John Cusack: Point Blank
Details for Men, by David A. Keeps (August 1997)
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Deadly aim. Perfect timing. From confused teen to conflicted hit man, John Cusack has always been on target. David A. Keeps listens while the actor says, well, anything.
One the side of John Cusack's massive stainless steel Sub-Zero, the refrigerator of choice in these here parts, there's a Technicolor portrait of Charo surrounded by magnets of Felix the Cat and Curious George. (John's favorite: "The one where Curious George is sniffing a bottle of ether.") Inside, there's a frost pack of American Spirit Lights. "In the tasty green package," he says, all voice-over-pro smooth, as he fires one up on an equally imposing Wolf chef's range. As he smokes-- big, huge puffs-- I study his face: a shock of black hair, pale skin, a towering forehead indicating major cranial capacity, eyebrows that arch over his coal black eyes like French accent marks, ebony lashes, a straight and sturdy nose that tapers down to small, somehow comic lips that cover charmingly crooked bottom teeth. He is as he looks: a stand-up guy (six two), a man of the world, a man of his word.
Seating himself behind a long, rough-hewn wooden table, John Cusack is the master of all he surveys. To his right lies an entertainment lounge with a Wurlitzer CD jukebox, stacks of TV equipment, and wildly upholstered new-wave-meets-Sedona sofas and chairs. Beyond that, a Lifecycle, a treadmill, two punching bags, floor mats, and weights sit at the end of half a regulation basketball court. (The wooden floor is also a staging area for his kick boxing, sparring bouts, and commedia dell'arte theater workshops.) Behind and above him are workspaces and a place for John to crash. He keeps an apartment in his native Chicago, and has a small beach house in Malibu. But this renovated furniture store in a slightly run-down part of Venice is where he spends most of his time. It's an all-purpose facility, John explains, "office/clubhouse/meeting place/creative space/playpen."
We're in the headquarters of New Crime Productions. This is where John Cusack, star of this year's sharp noir comedy Grosse Pointe Blank and the recent megabucks action flick Con Air, becomes John Cusack, film producer, screenwriter, and partner in creative subversion with his high school friends Steve Pink and D.V. De Vincentis. Together they wrote Grosse Pointe Blank; together they are New Crime. They have ongoing projects at Paramount (Muckraker, about tabloid journalists) and United Artists (Hail Mary, about the NFL) and just signed a "first look" deal with Castle Rock's Rob Reiner, who directed Cusack over ten years ago in The Sure Thing and Stand By Me.
"He was a wild kid back then," Reiner remembers. "He came to work one day with a huge gash on his forehead. 'Rob,' he says to me, 'last night Tim [Robbins] and I were in the hotel watching Conan the Barbarian, and every time Arnold came on we'd just have to snarf.' I said 'Snarf?' And John explained. Basically you take a beer, you drink it down, you smash it against your forehead, and throw it against the TV."
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John Cusack lays it all on the table: "I have a chronic rebellion disorder. It's self-diagnosed and it's been self-treated. If someone tries to corral me to do something I don't want to do, it gets my Irish up." In 1988, when he made the rock satire Tapeheads, with Tim Robbins, they took a punk-rock approach to publicity, obsessing about their hair in interviews and being so obnoxious on Good Morning America that the segment never ran. "When you're young and militant about your art," John philosophizes, "you tend to equate your own personal identity with the success and failure of each project you do, which is actually insane. People have said, 'You turned down Indecent Proposal, Apollo 13, all these megahits-- don't you regret that? Are you afraid of success?' Success to me was Woody Allen films. I never wanted to get any specific place by the time I was twenty-seven; I wasn't trying to make my box-office mark."
Meet the new, improved John Cusack. A trusted household name for half of his thirty-one years. Same great taste, more fulfilling. Able to polish the dullest films to a showroom shine without using anything harmful or abrasive. Ready and willing to sell himself without necessarily selling out.
