The Time of My Life (20 page)

I felt as if I was about to suffocate. I’d never been claustrophobic in my life, but being completely encased in this plaster cast, I was seriously freaking out. I couldn’t see, smell, or hear, I could barely breathe, and foul-tasting liquid was seeping into my esophagus.

As panic rose in my chest, I started clearing my throat loudly, hoping the guys would realize what was going on. Finally, one of the guys asked, “Are you okay, Patrick?” I groaned, and he must have realized what was going on, because he poked a tongue depressor through the plaster covering my mouth, to let me get a little air in. I calmed down enough to sit still while the plaster dried, but once I got that cast off I swore I’d never do anything like that again. Ever since then, I’ve had little moments of claustrophobia, when scuba diving or in an
enclosed space. I flash right back to that feeling of being trapped.

Ghost
was the most high-tech movie I’d ever done. It wasn’t easy back in 1989, when CGI technology was so new, to shoot a realistic-looking ghost scene. But we used a new technique that made the ghost scenes look real, even though some of the effects do seem dated now.

First, the actors would do a run-through of the scene, getting an idea of where each character would be. In the scene where Willy, the Bronx bad guy, breaks into Molly’s house, we walked through the whole sequence: Sam sees him come in, realizes who he is, and tries in vain to stop him from going through the house. Sam still doesn’t understand that he can’t touch living people, so he takes swings at Willy, but his fist goes right through him. And when Willy tries to go upstairs, to Molly’s bedroom, Sam hurls himself at him, desperate to find a way to stop him. But Willy never knows he’s there.

Once we’d walked through the scene, the crew taped little numbers on the floor, showing us exactly where we had to be at each point in the action. I had a specific spot for every tiny moment, and not only did I have to be right on that spot, but my timing had to be absolutely perfect, because Jerry was going to shoot the whole sequence with each actor separately, and then layer them together to make it look as if we were in the room at the same time.

This would have been just about impossible to pull off, but we had a computerized camera that ensured the timing was perfect. When we first shot the scene, the camera recorded its own position, angles, and length of shots. It could then
re-create the shoot precisely again—but with a different actor going through the scene. Using this camera meant that whatever the actors did, it would look as if they were together while the scene was being shot, since the camera angles were identical. So the only thing we had to do was make sure we hit our marks exactly—otherwise it might look like Sam was swinging at air, rather than throwing his fist through Willy’s jaw.

Of course, hitting those marks so precisely is easier said than done. For the sequence where Sam chases Willy up and down the stairs, I was throwing myself all over the place, diving, falling, rolling. It’s hard enough to throw yourself down a staircase and make it look good, but try throwing yourself down one and then hitting a tiny piece of tape at the bottom. It’s tricky.

The other tricky thing was trying to do all this while acting. With all the focus on hitting those pieces of tape at exactly the right time, it was easy to forget about playing Sam’s emotions. Besides, there was no one acting opposite me—I was acting and reacting based on what I knew Willy’s character would do. But he wasn’t there, so I was running around this set, yelling at nobody, swinging at nobody, throwing myself down stairs to grab nobody. It was a very strange experience.

Doing all that in the confines of a closed set was one thing, but doing it outside in front of a crowd of gawkers was another. We used the computerized camera technique for the scene where Sam follows Willy to his apartment building and then sees his former buddy Carl there. We shot those scenes up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a rough part of New York that was even rougher back in 1989. Not a whole lot of movies get shot there, so a crowd of people had gathered around to watch.

This was a big, emotional turning point in the movie. It’s
the first time that Sam realizes his own friend Carl was the one who set up his murder. Sam follows Carl out onto the street and swings wildly at him, furious and hurt at his friend’s betrayal. It’s a very intense moment.

I got really geared up for this scene, summoning all the emotion I could to convey Sam’s hurt and anger, and when Jerry yelled “Action,” I stormed out of Willy’s apartment screaming and swinging. But of course, because we were shooting with the computerized camera so that Sam’s punches would go right through Carl, I did this scene completely alone. There was no Carl there. So the crowd of people who’d gathered to watch just saw me coming out yelling and swinging like a maniac. And they started laughing.

