“It wasn’t Dostoevsky”: the character Patrick Swayze said he was “built to be”
Sometimes, a film simply emerges at the right time, surpassing expectations and becoming a mega-hit, much to the surprise of its makers, which was the case for Dirty Dancing, one of the most beloved romantic movies of all time, that was actually meant to be a modest hit.
It was pretty much designed to go straight to video, but people couldn’t get enough of the film, which danced its way into the hearts of viewers who found themselves obsessed with the love story blossoming between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. It was a big break for the latter, who became an undisputed ‘80s heart-throb, known for his flawless dance moves.
But Swayze always thought he was better suited for a much more macho kind of role, the kind he embodied in the 1989 film Road House. He didn’t want to be strictly known as that guy from the musical romance movie; he wanted to prove that he could play tough guys, too.
It was here that he felt he thrived because he had spent years honing his skills in various other endeavours, like gymnastics and boxing and wanted to put them to use, at least. “While Dirty Dancing had launched a kind of cult following for me among women, Road House created a cult following of its own among men. With its multiple bar-fight scenes and macho, tough-shit antagonists, it was a classic guys’ film,” Swayze wrote in his book The Time of My Life.
He went as far as to claim that, really, he was “built to be an action star”, and with Road House, he successfully achieved that, even if critics weren’t too keen on the movie. Roger Ebert certainly wasn’t impressed, writing in his review, “Was it intended as a parody? I have no idea, but I laughed more during this movie than during any of the so-called comedies I saw during the same week”.
While Road House wasn’t exactly a hit, it did enough for Swayze’s reputation for him to be satisfied with it, and from there, he became an action star, appearing in movies like Next of Kin and Point Break. Although he was never afraid to dive back into the romance genre, finding particular popularity with Ghost, featuring that iconic pottery scene that I bet you’ve imagined recreating before.
Further discussing his suitability for the action genre, Swayze wrote, “All the running, jumping, and falling I did as a kid had taught me how to be my own stuntman. Gymnastics had strengthened every part of my body and taught me balance. Studying martial arts, boxing, and sword fighting gave me a base of skills I could use in any kind of fight scene. And I could race anything, cars, motorcycles, horses, whatever was called for.”
He knew his character wasn’t exactly the height of intellectualism, but he was compelled by this no-nonsense protagonist, whom he wanted to do justice, noting, “I knew it wasn’t Dostoevsky, but I still wanted to give my character, Dalton, real depth, and not just play him as a campy hero”.
