Christian Slater, young enough to take over for River Phoenix in Interview With the Vampire and old enough to play Kevin Bacon's lawyer in Murder in the First, talks about taking responsibility for everything from preventing his coffee from getting too creamy to avoiding the home-wreckers who are out to destroy his relationship.
__________________________
In Hollywood, when I meet someone indoors and they still have their sunglasses on, I always silently count how long it takes them to remove their shades and give me a look at whatever goes on behind them. The longer it takes, the more annoyed I get. I don't care who it is. In Christian Slater's case, I'm still counting. Over the course of two lunches at Kate Mantilini, he didn't remove his sunglasses once. He may still have them on, for all I know--they may be a permanent part of his head, like the futuristic visor LeVar Burton wears on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," one of Slater's favorite shows.
So what manner of movie star shades are these? Oakley, Matsuda, Persol, Randolph Engineering, Calvin Klein? Actually, 7-Eleven. Slater sports charmingly low-tech cheapies--punky black plastic wraparound shades with violently violet lenses the color of Liz Taylor's eyes if she were a demon in your nightmare after a dinner of heavy sauces. You can get these specs for nine bucks in most convenience stores.
"But they don't offer any protection," I point out.
"They had that little UV sticker on 'em," Slater protests. "They make everything look great." He peers out the window. "Really wild."
Since Kate's is just about the last restaurant in Beverly Hills--and perhaps the world--to allow smoking, we are smoking. To be honest, we are here in the first place because Kate's allows smoking, and Slater, he likes to smoke. Unless you hear otherwise, please imagine us smoking continuously from here on out. As he smokes, Slater pours cream in his iced coffee, tastes it and makes a face. He signals a waiter amiably: "I put too much cream in this. I lost it, man." The waiter heads off to get a new cup. I tell Slater he's being a difficult star now. "Am I really?" he asks, with genuine concern--willing to believe that I might know more than a star does about how stars should act.
"No, no," I reassure him quickly. "I've seen worse."
"I mean, I ruined it," says Slater, of the java. "It's my fault. It's not like they screwed up in the kitchen."
"Okay, take your responsibility for it," I say.
"Yeah," Slater says with satisfaction. "I'm the guy that did it."
Christian Slater is big on shouldering the burden these days. The one-time hard-drinking teen idol is 25 now, old enough to know that Hollywood is brutal on young talent, and that the line between rebel and fuck-up is a thin one. "I have to live with myself--the choices I've made," Slater says quietly. "So I can be pretty hard on myself. I mean, life is a damn tricky thing. I'm really trying to set up my own rules--create my own game here in life. It's not easy to play it well." Slater's weary grin and smoke-cured voice somehow give this platitude the ring of a hard-won truth. Platitudes are what stars utter when they don't want to say anything, but they're also what we all repeat to ourselves like a mantra when insecurity threatens to sabotage our better instincts. Part of Slater's vast appeal, onscreen and off, is that he struggles like the rest of us, and admits it.
For those used to seeing reports of early Slater antics--run-ins with the police from drunk driving, etc.--it was darkly ironic to read last fall that he had stepped into the "interviewer" role in Interview With the Vampire after River Phoenix died suddenly of a drug overdose. "My own life could have gone that way," he said at the time. He donated his entire Interview salary to two of River's favorite charities.
"The mood in Hollywood when Phoenix died," I remind Slater, "was depressed and very, very weird."
"Well, they didn't give it much power on the set," Slater says. "I'm grateful for that, because that would have made it really uncomfortable for me. I was nervous about it--wasn't sure how people would feel or I would feel. But [co-executive producer] David Geffen was great. He said, 'Don't worry. It's all gonna be fine. This'll be fun for you.' And it was one of the greatest experiences. I felt no pressure at all."
I have to admit, I tell Slater, that I don't quite buy all that "it could have been me" business he came out with when Phoenix died. Underage drinking and driving, while not a good sign, is not the same thing as overdosing on Valium, heroin and cocaine. "Some of us escape it, some of us don't," Slater says bluntly. In other words: I'm missing the point. It's not very 12-Step of me. But I repeat: Slater and Phoenix were not drinking from the same well. "We didn't really have a great deal in common," Slater allows. "Similar in age, similar looks, I think--but he was a vegetarian, he had many more beliefs than I did--the family had the whole spiritual thing. If we'd met, we probably wouldn't have been great friends.
"I've spoken to his mother," Slater continues. "Heart Phoenix--she's a really sweet lady. She's managed to turn it into a beautiful thing somehow. She believes that River is still here. She almost feels he has more power now than when he was alive. For her, he's become everything."
Yeah, but ... the guy's still dead. "It's a shame and it's a crime, but ... drugs are an attractive thing," Slater says. "To be able to have some kind of escape--it's just heaven. There are moments when I'd like to get the hell out of this deal and run from my life, but I don't."
If Phoenix is the ultimate tragic failure of his acting generation, Slater's Interview With the Vampire compadre Tom Cruise, who occupies the older edge of the generation's span, is its ultimate burgeoning success. Slater was suitably floored by Tom. "To be able to cope with the stuff he's got to deal with, it's unreal. I don't know how he did it-- if he picked the right role model--but he seems to know everything. I learned a lot from him. He commands such respect on the set. I loved that."