"You have to be part of the system in order to get stuff out of it, even if that means doing more commercial movies so I can do a Grosse Pointe Blank," he explains. "It's actually kind of arrogant to think you could get $15 million from somebody and not have the common courtesy to sit down with them and say hello."
Is he becoming less of a nonconformist or more of a conformist?
"Neither. I think probably the punishment for defiance is that you have to become a leader."
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There's one thing that's still punishing: Being a private person in a very public profession. Nonetheless, John Cusack has managed to slip through the sticky strands of celebrity's tangled web. Surrounded by family and longtime friends, he has no need to shoot pool and the Hollywood Athletic Club or do shots at the SkyBar.
His relationships are low-profile to the point of being no-profile. (His rumored affair with Grosse Pointe costar Minnie Driver never even made the tabloids.) He has always maintained a steady, studied distance form the press, though when I read him quotes from previous articles, he usually remembers who wrote what for whom.
These days he'll even indulge in the reality-free performance art of doing talk shows. "The whole idea of that used to drive me crazy," John says. "When I was growing up, De Niro, Pacino, Duvall-- you didn't see those guys on talk shows. You didn't know who they were dating. You didn't hear what they had for breakfast."
So, who did he have breakfast with this morning?
"Let's see," He says with a smile. "I had breakfast with the Dalai Lama. Then we played golf together-- helluva putter."
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Quick with the quip, John Cusack has one firm belief: "If you want to know something about me," he advises, "look at my movies." There is his early Everyteen period (from 1983's Class to 1987's Hot Pursuit) in which he established his comic timing and deadpan cynicism, usually as a charmingly horny high schooler who bumbles his way toward maturity and lands the girl. His appeal was immediate, and lasting: Women think he's adorable yet somehow deep, the kind of guy they talk about when they say a good sense of humor is more important than looks. For men, Cusack simply looks and acts like a bro.
By twenty-two, Cusack had entered a humbler period, playing in adult ensembles: as a third baseman in John Sayles' Eight Men Out and a nuclear physicist in Fat Man and Little Boy. Then he embraced a darker side, playing unsympathetic characters whose smooth moves proved their undoing. As a doomed con man in The Grifters and an ambitious political aide in True Colors, Cusack examined the unlit corners of young men's minds, taking fans of his comedies on a tour of a bleak, corrupt world.
While the Brat Pack faded into "whatever happened to" casualties, and two other graduates of teen comedy, Toms Cruise and Hanks, became, respectively, the world's sexiest prick and America's good buddy, John Cusack quietly determined to keep breaking his mold. In the early 90's, he entered a cameo phase, taking small roles in Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog, Robert Altman's The Player, and Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts. They were sharp turns, easily maneuvered, and they reinforced Cusack's integrity.
Grosse Point Blank proved the perfect merger to Cusack's comedic talents and his ability to play cold-and-calculated. Cusack's contributions to the script bear the mark of his absurdist sense of humor and cutting political commentary. (A quick example of each from off the top of his head: First, John tells me a joke. "A skeleton walks into a bar and says 'I'll have a bear and a mop.'" Then, John's take on "alternative Republican" Kennedy: "She should be given electroshock therapy.") In Con Air, he is able to parlay his person-- sarcastic humanitarian taking on the system-- into a character that ever so slightly transforms the action movie genre.
And let's not forget 1989's Say Anything...
There are legions of young men, the makings of a minor cult, who can't. When Cameron Crowe first approached Cusack to play Lloyd Dobler, the kick-boxing regular guy who woos and wins the class valedictorian, John had his doubts. It was like having one of those dreams that you're back in high school again. At twenty-three, it felt like a sick joke. But, he brought everything he had gone through as a teenager to the script: "You're growing up in your freshman year of high school and Ronald Reagan is taking office and you're pretty sure that this... thing is gonna blow up the world. I knew what it was like not wanting to be part of the system and trying to find your identity. That was my turf."
