I sincerely toyed with an even more radical idea, one that I never dared share with Cheryl, though I wasn’t entirely kidding about it. The year we graduated from high school, Gerard Damiano’s pornographic movie Deep Throat became a sensation, earning $3 million in its first six months of release—a cinematic record at the time. A long-game, Hail Mary notion developed in my head: What if I self-funded a serious independent film by doing another kind of film first, casting aside all shame and industry goodwill by making an X-rated movie? This skin flick’s title? Opie Gets Laid.
After a few days’ consideration, I thought better of this scheme. Cheryl would never forgive me. Nor, probably, would any moviegoer who paid money for a ticket and then saw me naked.
ONE OF THE few things that kept me tethered to acting was the looming threat of boot camp and combat. I was opposed to the Vietnam War on philosophical grounds, in that it seemed pointless, needlessly destructive, and unwinnable. More immediately, given my status as someone who was going to turn eighteen in the second semester of his senior year of high school, I didn’t want to fight in it. Dad was equally vehement, notwithstanding his status as a military veteran. He still resented his four-year stint in the air force for the time it took from him as a young man and the career opportunities that he had missed out on. He found the justifications for our country’s involvements in Korea and Vietnam hazy, unlike the unequivocal call to action that World War II presented. He had no desire to see Clint or me in uniform unless we chose to volunteer.
Distressingly for me, college deferments were abolished in September 1971. So even if USC accepted me, it wouldn’t provide an out from the draft. Neither my parents nor I ever thought to consult a lawyer to see if there were loopholes or ways to game the system, as so many families of means did during that war. My parents were sophisticated hicks but not Hollywood hustlers. They knew the ins and outs of show business but didn’t move in circles where special favors transpired. So I was on my own.
Then it occurred to me: performers were known to receive special dispensation from the military. As a baseball fan, I had noticed that a lot of pro players, such as Nolan Ryan, Johnny Bench, and Pete Rose, circumvented the draft by joining the Army Reserves. You still had to report to an army base periodically and serve your country in two-week increments. You might be called upon by the league to travel overseas on a USO tour to cheer up the troops. But these scenarios sure beat wearing a helmet and fatigues in the jungle, one ambush or errant footstep away from sudden death.
A regular acting job could put me in a similar position to these ballplayers. A network or a studio would have my back and figure out a way for me to perform some sort of service that didn’t involve being a soldier. As an independent film director, on the other hand, I would be on my own. This may have been another factor in Mom’s wanting me to stick to acting. I can’t know for sure, since talk of the draft was taboo in our household. None of us wanted to openly contemplate the unthinkable scenario of me going off to war.
But one day during my senior year of high school, the depth of Mom’s concern revealed itself. We were having one of our set-tos about my slovenly ways. I had left my bed unmade, as per usual. Mom asked me if, just for once, I could pick up my room like a normal person. I responded petulantly that I didn’t wanna. At this, she erupted.
“You’re going to get drafted, and you’ll go to Vietnam!” she said. “And then the army will finally teach you how to make your goddamned bed!” She burst into tears and ran out of my room, slamming the door behind her.
That was sobering. In my own self-absorption, I hadn’t considered how much fear she was keeping inside. I never got any better at making my bed, but I did get better at being a son. I stopped laughing at Mom’s expense and talking down to her. My teenage smart-ass phase ended right then and there.
IT WAS IN this context that I took a part in a TV pilot that was provisionally titled New Family in Town. It was set in the Midwest in the 1950s, and its central character was a clean-cut teenage boy named Richie Cunningham.
The pilot was written by Garry Marshall, a prolific comedy guy who had worked on The Dick Van Dyke Show and was currently with Love, American Style, an of-its-time hourlong anthology series on ABC that each week included three or four unrelated mini-episodes about love, sex, and grooviness. Tonally, New Family in Town was inspired by a movie called Summer of ’42, a sleeper hit in 1971. Like that picture, our pilot was a coming-of-age story that looked to a more innocent past. But it was gentler and more G-rated than Summer of ’42 or, for that matter, Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, another ’71 hit about high school kids in pre-1960s America. Our show wasn’t going anywhere explicit or raunchy. The most risqué it got was when Richie’s best friend, Potsie Weber, said that the newfangled invention known as a TV set was a surefire way to get action, because you could invite girls over and—cringe alert—“grab ’em right in the middle of Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”