"Did Cruise enlighten you?" I ask. "Give you the key to surviving Hollywood?"
"We didn't talk about that," says Slater. "We talked about life. We spent a lot of time alone together driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. The guy just seems incredibly together. I don't know exactly how old he is. I think a lot of it comes with age and experience."
"He's 32," I say.
"Observing how things worked with him kind of changed me a little bit. That's the way I'd like to do it. He's right on the money, man, a really sweet guy."
The highest compliment Slater can pay a man he admires is to call him a "sweet guy." There's something appealingly unmacho about it. The world would be a better place if more guys were sweet, but how many guys would admit this? And sweet in Hollywood? The higher up you go in the echelons of stardom, the less often you get a taste of that.
Slater has a hunger for role models, but his first one wasn't "sweet" by any stretch. At the time Slater broke through back in 1989 when Heathers was released, he was consumed with the moves and moods of Jack Nicholson. Lately, he's been waxing rhapsodic about Harrison Ford. I tell him I found the superstar's latest, Clear and Present Danger, disappointing--a little too much of an assembly-line Ford vehicle. Slater hasn't seen the film, but he waves off my comment: I'm missing the point. "The poster is great," he says. "I mean, 'Truth Needs a Soldier,' that's a heavy statement. With Harrison Ford's picture. You just go, 'Oh, here's the hero.' The guy has been in some of the most incredible films ever made and been the star of them. He is in-cred-i-ble!"
Slater met Ford last year, while co-starring in Barry Levinson's showbiz satire Jimmy Hollywood. "He was great. Very quiet. Really, really sweet." It's more than Ford's heroic persona that gooses Slater. It's the way he handles the deadly weapon that is stardom. "He's really managed to keep it in perspective. When he's finished with a movie, he retreats to his place in Wyoming--the middle of nowhere. He builds things."
"It's a bit too early for you to start strapping on the snow shoes and heading out to the high country," I point out. "Ford, after all, is 52."
"Fifty-two? Holy shit! Slater ponders this. "Hollywood is the place for me to be at this point, absolutely. There's no leaving for me."
The best thing about Slater's early rise in Hollywood is that he learned the limits and the dangers of fame early, too. "There's no question that I love it. There're so many perks to it, it's unreal. I thought I'd get over being insecure if I became famous, but it hasn't happened. It just gets worse, really. You get more and more on edge, more nervous. These are all the things I'm dealing with. You think if you get famous, fear will go away and problems will go away. But they don't.
"I'm looking for more stable guys to play," Slater says, "because I'm trying get more stable in my life. I've never been the type of guy who's been able to leave a role on the set and not take it home. It's great if you're playing a heroic role--take it home with you. But I've played more offbeat characters than heroes. I mean, Clarence [in True Romance] was weird. It was a strange experience."
This, Slater says, is what led him to Murder in the First, director Marc Rocco's based-on-a-true-story crime drama in which Slater, starring with Kevin Bacon and Gary Oldman, plays a lawyer defending a man who's being railroaded by the system--in other words, a Harrison Ford-esque lawyer. "My character's definitely a mature guy, kinda heroic--not some goofball kid. The story is very special, it's about two guys who were dealt different decks in life. People should be able to relate." And so, I guess we'll bid a fond farewell to the "goofball kids" Slater has played so well.
I ask Slater how much time and effort he puts into contemplating his fears and insecurities. "I actually lied about all that," he shoots back with a grin. "I don't really have any insecurities at all. None. It's scary. I'm the most secure guy..."
"I figured as much, Christian. Glad you came clean."
"I had to confess," Slater says.
Yeah--and maybe it's this bold confidence that has allowed Slater to single-handedly keep the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company in business during this, their darkest hour.
James Spader once told me that fear and cigarettes kept him thin. Does Slater concur?
"I agree with that. Cigarettes keep me very thin," he says, deftly avoiding the fear angle.
A young woman approaches our table. "Can I have your autograph?" she asks.
"Sure," says Slater. He points to a scribble already on the page of her book. "Is that Keanu Reeves?"
"Yeah."
"Wow," says Slater, actually sounding impressed. He signs. "There ya go."
"Thank you."
I am bringing the discussion around to women, but carefully. In the past, Slater says, he has made comments about his personal life without thinking. "And then I've had to deal with the repercussions." Comments, perhaps, like the one in an interview last year, about how he inevitably falls in love with his female co-stars--while a couple paragraphs later he was professing his love for his long-time girlfriend Nina Huang. Slater has indeed dated or been involved with many co-stars: Kim Walker, Winona Ryder, Samantha Mathis and Patricia Arquette. Last year, he parted from Nina Huang and carried on a high-profile relationship with supermodel Christy Turlington, but now he's back with Huang.
"Getting a relationship to be stable is not easy. You really need someone who's willing to listen, and genuinely cares. I get pretty passionate about everything in my life. So my woman gets an earful all the time. A hyper-passionate earful."
"Do you consider yourself a romantic person?"