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John Paul Cusack was born June 28, 1966, in Evanston, Illinois, an old wealthy suburb of Chicago. His father, Dick, is a screenwriter who won an Emmy Award for a documentary about genetic engineering: his mom, Nancy, is a math teacher. He was the fourth of five kids: Ann, Joan, Bill, John, and Susie.
"When I first met John Cusack, he was mewling and puking in his mother's arms, but even then he was a player," recalls Byrne Piven, the co-director of Chicago's Piven Theater Workshop (alma mater of Aidan Quinn, Lili Taylor, and Rosanna Arquette). Piven was part of the Cusacks' circle of left-learning friends, and taught the two eldest Cusack daughters how to act. John started early. "From the beginning," Byrne Piven recalls, "he insinuated himself right in here. His beautiful, pudgy little face in still in our logo." John's first role was playing a reluctant child in an adaptation of a Chekhov short story. He was a natural, with a gift for improvisation. "We'd play this game called To Gets," Piven explains. "The object is to get something from another actor without coming right out and asking. John was the one guy who could violate that rule. If he was playing a window washer who wanted another window washer's sandwich, his opening line would be 'Gimme your lunch,' and it would bring the house down."
In other ways, he was an average American kid: a sports fan who collected baseball cards, bombed around on a GT skateboard, and played bike tag on a Schwinn manual he called the Green Monster. He liked Asteroids and Spider-Man and had a keen appreciation for the charms of Raquel Welch and Ann-Margaret. One night when he was twelve he was taken to see Apocalypse Now on a school night. "It was like having the back of my head blown off."
School sucked. Except for Mr. De Mano's sixth-grade health class. "We used to take bets on how much he'd sweat that day as he talked about intercourse and things." At Nichol's Junior High, John developed something of an attention deficit problem. The less attention he received, the more problems he caused. he created an alternate language and anarchic cult he called "Joe Mania." Soon, he got the whole class into it. His parents were summoned. Perhaps John should go to St. Mary's? John had been raised a Catholic, but there were just some things he didn't get. Like guilt: "It's just a knife-wielding, piercing shame." He remembers feeling guilty for not having any sins for his first confession. So he lied about stealing a candy bar. "I got a couple of Hail Marys and Our Fathers and then I came out of the confession booth to the applause of the congregation and I thought, 'This is psychotic.'"
St. Mary's was not his salvation. In his misery, at least, he had company. "We had a moment of bonding over the horror of being in this Catholic lockdown," recalls D.V. De Vincentis. "But he somehow talked his parents into putting him back into public school." At Evanston Township High School, it all came together. "John and I shared the same darkly cynical, humorous vision of the world," Steve Pink remembers. "Our first words to each other were something like 'The end of the world is near.' 'Yeah, I agree, let's go get a drink.'"
A posse of cultured misfits partial to Adidas Sambas and overcoats was born. They were red-blooded suburban boys, eager for experiences with women, curious about drugs. "Yeah, yeah, I have used drugs," John says. "Stop the presses. What's the big deal?"
Ultimately, there was a more important dynamic. "What attracted us," De Vincentis explains, "was subversion-- what we read and what we saw and what we listened to." For John, that included J.D. Salinger, Hunter S. Thompson, Stanley Kubrick, Hal Ashby (particularly Harold and Maude and Shampoo), the Clash, the English Beat, and all that ska music. Later it was Fishbone. ("I don't understand why that band didn't change music forever.") Later still, it was Nirvana. ("Kurt was actually going to write the music for Grosse Pointe Blank," John says sadly. "Then he decided that he had other plans." In the end, Joe Strummer wrote the score.)
