{"id":9221,"date":"2017-08-18T14:32:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T14:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=9221"},"modified":"2017-09-07T20:12:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T20:12:03","slug":"drinking-wine-in-the-sunshine-with-patrick-swayze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=9221","title":{"rendered":"Drinking wine in the sunshine with Patrick Swayze"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Patrick Swayze jumped menacingly from the corral fence to the dusty ground of his ranch in the flats next to the Angeles Forest in La Canada. \u201cSteve McQueen said what?\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing tough about making movies,\u201d I repeated. Swayze shook his head. \u201cGod, I loved that man but that sounds like bullshit to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a long time ago before Swayze had hits like \u201cDirty Dancing\u201d, \u201cGhost\u201d and \u201cPoint Break\u201d. He would have turned 65 today but Swayze died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57 in 2009. When I spent a day with him in 1985, when he was 33, he was full of life, feisty and combative.<\/p>\n

I drove out to his spread just after lunch as his wife, Lisa Niemi, was just heading out. Swayze greeted me with a wave of a bottle of red wine. \u201cYou boys behave, now,\u201d Niemi said before she left. Swayze kissed her and he was pouring wine before the door closed behind her. Energetic and immensely likeable, the young actor couldn\u2019t sit still and suggested we take our glasses \u2013 and the bottle \u2013 out to the corral so he could show me his horses.<\/p>\n

We stood in the California sunshine as he told me about making movies: \u201cI\u2019ll tell you about tough. For \u2018Red Dawn\u2019, I was in the Rockies in winter at 10,000 feet and 30-below. For \u2018Uncommon Valor\u2019, I was in a jungle fighting heavyweight boxer Randall \u2018Tex\u2019 Cobb, who nearly killed me because he didn\u2019t know how to pull a punch.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the 12-hour ABC-TV miniseries \u201cNorth and South\u201d, he spent more than six months filming on location in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and South Carolina, often in sweltering conditions. Swayze said, \u201cThe key there was speed. You better be ready and able to deliver or you got problems \u2013 you blow your performance, you blow your goals, you blow your ambitions. I think Steve McQueen was full of shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swayze paused and realised what he\u2019d just said. He made a wide grin. \u201cOf course, if was he was comparing acting to what it takes for the average Joe to get through from eight to five without becoming a lunatic, then he was talking straight. Comparatively, making movies is a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

We drank to that. \u201cStill,\u201d he said, \u201cthe only thing that will make my career last is if I always deliver 100%. If I don\u2019t, I\u2019ll have no one to blame but myself if my career peters out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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His co-star in \u201cNorth and South\u201d, the delectable but steely Lesley Anne Down (pictured with Swayze above), then 31, took a wry view of the actor\u2019s energy. \u201cMine has faded,\u201d she told me. \u201cI don\u2019t know how long he\u2019s been in the industry but I\u2019ve been in it for 21 years. I want to put my energy into other things now.\u201d<\/p>\n

On location for the Civil War series, Swayze said, \u201cIt was very hot wearing West Point woollen uniforms and great coats in 100-plus degrees,\u201d and Down agreed: \u201cYou\u2019d be uncomfortable, too, if you had to wear dresses that weighed 40 pounds with six petticoats and those bloody corsets.\u201d She recalled the balmy days in England when she starred in \u201cUpstairs, Downstairs\u201d: \u201cWe used to wander in at 1 o\u2019clock, have tea and buns, play cricket, do about an hour\u2019s worth of work and all pootle off at 5. This was totally different. Totally.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was all grist for Swayze, who told me, \u201cI work non-stop. I work like a crazy man and I love it. My father died not too long ago and I realised, \u2018What the hell? What\u2019s the insecurity? What\u2019s the fear?\u2019 Go for it!\u201d<\/p>\n

As a child, he studied with his mother, dancer\/teacher Patsy Swayze (\u201cUrban Cowboy\u201d), at her studio in Houston, Texas. As a fiercely enthusiastic high-school athlete, he was offered scholarships in gymnastics, diving, track and football but instead he joined the \u201cDisney on Parade\u201d touring show, performing all over the U.S. for a year. After a stint as an ice skater in Houston, he moved to New York and studied with the Harkness, Joffrey and Feld dance companies. His first chance on Broadway was with Joel Grey in \u201cGoodtime Charley\u201d and then he followed John Travolta as the lead in the long-running \u201cGrease\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hollywood beckoned and, after a series of appearances in TV movies and series (notably as a soldier dying of leukemia in an episode of \u201cM*A*S*H\u201d), he made his first feature film, \u201cSkatetown, U.S.A.\u201d in 1979. He was busy after that, mostly in tough-guy roles but he didn\u2019t always like the results. He dismissed \u201cSkatetown, U.S.A.\u201d as \u201cgarbage\u201d and of the cult picture \u201cThe Outsiders\u201d in 1963, he said, \u201cThey sold out the story of three brothers and turned it into a Matt Dillon flick. \u2018Red Dawn\u2019 could have been a legend but it was sold out for the action.”\u00a0The Swayze grin appeared again: “I voice non-stop. If anything will blow my career, it’s because I open my mouth too much.”<\/p>\n

He was proud of \u201cNorth and South\u201d not only for his performance \u2013 \u201cMy best work\u201d \u2013 but because of its clear-eyed view of the American Civil War: \u201cI don\u2019t believe \u2018Gone with the Wind\u2019 cut it. It made that time look pretty. This show tells it straight because the South was wrong about slavery but the North was wrong about immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When \u201cDirty Dancing\u201d (pictured above) came out in 1987, Swayze spoke positively to me about it although he said that it\u2019s really Jennifer Grey\u2019s movie. Daughter of his first co-star Joel Grey, she plays the girl who becomes a woman in the story. He said, \u201cThe picture took a lot of real work and passion, I was concerned going into it. Would a sweet, simple story work these days? It\u2019s so difficult to get a message across subtly. It\u2019s not brilliant but I think the movie\u2019s a breath of fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n

So was Patrick Swayze. I recall well that afternoon at his ranch with the wine, the horses and the sunshine when life was full of promise. He said he retreated to his ranch between projects because \u201chorses don\u2019t mess with you; dogs don\u2019t mess with you; you do it right and they work beautifully for you\u201d.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t view Hollywood the same way: \u201cAs fast as you\u2019re hot in this business, you can be not-hot. People can be talking about you so quickly it makes your head spin. But I don\u2019t care. I don\u2019t have to have this film career. I really don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, Swayze heard himself, stopped and grinned: \u201cI do care. That\u2019s bullshit, that\u2019s a lie. I do care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Patrick Swayze jumped menacingly from the corral fence to the dusty ground of his ranch in the flats next to the Angeles Forest in La Canada. \u201cSteve McQueen said what?\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing tough … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,8],"tags":[4692,4691,4693,4688,4689,4687,4690,1129],"class_list":["post-9221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-music","tag-dirty-dancing","tag-north-and-south","tag-jennifer-grey","tag-lesley-anne-down","tag-lisa-niemi","tag-patrick-swayze","tag-patsy-swayze","tag-steve-mcqueen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9221"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9237,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9221\/revisions\/9237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}