March 2, 1985| John Cusack, star of The Sure Thing, may be The Next Big Thing if his movie is a commercial success. The prospect leaves him decidedly ambivalent.
“To tell you the truth,” he said during lunch in Houston a few days ago, “I try not to think about it. Not because it’s unpleasant. It’s just that, every once in a while, I’m just sitting around and it dawns on me what it’s like to be a film actor in the United States. Or the world, really.
“It’s like you’re royalty. People treat you like you’re larger than life, like you’re some kind of prince. And that’s not reality. Not at all. Everybody wakes up in the morning, and feels lousy on Mondays. Actors are like everybody else.”
Although he’s only 18, Cusack has had a lot of time to prepare himself for showbiz stardom. The son of an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, he joined an improvisational theater company at the age of 8. While still in his early teens, he began appearing in industrial films and doing commercial voice-overs in his native Illinois. During his high school years, he wrote and staged two musical comedies that were taped for presentation on cable TV.
Cusack began his film career three years ago with a major supporting role in Class, a comedy filmed on location in Chicago. He followed that with appearances in Sixteen Candles and Grandview U.S.A. Now he’s graduated to starring roles; The Sure Thing opened Friday, and two other films — Natty Gann and Better Off Dead — are in post-production. And he’s currently working on his own screenplay for Henry Winkler and Roger Birnbaum, co-producers of The Sure Thing.
Not a bad resume for someone who has yet to enter college.
“Actually,” Cusack said, “I think I’m gonna to go to NYU in the fall. But I really don’t know what’s gonna be ahead. I mean, I know that if Milos Forman comes up to me and says, ‘Do my film next fall,’ I think I’d go do it. But I can’t foresee that happening. I really want to go to school. I feel like I need to become more educated. And I’d like to become exposed to great ideas.
“I don’t know if I have the discipline to do it on my own right now. See, in high school, I never worked. I mean, I did four films in high school. And it’s hard to go work with Jacqueline Bisset and then take a French quiz afterwards, you know?”
Academically, he seems to be doing better on-screen than off-screen. In Class, he was enrolled at a prestigious prep school. And in Sure Thing, he’s a freshman at an Ivy League college. The new film, directed by Rob Reiner, has Cusack cast as a raucous party animal who falls in love with a preppy, proper young co-ed (Daphne Zuniga). Yes, it’s another picture aimed at the “youth market.” But Cusack insists it’s closer in spirit to It Happened One Night than Porky’s or Animal House.
“This is not really a teen film. I mean, it’s about teens, but you see characters. It’s not like, ‘Hey, this is a Teen. Look at him be funny because he’s a Teen. Watch what happens to The Awkward Teen.’
“I think part of the movie’s charm is that its humor relies on basic forms of comedy. It reflects human nature, and the insecurities that everybody has. That’s what Rob Reiner is all about —pointing out contradictions and things like that. He doesn’t use teen-agers awkwardly fumbling with sex as an excuse for comedy. I mean, maybe that’s good for a scene. But you shouldn’t have a whole movie revolving around that.”
Sure Thing is a striking change from Reiner’s last directorial effort, the hilariously satirical This Is Spinal Tap. Almost completely improvised, Spinal Tap pretended to be a documentary about a disastrous tour by a fading heavy-metal band. Sure Thing is more conventional, telling a straightforward story about attracted opposites.
“Reiner’s like a dream to work with,” Cusack said. “Because he’s so patient. And he understands the actor’s dilemma. He knows that, basically, an actor is scared to death.
“I remember the first time I saw myself on screen. It was in Class. I looked at myself, and saw this guy with a haircut like Moe of The Three Stooges, a big, long nose, and a horrendous acne problem. And he couldn’t deliver his lines. That’s what I saw, I swear to you. I sat in the movie theater and cringed. The laughter of the audience made no difference to me — because I thought they were all laughing at me.
“But in The Sure Thing, I felt great. Because Reiner’s open to improvisation — he knows how to use it, how to handle it. And that’s a hard thing to do. If you improvise off the script, you can forget that each scene is meant to be there, because this scene comes before that scene, and each scene matters. It can get sloppy, get fat, if you don’t watch yourself. And Reiner contained it very well. He’s great, because he gives you the freedom to throw out whatever’s on your mind. He’s got the overall vision, and he knows what’s too much, and he listens to everything the actors say.
“I think I was just lucky that I got into a film where the director and the producers, everybody involved, wanted to do their best. They wanted to make money, sure. But their first goal was to make a film that they were proud of.”
