The co-star Patrick Swayze almost came to blows with: “You want to fuck with me? I’ll fuck you up!”
As an actor who studied Buddhism and practised transcendental meditation, Patrick Swayze was renowned for taking a philosophical, spiritual, and altogether Zen-like approach to his life and career. However, it didn’t mean he was above throwing hands with his colleagues.
Life imitated art when he was filming a fight sequence opposite Road House co-star Marshall Teague, with the pair eventually abandoning any semblance of pulling their punches and brawling for real, which forced the crew to ruin the shot, jump in, and pull them off each other before things got out of hand.
There was also the famous behind-the-scenes friction between Swayze and Jennifer Grey on Dirty Dancing, with the duo hardly seeing eye-to-eye, not that audiences could tell when the chemistry between them helped turn the movie into a multi-generational classic.
James Cameron, who isn’t exactly a shrinking violet, admitted he “resented” Swayze at first when he encountered the star on Point Break, which he executive-produced, because he “had much less respect for the script than most other actors I worked with,” which is ironic when Bodhi was probably the character closest to his real-life personality than anyone else he played.
The spiciest incident by far came on the set of the cult classic To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, though, which was to be expected when there were so many big personalities. Wesley Snipes has been in his fair share of arguments over the years, and John Leguizamo has no issues calling out people he doesn’t enjoy working with, and Swayze fit the bill for a brief moment.
During rehearsals, Leguizamo was being a little too exuberant for his liking, leaving the actor to admit he “wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth” to shut him up. He was improvising and deviating from the script, and not to put too fine a point on it, but Swayze couldn’t be arsed with his shenanigans and decided to try and nip it in the bud.
“I snapped, ‘Oh, god! Would you just shut the fuck up for once?'” he wrote in his memoir, The Time of My Life. “Well, John is a scrappy little fiery Latino who can probably kick the butts of guys three times his size. He came right at me, fists up, yelling, ‘Come on, let’s go! You want to fuck with me? I’ll fuck you up!'”
Swayze and Leguizamo went nose-to-nose, “yelling insults in each other’s faces, our chests puffed out like a couple of roosters.” What completely passed them by was that it was a dress rehearsal, so they were both decked out in drag. “We must have looked ridiculous,” he reflected. “A couple of tough guys ready to go at each other while wearing panythose.”
“I love John,” he clarified. “And I love that he went at me with fists up and makeup on. Not many guys would have done that, and though it didn’t seem funny at the time, it sure does now.” The pot didn’t boil over for very long, which is just as well, because Swayze had the sneaking suspicion that Leguizamo was well-placed to kick his ass if things did end up getting physical.
