Struttin' His Stuff

"Um, you're not really going to ask John that?" Michele gasps courteously. "I don't know, I think that would...embarrass John."

Possibly Michele is right, In addition to, and working in tandem with, his sexuality is a marked ingenuousness, an almost callow vulnerability. If I were kinder. I would call this a genuine sweetness. a less-than-casual interest in pleasing others. Michele exits as soon as John enters, and I find myself aiding him. conversationally: though eager to ingratiate. he seems unsure how, or of what to say. First, he simply smiles. The subject of cowboy boots is introduced: we are both wearing them. "I almost always do," John offers, grinning. I tell him of the night I got stuck in a boot and had to summon friends to pull it off, mostly to watch him listening, which he does intently — not, I sense, to ingratiate, but because he is sharply curious. As I speak, he continually visualizes what is described, construing messages in his visions. At the story's end, he says, "Well, that certainly was a...boot story," staing a fact, nothing more, as is his habit.

Another of his habits is to question. "If you write," he begins abruptly, "you have to wait awhile for the reaction to your work, right? Whereas I'm judged instantly, by my peers." Judged? "Sure. That's what it is, isn't it? How do you see it?" But which is more important: how his peers feel about his work, or how be feels? "Well...which is more important to you?"

And he grins at what is obviously his way of handling interviews. Actually, if he didn't act he would be rather good at interviewing, because his interest is clearly sincere. "I know, I'm the one who's supposed to talk. Okay, I know that if I don't feel right about my work, I'm discontent, no matter how much praise or money is involved. If I haven't done it to my own satisfaction. nothing will convince me it's any good. But if I'm really pleased with it, and it doesn't please others, it's still okay." Oddly, his inflection is becoming Vinnie Barbarino's, yet he concludes with, "I must say. it's myself I must please," a decidedly British phrasing. "Pleasing myself and the audience—that's optimum. Though the audience is the one it's all for." He seems to doubt that; he's frowning, abstracted, speaking sotto voce. "I'm not easy to please, with my own work, not at all. I'm very hard on myself that way."

The Oriental waitress executes a mini No play, "What's Your Order?" John requests tempura and a Coke, and politely awaits a question. I remind myself that he is an exceptionally good actor, and since the dawn of New Journalism, actors have become adept at flattering writers. Why is it so inviting to mistrust him? Because he looks too good and made it too big too fast? Because he must know full well how seductive his presence is? Ask him about that, and he grins and blushes; he is probably not yet accomplished enough as an artist to blush on cue. He is rising to the occasion. Why has he talked so little to the press? I don't ask that now, however for he's suddenly discussing Grease.

"...It was fun, on one level. Nowhere near as complicated as Saturday Night Fever, but it still wasn't easy because I'd never had to play a Fifties dude on the screen before. Even though it's a musical and looks simple, I felt that I had to think a lot about how a guy's behavior would have differed twenty-five years ago or so, before I was born. I mean, movement had to be different. There hadn't been the drug thing, or the awareness of blacks, so none of those styles of moving or talking had happened yet. Behavior, even for guys like Danny Zuko, who I play, had to have been much more...foursquare, you know? Posture was different: it was better. Also, there wasn't the urban sense of style or behavior that kids everywhere get from TV today. There had to be an innocence that nobody was really aware of, because they didn't have the sophistication to compare it with. Am I saying that right?"