The Time of My Life (25 page)

The NTSB investigation later revealed that a clamp on the hose connecting the plenum chamber to the upper plenum had malfunctioned. That alone would have been enough to cause a pressurization problem, but the situation was also exacerbated by two other factors: the continued presence of tar deposits on that rubber outflow valve, and the fact that I was a heavy smoker. When you have a three-pack-a-day habit, as I had at the time, your lungs don’t function as well at altitude as those of nonsmokers. The NTSB report noted that the combination of all these factors meant I almost certainly had become hypoxic during the flight. And it found no evidence of alcohol as a factor.

But the really scary thing was this: Nobody wakes up from full-on hypoxia. Once you have passed out due to lack of oxygen in the brain, it’s impossible to recover unless you descend to a breathable altitude. I had apparently stopped responding to air traffic control around Needles, California, near the Arizona state line. Yet somehow, I must have knocked off the autopilot between there and Prescott Valley, which allowed the plane to descend. Otherwise, my plane would have just continued at thirteen thousand feet, flying until it ran out of fuel, like Payne Stewart’s plane. And I would have been dead.

Even though I’d stopped responding, my aircraft kept on flying. Air traffic control radar showed that between Needles and my landing in Prescott Valley, I almost hit the ground eleven times. I flew between 6,500 and 11,500 feet, narrowly missing the mountains. And my route looked like a strand of spaghetti, looping around with no purpose for about forty-five minutes.

Fortunately, as I approached Prescott Valley, my plane had gently drifted lower until there was enough oxygen in the air to revive me. I woke up at just a couple hundred feet above the ground and managed to land safely anyway. It was nothing short of a miracle. Robert Crispin of the NTSB even said to me, “This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to talk to a pilot who’s suffered hypoxia.” Pilots just don’t live through that. But somehow, I had.

There was a lot of fallout from the off-airport landing. For one thing, Lisa and I never smoked in the cockpit again. I also offered to make a public-service announcement for the FAA, warning of the dangers of smoking while flying, which weren’t widely known at the time.

Even though the problem had been mechanical, I still had to fight to keep my pilot’s license, going through psychological testing and skills tests. That, combined with the repairs our plane required, meant it would be two more years before we could fly it again. But getting into the cockpit again wasn’t nearly as tough as getting through the nightmares I began having regularly after the incident. I woke up many nights in a cold sweat, dreaming I was heading for a crash or floating aimlessly in the sky, unconscious to the end. Once again, I’d cheated death, but as with the horse accident on
Letters from a Killer,
this incident left painful scars that were hard to heal.

Lisa had a hard time coming to terms with it, too. She later told me that when I first called her from Prescott, her heart felt as heavy as a stone. We had been together twenty-five years by now, through thick and thin, through enough pain and joy to fill a hundred lifetimes. She hadn’t wanted me to fly that morning in the first place, but when I did, and then nearly died doing it, she felt betrayed that I’d risked everything we’d
built together—everything she loved. Lisa felt helpless and angry, and it would take some time for those feelings to subside.

This airplane incident, combined with my feelings of vulnerability after the horse accident, really messed with my head. I had cheated death once again—but what for? What was the point of all this? What was I adding to the world? My career was at a crossroads, and the past few years had shown me the darker side of fame. As high as my career had soared with the success of
Dirty Dancing
and
Ghost,
it just felt that much worse to be back struggling again.

Earlier in my life, I had made it through difficult times by always focusing on the next dream. From football to gymnastics to dancing to acting, I always was able to throw myself fully into my next goal, and keep myself going. I never doubted that there was something great around the corner, and I never tired of pushing myself toward it.

But now I was starting to feel not just tired, but disillusioned, too. Had all this effort and pain been worth it? Had I created anything of value? As my relationship with Lisa frayed from the stress of constantly trying to prove myself, and struggling with feelings of never being quite good enough, I wondered if I had been focusing on the wrong things all along, to the detriment of what really mattered in life.