Looking back, I’ll admit that it probably looked pretty funny doing that scene alone. But at the time, I definitely didn’t see any humor in it. I stopped and turned to the crowd, furious.

“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled, my adrenaline pumping from the emotion of the scene. “You want to get out here and do this yourself? You think this is easy?” People looked startled, but they shut up. And when we went back to shoot the scene again, you could hear a pin drop. Nobody made a peep until we finished the whole take. When Jerry yelled “Cut,” the whole crowd broke into applause.

After we wrapped on
Ghost,
I did a 180-degree turn for my next role. I went from playing the straitlaced, Mr. Nice Guy banker Sam Wheat to the Zen-surfer-bank-robber Bodhi in
Point Break.

Bodhi was a once-in-a-blue-moon character, the bad guy whom you love because you believe what he believes in—until
he believes it too far and breaks the law and kills someone. I loved Bodhi because I identified with his quest for perfection and the ultimate adrenaline high. In fact, when I was first approached about
Point Break
years earlier, they asked me to play Johnny Utah, the FBI-agent-turned-surfer. But Bodhi was the only role for me. He’s a complex character who can read people instantaneously and knows exactly how to play them. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into that role.

I also was excited about getting paid to be a beach bum.
Point Break
is a surfing movie, so going to work meant hopping into my Range Rover at dawn, heading out to the beach, and being on a surfboard as the sun came up. Both Keanu Reeves and I got surfing lessons, but we had world-class stunt doubles for the really big waves. When you get out there in the ocean, you realize quickly that serious surfing takes huge amounts of both skill and courage.

To be a really good surfer, you have to start when you’re a flexible little kid and have no fear, because you’re trying to pop up on a wave that’s lifting you higher and higher, sometimes up to the height of a three-or four-story building. Then, just at the moment you have to be functioning at your highest level, the fear kicks in, and you go over the top and get your brains pounded in. I had surfed in Galveston growing up, so I knew the basics, but this was different. Messing around in these big waves was dangerous, so I just focused on being able to paddle out, pop up onto the board, and do a cutback on the wave. I just wanted to be good enough so that when they cut from a shot of me to a shot of my surfer double, I didn’t look like Bobby Darin on the soundstage of a fifties beach movie.

Keanu and I also got to skydive for
Point Break.
I had never done it before, even though my brother Donny had gotten
seriously into skydiving. I knew it was only a matter of time before I decided to throw myself out of an airplane, too, and
Point Break
finally gave me the perfect opportunity to do it.

The funny thing was, the first time I jumped I felt no fear at all. I stood at that open airplane door looking down, knowing there was nothing between me and the ground but air. I should have been terrified. But it’s such a sensory overload that I couldn’t really take it all in, so I just jumped. It wasn’t until the second jump that I suddenly found myself scared—because my brain had a chance to catch up and figure out what was going on. On the videotape of that second jump, I’m smiling, but you can see the jump master having to rip my hands off the bar to get me out the door.

The movie’s insurers didn’t want Keanu and me skydiving, even though they seemed to have no problem with us going out and getting pummeled by giant waves. I couldn’t believe they were so shortsighted about it, since we were much more likely to get injured or die in those waves. I can’t count how many times I ended up getting caught in an impact zone and sucking in water, unable to get up for air. But the insurers insisted that skydiving was just too dangerous, so we actually spent two days shooting skydiving footage after the film had officially wrapped.

That didn’t include the big, climactic skydiving scene, though, because that one didn’t really happen in midair. It couldn’t have. For one thing, Keanu and I are supposedly talking to each other throughout a free fall, which is impossible. And he supposedly leaps out of a plane without a parachute, catches Bodhi, and the two of them successfully deploy Bodhi’s chute and float down. This couldn’t happen in real life either, as Johnny Utah would have flown right off him
when Bodhi deployed the chute. So we shot the scene with giant rigger fans and a contraption that held us in place in midair, to look like we were falling.

With all the skydiving, surfing, chase scenes, and fight scenes,
Point Break
was one of the most fun movies I’ve ever worked on. It was also one of the most painful, as I cracked my left wrist and a couple of ribs, and tore up my shoulder and elbow. The worst injury didn’t come while we were shooting, though. It came when I was bored out of my mind back at the trailers.

