Hot Young Actor ^
MICHAEL PARE
Stars in His First Two Movies
by Damn Seay
It's a publicist’s dream ... no long, drawn
out saga of a dreary, dues-paying climb to the
top. No sir, you don't get much more instant
than Michael Pare s nimble leap up the ladder
of success, clear over the heads of countless
toiling also-rans, right to the very portals of
marquee immortality.
Consider, for instance, the current pitch:
24-year-old Pares first film, as well as, not
coincidentally, his first starring role, is Em
bassy Pictures’ Eddie and the Cruisers. Pare
portrays, quite convincingly, a mythic Sixties
rock star, a cross between Eddie Cochran and
Jim Morrison who disappears under suitably
mysterious circumstances. “Michael doesn’t
do his own guitar playing or singing,’’ his
press agent breezily informs. “It’s all synched.
of few actors in Hollywood history who’s
never had to endure the indignity of playing a
supporting role.
“Of course I’m lucky,” says Pare between
bites of breaded pork chop. “I’m the luckiest
guy I ever met,” and no one in the crowded
town square — clogged with catering trucks,
an idle herd of Harley Davidsons and a battal
ion of tattooed extras in black leather regalia
— seems inclined to contest the point. For
one thing, they’re all busy scarfing down
pounds of quintessential movie locale cuisine
— canned fruit, overcooked entrees and stale
cold cuts. For another, it’s unbelievably hot
out here — three degrees over a hundred on
the Universal Studios backlot in Hollywood,
where the filming of Streets of Fire — director
People who've seen the picture don't believe
me when I tell them. That's how good
Michael is.” The stunning non-sequitur passes
by without a pause. After all, lip synching is an
art like any other; if one’s client excels in fak
ing it, why not let the world know?
Eddie and the Cruisers is something of a
muddle a flimsy whodunnit with a surfeit of
who-cares plot twists, the flick wallows in
enough cliches to embarrass the entire staff of
Reader's I finest, while Martin I>avidson directs
with a hand heavier than Mr. Ts. It is equally
true, however, that for die time Pares lean
and hungry good looks fill the screen we are
in the presence of a Presence Even as rickety
a vehicle as Eddie and the Cruisers can t seem
to slow Pares considerable matinee idol
momentum — he smolders, flares and broods
with all the instinctive elan of a Richard Gere
or Matt Dillon Even from such scant evidence
it appears likely that with time he'll expand
his dramatic repertoire to include charm,
vulnerability and either cmexional essentials
As of this moment, the fate of his fledgling
career rests on two considerably more prom
ising starring slots, which must make him one
The face that launched a career:
Pare as Eddie in Eddie and the
Cruisers (above) and as Tom Cody,
Walter Hill’s latest futuristic urban
hero in Streets of Fire (above right).
Waller Hill's latest paean to manly violence
and other heroic virtues — is proceeding in
fits and starts.
Standing by an enormous tub of strawberry
ice cream is Mr. Lee Vlng, fresh from his
debut film role as the sleazy nightclub man
ager in l-'ktshdance and quickly recruited for a
small pan in Streets of Fire alongside such no
table supporting actors as SCTV's Rick
Moran is. Lee's’ shirt is off, revealing a tattooed
snake circling his bicep, and he’s waving
around what looks like a sawed-off shotgun,
one of hundreds of dangerous looking weap
ons lying in piles on the set. Next to him, an
other sunburned extra sans shin totes an
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Sept./Oct. 83, page 10
enormous beer belly, waddling by to reveal
the Harley Davidson logo etched onto his
back. Ominous-looking knots of biker types
silently consume lunch beneath a pitiless sun,
their DA’s wilting. Walter Hill, orchestrator
of all this menace, is huddled with producer
Lawrence Gordon under the only shade
around, a mottled patch beneath a wormy
elm tree. Looking like someone’s jovial truck
driving uncle, Hill, pudgy and bearded and
wearing a baseball cap, seems completely at
ease amidst the sizzling chaos of his own de
sign.
"Walter has a vivid picture of what he
wants," remarks Pare, squinting against the
blinding glare. “There’s never a question of
'do I have what he needs.' You wouldn't be
here if you didn’t.”