And even as I kept pushing to find good projects in Hollywood, the whole business of making movies was changing. With the economic downturn of 2000–2001, financing for bigger projects dried up and independent films started becoming more popular. There seemed to be fewer movies in general,
and not as many good roles to choose from. It was tough going, but I did manage to shift gears and get roles in a few good independent films—
Green Dragon
with Forest Whitaker,
Donnie Darko
with Jake Gyllenhaal, and
Waking Up in Reno
with Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, and the beautiful Natasha Richardson among them.

There was one film both Lisa and I longed to make, but we’d spent years trying to pull it together without success. Ever since our play
Without a Word
had been a hit in the LA theater world back in 1984, we had wanted to turn it into a film.
Without a Word
had only a month-long run in LA, but even all these years later, people still stopped Lisa and me on the street to say how much they’d loved it. They would tell us how inspired they were, and how moved by the depiction of people who never gave up chasing their dreams. And they would ask us to please make a movie out of it.

If movies were made through sheer effort alone, we’d have finished this one long ago. Over the past two decades, Lisa and I had done everything possible to try to bring
Without a Word
to the screen. But there are so many factors that have to come together to make a movie, it’s like herding cats, and we just couldn’t seem to get all the cats together at once.

Early on, Lisa had done a full rewrite, since the play was nonlinear and would be hard to adapt for film without a more traditional narrative story line. We had entered into discussions with a variety of possible producers, financiers, directors, and writers, but for one reason or another, we were having trouble finding the right blend. We’d start down one road, thinking we were making progress, but then the project would fall apart.

A lot of the difficulty stemmed from the fact that the artistic
vision Lisa and I had for the film was different from the vision other possible partners had.
Bagdad Cafe
director Percy Adlon wanted to direct at one point, but we parted ways when we couldn’t agree on how the script should be structured. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Israel Horowitz wrote several script drafts, but they weren’t true to the spirit of the original piece. Lisa and I even had a falling-out with Nicholas Gunn, who had cowritten the play with us back in 1984, over differences about the movie script. We didn’t speak for three years, though he eventually did rejoin our effort to make the film.

The project stalled again after Nicholas left, until we realized it was do-or-die time. Lisa and I knew we wouldn’t be able to do the film’s very demanding dance sequences forever, so we had to make it happen soon—or let it go. Nicholas came back, and we had an associate producer on board. But we were still having problems finding a writer who could deliver the script we wanted.

And that’s when Lisa really stepped up. She invited Nicholas and the producer, Janice Yarbrough, who had run our production company at Fox, to dinner. With all four of us at the table, she said, “I’ve got the burn. I have to do this script. I know what needs to be done, and I can write it.”

A dead silence fell at the table, and I looked at Lisa. Her face showed a kind of determination I’d never seen before, and although it was clear that Nicholas and Janice weren’t convinced she was the best choice, she wouldn’t back down. She’d always been the type to defer to others, playing down her own skills. But not this time. She’d worked on nearly all my movie scripts over the years, and had written a theatrical musical, so she was completely prepared for the task. More important, she knew the story in her bones.

In the face of their obvious reticence, Lisa said, “I lived this. I know it better than anyone, and I can write it better than anyone.” As she spoke, I saw in her eyes that she was absolutely right, and I suddenly knew with every fiber of my being that she could do it. I made up my mind at that moment to support her no matter what, because she’d earned this and would do it better than anyone.

Janice threatened to quit, but Lisa stood her ground. And even though Janice did end up walking away from the project, Lisa knew it was just a difference of professional opinion, and we remained friends with Janice. Lisa never wavered, and in addition to writing the script, she took on the director’s duties, too. She had directed several professional videos about horses and aircraft, and had studied the craft seriously with directors and cinematographers on numerous film sets over the years. Lisa knew what she was doing—and now she was stepping up for herself to have the chance to do it.