"Hmmm...I have my romantic qualities," he says. "The truth is, I can't keep my hands off my woman. I can't. I don't know if that's romantic..."
"Hell yeah it is, Christian!"
"It is?" He seems relieved. "Yeah, I constantly need to be grabbing her, touching her. Because the woman is unbelievably sexy. I'm so hugely lucky in that respect. It's great. And I'm really having too good of a time in my life not to share it with somebody else, a special somebody in my life. And my woman fits that beautifully-- 'my woman,' man, that sounds funny. There are the ups and downs, all that shit. I'll tell you, though, the woman is just so sexy it's ludicrous."
"I know," I tell him. "I've seen pictures."
"Ann!" Slater yelps. "She kills me."
"Maybe the key is to figure out how to make all those differences between men and women work together," I suggest. Brilliant, I know. But wrong, says Slater. "We'll never figure it out," he shoots back.
There are two main keys, Slater explains, to a good relationship. One is: avoid home-wreckers. "The scary thing is there are a lot of people out there who will look at a happy person and try to destroy it, because they say, 'Well, that's what I want. Maybe I can get it if I get that person.' You have to be on your toes. Homewreckers. If you've got a wife and kids and some woman comes into your life begging and pleading, tell 'em to get fucked. Really. It's nuts."
And the other key? "Farting." Really? "Yeah, you start farting and belching, and that's the ultimate, really. Just hang. There's nothing like being able to do your bodily functions in front of another human being and have the other person appreciate it. That's the goal. And that is really as simple as life is." Christian Slater: true romantic.
Slater was born and raised in New York. His mother, Mary Jo Slater, a successful casting director, and his father, a sometimes-successful soap opera actor known alternately as Michael Hawkins and Michael D. Gainsborough, split up acrimoniously when Slater was five. He was raised by his mother, and saw his father infrequently. "I just had a real outrageous father," Slater says. "High energy. He was a kooky guy. He's out there. He's great, but not the normal father you could have." Slater's contact with his father was always limited, but now, he says, his dad lives in L.A. and they're talking more. "It's weird, finding out things. I had a very one-sided situation growing up and now I'm getting the whole picture, filling in a lot of blanks. A lot of things that were ingrained in me I wasn't comfortable with. I don't want to sound like a victim. I've had a great, magical life. But I find I've been used for a lot of my life. That's weird."
Recently, Slater has said, his father has more aggressively insinuated himself in his son's success. "I really don't like people taking credit for what I've achieved," he says now, pointedly. "It's like that scene in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner when the father says, 'I've done this for you, I've done that--' And Sidney Poitier just says, 'Look, man, that was your job. I don't owe you anything!' That's the truth. It's the parents' job: take care of your child! Parents--this is just my opinion--should be proud when their kid doesn't have to live at home, can support himself, have his own relationships, take responsibility. All I want is respect and understanding. Respect for my choices and decisions.
"A lot of people really like to--I don't know how to put it--I've been controlled in certain areas in my life. I've done everything I can to break out of it--by getting people in my life who know what's going on. I've had to do a lot of growing up in this business, in front of people. I've had people working for me since I was 18 years old--since I was nine, really--and a lot of people have had to grow up with me. It's been difficult for them to accept the fact that I'm getting older. There are still people who try to make me feel like I'm a puppet in this life and they're pulling my strings. So I'm cutting those strings."
"What do you know now, about the profession," I ask Slater, "that you didn't know at 20?"
He ponders. "I'm getting comfortable with what I have and where I'm going--that makes it easier dealing with the fact that there are other fucking actors on this goddamn planet.
"It's difficult in this town," Slater says, "because everyone always seems to be busy. You meet some guy at a party--he's got some project going on. If you don't have a project, you begin to feel like a total loser and you get really nervous and anxious and freaked out--"
"It's a well-known fact that everybody you meet at Hollywood parties is full of shit," I point out.
"Yeah," Slater admits, "nine times out of 10. I've realized that."
"Hell, 10 years from now," I point out, "you'll still be in a position to be a young leading man."
"Yeah," he nods. "There's not really a great hurry. My motto used to be, 'If I don't have something shaking come July, I'm just gonna curl up in a big ball and die.' I'm trying to get past that. I like this business and I'd like to be doing it for the rest of my life."
"How good are you at separating out the business from the rest of your life?" I ask. "For instance, how much acting do you do when you're not in front of a camera?"
"I suppose in certain situations, yeah," he says. "You've heard it before: people wear a different mask in each situation. This is my interview mask. When I go home, it's my relationship mask. When I'm on the set, it's my acting mask. Yeah, I do catch myself doing it."
Spoken like an actor. No wonder he's looking for some stability. "I found that in taking care of things at home, and being straight up and keeping that organized, that at least I have something to come home to," Slater says. "I'm lucky that, in this town of weird agendas and hidden motivations, I have a house I can retreat to up in the hills, where there's a certain amount of tranquility. And a good woman who says, 'Calm the hell down, everything's fine. You're doing good, just take it easy.'"
____________________________
Joshua Mooney interviewed James Cameron for the July Movieline.