Hill does indeed seem to know exactly
what he's up to. Among the hottest of a cur
rent crop of bankable Hollywood directors,
the one-time screenwriter is flush from his
box office smash 48 Hrs., a film mapping
exactly the same macho cosmos as the rest of
his work, which includes the queasy Southern
Comfort. that masterpiece of slow-motion
gore, The Long Riders, and the hair-raising
The Warriors, to which Streets of Fire, billed
as "a rock ’n’ roll action fantasy” I tears more
than a passing resemblance. With Hill’s im
pressive credentials he could, of course, snag
any number of rising or established stars to
front this latest effort—the first of a projected
film trilogy titled The Adventures of Tom
Cody That he chose Pare, a nearly complete
unknown, to portray his mythic hero is re
vealing evidence of the young actor s con
siderable on-camera charisma.
Born in Brooklyn, the eighth ot ten chil
dren, Pare and family moved to the wilds of
Westchester County when Michael’s father
died. "I went to the Culinary' Institute in Hyde
Park," he relates through a mouthful of can
ned peaches, “because cooking was the first
real job I had when 1 got out of high school.
It was something ! could do and get at least a
middle class income. But I don’t think 1 ever
considered it my life’s work."
That last comment sounds a bit fishy. After
all, Pare graduated from the Institute with a
cooking degree and began almost at once
climbing the long ladder to chefdom, taking a
few sous-chef positions in New York restau
rants, filleting and flambeing until he landed a
spot, at age 21, as an assistant baker at New
York's ultra-trendy Tavern on the Green. It
was just about then, however, that destiny in
tervened with stunning alacrity.
"1 was waiting in a bar for my girlfriend to
get off work,” relates Pare, his winning smile
suddenly' bright at the memory. “1 felt some
one tap me on the shoulder " The tap, believe
it or not, was Opportunity itself, in the person
of a New York talent scout/agent who liked
what she saw and wasn’t shy about saying so.
She suggested he attend acting school, where
he was eventually to meet the late legendary
talent agent Joyce Selznick, who was also duly
impressed.
Sitting across from him it’s impossible not
to catch^the full force of his appeal to sharp
eyed scouts and canny film directors. His
striking good looks are set off by pale blue
eyes and a shock of unruly blond hair. Look
ing a bit like a pre-dissipated Nick Nolte with
a touch of. down-home Gerard Depardeau,
Pare certainly possesses the right mix of star
quality facial fundamentals. But there must be
file drawers full of appealing composites Hill
and company passed clean over in favor of
Pare. Why? It seems to have more than a little
to do with the fledgling star’s casual and un
selfconscious poise. “When I first met him, he
struck me as a kid with good instincts and not
a lot of training,” remarks Eddie and the
Crusiers co-star Matthew Laurence. “1 felt
about him like a son, and even with every
thing that’s swirling around him now, he’s
still that same kid.” (Laurence is incidentally,
roughly Pares age.) There is, even now, a
palpable eagerness to Pare, a transparency
and guilelessness that is quite disarming. He
is, in a word, malleable. "What he’s got," in
tones one press release, “you can’t spell.”
Nor, it seems, is it something Pare can eas
ily articulate. His frequent search-me shrugs
seem about the most eloquent statements he’s
able to make on the subject of his own suc
cess. “! fell for acting right away,” he says.
“Who wouldn't?” One gets the feeling he’s
waiting to wake up.
With lunch over, the Streets of Eire
menagerie straggles back to the scene of to
day's shooting. Six blocks of ersatz New York
City streets, complete with elevated train
tracks, comprise the main set for Hill's
Fifties-styled vision of the future. Mounted
over the entire length of the stage is one
enormous expanse of plastic tarp. What
seemed like a good idea at the time — cover
an outdoor stage set to allow night shooting
during daylight hours — now resembles a
diabolical health hazard. The plastic sheet,
flapping in a blistering breeze, cooks the set
to an even 110, creating a sort of greenhouse
effect as hordes of extras, decked out as the
film’s evil motorcycle gang, sweat and steam
while waiting for their cues.
Pare, sitting in the ubiquitous personalized
director's chair, suffers along with everyone
else as he waits through another interminable
break in the shooting. His costume is a
woolen, Wallace Beery-style undershirt with
suspenders holding up heavy suede trousers.
Smoking a succession of Marlboros, he con
tinues his account of his rocket ride to verg
ing stardom. “After I met Joyce Selznick," he
recalls, “1 started taking the whole thing a lit
tle more seriously. She helped me get acting
lessons, and 1 quit cooking. 1 gave myself a
year to make it.”
It took two, but he eventually landed a
supporting role on the benighted prime-time
TV series Greatest American Hero playing a
“smart aleck kid” named Tony. “I had that job
for a year and a half,” he recounts, apparently
unaware that in a single bound he cleared the
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