I’d been hanging around a parking lot all day, waiting to be called to shoot a scene. I walked over to the prop truck and said, “Hey, you guys got a skateboard?”

“Sure,” said one of the guys, and grabbed one from the back. “Here you go,” he said. “Don’t kill yourself.” I just laughed and said thanks, and then hopped on the board. It shot out from under me, and I fell straight down onto my elbow, which drove my arm bone right up into my shoulder, tearing tendons and my rotator cuff. I was dizzy with pain, but knew that if I let anyone know I was hurt, there would be repercussions with the movie’s insurers. So I just acted as if everything was okay.

Whether I’m dancing, playing sports, acting, or anything else, I try never to allow pain to derail me. Pain is a constant companion when you make action movies. It’s also just a part of living with a serious knee injury. But I learned how to put the pain elsewhere, how to compartmentalize what was happening in my body.

Pain is nothing more than a sensation, and you can choose to give in to it, or choose to control it. It’s how I managed to sustain my career for this long, and even how I’ve managed to
fight cancer. Pain, like fear, can even be your friend if you let it. It sharpens your focus, and lets you know you’re alive.

But Lisa and I had to deal with another kind of pain during this period, one that had nothing to do with physical aches. This one had to do with heartache.

Lisa and I had been together for fifteen years now, and despite some ups and downs over that time, our relationship was strong. We both loved children and definitely wanted to have a family of our own. With my career going so well and both of us in our thirties, this was the perfect time to go for it.

To our excitement, Lisa got pregnant. I couldn’t wait to become a dad, to have a child with this woman whom I loved so dearly. The idea of having a family together with her made me happier than anything. And I wanted to be the best father I could be—the kind of father my dad had been to me.

About three months into her pregnancy, Lisa went in for her latest ultrasound. She’d gone into the exam room before me, and by the time the nurse showed me in, the ultrasound had already begun. As soon as I walked into that room, I knew something was very wrong.

Lisa was crying. The technician still had the ultrasound wand on her belly, but she already knew the baby’s heart wasn’t beating. She didn’t even have to say anything to me—one look at her face, and I knew the worst possible thing was true. “Oh, my God,” I said, fighting to control my emotions. I looked from the ultrasound machine to Lisa’s face and back, struggling to stay composed.

I felt completely crushed with grief. I’d been so excited that day, so thrilled at going in to see my baby’s heartbeat. And he
was dead. I couldn’t handle it—when we got to the parking lot, Lisa and I both wept bitterly, holding each other tight. I grieved as I hadn’t done in years, since my father died. Even now, neither of us can talk about that day without tearing up.

We wanted to try again, but the loss had been so devastating that we just couldn’t do it right away. At that point, we figured we had plenty more years ahead of us. Eventually, we did start trying again, and we kept at it for many years, hoping Lisa would get pregnant again. But she never did.

When she became perimenopausal, our doctor told her we could try in vitro fertilization with a donor egg. But when Lisa suggested it to me, I knew I didn’t want to do it. “I wanted it to be
us,
” I told her, feeling the tears come again. And I really did. I wanted a child, but what I really wanted was to create a child with this amazing woman I loved.

We always knew we could adopt, and we talked seriously about it. While I was shooting a movie in Russia, Lisa even took a trip to a Russian orphanage to do someresearch on adopting there. But somehow, as the years went by, we never did it. I’m not sure either Lisa or I could even explain why, except to say that it must be tied somehow to the shock and grief of that terrible day in the doctor’s office. But if there’s one thing I regret in my life, it’s that we didn’t have children. It makes me sad for myself, but maybe even more so for Lisa, who would have been a beautiful mother.

After
Ghost
came out, the whirlwind started up again, fiercer than ever. The movie shot up to number one at the box office, and it stayed at the top for four weeks. The magazine and TV interviews and photo requests kept flooding in—our phone never seemed to stop ringing that year. It felt great to have such a good movie out, and Lisa was also having a blast, wrapping up her starring role in a TV show called
Super Force,
in which she played a police captain in the year 2020.