The 1990 scene nobody wanted Patrick Swayze to shoot: “Served him with a cease and desist”
The thing about a Patrick Swayze movie is that you never quite know what you’re going to get.
He might be best remembered for romantic hits like Ghost and Dirty Dancing, but there were plenty of other sides to him. He threw punches in Road House, played a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and even voiced a singing dog in The Fox and the Hound 2. Yes, there really is a Fox and the Hound 2. No, you’re not missing much.
One of Swayze’s greatest roles, though, came in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break, where he played the surfer-philosopher Bodhi. A laid-back thrill seeker who lives for chasing waves and pushing limits, Bodhi finds himself pursued by FBI agent Johnny Utah, played by Keanu Reeves, who suspects him and his crew of carrying out a string of bank robberies. As the two men develop an unlikely bond, Johnny’s mission becomes increasingly complicated. The film helped establish Reeves as an action star, has since earned a huge cult following, and remains one of cinema’s most famously homoerotic blockbusters.
Following Swayze’s death in 2009, Reeves reminisced about their time working together with E Online. He explained that his co-star was very similar to his character in the sense that they both liked to live life to the fullest.
“There was some skydiving sequences in this film we did together,” he recalled. “As filming was going on, it came to be that Patrick was jumping out of airplanes all the time. I think he had over 30 jumps during the course of filming and so the production served him with a cease and desist, which he listened to until they got to Hawaii.”
Skydiving makes up a very famous scene in Point Break. Johnny, having earned Bodhi and his gang’s trust, is coerced into joining them for a little high-octane fun. This is the moment Bodhi reveals that he knows Johnny is with the FBI and that he’s kidnapped his love interest Tyler (Lori Petty) to force him into joining their next robbery. Swayze insisted on doing the skydiving himself, with the movie’s instructor, Jim Wallace, describing him as a natural. He was a thrillseeker in real life, so that comes as little surprise. He was a qualified pilot and got into a couple of midair scrapes in his time.
Given that the entire movie is about extreme sports, it’s not surprising that the Point Break set could be a dangerous place. Swayze claimed that he nearly died six times across the various surfing, sky-diving, and chase sequences. He famously never used a stunt double for his action scenes, but he did pass the mic to some professional surfer, Darrick Doerner, a few times. Swayze even borrowed some of Doerner’s mannerisms for the character.
Point Break is an absolute gem of a campy action romp. The stunts are a big part of what makes it great, and the fact that it’s actually Swayze doing some of those crazy things just adds to the enjoyment. Even if the legal team hated every second of watching him out on the waves.
