The “legendary director” who called Patrick Swayze a poser: “This was a real insult”
Since he had a working pair of eyes, Patrick Swayze would have known that he was a handsome fella. However, since he had a working pair of eyes and knew that he was a handsome fella, he dedicated himself to working even harder to be taken seriously as an actor.
Not that he could do that from the start, though, which is why his first big-screen role saw him playing one of the leads in 1979’s Skatetown, USA, a slab of roller-discoing cheese that was outdated by the time it reached cinemas, and it was an inauspicious start that Swayze preferred not to talk about.
With pickings remaining slim in the world of features, he opted to take his talents to television instead, which gave him the platform to play a variety of different characters in shows that spanned numerous genres, including the made-for-TV sports drama The Comeback, a guest spot on M*A*S*H, and top billing in the biker procedural The Renegades, which was canned after six episodes.
For his sophomore cinematic outing, though, Swayze couldn’t believe his luck. Despite having just one shoddy flick under his belt, he’d always dreamed of collaborating with the best of the business, and he’d also developed a fascination with the inner workings of filmmaking, so he understandably viewed Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders as the perfect job at the ideal time.
Cast alongside a bevvy of fresh-faced future stars, which numbered Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, and Diane Lane, it was a massive opportunity. Unfortunately, his past as a dancer came back to haunt him yet again, this time when the mastermind behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now took his curiosity the wrong way.
“Francis and I also clashed after I asked him about camera angles for a couple of scenes,” he wrote in his memoir. “I was curious about the art of filmmaking, and here I was working with the master; I figured it was as good a time as any to ask questions and learn how it was done. But when I asked him about why he chose to shoot in certain ways, he misunderstood why.”
Dismissing him as just another pretty face, Coppola waved off his inquiry. “Ah, everyone knows that all dancers are interested in is looking at themselves in the mirror,” Swayze was told. Needless to say, he was taken aback. “This was a real insult,” he recalled. “And it was all the worse coming from a legendary director.”
“I didn’t care about how my face looked onscreen; I wanted to be the best actor I could,” the Dirty Dancing icon explained. “And if he didn’t believe that was so, why had he cast me? Francis’ comment really pissed me off, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, except show him how hard I would work in my performance, which is probably what he was angling for in the first place.”
Even though he wasn’t 100% sure if Coppola really thought he was a poser, or if it was some kind of reverse psychology to help him get into character, Swayze was stewing. For the first time, he was working with one of the directorial greats, and his overriding memory is that they pissed him off.
