was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award. We finished shooting in June, and I returned to California, where another call came, this one for an audition in a Paramount picture to play the part of a wounded Vietnam veteran. The movie’s working title was simply the name of the main character: Forrest Gump.
From the start, I wanted this role. Any project that dealt with the Vietnam War interested me, due to the work I’d done in the 1980s with Vietnam vets, in addition to my close connection with the Vietnam vets in my family. The innovative director Robert Zemeckis, who’d had a string of hits, including the Back to the Future movies, Romancing the Stone, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, would helm the film. The project, based on a 1986 novel by Vietnam veteran Winston Groom, was already set to star Tom Hanks, and the screenplay was adapted by Eric Roth, another wonderful writer. I knew it stood a chance of being a terrific project all around.
But I didn’t get the role at first. I auditioned in a conference room at Paramount Studios. Wendy Finerman was producing the movie, along with Steve Tisch, Steve Starkey, and Charles Newirth. Wendy had secured the rights, and it had taken her a long, nine-year-journey to make the film a reality. Wendy was present at my audition, and she’ll tell you today that she knew immediately I was the right actor to play Lieutenant Dan Taylor. But the wheels of Hollywood can turn slowly, and after I auditioned it took some time before I heard anything.
In the meantime, I kept auditioning for other movies. That’s what you need to do in Hollywood—always keep going. You never know what will or won’t materialize. I auditioned for Little Buddha with Keanu Reeves and for the Western epic Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner. Both movies were big, expensive projects. Keanu was coming off a string of hot hits, including the Bill & Ted franchise and the action thriller Point Break. Kevin had exploded in popularity with Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, Bull Durham, Robin Hood, JFK, and The Bodyguard. I kept phoning my agents, asking if anything was happening with Forrest Gump, but they’d say things like, “Well, they’re considering a lot of different things right now. You’re still on the list, but it isn’t finalized yet.”
I would have been happy to land the roles in either Little Buddha or Wyatt Earp, and I kept my fingers crossed, hoping something would happen. Meanwhile, Moira and I both auditioned for Tall Tale, a Disney movie starring Patrick Swayze. They offered Moira and me the roles of the mother and father, and the idea of acting with Moira in a movie was really appealing. Simultaneously, I learned I hadn’t gotten the part in Little Buddha. They’d liked my screen test a lot, but the part ended up going to singer Chris Isaak, who was just starting to break into the movies. I also learned I’d been passed over for Wyatt Earp, although I was told I’d been in the final mix.