Tim Robbins’ long-forgotten sex comedy: “Every young actor has to do a ‘get laid’ film”
These days, Tim Robbins‘ status as the beloved Academy Award-winning star of Mystic River and The Shawshank Redemption is set in stone. However, true fans know the lanky thesp wasn’t always such a critical darling, and his ignominious past as the amusingly named Larry ‘Mother’ Tucker can attest to that.
Before he played that (mercifully) forgotten character, though, Robbins was in the same boat as every other starry-eyed actor who moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, having graduated from UCLA Film School in 1981. Subsequently, he lost no time in forming Actors’ Gang, an experimental theatre troupe that gave him a place to hone his craft with other like-minded peers, and while it served as his creative outlet, it didn’t exactly put food on the table, so he submitted himself for every audition under the sun, along with hundreds of other aspirants.
Robbins’ innate talent must have shone through quickly in those days, because he didn’t have to tread the boards for long before he began landing jobs in film and TV. He had a memorable three-episode stint as a domestic terrorist in the medical drama St Elsewhere, for example, and also shot a minor role in the Demi Moore movie No Small Affair. These gigs were vital for the young actor, as they paid his rent, but also gave him legitimate experience of working on movie sets, which was worth its weight in gold.
Naturally, though, he couldn’t afford to be picky about the jobs he tried out for, and this is how he ended up in one of the worst examples of the ’80s teen sex comedy ever committed to celluloid.
In 1985’s Fraternity Vacation, a painfully gangly Robbins played James ‘Mother’ Tucker, a Theta Pi Gamma frat boy who gets the opportunity to score a free holiday in Palm Springs. There’s just one problem: if he wants the vacation, he has to take a new pledge, the uber-nerd Wendell Tvedt, under his wing. Not wanting Tvedt to cramp his style during Spring Break, he teaches him all about the drunken, sex-crazed ways of college, before making a wager with a rival frat house to see who can be first to have sex with a beautiful, bikini-clad co-ed named Ashley. Cue 84 minutes of boozed-up, boob-filled antics.
Back in 1999, during an interview with The Guardian, Robbins was asked about Fraternity Vacation, and the embarrassment was written all over him. This wasn’t Animal House or Fast Times at Ridgemont High but a proper cinematic car crash, one that Roger Ebert immediately slammed as worryingly sexist, and that was in 1985, when half of Hollywood didn’t exactly have the cleanest track record. You’ve got to really overstep the mark to catch flak for that sort of thing back then.
After shifting uncomfortably and, for no apparent reason, noting that the film’s original title was ‘Wendell‘, Robbins gave his best explanation for his incongruous presence in the movie. “Well, you gotta make a living, you know,” he offered with a meek smile, “I think every young actor in Hollywood has to do a ‘get laid’ film. It’s a kind of rite of passage. You couldn’t get into the union without it.”
It’s obvious that, even at the beginning, Robbins had higher ambitions and knew Fraternity Vacation was fluff, but he was also a realist. He knew that the payday from that movie, which would only be six weeks’ work, could sustain him for six months in LA and help fund a new stage play for the Actors’ Gang to perform. In truth, the last thing he wanted was to turn down a job, which would mean he’d have no money, which in turn would lead to becoming creatively stuck. He needed to work to keep his creative juices flowing, even if that work was lowest common denominator guff.
“I feel the way I survived in Los Angeles was that all my downtime was taken up with creativity and trying to make plays, and workshop and experiment,” he explained. noting, “I think it’s a really dangerous place to be if you’re sedentary; if you’ve got a lot of time and you start hanging out, celebrating yourself and the business. I think that’s when it becomes really unhealthy.” OK, Tim, we’ll let you get away with this one.