At sixteen, John convinced his agent to get him auditions for movies being filmed in Chicago. His first was a bit in Class with Rob Lowe and Jacqueline Bisset. He ever got his friend Steve Pink a role as an extra in Sixteen Candles. (Steve lasted a day: "I thought, 'I'm not fooled by this lack of glamour; I could be doing my own really glamorous thing, like procuring more weed.'") For John, movies meant freedom. He graduated early and moved out at seventeen. He tried NYU, but didn't last the year. "Too much fire in my belly," he explains. For a while, he lived with D.V. De Vincentis, who had also landed acting roles: "We had a lot of disposable income and we found a lot of ways to dispose of it. We had one apartment that we thought was a fantastic bargain, but there was a bus depot directly across the street. There was so much pollution, it was like living inside a catalytic converter."
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Back at the New Crime Office/Playpen, John's massage therapist drops a handful of Cold-Eeze lozenges on the table for John next to his zinc-echinacea tablets. He's fighting off a cold and wants quick action. Even so, he worked out today, sparring with martial arts legend Benny Urquidez. ("He's the guy I kill at the high school reunion in Grosse Pointe Blank.") Not only is it good for his body, says John, it's good for his head. "It's a Zen fear exercise," he explains. "You face your fears of getting hit and of combat and of conflict. And when you get hit, it brings up a lot of emotions that you have to process: fear, wanting to hurt someone, and getting hurt without it bothering you at all."
But something is bothering John. He reaches inside the neck of his black shirt and rips out the label: "Sixty percent linen, 40 percent cotton. Made in Hong Kong. Donna Karan," he reads aloud. He wouldn't have known without looking. "I'm not really a materialist," he says. "If the house was on fire, except for some letters my father has written me and some things I've written, I'd say let it burn. I don't put much value in things-- the trophy wife or the the car." He drives a '93 Cadillack Allante convertible, black with a tan interior. He's also owned a Saab and, in his younger days, a '64 Caddy. John tells me about the time, about six years ago, when he realized something important was missing in his life. (Presumably, when you're on-stage at eight and a film star at seventeen, your first mid-life crisis arrives by your twenty-fifth birthday.) "I had to change the way I viewed the world. Learn about relationships. I wanted to figure out what made me happy. I had been looking outward for a long time for stimulus-- now I wanted to look inward for other things."
It took some time. He traveled, took smaller roles for a couple of years. A while back he started seeing a therapist. "I walked in with my dukes up a little bit and then I found out that there are brilliant psychiatrists just like there are brilliant actors and baseball players. In America you turn eighteen and it's like, 'All right, you're on your own, have a nice life.' Other cultures have medicine men, wise men, elders. Why wouldn't you want to know how your mind works? If you can find someone who is gifted, it's amazing."
ME: So do you talk about recurring dreams?
JOHN: No. But I have dreams that are part of the same series sometimes.
ME: Not being naked in front of your high school class? Or having your teeth fall out? Those are insecurity dreams-- well, the destruction of teeth is a sexual dysfunction.
JOHN: Actually I have a very fine subconscious bridgework.
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While he is out of town filming the Clint Eastwood-directed version of the best-seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I talk to John's friends. (They are a tight-knit bunch. The first time I met them was at the Sundance Film Festival. John was there with D.V. De Vincentis, Doug Dearth-- once John's trainer, now a production associate at New Crime-- and John's girlfriend, actress Claire Forlani, who starred in Basquiat. They were there to ski and see a midnight screening of Claire's new film, The Last Time I Committed Suicide. "Hi, I'm Johnny," he said to me by the way of introduction.)
"He has a great loyalty to and love for close, old friends, where you can relax because they know who you are," says his sister Joan. "It's like family." Steve Pink recalls a camping safari they took to equatorial Africa. John insisted on bringing ice into the wild. Out in the heat and dust, they had flies crawling all over them and couldn't swim because of the crocodiles. For some kind of relief, they reached into the ice container and, thanks to John, found cold brewskis. "Not to make it sound like a beer commercial," Pink says, "but there was something brilliant about his calculation."
