After lunch, we powered through and miraculously caught up. “Make your days,” Jonathan Demme had said. We did! Gary and the crew had rescued me. What I learned in that single afternoon, and would come to understand even better as the shoot went on, was that a director needs to communicate and ask for help. The crew can set up the next few scenes while you’re focused on the one you’re shooting. The cinematographer and assistant directors can advise you on efficient ways to achieve your creative ambitions with little compromise. The director can humbly defer to the opinions of others and actually increase, rather than diminish, the respect he commands on set.
Roger was beaming at day’s end. He shook my hand and didn’t even show up for Day Two.
I have never felt more physically tired than I did at the end of that first day. The combination of acting, directing, and carrying the burden of being in charge of everything had utterly depleted me. My feet hurt, my back was sore, and my hair was matted with sweat. But you know what? I couldn’t wait to wake up the following day and do it all over again.
AS THE SHOOT went on, I discovered that the less I was in the movie, the more I enjoyed directing—a crucial distinction that would soon come to bear on my acting career. I really got a kick out of directing the Grand Theft Auto cast. There was a warm, loving Old Home Week vibe to the proceedings because so many of the players came from different parts of my life: Dad, Clint and Pete, Marion, Garry, Jim Ritz.
Dad and I created a part especially for Hoke Howell, his pal and frequent writing partner, as a sleazy preacher who steals a police car to pursue the young lovers and get the $25,000 reward. Hoke, a native of South Carolina, was in his element, gleefully chewing the scenery like it was pulled pork.
As it happens, food became a major issue during the shoot: the subject of my first managerial crisis. By our eighth day, the crew was in open revolt about the quality of the grub they were being served. Our production was feeding them a steady diet of McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Unlike the old-timers on The Andy Griffith Show, who were all too happy to subsist on cigarettes, stale coffee, and donuts, my young crew actually cared about its health and well-being. The unyielding onslaught of greasy fast food was bringing down morale, something that Cheryl, more than anyone else, had picked up on.
She went to our line producer, a man named John Davison, and asked him what the daily budget was for catering. The number she got was two dollars per person. “Ron,” she told me, “for that amount, I can feed everyone a whole lot better than what we’re settling for.”
At that point, we had finished shooting our L.A. scenes and were about to head out to the hinterlands of Victorville, California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, where the majority of our smash-’n’-crash action sequences would be filmed. It so happened that Cheryl’s maternal grandparents, Les and Lillian Schmid, owned a one-room, cinder-block vacation cabin—so spartan that its bathroom was an outhouse—in the same area. Cheryl got their permission to use the house’s kitchenette and began to compose a menu with my blessing.
Mom was worried about this scheme and made her feelings known. “Cheryl, men and their stomachs are monsters,” she said. “You are setting yourself up for disaster. For the love of God, don’t do it!”
But Cheryl was determined. She went food shopping with her grandparents and set to work in their little kitchen. Our first day in the desert was cold and windy, with gray skies. Yet all workplace discontent evaporated when, shortly before lunchtime, our maroon Volvo wagon appeared from over the horizon with twenty-three-year-old Cheryl at the wheel. She had prepared a lunch of rack of lamb, roasted vegetables, and a fresh green salad! The members of our crew were beside themselves with gratitude. Mom dove in to help bring service with a smile to the catering line. She happily conceded that she was wrong to have doubted her can-do daughter-in-law.
Allan Arkush and Joe Dante still talk about how Cheryl saved my ass by feeding the crew properly. But I was so caught up in every last detail of the film that I was not sufficiently partaking of the quality catering. Grand Theft Auto had only twenty-three shooting days, with Sundays off. Yet in that short span, I was wasting away. I began the shoot at 150 pounds, which suited my five-nine frame. A few weeks later, Joe, concerned for my well-being, confronted me about my gaunt appearance and urged me to take better care of myself. When I got on a scale, I discovered that my weight was down to 136 pounds. Yikes.