December 19, 1988 | Patrick Swayze returned home last week, every inch the conquering hero after the box-office smash of Dirty Dancing and the chart-busting hit of ”She’s Like the Wind.” And for two solid days, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of him.
Swayze arrived with his wife and frequent artistic collaborator, actress-dancer Lisa Neimi, to participate in a horse show with Rhita and Tom McNair. During the next 48 hours or so, he busily promoted upcoming January events — a charity-benefit Arabian horse auction, the Houston Post-sponsored Winter Ball — and impulsively decided he would give a live concert performance to enliven the high-horse affairs.
Late one afternoon, as shadows started falling outside his posh Remington Hotel suite, Swayze was holding up well, considering. Still, even high-octane dynamos run out of steam now and then. A radio station interviewer asked Swayze to tape a promotional spot. Swayze agreed, graciously, and spoke into the microphone: “Good morning, I’m Patrick Swayze. You’re waking up to the most country music in the morning on K . . . I . . .
“Er, what are the letters again?”
Swazye laughed sheepishly as he was prompted, and completed the spot on his very next try. Pictures were snapped, goodbyes were exchanged, and the radio people were gone. Swayze remained, however, his work not yet done.
Indeed, Swayze is too polite to ever admit that he’s fading fast, that the last thing he wants to do is talk to yet another journalist. My first impulse was to cut short our conversation, to give the poor guy a chance to rest. But no: Swayze would hear none of that. After all, we had some catching up to do.
The last time we talked, Swayze and I were able to lunch in relative obscurity at the Paradise Bar & Grill. Just about the only person who noticed him was the waitress, and she paid attention only when Swayze raised his hand to order a glass of wine. That was back in August 1987 — a few weeks before the release of Dirty Dancing.
Now, several months and dozens of millions of box-office dollars later, everybody seems to notice Patrick Swayze. And that, he admits, has been a mixed blessing.
At first, the sudden shock of recognition was worse than uncomfortable — it was downright scary.
“I’m not sure why fear of this came up,” Swayze said, “but it’s a strange lifestyle we moved into. I’m very much a people person, and pretty much hanging out in general anywhere anymore is out of my life. So that’s a strange one to deal with.
“I’m real happy about what has happened. But I didn’t bank on some of the trade-offs, the alienation, the loneliness that comes up.”
Loneliness? This man who draws crowds the way a magnet attracts 10-penny nails? Yes, indeed, loneliness. And pressure. And, until recently, a very unhealthy defense mechanism.
“People are coming at you all the time,” Swayze said. “And, involuntarily, your subconscious protects itself. And I started feeling like my insides were shutting down or closing off, or something. Like, when I’d talk to people, I’d put on the picture and the face of looking like I was present and accounted for, and there. But my insides would be 100,000 miles away.
“And I’m real glad I caught that one. Because I think that’s a killer. You know what I mean? Because you start losing touch with reality. Or you can. And I saw that coming on, and I felt helpless to do anything about it. So, I started making up exercises to keep myself right here, present and accounted for, when I’m talking to someone.
“And actually, it was just that, with everything being so confusing, I didn’t feel I had a whole lot of control in my life. It just felt like my life was running me. And so Lisa and I did a lot of talking, and work, on, ‘OK, this is what our life is now. And it’s neat, and money’s neat, and the opportunity’s neat. Yet, what do we do about us? And our insides? And our relationship? And keeping everything emanating from us, rather than running us?’
“So just by doing that, just by making that statement, instantaneously, things started to change, and we started feeling a little better inside about things.”
Swayze and his wife have a ranch in the sprawling foothills surrounding Los Angeles. It’s more than a great place to raise horses, or record music in a private studio, or work on their joint efforts in dance productions. It’s also great therapy.
“We’re trying to finish this barn at home, amongst traveling and doing benefits, and that kind of thing. It’s exciting to see the ranch starting to come together. It looks like a desert now, because it’s all dirt. I just spent three days straight on a bulldozer, on a tractor, finishing up all the final grading and stuff. That was actually real good for my head, to come home and go right back to that kind of work and just sort of settle myself back into being normal.”
Trouble is, it’s hard to keep Swayze down on the farm after the public has seen Dirty Dancing. He recently completed back-to-back movies — Road House, an action drama directed by Rowdy Harrington (Jack’s Back ), and Next of Kin, a police thriller co-starring Liam Neeson (The Good Mother) — and is contemplating production deals with Columbia and Tri-Star. He has been offered opportunities to direct movies – “B-movie stuff, on a small level,” he explained, modestly. And record companies, impressed with his success as singer and co-writer (with Stacy Widelitz) of “She’s Like the Wind” — have been dangling contracts before him.
But Swayze remains cautious. Even after Dirty Dancing, he realizes that he still needs to prove himself as a “bankable” actor. Two films he made before Dirty Dancing was released, Steel Dawn and Tiger Warsaw, were box-office flops, even though they were released after Dancing hit big. “One hit movie does not a movie star make,” Swayze said. “So, actually, from a career point of view, I need Road House and Next of Kin, one or both of them, to be hits.”
As for working on the other side of the cameras, Swayze isn’t ready to direct — not yet, at least. Nor is he quite ready to start recording albums.
“I’ve been offered album deals with just about major label in Hollywood. But I turned them all down, because I don’t want to look like just another actor trying to capitalize off an acting career, and stick himself in everybody’s face musically.
“I’ve been writing music too many years, and music means enough to me to where I’ll do it for himself, in my little studio at home, or in my hotel room, and never let anybody hear it if I have to. I won’t sell out on that part, I won’t just start writing commercial tunes for the sake of making the buck, or selling an album.”
Besides, Swayze added, “I knew in many people’s minds that having a hit song wasn’t going to do a thing for me. That doesn’t prove you to anyone, that’s not a track record, that doesn’t truly create credibility. To give you an example: Stacy Widelitz, the guy I collaborate with musically, was going to these big BMI parties and things, and he’d introduce himself, ‘Hi, I’m Stacy Widelitz, I collaborate with Patrick Swayze, I co-wrote ‘She’s Like the Wind.’ And sure enough, people would go, ‘I knew it! I knew there was somebody who knew what they were doing behind that song!’
“That very reaction is the thing I knew that I would get. So that’s the reason why I’m not letting the vultures shove me down the public’s throats. I’ll build a track record if I deserve to build a track record.”
Mind you, Swayze is nobody’s idea of an overnight sensation. Now 36, he paid his dues on stage and in movies for many years before donning his dancing shoes (and occasionally doffing his duds) for Dirty Dancing. Take a trip to a video store near you, and you can rent several of his earlier efforts: Red Dawn, Youngblood, Grandview U.S.A., The Outsiders.
But nothing in his past — not even his starring role in the popular ABC miniseries North and South — could have prepared him for life in a post-Dirty Dancing world. And now he’s taking great pains to keep head straight, and his humor hearty. So far, in the eyes of at least one observer who knew him before the Dancing began, it looks like Patrick Swayze is succeeding in his life as well as his art.
“No matter how much you prepare yourself for success — you can never prepare yourself for it,” Swayze said. “Things come up that you didn’t know were there. And with Lisa and I, our biggest focus has been, we don’t want any of this stuff to change us. We want to stay the kind of people we believe ourselves to be. And try to grow and become better human beings. And I think that is what is really doing us, and our heads, a lot of good. And how we’re handling all this.
“I don’t plan on getting stupid and messing up my life in any way. I want to keep grounded in the things I believe in, those ideals that sometimes in Hollywood seem a little naive and innocent. I don’t care — I believe in integrity, and a certain level of quality in your life.”