This was the film that finally led Lisa to put herself out there in a way she’d long been reluctant to. It was a huge turning point professionally, and I was thrilled for her—and for our movie.

Lisa was excited about taking on the roles of writer and director, but she felt that trying to do both, and act in the film, too, might be too much. “Lisa,” I told her, “you’ve got to do this role. It’s in your DNA.” She still wasn’t convinced, so we asked a few friends who had been actor-directors on other films whether they had run into any particular problems. Diane Ladd, who wrote, directed, and starred in 1995’s
Mrs. Munck
, reassured Lisa that it was absolutely doable and gave her tips on how to manage the workload.

Billy Bob Thornton was more succinct. “All the producers
have been telling us this isn’t possible,” Lisa told him. “They’re saying it’s too complicated to direct and star in a movie at the same time.”

Billy Bob, who wrote, directed, and starred in
Sling Blade,
said, “One word: horseshit.”

We took that as a kind of blessing, and with a commitment for financing from Warren Trepp and some money from our own pockets, we were finally off to the races. Lisa wrote, directed, starred in, and coproduced
One Last Dance
, the name we chose for the film. We got an amazing cast of dancers, including my little sister, Bambi, and hired the fantastic George de la Peña to play Nicholas Gunn’s role. It’s not easy to find people who can both dance and act at the highest level, but George could do both beautifully. He was a former soloist with the American Ballet Theatre and an instinctive, genuine actor. He was perfect for the role.

We shot the film in thirty-two days, mostly in Winnipeg but with a few exteriors shot in New York and LA. I’d had yet another knee surgery just a few weeks before shooting started, so some of the dance scenes were pretty excruciating for me— Lisa had to cut around my grimacing face on more than one occasion. But when all was said and done and Lisa had pulled the footage together,
One Last Dance
was everything we’d hoped it would be. Everyone in the cast and crew had given their hearts and souls to this movie, and it showed.

Seeing the finished film was a culmination of two decades of hard work, dedication, and perseverance, and it was thrilling.
One Last Dance
was released as a DVD and went to number one, and it’s still one of the best movies ever made about what it’s really like in the world of dance. Lisa showed all the abilities I knew she had, and I loved being directed by her. She had
a natural instinct for it, and I was thrilled that she’d finally gotten the chance to put that talent into action.

I’d never been so proud of Lisa, but I was spent by the end of the process. The shooting had been grueling, and there’s always a natural letdown when you finish a project you’re emotionally invested in.
One Last Dance
was such a deeply personal project that I felt that letdown even more acutely. And before I knew it, I was becoming seriously depressed again.

I don’t think I really understood what depression was until this period of my life. I had certainly struggled with deep sadness and feelings of frustration, but my natural optimism had always somehow managed to shine through. In the years following
One Last Dance
, though, that optimism began to desert me entirely. I just couldn’t figure out what the point was anymore, and I started drinking again in an effort to numb myself to the creeping feeling of despair. I’d lost the passion and purpose in my life, and couldn’t seem to get it back.

I had always felt like a lucky person, but that was being replaced by another feeling: that life wasn’t ultimately going to work out the way I’d always thought it would. It felt like this was what real life was—that I was finally growing up and facing the truth, and the truth was ugly. I had first felt it after the horse-riding accident, when I finally realized that no one could simply careen through life, completely invincible. For the first forty-six years of my life, I had really believed I was invincible—or had acted as if I was, anyway. When I suddenly realized I wasn’t, it was a huge blow. The same thing was now happening emotionally.

Everybody fails in life, but it’s when you can’t pick yourself
up after failure that you’re in trouble. I felt like I’d tried to do everything right, but was still getting smacked down. And that made me reluctant to get back up again. Why should I, when the same thing seemed to happen no matter what I did? I hated feeling like the whiny actor—Why can’t I be more successful? Why can’t I get better roles? But for the first time in my life, I began to fear deep down that I would never bounce back again, that I had no control over my success or failure. And that’s a deadly feeling.