Before going off on another trip, John charged his onetime assistant Tobi Tobin with finding, renting and decorating a beach house in Malibu while he was gone. "There's no baby steps with him," Tobin says. "One day he wants to be a cook, so you're buying kitchen equipment; the next day he wants to set up an art studio. He gives you something you don't think you can do and empowers you with his confidence in you."
It is confidence, not loyalty, that compels John to do business with his friends. "Between us there is a shorthand," John explains. "The goal for us at any one time is to make the other two fall off their chairs laughing. It's a pretty fun way to work."
Consequently, says De Vincentis, "we've written some of the sickest shit under the sun just to get each other going."
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One last meeting, John has flown in to L.A. to do a press day for Con Air. By the time I see him he has told thirty-two television crews why he chose to do his first blockbuster action flick: "The script had great gallows humor in it, and I think that producer Jerry Bruckheimer makes really good popcorn movies." Besides, he gets to destroy an FBI agent's Corvette, and wear a linen suit and sandals to work.
Before we get past he pleasantries, we're interrupted bu Joe and his wife Donna, who breeze into the suite. "Hey, look at you, the man in black, huh?" Joe says to John. "Where are your Birkenstocks?" It is Joe Roth, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, who made Grosse Pointe Blank a reality and oversaw Con Air for the house of Mouse. John gives him a big hug and they huddle outside for a while.
When he returns, he drinks a Diet Coke and begins to doodle on some hotel stationary. He scribbles in something that looks like eyebrows, followed by an Elvis pompadout, a triangular nose, and a gaping black hole of a mouth. He titles it "Alternative Republican Pumpkin."
After some small talk, we wade into the deeper waters: how sometimes we think with our head when we should feel with out hearts; how sometimes we don't think at all. "The mind is a defective organ," he tells me. "Wisdom and understanding come from a different place. The heart, the soul. I guess it's opening yourself up to the possibility that you may not know everything."
Were there times, I wonder, when he's let his little head do the thinking? "Yeah, I'm sure. I'm a guy, after all. I was nineteen once. Problems in your life-- bad relationships-- are there for you to learn a lesson. You can either learn it or you can keep doing it over and over again."
He has had one substantial relationship which lasted a long time, a long time ago. "Matters of the heart are tough. I guess you just learn that you can't change other people. You can't look for someone else to fill your holes. You become a better judge of character, and I think with women I'm finally looking past their obvious gifts more than I used to. I want someone who has control of their life and wants to share it."
Does Cusack foresee a John Jr.? "Only if it's right. I don't want to do it just to have a child and then not have parents around. I don't think it's something to take lightly. Otherwise you're fucking with a human life, and I don't wanna do that." I mention there's a scene in Grosse Pointe Blank, the one where hardened hit man Martin Blank makes goo-goo eyes at a baby and, in that one moment, gains a new appreciation for human life. It made me well up, I admit. He hastens to reassure me that the scene made Clint Eastwood misty, too.
He wonders where all this is going. So I ask simply, "What's your story?"
"The eternal question," he replies. "And the eternal answer is I don't know. You just figure out the ideas you like and what you feel to be true. I'm not just happy to be on a movie set anymore. You try to find characters that you can express yourself with." Once he though he could use his improvisational skills to act his way around potholes of a weak script. Now he knows better. These days, he contributes story ideas and dialogue to films he stars in. These days, he develops his own material, get financing for it, and gets it done.
He has managed one of the trickiest stunts in Hollywood: diving through the flaming hoops of movie stardom with his integrity unsinged, becoming a public commodity without compromising his private life. He has become modest without being humbled. Surely he must have a credo for living? "Nothing that can be digested into a sound bite for a magazine," John replies, "you know what I mean?"
Yes.
"And that's the dilemma of our relationship, isn't it?" He asks me, smiling confidently, knowing he is dead on target. "How do you sum up someone in five hundred words?"
I ask for five. His friends are happy to help: Inspiring. Curious. Loyal. Tenacious. Tall.
But Johnny don't play that. To my request he replies in exactly five words:
"That would be so self-serving."
